time travel

it seems that whenever someone travels through time in a television show or movie, the moral of their time travels is that the future is not fixed, we make of our lives whatever we want.
on a somewhat related topic, one joke that is popular in movies and t.v. shows these days is to have a character say something like 'i will never in my life step foot on that boat' then the camera cuts to that person stepping onto the boat.
one joke i do like from t.v. is in that documentaries when those dolphins jump through the simpsons chests.

a fun game.

i think this game is so fun.

genius

there is so much genius in the world. all around us. in all a varieties. so often i have wanted to be apart of it. as if that would somehow make me happier. but i think i will need to accept my fate of only being a fan. and i guess this is fine. accepting mediocrity seems like it can be important for one's mental health. because even if i were a genius, how much good would that do me other than feed some sort of need for value by having something superior to others.
so i can just sit back and admire the accomplishments of others.

electrolytes

of all the drugs i have tried, my favorite is Electrolytes. if life deals you gators just make gatorade, then you have your electrolytes.

.

sacrament

imagine if one time in a sacrament meeting, when the person was giving the opening prayer instead of beginning it traditionally by saying 'heavenly father....' they begin, 'Dear Elohim, lord of Kolob...' and imagine if it was a well respected member of the congregation like the bishop or even stake president.
this is probably taking the joke to far, but maybe he could even close it 'in the name of the third nephite, amen'

ike

i spent the night at isaac's Saturday night. i always have fun when i do that. i enjoy spending time with isaac. someone who is so very intelligent. we have good talks about things that i rarely have the opportunity to discuss in such depth. we played chess and ate taquitos and chips.
even though he only lives in salt lake when i stay over there i feel as if i am on vacation from my normal life. as i can leave my provo troubles behind me.
that can be one of the draws of moving. when i am in other cities i feel so nice there, away from my life in provo. but were i to move there i can imagine the discontents i have with provo could follow me. who knows. i am still planning on moving soon. there isn't really anything keeping me here.

i want the shades drawn. and an overgrown lawn.

there is a song that sings 'want do i want with my life now that you're gone? i want your ghost gone'.
what an appropriate line. it is amazing and ridiculous to me that a short interaction with someone can continue to have such a deep impact in my life. that this person's ghost is still able to loom so large.
to make it all the more pathetic i imagine the spot i occupy in this person's mind is next to nothing. something hardly remembered, and in those occasions when i am remembered it is probably with an sigh of regret. something along the lines of 'what was i thinking?'
of course over time the longing and pain has eased considerably. i used to dream of her every single night, now, only on occasion, this gives me hope. imagine how i will be when twice the amount of time that has now passed passes? especially if i am able to find someone else to replace what is longed for.
i have found myself asking people how long it takes them to recover from brokenheartedness. a common response has been about a year. although one has said she has never stopped feeling brokenhearted, even after four years.
amazing that relationships can be so non-reciprocal. that one person can feel one way so strongly, while the other feels nothing.
i felt i had discovered a cave, so rich with treasure whose depth and brilliance was exciting to mine and explore. stimulating my passions and causing me to feel i had entered into a new world whose beauty i had not before realized.
i think one challenge for me has been that our interaction was so brief. brief yet very intense.
because of this, i am left in that fictional world of first knowing someone, when your mind romances and fills in what is not known. had our interaction been longer, who knows what could have happened, perhaps we would have gradually seen one anothers flaws and grown apart naturally, rather than bizarre and unfortunate circumstances shoving us apart suddenly. leaving me longing for what could have been. a longing based on what may only be my imagination.
so this is what future girls have to compete with. my imagination of what someone may be. this is unfair to anyone because perhaps my imagination has no basis in reality. who could someone compete with that? compete with my hoping of what a person is.

it is like some sort of arrow that a ninja or medieval person may have used, that once the arrow enters the victims chest, the arrowhead expands, sticking barbs into the surrounding organs and muscles so it cannot be removed without breaking bones and tearing muscles and organs. because of this i was scared to take it out, despite the pain, and so i left it in. it grew infected.
but the wound is healing, and i am still waiting for this ghost to be gone.

tonight

tonight i found out rice king has a vegetarian menu full of tons of fake meat dishes. i am so excited about this. i think i will begin eating there more often. the waiter is so funny. he is so casual. when asking our order he sat down at the table across from us.

idiocracy

it is funny to me how much i like the movie idiocracy. when i first watched it i laughed a lot and enjoyed it but did not necessarily think the movie was exceptional. but afterwards i found myself frequently thinking about it. i would remember funny parts and want to see them again. so i would watch the movie again. when i would rewatch it i wouldn't get bored, if anything i enjoyed it more, noticing things i hadn't before.
i have now watched the movie, i think seven times in the last month. and i would not be opposed to watching it again with someone who was interested in seeing it.

j.blaze

there have only been a handful of movies i have seen in the theater that have caused me to want to walk out.
one was fifty first dates. the jokes were so awful.
another i saw last thursday. it was called 'Ghostrider'. before seeing it the only knowledge i had of it was i had seen a poster of a picture of a skeleton who was on fire riding a motorcycle and thought it seemed like something i would not be interested in. i had never heard of the comic book it was based on or seen any previews for it.
i saw it with caleb because it was his birthday and he wanted to see it.
i felt that every time the movie had an opportunity to be bad, for example being very cliche or otherwise unpleasant, it took that opportunity.
because of this i found myself totally disinterested in the character, johnny blaze, or what would happen to him.
another movie i feel took every possible opportunity to be bad, even more so than ghostrider, is 'left behind'.

study group

i am so so pleased with my participation in the baha'i faith.
i enjoy so much the baha'i study group i attend. each time the discussions have been rich and enlightening. i come away feeling uplifted and inspired for positive change.
one thing i love about the baha'is in contrast with other faiths i have participated in is the topics and principals that are emphasized. i feel they are very applicable to my life, and presented in clear ways, allowing me to benefit more than i feel i have from any other faith.
i feel the things taught by Baha'ullah, more than anything else i have yet experienced, provide good, clear direction for how individuals and groups should live.

in Mormonism a great deal of emphasis is placed on things like faith, atonement, being a disciple, sexual purity, fulfilling callings, being worthy, loving god etc. while i can see the value of these things, for the most part they are principals i long ago stopped believing.

other churches seem to place enormous amounts of importance on praising god, loving god etc. something that may indirectly improve a persons way of living, but is not something i see as incredibly important.

however with the baha'is, their main emphasis is on things like tolerance, equality(racial, religious, gender), honesty, independent investigation of truth, self examination, the oneness of humanity, etc. while these are things that may be touched upon by other faiths, it is not their main emphasis.
i feel the baha'i teachings, and ways of teaching more easily create the kind of people and communities our world needs.
they have several similar doctrines as mormonism, such as eternal marriage, eternal progression, heaven and hell as metaphor.

one of the only things about mormonism i prefer to the baha'is is their theology on god and the human being.
in mormonism individuals are intelligences, uncreated, that have always existed, in that sense equal to god. god is unique because he is further advanced and acts a spiritual father to guide us into becoming similar to him. he himself having been required to progress as we are now.

while i am not sure if necessarily believe this, i enjoy it. because a great confusion of mine is why would people exist. why would god want to create beings, just to test them in something they may or may not be successful.
islam says that god created people so they can know god. but i think, why would he bother? this all powerful perfect being, why would he go to the trouble to create people to know and worship him? you think he would be more self actualized than to need that.
but in mormonism it is that these beings already existed, and so this god character is doing what he can to help them along, having greater experience and so is able to serve as an appropriate guide.
this is kind of a godless theology. there is no one all powerful being ruling over everything, but rather uncreated always existing beings, finding themselves existing, so working together towards what they see as the best possible reality.

i would be so happy if my friends and family would embrace the baha'i faith. i think it is something that could be of great benefit for them. however i see this as unlikely. but i am fine with that.
i would love to find a baha'i girl to marry. and i look forward to raising my children as a part of the baha'i community.

hiro's hero.

it seems that whenever someone does something heroic and are then praised as a hero the hero won't acknowledge that what they did was heroic. they say things like 'i just did what anyone in that situation would have done'.
i was thinking if i ever did something heroic and was interviewed by some media i would like to say something like 'i don't think hero is a strong enough word for what i did.'

night

last night was so weird.

thinning winds.

sweetheart, sleep well.

bleak.

this time of year has a certain bleakness to it. after the snow has melted and the weather has warmed a bit, but before anything new has begun to grow.
everything outside has a lifeless feeling. everything is covered in a thin layer of dirt from when the snow melted and the grass is all matted and smooshed down.
aside from that i am happy it has become much warmer and brighter.. it lifts my soul.

snowboarding.

i overheard someone saying this on his telephone yesterday.
'i never came but she was coming all over the place. i was thinking about snowboarding the whole time.'

junk

isn't so much of life about 'what in the world is going on?'
we, all of us, have found ourselves suddenly existing. surrounded by other people who also exist. surrounded by all sorts of things.
what is all this?
we want so much for it to be something. to have some sort of meaning. so we have religion to answer the why questions. why is there anything. why are we.
we have science to answer the what and how questions. what is all this stuff and how does it work? how can we use it to our advantage.
we have politics to help us get along with each other on a large scale.
we have philosophy to help make sense of it all.
but seriously, what is going on? i feel so perplexed by everything that is the universe.
in one sense it does not matter too much. whatever the answer is to all our big questions we still need to get our food and houses and have friends and things to do.
i like that line by r.e.m. that goes 'You want to see forever-You want to go out Friday And you want to go forever.' i don't know if this is what micheal stipe meant, but i interpret that line as speaking of our desire for transcendence and ultimate knowledge, but coexisting with that is our desire to have fun things to do. that even if you suddenly knew everything, you would still want something to do on fridays.

i finished this today.

i finished this today. i returned my digital camera a while ago because i did not think it was very good, so i had to photograph it with my computers built in camera. that means it is reversed and not great quality.

desire

it is difficult to want something more than you want anything else when there is literally, as far as i know, nothing i can do to get it.
all i can do is either try to not want it. or try and be okay with wanting it and never being able to get it.
time helps.

reincarnation

i like the idea of reincarnation because it evens out the seeming inequality that is our earth life.
if this earth life is meant as a sort of test, trial, or growth experience, how can it be a fair one if some people are born into middle class devoutly religious homes, have high i.q.'s and mild temperaments with parents who are loving, tolerant etc. and some people are born to drug addicted, abusing, with no opportunity for an education etc homes.
some people only live five years while others live 120. some are even aborted or miscarried fetuses.
if such a wide range of experiences exist, how could this be any sort of a just test or trial. why even bother having such a test.
but if people are being born again and again, it seems the inequality would end up smoothing itself out. people would get the opportunity to have all variety of experience.

j-dawg.

i don't have a lot of reasons to think this, but i have a few reasons. but it is my opinion that jesus is alive somewhere on earth today. one reason is the Mayan prophecy about 2012. since the mayan's made accurate predictions about 1844 and 1863 i am inclined to trust their powers of prophecy.
i am also inclined to trust the prophetic powers of Baha'ullah who said that when that 'blessed beauty' should return he would be a man, born to parents who would eat, drink and walk the streets. that the 'clouds' he is prophesied to return in refer to the clouds of tradition which cause people to doubt.
because of this, i feel that if he is intended to return in 2012 (i would guess by return, it is meant he will make some sort of declaration of who he is), it makes sense he would be a grown man by that time, and since it is only five years away he must now be living and doing stuff.
it is also my opinion that he lives somewhere in north America, likely the United States. i think this because of the Baha'i prophecy that the next manifestation will come from the west.
i like trying to imagine this person. what sort of things he might be doing right now. what sort of music, food, art etc. does he like.
it is not too difficult to imagine his character. probably very gentle, honest, loving, wise, patient, funny, humble etc.
of course i could be wrong about all this. but either way. i feel just having the idea that such a person exists, and trying to imagine what they are like in my imagination and emulate that helps me be a better person.
because trying to imagine historical Jesus, or Buddha or Krsna or other manifestations, while helpful can be a bit too abstract because they lived in times so different than our own.
i want to keep my eyes peeled for this person. keep my self aware so i can recognize this manifestation when and if i have any sort of encounter with him. who knows, maybe he is even on Myspace. i would imagine that despite his noble character, because of the outrageousness of his claim many people will not take it serious.

books.love

having a favorite book and falling in love feel similar to me. similar in that it is hard for me to imagine me having a favorite book, or falling in love.

i love books. i read many, but no book do enjoy enough that i would want to give it the status of being my favorite. no book i have read have i wished i had written it.

i suppose every book is a reflection of the author's soul. just as other pieces of art, like poetry, music or painting. but other pieces of art are much quicker reflections. or reflections of just one aspect,i imagine this would make it easier to fully connect with a person. whereas a book contains so much information, touches on so many aspects of the author's character, it would be more difficult for it to fully connect with a person.

although i realize a person's ability to make quality art does not fully or necessarily reflect on their character. some people i admire are not gifted in artistic ways, and some art i love is not made with a full comprehension of why it is good, and so is not a true reflection of the creator.

what i am trying to say is that while other pieces of art can fully speak to me and be everything i want that piece of art to be, no book has done this, though i am open to the possibility of such a book existing.
there are so many books it seems easy to imagine i may never discover it if it exists.

as well it is also amazing to me that so many people do have favorite books. each person is so unique and so specific how can so many have found a book they can connect with fully?

this is also i feel about love. how can so many people have fallen in love? it seems like such an impossible task to meet another individual you enjoy so much you would want to spend your entire life with, even share the same bed every night. and yet this happens to most people.
of all the billions of people you wouldn't be in love with, most people are able to find someone. amazing.
and while i am open to the possibility of one day finding this person, it is difficult for me to imagine.
i wonder, how many people in this world could i' find true love' with? one hundred? one thousand? even if there are as many as one thousand girls in this world i could be in love with i still must be in the right place at the right time for this to happen. so easily could i miss that opportunity.

paints

even though i tend to like what i make with oil paints more than what i make with water colors, i more enjoy the process of using water colors. they are so clean easy and quick to dry. as well as mobile. i can easily carry my water colors with me in my purse as well as a little bottle of water.
oils look wonderful but are so messy. i must be careful to not let the paint touch any surface i don't want to permanently be painted on. this requires a lot of time to prepare an area for painting. plus they take so long to dry. because of this i have primarily used water colors for the past couple years.
i also like the idea of water colors. or the feeling i have when i think of them. they give me a feeling of being gentle, calm, unobtrusive.

c.a.

it seems i frequently meet people who have heard of me. i don't mind this. even if what they have heard is not necessarily positive i don't have problem with people speaking of me when i am not around. i realize it is something we all do, and i do not necessarily think it is a bad thing. i think that 'gossip' is a cohesive thing. it is something people bond over. talking about people they know.
for the most part, when i meet people who have heard of me, it seems they have heard positive things, because they will walk up to me and introduce themselves.
but when people have heard of me, it seems they always hear of me as 'chris allman' rather than just chris. likely this is because of how common the name chris is. so it is not uncommon to have people i know only as acquantances refer to me always as 'chris allman' rather than just chris.

things i do.

these are the things i do with my time:
read books. i am currently reading 'the elegent universe'. The Koran and book of short stories.
I usually take a walk everyday. the most common places for me to walk are to the library or byu campus. usually this depends on the weather. if the weather is poor i will likely just end up walking to the provo library since it is closer. if i end up there i will usually stay for an hour or so reading. while walking i either listen to music on my ipod or silence.
i find myself really enjoying mundane chores. like watering my plants or doing the dishes. i like having something to do that involves very few options on how to do it. this relates to a discussion i had with isaac about how when we increase our options it can decrease our happiness. i will write about that later. while i do things like wash the dishes i like to listen to public radio.
i make some sort of art on most days. currently i am making a diorama i am pleased with it. it involves an angel and children and a cloud. i most often listen to public radio while making art.
i try to exercise every day. either doing some combination of yoga stretches, or weight lifting or push-ups. i also try and do the falun gong exercises everyday, although recently i have not been doing as well.
on tuesdays i attend the bahai discussion group in slc. before it happens i often don't want to attend, but i am always glad i did during and afterwards. the discussions are great and uplifting. i like the people who attend.
i had signed up to be a hospice volunteer but i missed one of the training meetings and have yet to reschedule so that hasn't happened yet.
i was also trying to volunteer to teach reading at the prison, but the woman in charge never returned my calls so i finally stopped calling.
i typically hang out with friends a few days throughout the week, but as i wrote about earlier there is no one friend i seem to spend more time with than others. for a while meg and i were hanging out often but now she is dating scott we hang out less often.
sometimes i take drives.
sometimes i help my parents with different things. for example they have been moving lately and i have been helping them move. or sometimes my mom will need a ride to a doctors appointment so i will help with that.

speaking of faith.

the past few nights, as i have been going to bed i have been listening to the public radio show 'speaking of faith'.
i would say it is my second favorite radio show, the first being 'this american life'
i love the way the show explores the spiritual dimension of many aspects of life. like the spiritual aspects of business, sex, science, addiction or depression.
these are not discussions i often hear elsewhere. the discussions are often to spiritually based for normal news coverage, and too secular for normal religious discussion.

future

my plan, at this time, is to move to washington around may. hopefully take summer classes at evergreen.
i am hoping this will be good for me. give me more direction and focus.
hopefully i can make friends there and enjoy going to school at evergreen.
although i love school i have yet to have attended a school i love. talking to melissa makes me excited about evergreen. she talks about how life changing it is. also her talk of how much she loved olympia is encouraging.
then i think of how i will miss provo, but i have very few attatchments here so that should be okay.

bf

at this point in time i don't feel i have any male friends who are too close. this is something uncommon for me. i feel i have always had a close male friend in my life since the eighth grade.
normally when one friend leaves my life, like when morgan began dating lindsay, another will immediately enter, the way jeff did.
since jeff has left for l.a. i don't feel anyone new has taken his place.
i live with caleb now who i felt fairly close to before his mission. but things have felt different since he has been back. we live together now but don't seem to talk or hang out much.
i have grown to like my roommate ryan, but it seems he is only interested in snowboarding and marijuana so it is difficult to create a strong connection.
i have been spending more time with isaac lately which i really enjoy. but he lives in salt lake and works hours that make it difficult to hang out more than once a week.
davey and i have both expressed interest to each other about becoming better friends. but things haven't seemed to coalesce for that yet. partly my own fault. he has made a good effort at inviting me to things but seem to be doing something else whenever he does.
i miss having a male best friend in my life

h.p.

i bet when the casting director hired daniel radcliff to play harry potter, he or she was not expecting his face to remain child size while his head became as large as an adults.

prayer-ocd

last night i was feeling kind of lonely. i said a prayer in my heart asking to be less lonely. almost right after the prayer a friend stopped by. after that a friend called inviting me to dinner. after that was over a friend texted asking if i would like to watch a movie with her.
these actions could have been a direct result of the prayer. or could have been coincidence.
i enjoy the idea of it being a result of prayer because that gives me a feeling of being able to have an impact on things in areas of my life i might otherwise feel unempowered.
or it could be superstition. or obsessive compulsion. i did not understand obsessive compulsive disorder until talking to a friend who has somewhat severe ocd. What i did not understand about the rituals is that they are done because the person feels that
by doing the ritual it will cause something bad not to happen.
understanding this i realized i have a certain degree of ocd. sometimes i may, for example, see a piece of trash on the street and feel if i do not throw it away i may not have good things happen to me. things that are not inherently related to throwing the trash away.
it seems that religion, whether it be true or false creates a sort of mass ocd. the religious participants engage in rituals with the belief that by doing them good things will happen, and if they are not done bad things will happen. so perhaps all my prayer and devotions are merely obsessive compulsive ritual. when i do them i look for good things to occur and so am able to find them.
or perhaps my prayer and devotion truly does create divine intervention in my life. i suppose i must, for the most part, believe that is true. otherwise i wouldn't waste my time as often as i do.