philipstorer

a night worth staying up for.

i’m on the computer and I shouldn’t be. Oddly enough… doug and molly just started into a diatribe about having landed and just set foot into a world where everyone is determined to be attached to an electronic device. But I can’t help but write.

Tonight blake and I drove to the airport to pick up the whartons. Sitting in the car on the drive home was odd. But when I say that is was odd for me… I’m sure it was unimaginably more odd for doug and molly to be here with us. Molly says “This is so weird to be in this car with you guys. The roads are so smooth.” The last time the four of us were in a car together… well… the last memorable time we were in a car together was a night where we were all driving from the valley of the angels to the mountain of light. Doug decided to turn on the radio (normally a horrible idea in honduras) and u2 sang sunday bloody sunday. Naturally, we hung out the sides of the truck driving over the relatively dangerous mountains singing at the top of our lungs. I really got into the “O” parts.

Tonight we rode in silence from the airport.

We are sitting in the living room… and it is a reminder to me of what it is like to come back here. It is surprisingly easy to forget the rest of the world in a short amount of time. As the whartons sit here with us… i am remembering the majority of the world by looking at it through their eyes. Doug just said: “We are surrounded by luxuries right now. We are sitting on carpet”. I forget that that too has at points in my life struck me abnormal.

Damien Jurado is playing.. before him was gillian welch. It is fitting. I need to stop writing and get back to it. To living. To engage in the conversations that remind you of what living actually is.

peace

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a day of yick

– bad news
– bad stomach something or other. love being sick in summer.

yick resolved:
bad news: results in a probable trip to p-town
bad stomach: i think it all came up

doug and molly get home tonight. that will be pretty great too. as long as i don’t hurl on them.

oh.. and honduras could be a reality again in december. hot dog.

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sleepy, no sleep.

report: comfest 2007 = lame

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simple way

www.thesimpleway.org

help out if you can

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the neighbor – rilke

Strange violin, are you following me?
In how many distant cities has your
lonely night already spoken to mine?
Are a hundred playing you? Or just one?

Are there in all the great cities of the world
those, who without you, would have
already lost themselves in the great river?
And why does it always have to concern me?

Why am I always the neighbor of those
who in fear force you to sing
and to say: The heaviness of life
is heavier than the heaviness of all things.

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.

i am at a complete loss for words.

1981-2007

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an afternoon ride on my bike anticpating the arrival of a gem.

Today, as I have done many times over the past two years, I rode north down neil avenue. Before which I spent most of my morning in anticipation for the ride. I parked in the usual spot among the other socially conscious and/or poor folks who have no use for a car, car payment, insurance etc. I locked the bike using the same lock I have been using over the past four years. Then took a dunhill and zippo out of my pocket and started a slow walk towards the James. It wasn’t until I neared the door that I began to curse whatever plan it was that upon closing the main entrance of the hospital would force the pedestrian to enter the maternity ward through the James cancer center. It may not have been the entrance of the hospital itself that set off my mixed emotions, I’m sure that whatever spirit it is that guides the randomness of ipods and decided that transatalticism was the appropriate song for the occasion had something to do with my emotional confusion.

I wish that I didn’t know my way around that hospital so well.

It didn’t take long to find the family waiting with anticipation. After about a half an hour with both Mike’s Mother and Lianne’s parents the nurse arrived and announced that Ruby had been born at 3:51p.m. The moment everyone in the room had been waiting to hear… I was so excited to hear that, mike was a father, lianne was a mother, that the news began to overshadow the odd feeling that had overcome me in being in that place.

Since that time I have had thoughts of the beginning and the ending of life, joy and sorrow, despair and hope. With each new collision of thought there is no resolution. There is only the face of that beautiful crying baby, the worn out mother, and a new father.

It truly is a beautiful, hopeful, and delicate world. Welcome to it Ruby Dylan Redcay.

..

transatlanticism

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please include a photo with your application to the school of theology at UD

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..

hmm.. now to decide which photo to send.

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i mean.. i listen to the new wilco during this.. but you are your own person

here it is

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been awhile

i haven’t really felt the need to post in awhile..

enough life going on to not really need to use the internet as a crutch.

updates:

back from Honduras. not entirely.
vintage motorcycles. honda 1976 cb360. i need leather fringe.
listening to lots of tom petty, dylan, & zeppelin. feels good to drop the pretentious indie world for a little while. don’t worry, I’ll be back indie world.
reading: wittgentstein, berry, & more berry
considering the next time and place to drop off the face of the world. how about nationwide?zaaaaaaaaaaa

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oh here I am..

at some point i neglected to mention that I have arrived and am not only alive but living.

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pictures

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next

back in town today and tomorrow.. will be leaving early sunday morning for honduras.

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a thought…

“… perhaps you are like me, so emeshed in this reality that another way is nearly unthinkable…. the dominent history of our own time, consists in briefcases and limousines, and press conferances and quotas and new weapondry systems. And that is not a place where much dancing happens…”

-w.b.

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pictures

I haven’t really taken many photos.. which I’m sure I will regret later… but here are a few:

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hi

this is to let you know that I’m alive.

I don’t want to waste more time than necessary on the internet.

it’s raining right now. a fantastic kind of rain.

visited an in-progress orphanage in the mountains yesterday in a little valley called “constanza”. We met a few hatian aid workers today. spent a lot of time reading. eating our share of rice and beans. We have found one cup of beans and one cup of rice is a perfectly sized meal for the two of us.

It seems like everything casey and I set out to do turns into gold. we walk out the door with no agenda and end up having the time of our lives. or if we do set out to do something specific we end up finding exactly what we were looking for without any idea of where we are going not to mention a sad lack of language skills.

I’ve been thinking a lot the past few days about vocation and imagination… I’ll try to type them out as I have time.

peace

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bskidz

Good to see him again.

dude played open mic last night at ruby tuesdays… played one of his newer songs “revolution”… pretty fantastic.. the sooner he starts recording again. the better.

listen:
http://www.myspace.com/blakeskidmore

oh and there is a full-on show with he and hal hixon happening on tuesday evening. I’ll get you the details asap.

yeah.. and I leave for central america the next day.. so come to the show if you want to see me.

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getting ready

emails
phone calls
bills
doctors
mixed feelings
loose ends
loose grip on the future
anticipation
dylan

…take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow…

oh.. and wendell berry(again) on effectiveness:

Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvement and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protesters who hold out for longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal. If protest depended on success, there would be little protest of any durability or significance. History simply affords too little evidence that anyone’s individual protest is of any use. Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.

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a little more detail

that last entry was a little vague..

that was more for the people who knew that I was in the middle of the decision making process.

the story..

my friends matt and elisa leahy are traveling to honduras to begin their journey to: “give voice to those who would otherwise not be heard through the use of documentary film making”. They have asked me to join their latest project which they defined as

“to tell the story of the HIV/AIDS
epidemic (in honduras) told through the context of Montana de Luz, an orphanage
for children with AIDS,,. We aim to find threads of life that exist
despite the death that is supremely evident.”

I will be joining the noonday film team for their final week in honduras shortly after my trip to the domican republic. From there, I will be traveling to the island of Utila for one month of immersion language training. After that month I will spend a week at Montana de Luz. my plane ticket says that I will return on June 9th.

I’m too tired at the moment to spend much time writing about this… but i’d love to chat. Feel free to catch up with me in the next 9 days and I’ll tell you all about it.

Noonday films could use your support on this ambitious project.. you can donate here: http://noondayfilms.com/
MDL could use your support too: http://www.montanadeluz.org

and if you have some time on your hands:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/view/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honduras

here are a few photos of utila:
http://www.aboututila.com/Photos/AdamLaverty/Sunset-Cays-04.JPG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Road_Near_Munchies.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Road.jpg

dosn’t seem too bad.

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“..much protest is naive..”

I’ve decided to go. In 10 days I’ll be leaving. I’ll be back mid June.

I will post the details soon.

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would you do it?

If you could blow up the world with the flick of a switch
Would you do it?
If you could make everyobody poor just so you could be rich
Would you do it?
If you could watch everybody work while you just lay on your back
Would you do it?
If you could take all the love without giving any back
Would you do it?
And so we cannot know ourselves or what we’d really do…

With all your power
What would you do?

—
“…what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

not for sale.

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how to be a poet

(to remind myself)

“…

breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air
shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from anything
that obscures that place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and descecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.”

-W.B.

—————-

A few of you may have heard stories about the day we buried mark last year. And the bird that sang through the entire service.

on friday, amy and I went back to the grave site. a beautiful day, very much the same as the day one year previous. I didn’t expect it to be an emotional time for me. I just didn’t think I was going to feel it.

I was wrong.

I went there and couldn’t stop thinking about this whole thing on belief and hope and certainty and…

I sat there thinking about belief and how faith has become something that looks much more like wishful thinking… I want so badly to be certain about the christian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead… I want to know that everything will be made right.

So what do I do with doubt? I began to pray there… “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief” and as I prayed this same prayer over and over again, I began to think about what it would look like for my unbelief to be helped. Would it mean more confidence that I am “right”? Or is it possible that if faith looks more like hope than it does correctness, could more faith simply mean more desire.. more yearning for the world to be put to rights… more sight of where creation has been broken and more glimpses of creation being renewed.

Just as I was having that thought, a cardinal landed in the tree. The same tree he landed on one year ago. I nudged amy and pointed. We laughed a little to ourselves. And then he began to sing. He sang the kind of song that screams of life.

I tend to shun most instances of “answers to prayer”. I have too much trouble seperating providence and coincidence. I think maybe prayer just opens your eyes to the mundane things that are already around you and that you would have missed the glory of otherwise.

anyway..

When he sang, I was not given more confidence the rightness of what i believe.. but I was able to more fully pray: “God.. i hope so.”

I’ve renewed my subscription. I’m in for a little while longer.. I’m committed to seeing where this thing takes me.

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more today

breakfast with caldwell
nap
lunch with vicki
phone call with MI
bake beer bread for patience 21st
walk with casey
8:30 – sleep

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yesterday/today

invisible children
magic lamp
rock show
drool

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poems

on finding new poets ed suggest to go to the library and browse. ok.. on my way.

oh.. and after a few clicks i happened onto this guy:

“…At night I watch the moon and imagine exciting places
over the horizon. Only a fool does not see that the vast
industrial economies are temporary. I say too much. My
throat is infected with words. At the country hospital, I am
treated by a beautiful doctor. That evening we drink wine
from the valley on the balcony of the hotel. Look, she says,
the moon is moving into the distance, three centimetres
each year, which is the speed at which fingernails grow!
We sing revolutionary songs until all hours, drinking to
friendship between our two countries. In her language, the
word for ‘Sunday’ is ‘resurrection’. I leave the following
morning…”

read the rest of it here:

http://www.vuw.ac.nz/modernletters/bnzp/2001/brunton.html

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just when you thought…

so.. by saturday night it had been a pretty good weekend… and then came sunday. 70 to 75.. sunny… occasional breeze, park full of people to watch, blanket to lay on, book to ignore, weezer, ben harper, and good company. very good company.

my nose is sunburnt.

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i’ve had a better weekend than you.

..

oh.. and internet stalkers aren’t all bad.

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a battle in the war between good and evil

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support your friends and artists:
http://www.sharonhbell.com/

i just thought about combining friends and artists by saying “fartists”. how mature. I’m sure you appreciate that… right sharon?

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thanks

whoever it is that is mailing me books. you are awesome.

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cinci

the weekend ended up being heavier than i expected.

the whole party was spent in this delapadated old cathedrel… at least they have heat there this year.

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there were highlights… like playing chess in here with mcaughy..

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that t.v. was a fish tank. I think all t.v.’s should be fish tanks.

oh.. and then this…

“There are some things in life, and they may be the most important things, that we cannot know by research or reflection, but only by committing ourselves. We must dare in order to know. Life is full of situations to which I can respond not with part of myself but only with commitment of my whole being.”

cincinati weekend

live music. missed one show so far.

recorded music. bought the latest american analogue set.

celebrated the feast of st. francis with beer, humus, veggies, beer…

last night marshall asked me to come and tell 200 folks at st. elizabeths about mark’s life and passing. i had thought about spending the morning at the speckled bird, and instead i stood in front of these people and told them that mark was my friend. I wasn’t really prepared.. so I hope I at least said that. but.. I think it took me about 15 minutes.. so who knows what it was that came out.

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oh.. and..

a sunny porch with Coronas and Polaroids look like this:

..

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yesterday

brothers karamzov
corona on sunny porch. no shoes. poloroids
big salad
kentucky for appleseed cast

weekend:
thinspace
back to kentucky for mewithoutyou

apple seed cast looks like this:

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Tears of Mourning and Birthing of Hope

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March 15
Time: 5:30 to 6:30
Location: Capitol Square
This contemplative prayer service will include praying for our enemies (whether they be around the world or in your own household)
If you need a ride, be at 64 king at 5:00 p.m.

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sitting beneath the big tree

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if you squint, you can see nicaragua.. neat.

at some point while sitting here, i told molly that this very spot was in my top 5 list of places in the world. she asked where the other 4 were and i said they were all in the adirondak mountains… moon ledge, split rock, angel falls, schroon manor… and then we laughed that she knew of the places I was talking about.

life is weird.

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another story

I was in a pretty dark place a year ago…

I remember talking to doug about Molly’s decision to leave everything to be with those children in honduras. and in the middle of the conversation doug looks at my arm and asked what it meant to me… he asked: “Is that really hope or just some ink on your arm? Because…” he said “If it is just some ink on your arm, than Molly and I quit. We are not going down there just to be marytrs, this isn’t downward mobility for mobility’s sake. We are going down there to create a new reality that we believe is possible precisely because of what is happening here. If you are telling me that thing is just ink, than we are coming home.”

I’ve thought about that conversation a lot. Hell, I quit my job and went to work with them not long after. During my last trip we were hauling bricks to build a new school in the town of Neueva Esperanza (please keep reading into what that translates to) when the edge of one of the bricks scraped across my forearm leaving my tattoo to bleed toward my fingers. It was profound, to say the least, to see this healing tree suffer as it worked toward a better world. The scabs from the scrape lasted the rest of the week.

It was the first time I have felt comfortable with this on my arm. It was the first time that this was more than just ink.

These next two weeks are going to be tough. I sure do miss him.

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battered and torn / still I can see the light / Tattered and worn / But I must kneel to fight

“…If I say, I will not mention Him,
Or speak any more in His name,
There is my heart as it were a burning fire
Shut up in my bones,
And I am weary with holding it in,
And I cannot…”

– The Prophet Who Wept

“…I don’t know how a man decides
What’s right for his own life
It’s all a mystery

I’m a man, not a boy
And there are things you can’t avoid
You have to face them
When you’re not prepared to face them…”

-The Flaming Lips

Family, Friends, Enemies, Lurkers:


Announcement:

March 15th will be my last official day at Montana de Luz. I am leaving disappointed. I am leaving excited.

I’m disappointed because Montana is revealing the inevitable future of the world. It is healing to be in the middle of that hope. God knows we all need healing. I made friends there. I will miss them. I will miss the gift of being with Marlon, Wendy Uno, Celestina, Tato, Jamie, Leyla, Kevin, Kevin Omar, Dilma… you get the idea.

I’m excited because I was given the opportunity to taste hope. I was given the gift of healing. I have seen the future of the world. I will not look away. Everything from here on out will be more, not less.

The director of MDL recently asked what it is that I took away from my time at Montana. This is what I told her:

It is easy to despair. Life gives us an excuse to define the world as a tragedy. It does not take much effort to see the strangle hold that war, death, disease, deceit, abandonment, fear… have on our world. Even people themselves reinforce our despair.

At Montana, there are 30 Honduran staff members and 5 U.S. citizens who are all using their lives to create a better world for 22 children. Without the efforts of these folks these children would be abandoned to the death sentence that they been given. People who give their lives for these children are real. They are truth. They are beauty. And in light of such beauty we are given the opportunity to define our world as a place that has love at its very core. We are given hope that another world is possible.

To see tragedy but embrace hope in place of despair is healing.

I hope that I am leaving the project with as much as I took from it.

Details on My Departure:

I’m not an accountant. I wouldn’t know a detail if it punched me the face. That much is obvious, now. I am not a bean counter.

Leaving Montana will give me the chance to search for what it is that I am made to do.

Leaving Montana will give them the chance to have an accountant. A real one.

This in and of itself would not be enough reason for us to part ways. It was simply the piece of the puzzle that made it most clear that my departure would be better for both me and the project.

I’m leaving on good terms. I will continue to support their work. You should too.

What is Next:

Gardening
The Dominican Republic (I hope to leave in 8 days)
Couch Surfing (www.globalfreeloaders.com)
Beard Growing
Hiking
Bread Baking
Reading (I have a list)
Living Simply
Screaming
Looking for the kingdom with the landingplace community

I hope to see you there.

Grace and Peace,

Philip Storer
Insurgo Pacificus

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road trip…

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yeah.. camera phones are stupid.

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what’s next?

whatever comes next.. i hope it tastes something like this:

..

upon taking a sip of my blended watermelon, i decided to take this picture. I showed doug how happy he was after taking a sip of his and he says: “And i don’t even have a 401k”

brilliant!

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more from honduras

this is someone’s house in the capitol of Honduras. they dug out the side of a hill and put a door on it.

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this is the big tree. they call it: “the big tree”. this picture dosen’t really do it any justice. to give you an idea.. the trees to the right of the “the big tree” are full size trees. if that dosn’t help.. the little specs just below the tree, are horses. its big

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this is from the the porch. I call it: “the porch”

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