Jhaysonn Pathak

HrmmmNrmmm

2011-08-27T08:17:00.001-07:00

So I got a message on my Tumblr from someone who was raising awareness about teen suicide. In which I was immediately remind of a senior my freshman year at Stetson who hung himself in his dorm room. I remember how blown away everyone was because he was a Music major; I believe he was a harpsichordist and pianist? I remember seeing him around but didn't know the guy. Then a couple years later someone shot themselves outside of the music school.

I hadn't thought about these two things since they happened. And then I got this tumblr message asking me to promote suicide awareness to help struggling teens seek help before they seek the end, yea? It's kind of crazy that the age group for most suicides is 18-25 but I guess it makes sense because... well I just saw this movie and there was a great line in it.

"I guess I was just too young to know you can get over anything."

The movie was Paper Man with Jason (Ryan?) Reynolds, Jeff Daniels and Emma Stone. It was a strange movie...I guess it was good, but that line WAS the movie.

Anyway, I think that that's true for younger kids, and per my post on our current "safety society", I think that we DON'T really understand that we can get over anything. We don't give ourselves enough credit. I was just talking with a friend about how, in the Christian faith, you can very easily lose yourself and your confidence because you are sort of always aware of your shortcomings. I know a lot of people pretty much hate the Catholic church because of memories of Sisters or Preachers condemning them to hell and an eternity of suffering!! But, when the hershey hits the fan we sort of do that to ourselves anyway (which is why we don't really need the reminder IMHO...)

Anyway I'm derailing- I bring that up because just this morning I was reading 2Corinthians and Paul is talking specifically about this problem. Our innate sense of guilt. Here (chapter 4?) he was talking about a guy that was told to leave the church because he was unrepentant of some big sin (I'd love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments!) and post expulsion had really turned his life around. Paul was telling them to let him back into fellowship, forgive, live in the Spirit and in harmony because you can drive a man insane with guilt.

But guilt isn't there to make us feel bad. It's there so that we can experience the Joy that God wants us to. It's the yin/yang, +/- of life. It all goes back to why we suffer at all. Without the knowledge of our inadequacies, how can we truly appreciate what was done for us at Calvary. Even if you're not a Christian and you make your own moral compass, you can appreciate what was done. Imagine what Christians feel when we think of the Almighty God, creator of the universe, doing that because he loves you and he just wants to talk =)

"I guess I was just too young to know you can get over anything."

WHAT?! sleep and games? sure they don't go together

2011-08-19T11:40:00.000-07:00

I'm still not sleeping.

It sucks. I mean maybe it doesn't suck, I'm not a huge fan of sleep. But I know I need it. It's important to sleep. Maybe I wouldn't have some of the problems I do have if I were able to sleep more. But whatever. It's not that bad because I don't feel tired. Maybe it's a sign that I'm too inactive? I'm workin on that! I can finally do qigong again. Sort of. But it's a huge improvement over the pukish, nausea that I used to get a few weeks ago.

But one positive of waking up super early is that I feel like reading The Bible. AND Matthew Henry's commentary. 0.o I have always read my Bible every day...until I started chemo. I figured God understood the breaks. I would try to get back into it but these last years it's been intermediate at best. So it's nice to finally have the concentration to really read it again with some sort of regularity.

This morning I read 1Corinthians 10. Paul really has it out for these guys =) but ch.10 was a flip in tone and pretty interesting.

"I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread. Behold Israel after the flesh: are the which eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar? What say I then? that the idol is any thing, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is any thing? But I say , that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils. Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he? All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. Let no man seek his own, but every man another's wealth." 1Corinthians 10:15-24

Maybe I thought it was interesting because of a recent conversation I had with a friend. But I think what Paul talks about here is pretty profound because he's laying out how we as Christians are all unified. Like the spiritual atheist you know, or the Buddhist monk you once met, he's telling us and reminding us that we're all in the same boat.

But he makes a distinction about what we're doing in that boat. (There's some good history here so read up if interested, or post a comment and I'll do my best to explain what I've garnered). On one hand, let's bring this into the present, the Christian is sacrificing his life for God. Ideally, everything we do we dedicate to God. Our souls have been transferred into the very hands of God. GOD! So we should act like it. Show some respect! Right? But on the other we live in a very non-God world. How do we reconcile these? Run away from anyone that you haven't met in Church? Well Jesus SPEWS FROM HIS MOUTH the 'lukewarm' Christians...

Maybe I should quote more because in the previous chapters Paul stresses the importance of how there is no reason to separate ourselves as Christians from the rest of the world. It's almost un-Biblical if not impossible.

"To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. " 1Corinthians 9:21/22

Wait, now it sounds like in Ch.10 he's contradicting what he said in Ch.9. How can you not drink of the table of "devil's" yet "[be] all things to all people?" Simple. He's talking about the heart. What is going on inside. Ya know, the only thing that MATTERS to God ;)

I fear that too many Christians, and non-Christians that read parts of the Bible like what Paul is talking about here, get upset about this 'segregation' that comes up with Christians and you heathen beasts (teeheehee). I just don't think that segregation should exist. I don't think that's the intent.

"Let no man seek his own, but every man another's wealth."

That's probably the point of the whole thing. Not money, but the wealth of the individual. Their spiritual, physical, and mental wealth. Love them. Don't shun them.

Ya know in my head this whole post was a lot shorter, concise, and well executed. I hope you get something out of it. I read it now and it sounds like I'm painfully confused....

Also, I wanted to talk about GAMES. I've been playing more lately. Actually I've been DOING more lately. I finished editing my graphic novel (again). I split the big single volume into 3 smaller parts. It works a lot better this way. Hopefully I've improved my characters too because, as a writer..well I'm not a writer. I'm pretty terrible.

I started collaborating with a guy in France, Jean-Baton. That's been AWESOME. I hope we keep writing stuff, it's really great. Maybe we'll get a single out for you guys to hear.

But GAMES! I've got all these games that I've never been able to finish so I'm going through and playing through them. Manly because there are a bunch of games coming down the horizon that I'm really excited about. FireFall, a free FPSMMO entering invite-beta at the end of the month looks to mix Tribes with Borderlands in a persistent online world.

And speaking of Tribes, we get a free Tribes too!!!!

Not to mention the upcoming Diablo 3, Deus Ex, DOTA2... it's all a bit much. so I need to catch up whilst I can! But being productive is getting in the way! =) ha, that's the best thing ever!

peace love and chicken bacon! ew that sounds gross.

Motivation, Collaboration, Food, and Fatigue

2011-08-05T09:26:00.000-07:00

So let's agree that the last 2+ years have been erratic. My desire to even write music has come and gone (and been shattered completely) like the waves that seek the shoreline. But when it comes I try to take advantage of it. Not just writing music, all my projects. I write stories. Or at least I get lots of ideas for stories. I'm working on a graphic novel, which made me start drawing again ( I think I told you guys this...but hey my mind is shot! drugs are terrible...)
So I'm on prednisone...not sleeping...and trying to be productive in whatever way I can.

Odd thing happened. I like to send messages to music fans on Reverbnation (maybe like...isn't the word) to get some exposure ya know? Well I've sent like 2 thousand so far and don't really get many responses, but I've gotten some people that really enjoy Pissing Graffiti! YAY! It's a great feeling.

So anyway I meet this guy Jean-Baton. He does really cool stuff. Lots of samples and just... initially I was drawn to the images he uses and then the juxtaposition of what you would expect with what you hear....I was sold. Really good music. You can download the albums here - and yes I recommend all 3. They're free if you want just click on the album, then "Télécharger" and in the bottom field just enter your e-mail address.

So i was pretty humbled when he asked to collaborate. I'm definitely not near even my C game, but I thought this would be really interesting to see what happens. So far...he blew me away. I'm excited to keep working with him and see what comes of it.

Prednisone is sure messing with me. But I'm eating. And have become crazy with Kithen Nightmares and Master Chef. The Kitchen Nightmares in US sucks compared to UK. Just my opinion. Any recommendations? I like to look at food and get ideas.....to ask my mom to cook for me =) teehee

Yea, and I'm not sleeping. Every morning at 3 I end up stark awake with a need to poop. ? What? yea. Poop. Doesn't make sense and as I was already having trouble sleeping...this is just absurd. Going on 2 weeks now and really starting to feel it.
This is a lot longer than I wanted it to be, so I'm sorry. :shrug: drop me a line. leave a comment. download my album. BUY my album =) I have another one that I'm working on for my stuff that should be really neat. It's peaceful! :gasp:

by for now.
OH! I;m not done yet. Check this out. Trent Reznor on Spotify!

I think this is profound and hope to find more artists because my last review blasted me for being too much like NIN and using his influences...but I didn't really listen to his influences. So yay. Spotify is cool and all, but look how many plays you need in order to makeminimum wage... SHOCKING! (click to go to article)

And because we all need to laugh!

Life Life Life Life Life

2011-07-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

So, I got into Google+ as apparently it's the cool thing. Kind of sucks that it's another thing to update but I LOVE it's Picasa integration. I've never used the upload feature because they would just sit there. Now..they have purpose. Like sharing bulk dumps of my previous Korean life =)

And it seems like, at least among my friends, there isn't all this stuff that's barraging you.

On other things I'm taking steroids! Prednisone. In the hospital it made me suicidal. They're giving me a lot less and so far so good. I can actually eat! But now I think I have mucositis acting up again for God knows what reason so it HURTS when I eat... =/ an acceptable trade.

Have recently had an abnormal number of people suddenly start responding positively to my Pissing Graffiti work. This on the cusp of a musical depression at how little people seemed to care.

Been thinking about PG a lot too. It is kind of negative material, or at least my negative emotions. My thinking was that I would be able to use it to help people. Not just relate, that's kind of good; but to do a not corny hope aspect. I don't know if I've got the talent for it but I'll try. In the mean time... what do you guys think? I love it, always will. It's the other 50% of my emotions nobody ever gets to hear.

Also! I have decided to just replace my laptop hard drive since I couldn't bounce my generative piece properly so that comes in Monday. Once I have two good hour long bounces I should be ready to go. It's just getting the Mac/Windows app packed with the album that's gonna be hard. I was just let known a problem with one of my synths! So...Pray for a month for it's release? teaser album shot =) see my buddy?

First Choice

Second Choice

Third Choice

We'll see who tops out. Leave a comment on thoughts.

things I don't understand - thoughts version

2011-07-11T13:38:00.000-07:00

#7 - Schutzstaffel, Secret Service. The Nazi's had one, the US has the other, but they're both abbreviated SS.

#403 - Why do we always judge people the harshest when they violate our morals, but then blame other people for the problems of the world?

#3 - Why do we never keep our promises?

#6 - Why is it always easier to lie?

#68 - Why would you want to live fast and die young, when all the important things in life come from old people?

#2 - Why doesn't EVERYBODY draw on their walls?

#887 - Why is beauty so hard to describe?

#72 - Why is it always so funny when other people get hurt?

#31 - Do body builders get cancer?

#29 - I got hit with the cancer. So did my dog. What?

#182 - Why are popular things unattractive when nothing is original?

I don't understand

2011-07-07T10:06:00.000-07:00

3 - If we can make a movie of Saturn, how is we just decided to see what's under our Earth's crust?

4 - How can the FDA tell me what my DRV is for vitamins/minerals, but now know if an egg is good for me?

5 - Are people REALLY still confused by the hotdogs/bun issue?

6 - Why did this list start at 3?

7 - If have we been fighting a "war on cancer" for the last 30 years, why is it going to top the list of worldwide killers?

8 - When we realized we had a problem with cardiovascular mortality...why did *IT* climb to top of the list of worldwide killers?

9 - Why is so much money spent on war when we dont have proper funding to warn us of impending natural disasters.

10 - why do the rich get so much richer, and the poor just keep getting poorer?

11 - Why is pepperoni and bacon sooo good?

12 - If scientists keep telling us that we're running out of oil to meet demand, greenland is melting, the world's economy is a joke, why are people buying platinum Mercedes-Benz?

thoughts

2011-07-02T08:34:00.000-07:00

I got this in the mail the other day from Ravi Zacharias' International Ministry. I get these e-mails Mon-Fri and they're usually pretty interesting write ups about something going on in the world and how that might relate to a person's individual faith. This one hit close to home.

"I sat with a man in my car, talking about a series of heartbreaks he had experienced. "There were just a few things I had wanted in life," he said. "None of them have turned out the way I had prayed. I wanted my parents to live until I was at least able to stand on my own and they could watch my children grow up. It didn't happen. I wanted my marriage to succeed, and it didn't. I wanted my children to grow up grateful for what God had given them. That didn't happen. I wanted my business to prosper, and it didn't. Not only have my prayers amounted to nothing; the exact opposite has happened. Don't even ask me if you can pray for me. I am left with no trust of any kind in such things."

mmmmm, a tuffie!

So the title of the e-mail was "Why Pray?" and I think that's a pretty solid question. I mean, if we're all at the whim of God, wether we want His will to happen or not, it's going to happen. Right? I would be lying through my teeth if I said I hadn't thought about this very question, every day, for the past 2 years. I can relate to that man because I have ALWAYS prayed for health and strength so that I could always be able to help people that I saw were in need. I still got cancer. A worthless, suck-my life-away-because-non-lethal-treatments-weren't-working-and-the-lethal-treatments-that-did-sucked-my-life-away cancer.

I bet you thought I was going to give you an answer, yea? I'm not. Why? because there are smarter men than me that have spent more time than I've been alive that already have. They also have peers that believe the opposite and they both use the same sources. It's a slippery slope and I'm not of the state of mind to make strong argument.

Take a look at how Jesus tells us to pray in Matthews Gospel:

"Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen."

We've got 4 parts as I see it: 1)Praise God. 2 )Take care of me 3) help me let you love me 4)Praise God. 3 out of 4 are about submission to God's will.

Some thoughts.

1 - In human history the first time we had an atheist government we had rulers like Stalin, Hitler, and Lenin.

2 - This is funny and frightening

I just don't think we should be in charge of our own morality...

3 - Would we know Good if not for Evil? If there was ONLY Good, how would we CHOSE it?

4 - Jack Bauer is not as smart as he thinks he is. He's just written that way. And Edgar shouldn't've died...

5 - Does an animal that goes through medical testing understand the biology behind what the scientists are doing? Know that it's suffering will help others?

6 - When compared to an omnipotent God, are we any different than the animal?

I want to be a king

2011-06-29T09:04:00.000-07:00

But only if you'll join me. =)

"Give not thy strength unto women nor thy ways to that which destroyeth kings. It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine; nor for princes strong drink: lest they drink, and forget the law, and pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted. Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more." - Proverbs 31, 3-7

I wanted to post this and I had some really interesting points of discussion...but my brain just won't connect them. I apologize. If you have any objections/question please leave a comment. I have explanation/reasoning/etc... I just can't seem to form all of them into cohesion =,(

PS - I tried to solidify some of what Pissing Graffiti is all about. Click Here to read it and let me know thoughts/objections/etc. for that too..

I'm a stalker. But it's ok, I do it in reverse!

2011-06-25T08:16:00.000-07:00

So I like stats. I love going through and imagining who the people are that read my blog. This is part of my purpose for blogging. No lie, it's a joy unto itself.

So when I learned that my Pissing Graffiti tumblr account (because I'm basically ripping off How To Destroy Angels web design...) didn't have ANY stats I'd immediately went on a search. Now, mental capabilities aside, I ended up not searching very effectively. Most of the time I want to do something with Tumblr, I just get distracted *BY* Tumble... it's sad but those kittens are so CUTE!

So! I finally had the thought that I could use Google Analytics to achieve my reverse-stalk. This is probably a no brainer for anyone with a brain....-.- BUT since my vague and half-hearted search on how to do this turned up sour, I will write this for you.

Basically you go to Google Analytics, sign up, they give you a code, some instructions and bada-bing. It's actually the best stats-machine I've seen so far! Which is strange because blogger is owned by google.....

anyway, it's that simple....and yet it googling "get stats on tumblr" never yielded me what I needed..which is a shame. so

GET STATS ON TUMBLR! <----that's for you google-using-slightly-impaired-like-me-kid

yea, that's right

2011-06-16T12:47:00.000-07:00

I changed the design. What could that mean? hmm

i think it's possible

2011-06-16T10:03:00.000-07:00

...that I must get this book. Why? because of this except.

"It seems that a whole lot of people, both Christians and non-Christians, are under the impression that you can’t be a Christian and vote for a Democrat, you can’t be a Christian and believe in evolution, you can’t be a Christian and be gay, you can’t be a Christian and have questions about the Bible, you can’t be a Christian and be tolerant of other religions, you can’t be a Christian and be a feminist, you can’t be a Christian and drink or smoke, you can’t be a Christian and read The New York Times, you can’t be a Christian and support gay rights, you can’t be a Christian and get depressed, you can’t be a Christian and doubt.

I am convinced that what drives most people away from Christianity is not the cost of discipleship but rather the cost of false fundamentals. False fundamentals make it impossible for faith to adapt to change. The longer the list of requirements and contingencies and prerequisites, the more vulnerable faith becomes to shifting environments and the more likely it is to fade slowly into extinction. When the gospel gets all entangled with extras, dangerous ultimatums threaten to take it down with them. The yoke gets too heavy and we stumble beneath it…

...Once, a guy asked Jesus about his yoke, or teaching. He asked Jesus what he thought was the most important of all the Jewish laws. Jesus, who often responded to one question with another, chose this time to answer the man directly. He said, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matt. 22:37-40).

Love. It’s that simple and that profound. It’s that easy and that hard.

Taking the yoke of Jesus is not about signing a doctrinal statement or making an intellectual commitment to a set of propositions. It isn’t about being right or getting our facts straight. It is about loving God and loving other people. The yoke is hard because the teachings of Jesus are radical: enemy love, unconditional forgiveness, extreme generosity. The yoke is easy because it is accessible to all—the studied and the ignorant, the rich and the poor, the religious and the nonreligious. Whether we like it or not, love is available to all people everywhere to be interpreted differently, applied differently, screwed up differently, and manifested differently. Love is bigger than faith, and it’s bigger than works, for it inhabits and transcends both…"

just had a thought

2011-06-11T19:16:00.000-07:00

I was watching Dracula 2000 (Gerard Butler? surprise!) and this occurred to me: If Dracula has all these gifts, and his immortality is the 'brunt of God's wrath." then does that mean death is actually a gift from God?

An interesting idea that I don't know if it was intentional or not in the film. Hmmmmm

too distracted for coherency.

2011-06-10T13:19:00.000-07:00

So. I'm still reading that book. Not for the second time either. It's still a fresh experience. And I've come upon a good many things that have made me stop reading and try to apply, with varying degrees of success, what is written to what I experience(d) both short and long term. This, made me smile:

"Indeed, what is called "the pleasure principal" is, rather, a fun-spoiler."

If you're reading this, instead divert your eyes above and read the italics again.

Yes, again.

I don't want to write a huge thing, I want to watch my Halloween scream flick @4 in the afternoon. But I think this is important. Very important (and I wish I had a voice that reached, beyond 0's and 1's, more than 19oddveryclosefriendsthatalreadyprobablyagree.)

1 - Oscar Wilde and Solomon. What did they do? EVERYTHING. They wanted to experience all the good things that life had to offer. What did they gain? Misery and Wisdom.

2 - Wisdom is BAD!! wait, no it's not! Wait, apparently it is!

2.1 - people dont care about wisdom, and girls just wanna have fun.

2.1.1 - Justin Bieber accounts for 3% of ALL twitter traffic.

2.1.2 - Ashton Kutcher+bin Laden's pornography crashed twitter.

3 - How did we get here? (U.S.A.)

3.1 - America was founded a Christian nation. A nation of FREEDOM

3.2 - Less than a year after it's adoption, the Constitution began getting pillaged.

3.3 - (Personal Desires) + (American Freedom) - (Responsibility) = american hedonism.

3.3.1 - Frankl again =):

"To the European, it is a Characteristic of the American Culture, that again and again, one is commanded and ordered "to be happy."

3.4 - You turn on the TV and learn that your local senator enjoys putting his penis online.

3.4.1 - does it really matter when so does the rest of the country (people spent 3 billion dollars more on pornography than music in 2010.) Where does the REAL problem lie?

4 - What am I talking about? I don't know anymore. But I think I've made myself pret-tee clear. But I'm going to put that quote down, one.more.time.

"Indeed, what is called "the pleasure principal" is, rather, a fun-spoiler."

Now back to my Halloween flick. ;)

call me uncreative!

2011-05-28T14:15:00.000-07:00

There's a lot to chew on in this book.

“The existential vacuum is a widespread phenomenon of the twentieth century. THis is understandable; it may be due to a twofold loss which man has had to undergo since he became a truly human being. At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animals’s behavior is imbedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like Paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. In addition to this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development in as much as thee traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).

A statistical survey recently revealed that among my European students, 25 percent showed a more-or-less marked degree of existential vacuum. Among my American students it was not 25 but 60 percent.”

And I bet it's higher now! It's crazy to me when I hear all of this gobldygood (how the heck do you spell that?!) He goes on to talk about people getting bored and how that 'is becoming more serious' and I'm know I'm pretty out of touch with things, but I remember seeing that pretty prevalently in college. Think about it; how many times did you see the person at the head of your class or pull out an amazing project/painting/presentation and the thought pops into your head that they're just so smart or creative or whatever.

Yea, maybe they are, but maybe you're in THEIR class. God gave them life and they know what to do with it. Maybe they're just talented =) Either way, every time I keep reading his book, Man's Search for Meaning I keep coming around to motivation. Where's it come from? Does it matter if it's inside or out? A loved one or your God [one and the same? =)]. Here's a shorter mind bender from a few pages earlier.

"It is, therefore, up to the patient to decide wether he should interpret his life task as being responsible to society or to his own conscience." pg10

I feel lucky in that regard, but it did take me a while to figure it out. For me, my conscious is clear (Jesus is my boi!) and points clearly to a social meaning; which is where my thoughts immediately began. This is an overarching statement I think because the meaning of your life can change if you're suddenly attacked by ninjas. It might affect how you deal with them....but it can and does change throughout your life. I think =)

One of my ports were taken out too! tinypic tinypicofport

mmm, anyone wanna reply?

A book my dad got me

2011-05-14T12:21:00.000-07:00

Though I love a good read, my brain isn't functioning too efficiently these days so a book by a Psychologist isn't on my top of "to read's." But with a title, "Man's Search for Meaning" I was intrigued.

This is an excerpt. I thought it should be shared.

"We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road running through the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his hand behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another on and upward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look then was more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth--that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way--an honorable way--in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life, I was able to understand the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."

In front of me a man stumbled and those following him fell on top of him. The guard rushed over and used his whip on them all. Thus my thoughts were interrupted for a few minutes. But soon my soul found its way back from the prisoners existence to another world, and I resumed talk with my loved one: I asked her questions, and she answered; she questioned me in return, and I answered...

My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, and the thoughts of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I still would have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of that image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. "Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death." - Man's Search for Meaning, pg. 37-38

Heyyyyyyoooooooo

2011-04-03T17:04:00.000-07:00

So. Life. It's still inside me wrapped up in a warm layer of squishy substances. The blood part of those squishy substances consists entirely of my brothers blood. None of my own! Creepy 0.o If I commit a felony, and leave behind some blood, they'll go after him first!

Anyway, I've been out of the hospital for about a month now? Every day is better. Betterer. It improves upon itself. I weight about 122 pounds now....which is shocking, but it's kind of my new normal. Lots and tons of other boring stuff, which I know nobody is interested in.

I've released an instrumental EP for Pissing Graffiti. I've called it SAXAPHONE Why? Well, it just about felt the most ridiculous thing I could think of at the time. Yes that's a link to Trent Reznor, pre PHM, featuring a saxaphone...

GO HERE TO LISTEN!

I also have a facebook page.

Anyway, enough of the shameless self promotion. I also started drawing again. And it's terrible. But that's about what I'd expect. My hands/feet are still numb+tingly but getting better, as all things.

I'm really anxious to dominate Andy and Dan Will at Axis and Allies with MY ally, Matt Roberson. We always lose. Always. I played Matt once, and then it was just me that lost. So of us I'm the only one that hasn't won a single game.

I really feel like playing Magic: The Gathering.

Yes, I'm still alive

2011-01-28T16:45:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not done with treatment.

It's kind of a joke really. I probably shouldn't post here as I just had treatment Monday, and treatment brings with it an almost uncontrollable state of mind. And that mind is very miserable. Pessimistic. Apathetic. I've had 24 treatments now and every time there is a definitive point sometime after treatment (it's now more than 2 weeks than 18 months ago when it was about 6 or 7 days) where I start to feel somewhat human again. I'm not so apathetic and find I actually WANT to do something. So this post is an anomaly in many regards.

I've had a number of people tell me that you chose your state of mind. And I used to be one of those people. Chemicals change that. Deny it if you want, walk it through and you'll find I'm right. Hopefully without having to deal with them.

I think I'm posting because the last 2 years have been very tiring. In a way that Stetson couldn't compare. I've stayed up more consecutive hours than anybody I've ever met. Except maybe my brother's Ranger training, but we haven't compared notes. Chemo tired is so far beyond sleep starvation... it's like a joke. Have you ever felt like you were dying? I imagine people that get shot in the neck think, "oh goodness me, I'm dying." But they don't. They survived in WWII and modern traumatic medicine has improved in the getting shot in the neck department. But I imagine people in those situations would understand. And if they got shot 24 times, I think each time they would still think , "oh goodness me, this is really it" even after being saved 23 times prior.

Why am I posting on here? Because I'm angry. Anger has this....quality to it that gives me energy. It's a trade off though, as if I do anything WITH that anger I usually end up having to lie down, I can't see clearly, and generally need to go into a 20 minute recovery-coma. This anger has been seething all day. Hopefully, the coma will come later and let me sleep through the night.

Let me list to you all the things I was thinking about in this fantasy land of post-treatment I like to sometimes treat myself to. I wanted to:

Ride my bike across America.

Join the Peace Corps.

Play paintball again (and on that subject I had plans to make it a large part of my life and create a community/mentor/education center).

Finally hunt for my own food!

How to field dress different animals needed for said foods

Drag Henry out into the forest for more survival experience.

Go on a road trip to see all my friends that have been dispersed across the US.

These things and many MANY more were what I was excited about. I've been totally isolated for almost 2 years now. And you know how many of those things I'm going to actually get to do? Maybe a road trip. If I drive at night. WHY? Because of the transplant.

Isn't it funny? Get it? Are you laughing as hard as I am? Then you're a jerk, why are you reading my blog?

Of course, I kid. You can still read my blog, even though you're a jerk.

Actually I'm sure it won't be that bad. Life goes on. I enjoyed a lot of those things before, and life change. C'est la vie (although, God, if you get the internet in Heaven I would've rather you'd taken my legs than the sun). There's hope. I'm not yet in despair. God did give me the miracle of a more than perfect match with my brother. Normally they say perfect is 14/14, and he's 16/16. So that means that his immune system, that will be replacing my own (strange...I won't have my own immune system) is or should be remarkably similar to my own.

This means...well nothing really. I don't know the future. If any of the 10 of you that may read this DO know the future, I would love to know so I could plan accordingly. But it DOES put me in the lowest bracket possible for possible graft versus host complications. But I was also in the lowest possible bracket for getting cancer to begin with.

Oh... this is embarrassing, but I'm in the news. My parents have been helping me stay sane by handling all of the insurance/medicaid/scheduling/feeding/wiping bottom/etc that comes with the territory. Turns out when I was admitted for my first transplant and the cancer came back before treatment, Medicaid turns around and says that they won't pay for the allo transplant. Apparently they were pretty blocky about it and finally my dad got the media involved.

I kid you not, it was only when Shands and Medicaid were going to look bad that I was granted the ability to get treatment. Go bureaucracy (why is that spelled that way? come on). I don't know the details of it, but apparently they aren't going to pay all of it (sounds similar to when they first gave me Medicaid, before they took it away...and then gave it back) and I will still have to pay the doctors fees and yada yada yada. My dad put up a site for donations. If you feel inclined, it goes a long way. Doesn't look like we're gonna raise much, but...and this is really the only reason I can see in doing the article/news show was that there are some 10 other people that medicaid is NOT going to pay for.

Soooo if they have cancer anything like mine, that's some heartless policy that is guaranteeing those people will die. Did I mention they wouldn't even give us a self pay OPTION until my dad got the media involved? sigh...

http://jhaysonnscure.com/ - article on the right. News thing hasn't aired yet.

No More!

2010-10-28T07:28:00.000-07:00

Well, at least no more detectable cancer. I still have the 7 day blast of chemo before my stem cell transplant, but with a clean PET scan I'm praying that means God will let this part of my life lay down and DIE! -.0 Praying for home by January and giving proper hugs by February =)

What have I been doing all this time? Really nothing. Watching movies. But I'm finally starting to read again and my friend Ben gave me the entire Dark Tower series which is improving with each book. Excited to get to the end.

I've also been drawing/learning when I can and when my arm shake from chemo. You can see what I've been working on here.

I've also been working on me stories, so hopefully I'll be able to show some of that fruit in the future. As of now it's all scattered and in varying stages of embarrassment. =) But here's some older shorter stuff. This is something I wrote with Kristen Sieger at some really awesome restaurant/cafe before leaving for SoKo. Who wrote which part??!?!?!

"we just matched

a paring knife lodged between

the pages of this book

Twice I thought about a

kind of pinkish goo

and all the shapes we used to make

while sifting through the poo.

The happy children couldn't know

our tale of tearful woes

and throw our smiles into fires

burning without tire

Burning Pyres of tire

fires mired the squires with their

lyers and processional fanfare;

abandoned to be a feast for the

roaming wild dogs of the lowlands

we made our way towards home,

towards solace

A fierce dispute against mother

and child, a fallen resolve against

mother and nature.

Now I don't know where my

mind is going. Once it starts

the words keep flowing."

I'll give you a hint - she wrote all the good stuff =) The rest is assorted things. LBBoS and random.

"What is it about Death"

_____

"I am the chill

that brings you to life

The harsh air outside of her womb

I will break you

I will raise you up, so that when you fall

you will cry longer

You will grow. I will not.

You man learn, you may prepare;

I will never stop coming.

You cannot defy me, you never will.

You may try, and when I'm not looking,

find some measure of peace.

Know that I will never turn away.

For I love you. Eternally.

I will break you."

_____

"Empty. Hollow. These are not the qualities of encouragement, nor the good company of hope. If doubt, fear, and a trail of tears stand center stage, tragedy is found at the ticket booth.

_____

"It controls you. It tightens your muscles in spasm as if steeled for a fight. It takes hold on the reigns of your nerves and heels you like a dog to wait for battle.

But you are alone."

_____

I wrote this sitting on my window cill, while packing to come home early from SoKo. It's not very well written, but the memory it reminds me of... is special.

"The sun is frozen in the sky behind a think horizon wide cloud made black from the light behind it. Hovering over the rooftops on the other side of town sits a line of nondescript mountain tops stretching on until a high rise blocks it's view. Beckoning the sun to rest from a long days work, the mountains offer the sun a place to rest it's light for a while.

Slowly, as the cold air drops degrees of degrees, so does the sun. It finally falls beneath it's clouds, separating it's now orange flow from the sky blue above. It seems to quicken it's descent, eager to rest. Eager to say goodbye. A tired old man seeking the rest offered by the mountains.

Soon enough, the sun is gone. It's memory remains for a while in the sky; enough to care for a few more minutes. The sun is gone now. It leaves us in darkness with no promise of return, and the dark winter night begins to get colder."

_____

"I really like fat. Cheese, butter, eggs, bacon. Delicious."

Hello from Korea!

2010-09-10T18:26:00.000-07:00

Ha! Not me, though I do wish it were true. Actually I just found something I wrote while *in* Korea. It was for a lady that works for a local paper in DeLand. She found out I was there and told me to write a "DeLandite writes from.." kind of article. I guess I didn't succeed because I never heard from her again. I like it though. Tell me what you think.

"I'm sitting on the highest point of the tallest mountain in sight, at the edge of the South Sea in Korea. The water in the sea is the same color as the clear sky above me and the sun seems to be reflecting off of them both, setting the landscape on fire. Old Man Winter has set up camp inside my bones, but that's okay. Some things need to be seen, need to be experienced. And besides, it's not as cold as it was two days ago. Two days ago was really cold.

It was five o'clock in the morning, and I had stayed up the whole night in anticipation. I began walking to my friend Song Young-jin's house while it was still dark outside, which only added to the feeling I have that my neighborhood was designed by a comic book artist. Song Young-jin lives in a home older than the United States of America situated in the middle of a park surrounded by apartments as tall as skyscrapers. He traces his family lineage back not to grand-fathers and great grand-fathers, but 16 generations back, to Song Shi-Yeol. A famous advisor to a famous King.

Why get up at five in the morning on New Years? Who is even conscious at five o'clock on New Years? Apparently a couple thousand South Koreans are and they all flock to whatever mountain is closest to celebrate and say, "Hello!" to the first sunrise of the year. After all, if you don't make him welcome he might not want to come back.

The night started off unpleasantly cold and just got colder. Oh, when you hike up a mountain at about a 50° incline you start to sweat and begin to feel quite nice. But as soon as you stop the sweat freezes to your skin and you just want to cry at the irony.

And ironic it was, because the weather just kept getting colder, and colder and me, Song Young-jin and about 300 other Koreans atop a 1500 year old mountain fortress were reminded just how much we love the warmth of the sun. So an hour after the suns first rays began to burn off the morning fog around the mountains, hundreds of voices bellowed out a roar of excitement at first sight of that shining ball of fire in the sky. Song Young-jin told me, "Koreans call this a difficult experience. Beautiful."

I couldn't agree more.

There are a lot of things that I learned at Stetson. I added a bit more to that in Gainesville before coming back to Deland and learning how to make sushi at Oudum's Thai. I learned a lot about school and academic pursuit. Even more about friendship and falling in love. But in Korea, I'm learning a lot about who I am as a person. Sometimes it can be quite difficult. But most of the time it's just beautiful."

Notes from the Past and News of the Present

2010-09-08T08:09:00.000-07:00

I looked at the Notes app on my iPod Touch and was pretty stoked to see all these old notes that I had written to myself. A bunch of stuff from Korea like plans and things to get or stuff I was supposed to do. In the latter category, I kid you not, this is what I found:

"Write about guns and mike. Then about the bubble like factory and James bond making you realize you are a collection of experiences. Write about spring water and why I sometimes get the urge to punch little kids in the face."

Now, you have to understand (it doesn't help, but still try to understand) that when I'm writing these notes to myself, I am trying to write down just the key phrases that will trigger my memory upon referencing the note in the future. It's an iPod Touch, and not THAT easy to write with.

But what in God's green Earth was I thinking? James Bond makes me realize I am a collection of experiences? I didn't even watch any James Bond anything my entire time in Korea?! That note was written 446 days ago and apparently on that day I was insane. Apparently on that same day, I had to make a note to get that "American Boy" song. Maybe that's why my cancer came back.

Indeed. The miracle that I was looking for was not in God's plans. But God is Sovereign. And He knows better than I do what I really need. So I'm praying he gets me through this. I'm really glad I read The Problem of Pain during my last treatment, because in it C. S. Lewis clarifies a lot of the struggles that humanity goes through and as Christians how it all makes sense. And it does =)

I've also been listening to a lot of Ravi Zacharias lately, and lemme tell you this guy is amazing. He's got two Podcasts available, check them out.

Just Thinking

Let My People Think

In closing, at least I wasn't entirely insane in Korea. I wrote these lyrics for a rap I thought I would do. A rap.... 0.o

I love you like the words of a song you sing to Jesus

My diction never show it but Im trying to bring us

Together forever is the way that I've always seen us

You remember the time we were walkin and found that white shoe

Thumb sized I would hang it for years on my rearview

I remembered you said it was you that would live through

The pain that old age would undoubtedly bring true

Ok - so not in closing. That reminds me. I've been super nostalgic lately, so if you read this and have gotten one of my texts or e-mails recalling a memory, I apologize. But only half heartedly. I really enjoy a lot of the memories I have and it's my friends and family that are the reason I have them. So thanks =)

I believe in miracles...

2010-06-30T12:02:00.001-07:00

...since you came along [you sexy thang]

A miracle. That's what I've come to think God wants to show me and all ten of you! =) So, I got the results back from my PET/CT scan last week and my oncologist, Dr. Nam Dang, is 95% sure that I've relapsed and wants me to get a biopsy to verify that it's still Hodgkin's. That it could be some other type of cancer is ridiculous. From *MY* point of view this biopsy is a perfect opportunity to show how awesome God is.

It's almost ironic that this is setup this way because just the other day I was talking with my mom about miracles and how often, when talking with other Christians about miracles, I can easily come up with a perfectly logical explanation for why what happened did indeed happen. Sooooo it's entirely possible that God has quite the smirk on his face, eyes cocked, saying, "What was that? mmmmhmm."

What makes me sincerely apologetic to all of the times I've done that is not even so much that I'm now in a similar situation (if the biopsy comes back negative for *any* cancer there's always that 5% cushion that logic sort of demands be the plausible explanation) but that my mind is still operating on a wave length similar to a six year old. If you will:

When people are young it's difficult for them to grasp the world around them in terms of "others" and to think of their friends or families as being autonomous creatures entirely unto themselves. When a daughter is crying her eyes out when daddy leaves for work, it's because they stop existing when they walk out that door. I have a really smart friend (Sungwon) I met in South Korea with whom I would often talk about anything and everything relating to the mind, the consciousness, and all that inexplicable life stuff. We touched on this topic one day and he had actually read some paper about it but I can't for the life of me remember what it's proper name is called; rest assured it has one. I stress that only so I sound less like an assumptive wretch trying to explain away his problems.

Anyway, I'm detracting. My original point in bringing that up is that when I think about my own mental reasoning away of these miracles in others' lives is that I was not taking into account the individual. The same way that I curse western medicine for blindly using statistics as their safety net, I was forgetting about the individual and baselessly explaining away the profundities of what had happened in these peoples lives. Now that I'm in their shoes I can see how they call it a miracle.

Maybe I'm not being clear enough on that. I say that, "I'm in their shoes" without really explaining why. Well it's because this isn't exactly a shock to me. I've been reliving all of my pre-chemo symptoms for almost a month now and fighting off the worry and fear that comes with going through eight months of chemo to experience 2 months of comparative health before being thrust back into the misery of sickness once more. I have been terrified to give voice to it because, if God created the world with His Word, and His Word is "marrow unto my bones," and the lepers, and the blind, and the possessed, and the lame were all healed by verbal affirmation of their faith.

But here it is none the less, and I'm praying for a miracle.

Yes, I would call it a no-holds-barred miracle. I don't need a biopsy to tell me that everything I'm going through now I've already been through. If the explanation before was Hodgkin's, simple logic would dictate the answer now. But that's why we call them miracles. Will you pray for a miracle with me?

Georgia

2010-06-07T12:18:00.000-07:00

I moved up to Columbus, Georgia to spend some time with my brother (re: getoutofthehouseasfastaspossible). I've actually been up here for a month(ish) so far so excuse me for not writing (I say that to make me feel like people actually read this).

Anyway, I've been really productive lately. I'm working on a chanty-type tune with Henry and my brother and I'm super addicted to listening to it - which never happens. I hope that's a good sign. I've got like 5 PG tracks now, and a Snoop Dogg remix that I still have to figure out what to do.

I'm also working on some other things that are REALLY exciting and I can't wait to further develop them and show you what they are =)

So not really a post about anything, but to say I'm still alive - which is pretty awesome =) I will have some new music, at LEAST, to show you soon. I just really don't' want to put up ANOTHER instrumental track, ya know?

Fear

2010-05-01T10:33:00.001-07:00

"Especially now-a-days, ya know?"

So, I just got called out for crossing through a neighbors yard to get to a park that has newly been formed out of the woods of my youthful stomping ground. Understandable. I took a path through two people's homes that I used all the time when I was living here during high school and never had any qualms, I assume, because I was young or because we were on bikes...but we were also carrying shovels and napalm.

Anyway, one of the first times I took to getting to these woods I ran into one of the home owners and they were really friendly offering no qualms for using the path that was well worn to get to the new park. Even gave us some witness fliers which my brother promptly crumpled and gave to me =P

In any event, on my way out this same guy ( or maybe his son? i was in the middle of chemo so it's blurry) passively called me out and basically tried to get across that I could be someone up to no good. He used the words, "Especially now-a-days,, ya know?" and they stuck with me. Partially because I've been reading Northlanders and the imagery instantly came to mind.

It's interesting how we are living in such fear these days, when a few centuries ago we REALLY had to live in fear. And now I come to my point (apologies). Maybe that's a key thing that is wrong in America. We don't REALLY have any fear. We create things to be afraid of, but really.... how many of you have had to stare down the barrel of a gun? Scratch that. How many of you have had to practice the use of a sword so that you could protect your family from vagrants that would happen upon your quiet homestead while traveling to some nearby city. Would have to prepare yourself for the inevitable war that would come to conquer, or defend, lands vital to feed your family.

It's a different time, we DON'T have those fears and most people have never experienced their fight or flight system in action. Death and punishment are distant and not that big of a deal.

I don't know. Maybe I'm babbling. Someone comment to this.

The pot-maker

2010-04-15T14:50:00.000-07:00

C.S. Lewis.

He's almost a myth to me when I think about how freakin' spot on he is with a lot of his writings. I've only read (listened rather - when I would bike to Gainesville from Hawthorne) Mere Christianity and I'm working on The Problem of Pain right now and keep running over all these excellent "quotable's."

For instance, he's talking about people would often refer to primitive man and try to understand where we come from by using what little anthropologists have at their disposal, often complaining that 'we infer more than we have any right to infer.' I thought his arguments against our assumptions about what Man was like before The Fall were very interesting and I won't get into it now because I'm still chewing on it, but this made me laugh...a lot.

"The very same pot which would prove its master a genius if it were the first pot ever made in the world, would prove its maker a dunce if it came after millenniums of pot-making."

Earlier in the same chapter when discussion The Fall of man he brings up a point of how God could, had he so chosen, to perform a miracle that would undo the original sin of Adam and Eve (after reading this he has some interesting thoughts on the Original sin) but he wraps up his arguments against it with:

"...the chess player's freedom to play chess depends on the rigidity of the squares and the moves"

I can't help but feel that sentence would be improved if "available" came at the end...but who am I to edit Lewis =P

On the music side things are good. I'm working on a Snoop remix for a contest over at Indaba and hopefully Henry will pull out some wicked rhymes. If not... we'll figure something out. Also, I'm moving in with my brother in May for a few months and there I will consentrate on writing all manner of music. Classical arrangements (mainly for classical guitar) with some interesting ideas on incorporating electronic music, a lot of Pissing Graffiti stuff and maybe some more electronic dance stuff? Who knows. Then a move back to DeLand to write even more with Stephen Garza and Henry Toland. For anyone that stop by Henry's blog, comment that he needs to update it. The man has excellent writings that he's hiding from the rest of the world. -.-

Friends? Followers?

2010-03-12T20:13:00.000-08:00

What is this a religion? lol. I just noticed the friend/follower segregation going on to the right of my page, so I thought I'd rectify the situation. Friend me if I failed to friend you! DO IT! You'll be 'the special ones' once the religion starts.....

teeheehee 0.o

START THE PRAYERS!!!

2010-03-10T09:37:00.001-08:00

Alrighty, tomorrow I go in for a re-scan. I'll probably have to do two more treatments because I DON'T HAVE CANCER ANYMORE! Yea that's right. I can tell the future. My PET/CT is going to be totally negative. Which means only two more treatments.

PRAY IT! MAKE IT HAPPEN!

haha, sorry for the long period between updates but, honestly...nothing has happened. I've been working on my drawing, working on my writing, and not really working on my music. =P

Wow...chemo sucks

2009-10-19T08:47:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. Lots of things have changed since I last posted on here. For one, the IPT was a no-go. I really just wasn't feeling the doctor and his nursing staff and, this being what it is, I just.. didn't trust it. So I decided to go high-dose standard of care and put it totally in God's hands; which is really the best thing to do anyway. In a way I mean... it's a big thing that I don't so much fundamentally believe in, but I've done everything that I thought I could and it's not working. Isn't putting it all up to God the only REAL decision anyway?

So I've had two treatments and I'm going to another this Tuesday. It pretty much puts me comatose for about 3-4 days and I could pass for the living dead for 3-4 more after, but then I start feeling on the up and up =) 5 more months!!

PLUS! I'm having some really incredible plans lately. Can't wait to see what happens. =)

Update for today!

2009-08-27T20:55:00.001-07:00

Here's a copy and past from an update I sent out to the Facebook group.

-Holy cow! I just want to start by thanking you guys for everything. I've gotten a really warm response from everyone wishing me luck and taking the time to forward this message to people they know and posting it around the web. You guys make me all warm and fuzzy inside =)

Because of all this, I have two good bits of news too! The first is that I've raised enough to go down to south Florida to meet with the doctor and iron out some more details about what we're going to do. I'm really hoping to raise enough by then to cover the first week of treatment. It sounds like it might be $,2000-$3,000 each week, but again I'll be able to put a more accurate number up there after we meet.

Second bit of good news is that I talked with someone from the Times Union this afternoon about possibly having an article about my situation written. That would be great because I got to vent a lot of my frustration about the health care system here in the US. Plus they might get some more people that are willing to donate to the cause. Hooray! =)

So far I've raised around $800, most of which have come from small donations. My dad realized that if everyone in this group convinced 5 people they know to give $5 or $10 I would be able to cover the cost of treatment for the first 2 or 3 weeks, which would let me see if I'm reacting as planned or if I need to pursue another avenue of treatment. Another friend had the idea for me to look into personal 'unexpected circumstance' loans and I didn't know they existed so I'm going to be looking into those as well from both private or public avenues. Keep the ideas coming! I'm all ears =)

I want to thank all of you again for helping out, not just monetarily but with your kind words and your help in spreading the word. I really am in debt to everyone =)

The links!

2009-08-26T11:28:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, so I've finally got the links up for the donations. I've also started a facebook group for the cuase.

Facebook Group

Here's the link to:

The Elka Best Foundation

And here's the link for the page where you can download my music and pay whatever amount you want to donate. I've set up a special paypal account for this so I can keep everything legit =)

On Bandcamp.com

So now I just wait until I have enough money to start treatment, which really can't come soon enough!

Jhaysonn time to dominate the cancers

2009-08-18T10:53:00.001-07:00

So, I haven't really written much up here but there has been a lot going on. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I've come home from South Korea! Haha, I think I did write something about it, but again it's been a while. In any event, I don't know if I've marked the reason for my return. I had a Fine Needle Aspiration Biopsy performed in conjunction with a neck CT scan in South Korea shortly after my 24th birthday which came back with an initial diagnosis of Hodgkin's Lymphoma. HOORAY!! ....not really.

So that's why I came home. I wanted to be in the US with family/friends around to yell/complain and talk to. It's been like 6 months almost which is as long as I was in SoKo for and I really miss my friends there. I can't wait to go back one day! But first things first I have to get better. That's the big purpose for this blog. The blog-o-fundraising.

Here's the deal, and I want to to run through this both without making your eyes water from reading the screen for too long, but also by providing enough resources/reasoning for my decision for those that care to read more. First things first - my initial therapy.

I had previous knowledge of a cancer treatment that has been around for a while and was introduced by a German chemist, pharmacologist, and physicist. Her name was Dr. Johanna Budwig. She came up with paper chromatography which was a test that allowed us to, in the 1950's to analyze lipid structure to a detail that was previously unattainable. She was the pioneering scientist that discovered the difference between saturated and unsaturated fats, the omega fatty acid's that we all hear about now-a-days and a cancer treatment protocol that has been used for decades to treat cancer patients with great empiric results. Her own clinic boasted around a 90% success rate for all cancers at all stages. I don't want to get into an argument of empiricism, but lets just say when you see someone first hand who has benefited from this treatment - you're more incline to try it =) Plus - the science is pretty sound, if again, unfortunately un-funded (the bane of more than just medical care).

If you want more information about the diet - I would highly recommend buying her books. Only 3 have been translated into English unfortunately, but here's a really good summary of her protocol that I found on-line. Budwig

Needless to say, while one of the best ways to get tons of really clean calories into my diet, I went in for a CT scan (that took a ton of wasted time at Shands Jacksonville, a hospital I hope that nobody has to go to, at least for the Oncology staff I've experienced [although the nurses were always AMAZING and really nice.]) and it showed that I wasn't curing myself of cancer with Buwig's protocol. Darn. There are reasons as to why it might've not been working - the big two being sunlight exposure and anti-hystamine medication which are both tied together but, who knows. So I've been researching what to do now. I know that the diet I've been eating while on the Budwig Protocol is stellar so maybe no big change there. But I still don't know if going the standard ABVD route is what would be best for me.

Consider this article - Here

Those findings are consistent with the big packet on Hodgkin's that the NCCN puts out that I received from my oncologist (the one good thing that I got out of my appointments there). They didn't really jump out and say 'i'm your best bet at 24!' The highlight of the article that really stood out for me was where it talked about how permeable the cell membrane is to the chemotherapeutic drugs used on Hodgkin's lymphomas. Bazing

"after 15 years, show a FFS of 45% to 50% and an OS rate of 65%after ABVD, results that are not satisfactory considering thefact that HD is one of the most chemosensitive tumors in adults."

To me, I read this, and paired it with the earlier statement here:

"tumor cells, if not killed by the first therapeuticattack, progress, expand, and recur clonally, but mostly withadditional multiple somatic mutations, leading to genetic diversityand phenotypic heterogeneity or even to a secondary non-Hodgkin’slymphoma"

And suddenly I had more than just my previous dislike of the chemotherapeutic paradigm used to treat cancer - but I had something that was jumping out at me telling me how the first shot is the most important! Some people might see that and say how important then, the shotgun type drench your entire body in chemo method would be your best bet. However in my mind it makes it seem less effective because you have drugs that cannot differentiate between my hair and the tumor (not that hair loss is a big thing for me - I've always wanted to be bald and hairless... I'm serious!). All of this is brewing while in the back of my mind I have this vague understanding of what Insulin Potentiation Therapy is.

Ahem... please read

IPT-LD

I had a general understanding of the facts (which can be very dangerous) so I did a bunch of digging and found out some more facts about IPT. I read through the site of the grandson of the empiric inventor of the treatment protocol which made me do more research on insulin and then I talked with an ND about possible effects of insulin therapy and possibly becoming dependent (something that this ND did see in one patient). It all feels very summarized in this paper by Dr. Ayre (he has many other papers and articles available for reference on that site under the 'Documentation' drop down up top).

To me it seems that I am better off taking chemotherapy's that are shown to be very effective against Hodgkin's tumors and guiding them to all of the problematic cells in my body, instead of washing my body with maybe more chemo than is necessary in hopes of getting them all. To me it makes more sense. I can fully and completely understand the other side of the coin as well. The problem is that it's all interpretation. Unfortunately there hasn't been any funding into this treatment; unfortunately because of the test methodology involved.

Imagine you're a doctor and you have been treating people diagnosed with cancer using IPT in conjunction with other natural immune building medicine. I was talking with Dr. Ayre's daughter who told me that most of the clinics she knows don't just use IPT to help their patients. They know of many other nutritional therapies and oxygen therapies and medications that can and have been used in conjunction with IPT to give their patient the best possible response to treatment and prognosis. This therapy has been used for decades now and there are a number of these therapies that are commonly used in conjunction with IPT that would have to be done away with in order to test *only* the effectiveness of IPT. It seems cruel to deny the people involved in a clinical trial medicine that you know is going to help their prognosis just to show the statistics of it's effectiveness.

That's science. I totally understand. But we're talking about people's lives not petri dishes filled with bacterium. So, who knows. Will one ever be done? I pray to God it does, but who knows.

In any event, I've made my decision and I feel very confident in it. The only thing to do now is raise money to get it! It's going to cost around $40,000-$50,000 to get the treatment done so this could all be for nought if I can't raise anything in a couple weeks here to at least get started. This is where I need all the help I can get.

I've been working with my dad over the past couple weeks trying to decide how I'm going to go about doing this and we've come up with two solutions. One was an obvious and went along with IPT. It's called the Elka Best Foundation ( http://www.elkabest.org/ ). This organization is all about IPT. They help patients in need of treatment that are in similar predicaments as me and can't afford the treatment. They help fund research (I guess this is a theoretical for the future?). And they help people that just might need to talk, which is where the angel that is Annie Brandt comes into play. She talked extensively with my dad and even more at length with me about her experiences with cancer and IPT. She works for the Elka Best Foundation and is a stage IV breast cancer survivor. Her story is really something special and she ended cured cancer in 2002 using IPT in conjunction with a whole slew of effective natural treatments. She was such a great experience for me to talk with because she could connect with pretty much everything I'd been going through and she's on the other side, so. HOPE! =)

I will have a link up to be able to donate through Elka Best, but the other way that I'm going to make it possible to donate is through bandcamp. Bandcamp.com is a website that allows artist to sell/distribute their music on the web without any attached fees (yet?). They use a real simple interface that integrates PayPal so it's real easy to use (Elka Best uses Google Checkout). On this site I'm putting together a a compliation of sorts of all the music that I've put written over the years. All the styles, from art pieces for my degree to dance tracks, to dark industrial works. It's more a way for people to donate directly to me and help me not feel like I'm just asking for hand outs =)

I will have both of those links up in a couple of days. I know there are maybe only a few of you that will read this, but I'm hoping that the viral effect of the internet might bring more people and help me get this treatment. I will definitely post up more information about what's going on with me and the funds and I'll be totally transparent with everybody about this. The way I look at it, it's a team effort - but our team is like the population of the world. When you think of it that way it's all about distribution. 1 penny from everyone in the world is like 67 million dollars (per Google's July 2008 estimate) so feel free to spread the world to everyone you know! A lot of you will end up overlapping with people I know as I'm probably going to end up barraging everyone I know on Facebook and MySpace and everywhere =)

Oi - that was long =)

SOOOooooo it's been a bit

2009-07-22T08:47:00.000-07:00

I've been productive though! I have been working on mixing and preparing for that session with Dave. I would like to have more lyric ideas done - but turns out Henry is going to have a whole week free so who knows. I have 4 songs that are ready to have vocals laid over them with only 2 that have parts ready. This is the moniker that me and Henry are probably going to use

Pissing Graffiti

I have also had a great discovery of myself. I want to do a lot more music like this!

Softies

I'm going to try and get as many WWII radio broadcasts as I can and release an album of material that... I really hope just connects with people. Even if it's not what I set out to have them feel, I just want them to feel happy, and think a little.... that'd be nice =) Maybe it's the juxtaposition of Pissing Graffiti that pushed me to the polar opposite =)

Anywho - Im still alive and kicking, and should have a big juicy update coming up with some nice PG tracks finished!

SocraSational

2009-07-07T12:12:00.000-07:00

So, I posted these lyrics a while ago and finally have an update! Here's the whole shebang

Socrates was never made a fool, even when he died

As the poison took a hold inside, we were made the fool

Pay the debt, pay it fast, don't you hold the lie

Death is coming can you last or are you gonna cry

We always fail to heed the voice inside, crying out our names

Forever say that we will not be tamed, blaming all in pride

Long we be the child running entertaining Cain

Death is coming can we last or are we gonna cry

We live through our years, we cry in our fears, we're never clear about what we hold dear

A century is all that we're given, all of us driven, unique we think that we ought be forgiven

Nigh is the time to learn a lesson or two, stand from your pew and stop pretending you knew

That every generation sows the seeds of our fathers, we're headlong to a cliff that we're destined avoir

Socrates was never made a fool, even when he died

As the poison took a hold inside, we were made the fool

Pay the debt, pay it fast, don't you hold the lie

Death is coming can you last or are you gonna cry

We always fail to heed the voice inside, crying out our names

Forever say that we will not be tamed, blaming all in pride

Long we be the child running entertaining Cain

Death is coming can we last or are we gonna cry

Nigh is the time of your discontent, your sycophantic precepts misrepresent laments

You say that you care, but you just sit and stare, excuses stumble our of you for all the world to bear

Even Thrasymachus advocate for thoughts among us served to set us up the truth however hard he tried to boost

His own ideals became the message he revealed, one that resonates, reverberates and guarantees fear

"Why give it up, when you can have it all?" The salesmen says as he addresses your balls

Just sign the dotted line and you'll be dining with swine, forever always swearing, "I just wanted to shine!"

Socrates was never made a fool, even when he died

As the poison took a hold inside, we were made the fool

Pay the debt, pay it fast, don't you hold the lie

Death is coming can you last or are you gonna cry

We always fail to heed the voice inside, crying out our names

Forever say that we will not be tamed, blaming all in pride

Long we be the child running entertaining Cain

Death is coming can we last or are we gonna cry

Changed the Blog Player

2009-07-07T08:22:00.001-07:00

I changed my blog player so as to further promote Pissing Graffiti. I'm going to be focusing mainly on PG and another project with Lauren ( as yet to be posted ) so I thought it smart. Maybe smarter would a combination of the two! GASP!

cool, the band

2009-06-26T11:01:00.000-07:00

Well, me Henry Toland, and I believe Stephen Garza are going to be starting a group. A supergroup. A megalomanical dominant aural transfixtion of perfection.

You're gonna need to bring extra socks

myspace.com/pissinggraffiti

Have you ever seen the movie "Knowing"

2009-06-25T14:15:00.001-07:00

I just did this morning. If you haven't seen it, I'm about to ruin it for you, so go watch it (as it's worth it - the budget only allowed for Cage so the others actors aren't that good but..) and then read this.

Anywho, in the end of the movie, when everybody in the world is dying I got to thinking about how easy a death that would be for Cage's character. It's like knowing that you're death is inconsequential and that you are part of the slime that is eroding away the beauty of God's green earth. If I were to come to that conclusion (with the help of the massive space ship full of angelic mouth-flashlight people) I would feel like I *needed* to die. Especially knowing that my kid would be repopulating everything.

That got me to thinking - if dying via immolation would be a freeing experience (that's the best way I could describe what I would feel like in his imaginary position) then you could really turn any form of dying into the same. I mean... he *knew* that's what was going to happen but really knowing something is arbitrary. Even in science, when you know something, it's usually more accurate that you know something that makes sense at your present level of understanding, which will probably, in about 50 years, be wrong (who's waiting for the CERN!?!). But we *don't* know what will happen after. We don't know if Jesus will come back looking like Siddhartha or 50,000 years from now we'll be beings of light light the aliens in Knowing. We just have faith. Faith in what will happen after we die, like it's the beginning of a new journey, or it's where we get to hang out with God; or faith that nothing will happen. So why not have faith in something that will make you happy? I feel I'm failing to properly articulate this idea in my head but... maybe someone else can chime in

I'm finally going to get to show you

2009-06-15T20:10:00.000-07:00

Some of my more recent tracks. Come end of July I'm going to head down to record some vocals with Henry in Deland where my old roommate David Plakon has landed a job as Assistant Producer to Frankie Biggs. He'll be out of town so David will be helping me get some good vocals down. So hopefully I'll get 2-3 tracks done. More if I can get my broken Macbook pro back from apple soon, much less if I can't.

I iz 'cited!

Two Children

2009-06-10T12:51:00.000-07:00

Another from the LBBoS =) This actually happened

"Two children walking in two leather jackets shooting their two toy guns at everything around them. Spinning, aiming, shooting, repeating; theirs is a dance of subjugation. Walking around with the world at their feet, like the skulls of defeated and mistreated foes. A hundred years past it was swords they would misuse. Who wants to muse in a hundred years more, what kind of toys will be played with like war?"

Thoughts from Thomas Merton

2009-06-08T09:16:00.000-07:00

This due rocks. I bought this book called, No Man is an Island by Thomas Merton and he basically rocked my socks off by page 2. I just read something on the pot (not the herb, the defecator) and thought to share. It's the first entry from Chapter 3 Enjoy

"Conscience, Freedom, and Prayer

1) To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell. Selfishness is doomed to frustration, centered as it is upon a lie. To live exclusively for myself, I must make all things bend themselves to my will as if I were a god. But this is impossible. Is there any more cogent indication of my creaturehood than the insufficiency of my own will? For I cannot make the universe obey me. I cannot make other people conform to my own whims and fancies. I cannot make even my own body obey me. When I give it pleasure, it deceives my expectation and makes me suffer pain. When I what I conceive to be freedom, I deceive myself and find that I am the prisoner of my own blindness and selfishness and insufficiency.

It is true, the freedom of my will is a great thing. But this freedom is not absolute self-sufficiency. If the essence of freedom were merely the act of choice, then the mere fact of making choices would perfect our freedom. But there are two difficulties here. FIrst of all, our choices must really be free - that is to say they must perfect us in our own being. They must perfect us in our relation to other free beings. We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves. From this flows the second difficulty: we too easily assume that we are our real selves, and that our choices are really the ones we want to make when, in fact, our acts of free choice are (though morally imputable, no doubt) largely dictated by psychological compulsions, flowing from our inordinate ideas of our own importance. Our choices are too often dictated by our false selves.

Hence I do not find in myself the power to be happy merely by doing what I like. On the contrary, if I do nothing except what pleases my own fancy I will be miserable almost all the time. This would never be so if my will had not been created to use its own freedom in the love of others.

My free will consolidates and perfects its own autonomy by freely co-ordinating its action with the will of another. There is something in the very nature of my freedom that inclines me to love, to do good, to dedicate myself to others. I have an instinct that tells me that I am less free when I am living for myself alone. The reason for this is that I cannot be completely independent. Since I am not self-sufficient I depend on someone else for my fulfillment. My freedom is not fully free when left to itself. It becomes so when it is brought into the right relation with the freedom of another.

At the same time, my instinct to be independent is by no means evil. My freedom is not perfected by subjection to a tyrant. Subjection is not an end in itself. It is right that my nature should rebel against subjection. Why should my will have been created free, if I were never to use my freedom?

If my will is meant to perfect its freedom in serving another will, that does not mean it will find its perfection in serving every other will. In fact, there is only one will in whose service I can find perfection and freedom. To give my freedom blindly to a being equal to or inferior to myself is to degrade myself and throw away my freedom. I can only become perfectly free by serving the will of God. If I do, in fact, obey other men and serve them it is not for their sake alone that I will do so, but because their will is the sacrament of the will of God. OBedience to make has no meaning unless it is primarily obedience to God. From this flow many consequences, Where there is no faith in God there can be no real order; therefore, where there is no faith obedience is without any sense. It can only be imposed on others as a matter of expediency. If there is no God, no government is logical except tyranny. And in actual fact, states that reject the idea of God tend either to tyranny or to open disorder. In either case, the end is disorder, because tyranny is itself a disorder.

If I did not believe in God I think I would be bound in conscience to become an anarchist. Yet, if I did not believe in God, I wonder if I could have the consolation of being bound in conscience to do anything."

Pretty amazing in my point of view. I don't know about what he talks about "states that reject the idea of God tend either to tyranny or to open disorder" as the first place that pops into my head is Japan. I would say that since he was Catholic, and looking at the order of their governing system he would be right. I mean they are the longest standing government in world history.

Anyway - to all 7 of you that have the possibility of reading this, shoot me your thoughts!

lamentation de mes rêve

2009-04-19T17:59:00.000-07:00

A new song! I don't want to put it up, and I might take Kowka off-line too. I don't know - I think I just need to start playing out and see how people react instead of anticipating how they will react =P

Anyway, check this one out - put on some headphones and close your eyes if you can. You may spend 6 minutes listening to it but you'll tack on a good extra half hour at the end of your life =)

LOVE ME!

lyrics

2009-04-16T10:23:00.000-07:00

HA! a new song? why I do believe so....

We live through our years, we cry in our fears, we're never clear about what we hold dear/A century is all we are given, all of us driven, unique we think that we ought be forgiven/Nigh is the time to learn a lesson or two, stand from your pew and stop pretending you knew/That every generation sows the seeds of our fathers, we're headlong to a cliff that we're destined avoir

A soap box for the deaf, a podium for the blind, you say, "depart in peace, please think of me kind"/But you give them not peace, you take from them strength, yet still STILL, you think that all is in place/I tell you thou that doth seize what appeases, that what here is done stands forever, stands forever, stands forever, stands forever in paradis!

Interesting Quote

2009-04-13T07:58:00.000-07:00

I don't know where I found this, but I'm cleaning up around the house trying to make an order of things gone astray and happened upon it.

"Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished."

-Chief Seattle of the Duwamish Tribe

Medecine Creek Treaty 1854

It makes me ashamed of how things turned out.

OOO ooooOOO I can rap! HAHAHAHAHA, =,(

2009-04-06T12:47:00.001-07:00

Well, I'm working on it.....

_____________
What do I say, what do I do. What do you mean that I'm asking a hundred year question? A century will teach me all about life, and all about strife and what it means to hold a knife. At the end I lose it all, no one will listen and no one will call. I get a soap box for the deaf, a podium for the blind, confined to remind who's already resigned.

All I need is time to stop and think, for all of my crimes there's a cop and a shrink, how long will I shrink into a time that I remember divine, along the vines pouring out from my spine I look for signs among swine enticed by thoughts more divine bathed in wine but still tasting only and simply of brine. Never knowing it's in front of me, forever for me to see inbred and fed so that I could be free; free from tragedy and misery, and the potpourri of the bourgeoisie. I still believe in things unseen, Mom, but thirteen was when the machine turned obscene and the sheen of all queens left me dead in ravines hating the routine offered me so serenely

Because a man with a mission is a missionary man, to one a choice is held the other has no choice of his cell or is it?_ That a missionary man in a cell is where the man with a mission wants to ring the bell and sell to us hell, like a rebel when he says farewell, watching bomb bays open and drop down a wishing well.

4-Drachmus

2009-04-05T16:01:00.000-07:00

Two brothers find a coin in the street of Capernaum and, being poor, get excited. However, being careless, they begin tossing it back and forth and, being a coin, is passes through the hands of one and falls into the sewers. Chesed, being the one who fumbled, travels beneath to retrieve the coin. Isaac, being the eldest, stood watch at the opening. Chesed, being in the sewers, found herself beneath the Palace dungeon, audience to the words of a prisoner, being asleep, telling of a hidden fortune in the hills.

Grabbing the 4-drachmus coin, being now in her palm, Chesed speeds to her elder brother, being her look out for danger, to find herself audience again; but to the arrest of Isaac who, being the eldest, understood the implications of exploring the sewers by the palace. A diversion, being the only option, was sprung by Isaac the eldest to distract the guards, being too curious, so to save Chesed.

Her thighs then ate the ground beneath her, speeding on towards the treasure, being now the only way to save Isaac, the Eldest, from legionnaire justice, being corrupt and contemptible.

Night fell before Chesed, being still terrified, found the hills which contained her brothers salvation who, being in foul care, absorbed her thoughts,. The prisoners words, being the source of her knowledge, echoed in her ears: "The north star, being the brightest, shines upon the tallest branch, being the home of six keys, each fittiing the locks, being six each, to my treasure ever growing."

Clasping the 4-drachmus coin to her breast, Chesed, being the only hope now for Isaac, finds the north star, being the brightest, shining upon the tallest branch, being the house of six keys, each fitting the locks, being six each, to find a treasure ever growing.

Now dear Chesed, being taken with such wealth, kissed the 4-drachmus coin and cried with joy shouting, "Isaac stay calm with your captors. I come soon to you, being rich beyond factor." Tearing her clothes, being the only possible bag, Chesed gathered what she could and began her journey back to Capernaum. Deciding how she can buy Isaac's freedom, being all she can think on, Chesed walks through the night finding ill thoughts for rest. As the dawn comes abroad, the town comes clear to view. Quickening pace Chesed starts for the gates. 42 steps, being all she could take, for the gates of Capernaum chose Isaac for decor.

Disowning her cache she flies from the sight, being ever consuming, she plans out her blight. She comes to the Sea so named Galilee. And finding no strength, being sickened by events, Chesed has no strength to end life in sin. Her fist clasps the drachmus, being still in her pocket, and flings it to sea.

Shortly whilst tumbling, in waters so clear, the coin wouldn't stop at the bottom this year. This coin was attractive, being shiny and new, and a fish passing by saw what he thought was gruel. And later that day, being so sad for Chesed, Jesus would teach Simon Peter a lesson.

I just...

2009-02-14T14:11:00.000-08:00

...had a dream that I was some kind of king repelling an attack on my lands (in a bathroom of course) and had to resort to taking people down with the remnants of my Snickers bar...

Why do I

2009-02-03T03:09:00.000-08:00

Ahhh, to times at Big Rig =)

Why do I

Why do I feel that I fall

Forever never feel I am tall

Among the strong, a dem-god,

a god beneath my God.

In his image I prod at my call,

but just alive I feel I have to be

forsaken or stalled

to never hear the trumpets

calling my name as I crawl.

A kind of hospitality

2009-02-02T21:17:00.000-08:00

There's a pizza/chicken spot right around the corner from my apartment here that I go to when I'm hankering for some chicken. It's like a fast food place, and they mostly just do delivery. I might be the only person that goes there for take-out, and that's mainly because I have this have hearted fear of actually trying to call any delivery places because of the language barriar.

In any event, the first time I went there was late one night after work. When you're coming up to the building there are these vespas (the most common automobile in Korea) parked outside with thier alluminum boxes in the back for transporting food in. You walk in the door and the room where the drivers wait for the next order watching TV feels much like a small dorm room. A couch crammed in a cubby by a window, a computer sitting on a desk next to a small TV propped on a book shelf. Papers thrown everywhere, pizza boxes stacked to the roof. The rom is about 8'x12' and there is a table, the biggest piece of furniture in there, sitting in the middle of it.

When I walked in there was this middle aged Korean sitting down with a bottle of beer eating a big plate of chicken, presumably or dinner. His eyes were bloodshot from the beer but he was all smiles and courtesy. We figured out that I wanted to get some chicken and he rushed to the back and started preparing it.

When you get chicken in Korea, most of the time it will be prepared by simply taking an entire chicken and cutting it neatly in half down the middle, and then quartering it perpendicular to the midline. So you get a whole chicken. HOORAY!

When he came back we talked in broken Korean and English and figured out he and I both liked to bike. He was really nice and didn't even charge me full for the chicken. I have since gone back maybe a dozentimes, in the last 4 months and tonight I was feeling like some pizza. I walked in and saw him having dinner and noticed the light was off in the kitchen area. I tried to excuse myself and apologize and just walk out, taking the hint, but he insisted I stay and went in the back to make me a pizza. I sat down on the couch in the corner by the window and when he came back in the room while the pizza was cooking, he held a plate and a fork in his hand. He offered me some of his dinner and poured me some of the beer he was drinking.

Now, I feel like I need to state this again. The place was closed. He was having dinner, relaxing after work watching TV before he went home. I came in there like and he turns the kitchen back on, makes me a pizza, and gives me some of his dinner and beer. We can hardly speak to each other. I fail at most anything I try to express beyond good or bad (and those with my thumbs!!) or he tries to tell me beyond much the same, yet he shared his dinner with me at 12:30 at night and made me a pizza.

I think what strikes me as so amazing about that is that in America, or at least in my experience, for something like that to happen I would have to be very close to the person who was working at the restaurant. Very cose. Yet here is a guy who can barely understand a lick about who I am and goes so far out of his way. I know there is much for me to learn in this country.

A Walk - LBBoS

2009-01-24T00:24:00.000-08:00

Maybe not sorrowful for once, but open ended enough to be =)

"It had stopped raining and the sun was out. The air was thicker for it, but felt like winter was losing it's grip. I set out for a stroll and ended up on a burial mound carved into a mountain. There was no wind and the trees were still as I walked at their feet, softened by the rain and melted snow. The dead leaves beneath feel more like sandwiches underfoot than leaves. So silent is my walk that not even I feel like it's real. I feel like a ghost seen by someone else far off, gliding in the thick wood of a mountain. I pass by a marble headstone, etched in a foreign language and covered in years and moss. Walking upwards and over another ridge a massive modern city unfolds beneath me. For a moment I imagine myself a journeyman whose finally arrived, after some months of travel, at his destination. Then it slams home that this is not my destination, but my beginning. It is where my home is."

LBBoS excerpts

2009-01-20T08:12:00.000-08:00

So I have this other journal. It's not my Korea journal, but I call it my, 'Little Black Book of Sorrow." Why? Because for some reason I always end up writing sad things in it. It's just the way it is I guess. It's a black moleskin...

Anyway, here are some excerpts that I've written in it while in Korea.

-Today I humiliated a 10 year boy and made him cry. That was 5 hours after I cleaned my butt with my undershirt because there wasn't any toilet paper. I'm not lying about either.

- Why is it that I go to bed so late every night trying to put my finger on what exactly it is in my life that I've yet to even begin to fulfill, yet I wake everyday so tired as though I had no purpose in life?

- Without hypocrisy, I would know who I am

- Why does Daejeon so often feel like the frames of a comic book? It's like if I just get the right angle on it I could see all the support beams and rope holding up the facade. Do confident people feel it? Do confident people think?

- It sounded like the slow unraveling of my mind. Like a pendulum whose extremes brought the sound of glass cracking. It woke me from my sleep. Grated on my aroused stupor. Instilled a strong curiosity before the final departure of tension when the guitar string snapped.

- Today I took a walk in a snow globe. Tiny white feathers like crystals turned to tears of ice as I realized nobody cared.

November 29 - Late (journal excerpt)

2008-12-30T23:59:00.000-08:00

So, it's been a bit of a while. I have been losing discipline in many areas. Not just writing in this journal but practicing guitar, writing songs/compositions, studying Korean; all have fallen to a gross slackening. I don't know why, I just find myself less focused. I need to discipline myself as I have too many things to accomplish and shouldn't dwaddle my time away. Maybe it's the feeling of Winter though. At Dragon Rises I learned about how the seasons have very strong characteristics that we often find in ourselves. If this is true, then maybe I feel Winter very strong right now to make up for only experiencing the two seasons that Florida sees; Summer and Cold Summer.

Well I want to reflect a few things from my memory onto these pages, so bear with me.

First, the oldest to catch up on is an event that happened at my favorite restaurant. I wish I could remember the name of it, but it always seems to evade me. In any event I was going to the restaurant around 3, maybe it was 2 before work. I turned down the street that the restaurant is on and began to hear the low murmurings of a distant argument. As i got closer I realized I was walking toward it and as I opened the door to the restaurant, I was suddenly washed in an intense barrage of Korean being directed at Lee Myung-ou, the husband that runs the restaurant.

There was this middle-aged woman standing in the middle of the restaurant shouting bloody murder at him as he was sitting down trying to eat lunch. I tried to close the door unnoticed, but the bells above the door betrayed me... Lee Myung-ou and his wife Pak Bok-hwa welcomed me with open arms and pointed to a seat for me to take, all the while this crazy woman was hollering. I sat down, following Myung-ou's confidence, and ignored the creature in the dining room whose throat must start bleeding at any minute. I was served very quick as usual; first the water and steaming hand towl, then the seaweed soup followed by the 16 some odd side dishes. Then the Korean pancake and finally the clay bowl with the Nokchitukpeigi...all the while this woman was going off on what at some times seemed nobody in particular. I tried my best to just follow Myung-ou's lead, whose smile never faltered and who really made me feel like everything was ok.

While I was being served, I realized that the middle-aged woman wasn't alone. I noticed opposite me in the restaurant, a husband or a father (it's hard to tell with Koreans, they age remarkably well) was eating quietly. It appeared that at one point they were eating together, one would assume, before the screaming began. I was served and eating in less than 5 minutes, and I don't know how these guys put up with this lady because she was really going all out. It was ridiculous. At one point the man she was with said something, I assume to shut her up, and it didn't work. She ended up throwing her chopsticks/spoon? across the room, without much reaction from anyone!I was there eating for about 25-30 minutes and this lady never stopped shouting. Never paused for breath, it was sort of admirable. I started to leave when I was done and Myun-ou insisted I not pay, but I finally gave him 5000 Won and ran out the door before he could give me change. I think he was sorry I sat through all that but I was more sorry he had to listen to that insane woman because she was still going at it when I left!

Totally unrelated to that even, and just as much a surprise, about 3 weeks later (today actually) I went and got my Nokchitukpeigi and towards the end of my meal they made me a mini meal of a sesame leaf/caviar sushi salad. It was amazing! They are very kind people, Myung-ou and Pok-hwa.

I also want to write about a day I had recently that was extra blessed, or at least made me feel that way. It was a Thursday and too cold to go rock climbing so i was relaxing at home. I had completely forgotten about a lunch i was supposed to have with Mr. Kang until he called me to apologize for it not taking place! My heart sank to my gut and shot back up in about the same half second. he was just outside when he first called and so i went down to say, Hi." He had to cancle because the lunch was going to be with all the Dongchun-dong employees but they were all called to some meeting. So he said he's let me know if we could grab lunch after the meeting, but that didn't work out either. I just really appreciated the sincerity that Mr. Kang had when he wasn't able to keep his word. I don't want to forget that. It makes me reflect because I often say things and forget completely and end up letting someone down . It's not that I don't want to, it's just that I forget and don't remember until it's too late. =,(

Before work today I was hungry and that's actually when I got the free mini-seafood salad that added to my height of cloud 9. Then I get to work and Mr. Koo lets me borrow two Kayagum CD's to listen to. Kayagum is like the Japanese Koto, beautiful!!

On top of all that I finally figured out a way to explain the hot/cold food energetic. Check it out. Cold weather forces the body to work harder at maintaining equilibrium body temperature. So the body is forced to generate heat. When cold food enters the body, it has to do the same thing!

[edit: so turns out I'm an idiot. Definition of a calorie per princeton.edu - "a unit of heat equal to the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree in one atmosphere pressure." I fail.]

I must remember how much I am blessed. Everyday I wake up, I receive endless blessings and gifts from God and yet I somehow am always forgetting that. It's heartbreaking. If we experience, as humans, reflections of the emotions God has, I am stunned at how forgiving and patient He is towards us.

A little over a month ago

2008-12-28T07:18:00.000-08:00

I witnessed something I had to write down. I don't know why, but I wanted to write it on here so you could read about it. A resounding part of my Korean experience.

"It's a beautiful Autumn day and there is a wonderful park on the east side of town. An old man sits on one of many benches surrounding a small pond, either man made of simply remolded. Children are playing opposite the pond on the other side of a bridge that cuts through the center of this quiet pond.

Peacefully the old man sits, looking out of deeply chiseled eyelids. After so many years it must be difficult to keep them open for they seem almost shut as he meditates upon the scene around him. The wind blows gently and the sound of cars and buses are carried away on that gentle breeze, gently dancing with the lose hairs on an old mans head.

Time passes and he sits. Watches. Thinks. He pulls out a candy, wrapped gently in plastic, and works his leathered hands in an almost confused way as he sedks a weak point in his treasures armor. Ah, at last! It unwinds in his hands and he puts the reward lightly upon his tongue as he throws the tattered plastic on the ground. The wind gently blows as if sighing, blowing the plastic away, cleaning his house for his children."

Someone's busy...

2008-12-13T07:28:00.000-08:00

What Shall Come of This?

Here's the deal

2008-11-12T08:33:00.000-08:00

Ok - so I've been slacking royally on updating this, but I have my reasons. First and foremost is that I HAVE been keeping up in my journal. Which makes everything ok in my mind. But I realize that I do need to keep this up to date as much as possible, so here's the deal. Per Mel's suggestion I am going to begin simply copying over the things that I write in my KoJo (Korean Journal). I don't think I'm going to start from the beginning but I will start at some point of interesting more towards the beginning. =) I think.

PS - if anybody can tell me how the heck I'm supposed to get all my facebook photo albums onto here I'd really appreciate it. I'm not digging the interfaces that picasa gives me on here. I want a static page =,( :sniff:

Anywho, entry online for you numbero hana

October 4th - Gyejok-san

Today I planned, again, to head to Gyejok-san and actually made it (for better or worse per yesterday's amazing experience). I started walking towards the huge mountain I stare at everyday I walk to work, and found an 'entrance' easy enough, but it actually looked a little too much like an 'entrance' so I didn't take it. There are a bunch of homes built right into the base of Gyejok-san so I headed towards them figuring there might be a path less traveled. Turns out there are many paths less traveled... they are the paths of family going to pay respects to the tombs of loved ones.

From what I could see, these tombs are small burial mounds about 3 feet high that probably house the bodies or ashes of ancestors. There are often times prayer benches and small 5ft. tall obelisks that seem to act as markers or headstones. If there was any writing to signify the buried it was usually on the prayer bench that was situated in front of the mound. Large enclaves were cut out of the mountain to house groups of these tombs.

[insert cool Jdrawing from Journal - maybe you'll see it after after I die or someone steals it...or you ask =)]

There were hundreds of these around Gyejok-san. Some where around tons of enclaves while some were single mounds by themselves without any benches or obelisks. I assume the poor graves had no granite carved for them like a paupers grave in the USA.

There was one grave that had almost been knocked over that had a tombstone like granite market. They were clearing trees for power lines and this one grave was a lucky survivor. I saw a couple holes in my walking that looked like dug-up graves. Maybe relocating?

I ran into a family at the peak of my first ascent and they were very kind. Seeing my fatigue they offered water and a rice cake. For some reason I only brought 3 apples and water and that was definitely not enough. I gave them one in return hoping to at least show good in return.

There is what seems to be the same exercise equipment at Dongchun-dang park here at Gyejok-san. I think I am going to start working out there in the mornings.

I continued my trek and while walking behind an older couple they told me to keep going straight to check out a fortress! Soooo, I started running =) After about half an hour I had reached Gyejok sansaeng, a massive walled in fortress that overlooked a, now, farm valley. A mighty battle between Paekje and Silla forces took place there once and now all that is left are the remains of stone stairs and a massive stone wall. There must've been millions of stones used to create this massive wall.

After having my go at drawing the landscape (it was horrible, I threw it away when I got home) I headed back. Now extremely tired at the four hour mark.

I thought I got lost once but found my way back to familiar paths (by getting lost I mean I ended up at the pre-cut super easy lower elevation wide road of a trail that was much more boring that the ridge line trail I started on). Once I was back at the bottom I had a delicious meal at a restaurant there and embarrassed myself by not knowing how I was to eat what was put before me. A silver bowl that had 5 ingredients martially separated, a bowl of rice, a boiling bowl of tofu-miso soup and some kimchi were to be mixed together... The old man that owned the restaurant kindly showed me how =) A good day.

The mega update

2008-10-12T07:02:00.001-07:00

Ok, this update should be mega, but unfortunately it probably won't be. First I'd like to point out that...

I'M FINALLY IN FREAKIN DAEJEON SOUTH KOREA!!!

I actually got here two sundays ago at about 11:30 at night. I went out to a restaurant/bar called Hi OB... or something like that... with Mr. Koo and had smoked chicken and a Cass [asian beer]. Meeting him for the first time was great! He is just as kind and reassuring in person as he is on the phone! I started feeling very blessed to have him as a boss for the next year (or more?).

So I went to bed at about 1:30 and promptly woke up at 7 o'clock. Wait.. let's start over in this journey.

Ok, so before I got to Korea I was in Atlanta, right? I had to go to Atlanta to get my Visa from the Korean Consulate. I drove up the day before my interview and stayed at my awesome super great and mega nice friend Kristen's apartment (who is living with her equally awesome super great and mega nice friend Kim, sister [of three triplets] to Kristen) that was really a nice pad.

http://ping.fm/AoRt6

I ended up passing through this town that was really really old that had a 'Smallville' kind of feel to it. I took a bunch of pictures but can't really figure out this Ping.fm picture thing so... Good luck! One day it will be easy. For now you get only that one.

They had awesome location in Atlanta, which unfortunately cost them a pretty penny, but fortunately... well was a sweet deal because they had a borders about 100 yards from them and a 24 hour restaurant that actually cared about having healthy food. I didn't even think those existed!

So I get my interview at the consulate, which turned out to be more of a hassle than I thought. The director at the consulate was a real tightwad about Americans going into his country to teach English. It was really weird because it's not like nobody was going to get approved as we all had jobs waiting for us. I don't know, in any event he made everybody really nervous and then told us we would have our visas in 24 hours. Yea, 24 hours. That's the quickest I've had anything happen in this whole process.

So I hang out in Atlanta for a few days, with Kristen and Kim which was a lot of fun. Kristen says I'm a holiday because I only get to see her once a year; a comment that made me laugh, yet cry on the inside a little =,(

I decided to stay up Friday night because it would be really hard to wake up at 4 in the morning to get ready and be at the subway station by 5 so that I could get to the airport early as my flight left at 7:30 or something like that.

Kristen is a super-trooper and helped me lug all my stuff to the subway near her house. The buses weren't running that early so we had to walk it and I ended up a sweaty mess by the time I got to the station!

Ok - making this super long which was not intended.

I get to the airport and wait around for a while. I end up getting the dead end of the plane so I had no room to lean back and for the first time actually got a little nauseous. I arrived in San Francisco and had an almost 5 hour layover before hoping back on the plane for a straight shot to Korea. Seats were a little better... but still suck. I was in the dead middle seat of the plane, and for 12 hours that's not really where I'd like to be ever again. I wish first class wasn't so painfully expensive.

Anywho, so that brings us to Korea. Mr. Koo rocked. I've had a total blast teaching my students and I'm loving loving loving the food! It's great here. Autumn is just about to kick in so I think I need to get a new camera to capture this season. mmmm

LEAVING THE COUNTRY!!!!

2008-09-27T00:05:00.001-07:00

Well, it's finally here. In about 2 hours I'm going to walk to the MARTA Art Center subway stations and get on the train on a way one trip to the Hartfield/Jackson airport in Atlanta. I can't believe it's finally time!! I am horribly excited. I'm not going to lie, I feel slightly scared. I've never been out of the country and now I'm going to live in a time zone half a day ahead of the only time zone I've ever lived in! O man.... I'm going to live in Korea....

Onto packing!

Starcraft

2008-09-09T19:38:00.001-07:00

So... I bought Starcraft a little bit ago to try and 'relearn' what I used to be pretty bad at long ago. See I used to play casually with my friend and never got super duper into the game. He would play Terran (the human race) and I would just hole myself in with the Protoss (the 'elitist' alien race). Worked fine - we used to be able to take on 6 computers with just the two of us.

Something has changed. I am not playing with my friend, so there is that variable, but I still suck soooo horribly. I thought I would be able to relearn and at least compete with some of the more revered SoKo players (that's what I'm calling South Korea now :smirk:) Wrong - I can't even beat the computer 1v1. I played with my friend Matt and we couldn't beat the computer 2v1!!!!

Now, as you can imagine I have gone on to look at strategies but it seems that all strategy has been thrown out the window to make way for faster and faster build orders (or BO as they are called when you're on the in :another smirk:). This may work great for the super fast reflexes of our Asian brothers of whom people like Bruce Lee were created... but for me... I guess that leaves me with Sins of a Solar Empire where it took 5 hours to begin to interact with one of the other 4 people I was playing with....

Maybe I need to stop thinking about strategy because I'm just bad at it. Any good recommendations for bettering myself? please, don't hesitate to let me know. I suck at board games too. Axis and Allies psh, never won a game :P

Jumping ship

2008-09-04T18:17:00.000-07:00

AHHHH!!!!!! I have left the AweFULL Whale. It will be missed and has been the witness to a change in my life. It's good though. All is good though. I am curious how long I am going to be there. Or anywhere. I really don't know if I'm going to come back. It's weird to me because I love my friends - I feel like the friends in my life are not people that I would ever want to trade away for anything - but here I am going to South Korea.

I like the idea that was presented to me by a nice monk on the TV (mmm I love nice monks). I was in a hard spot in life (another touche to the Buddhists [let me make a short aside here - HTMT now stands for 'hint to my thoughts'] HTMT: pain is the result of our desire) and was watching this monk talk about the structural integrity of buildings.. Wierd right? It was of course the History channel and they were talking about this indoor 2nd floor bridgeway that had collapsed in a sky-rise building. Huge mess, it was a glass walkway and lots of people didn't get to go home that day (which might explain the monk on the show :shrugg:). So here is this monk the camera snaps to out of nowhere to 'straight represent in this mutha' his ideas about living life with two hands open; one hand to receive and the other to give away. He was saying that everything in our lives must be this way for us to be at peace and I have to say I really really agree with that. The thought process is mirrored in the bible like, "A man's heart deviseth his way but the LORD directeth his steps" (proverbs).

goal - hold me accountable - live this way.

Done

One Dream

2008-08-23T14:06:00.000-07:00

In the ruffle of the trees you can hear it
In the
You can feel it

Along clouds flattened out, dreaming of dreams in twofold
You can taste it

In this hour of night
…you can see it

Along two streams came a duck
Upon one dream came two memories

Membered in memories, joined in retention
These twofold remember…

Upon one memory came two dreams
Along two ducks came a stream

The preparation!

2008-08-23T13:57:00.000-07:00

So, I know... it's been about 8 months. =) Not like anybody actually reads this though :)

Anywho, I am currently waiting for my background check to come back from the FDLE in Tallahassee so that I can then mail it BACK to Tallahassee to get it certified which then I get to pay about 100 dollars to mail it to Korea!

THEN I'M GOING TO KOREA! I really can't describe accurately how excited I am about this opportunity. I should tell you where I will be.

The school that I'm going to work for is the Jeil English School in Daejeon. I am going to teach English to Elementary through High School students. The director of the school, Mr. Andrew Koo seems to be pretty awesome. I know I won't be short of opportunities to play guitar either as Mr. Koo was really happy to learn that I played guitar and purposed a mind swap; I teach him guitar and he teaches me Korean. I can't really complain with that kind of proposition.

Anywho here is a site about Daejeon - http://tour.daejeon.go.kr/english/goodsights/theeightsights/theeightsights.jsp

and here's something I'm definitely going to be interested in - http://www.fcdaejeon.com/main.html

must find Martial Arts school/Gymnastics and soccer in Daejeon =)

I LEFT GAINESVILLE

2008-02-26T17:36:00.000-08:00

So I was studying Oriental Medicine at Dragon Rises and I really loved it. I feel like I will go back to it one day, but not right now. I once read a book that my dad gave me by Wane Dyer called 10 Secrets something or other and one of the things that it talked of that spoke to me was how you have this little guy that sits on your shoulder telling you when you 'aren't doing what you were born to do.' Well I guess that little guy proceeded to not scream that in my ear but make me sick.

So I am moving back to DeLand, home of Stetson were I got my two undergrad degrees, and I'm going to work with my good friend Stephen Garza and Henry Toland to start making some serous music. Not to mention my best friend Lauren Nieuwland and I are going to work on album that should shake souls :)

Good things ahead, I can't wait to be able to actually post up information about finished songs :P

New Facebook Page

2008-01-21T19:04:00.000-08:00

SO i guess facebook has 'Musican Pages' now... I don't know when that happened but I signed up for one - I guess it's an extension of my main facebook page.

Anywhp - Here's a link

Hmmph

2008-01-17T15:20:00.000-08:00

Well I am working on redoing Catharsis ( or Weekend in Gainesvile.... I don't know what I'm calling it now :P)

Anywho - I added Lauren Nieuwland into the mix - her voice makes me want to re-record mine over and over and over and over and over and over until it sounds halfway decent and start the process all over again. One of these days I'll learn how to keep a pitch.

In the meantime, just look for that to be finished soon and I'll get rid of the one that's up now. I have a bunch of tracks that are getting worked on now when I find time/motivation to work with my iBook. It holds up surprisingly well in terms of running Logic Studio.. but not well enough for it to be quite enjoyable - I have to freeze almost every track, especially the new AudioInstruments that come with Logic Studio...

Anywho - [sorry for the rant - i do so because a whole 10 people might see this thing] just keep checkin my sites for updates as I will put them up as I finish them :)

I'm in Miami!!

2007-12-07T05:20:00.000-08:00

well actually Ft. lauderdale right now, but that's because that's where the hotel is at. MPG is performing at Art Basel yay!! I had to miss school (boohoo :P) but it should be tons of fun. Nathan Wolek won't be with us :( which means our group 'mom' isn't here but we should be able to pull it off quite nicely. We're performing tonight at 7 so... if anybody is in Miami (or I think if anybody actually stops by this page...) come check us out!

MySpace page

2007-11-12T08:31:00.000-08:00

I have always been angered by the inability to change my normal myspace page to an atist page so I just made a seperate one.

AuralArt

ENJOY! And as always, thoughts/ideas/critique is always welcome :)

New song!

2007-11-11T08:31:00.000-08:00

You won't beleive it!! I just finished a new track and it is available for your listening pleasure :) I hope you guys like it (all 4 of you that might happen across this page:P). Grab some tea, sit back and open your ears

It's the third new track on my reverbnation page, Catharsis

or just play it in the player in this page =)

New Way to listen!

2007-10-23T20:30:00.000-07:00

Hey this is kinda cool. So I was browsing around on Facebook - I know lame, whatever it's addictive - and I saw this add to 'promote your band.' Well needless to say I got all excited because i've been wanting to put my music up on facebook now for the longest time because quite frankly I hate MySpace. So you can check me out on ReverbNation here:

ReverbNation.com/Jhaysonn

Or click on the link in the player to the right.

New Blog

2007-10-21T20:09:00.000-07:00

Well, something in my brain told me to make a blog. I want to update my site - but untill then I will use this.