MTG Salvation

Quote from RabidVacin

Poor guy got suspended. I guess he didn't get the answer he was looking for.

I hope he doesn't make any rash decisions as a result of this discussions.

Quote from Madding

Don't run away from your problems. Honestly, be a man for your child's sake.

Quote from FuxAlt

To those who wonder why I haven't expressed concern for my child: He isn't even old enough to remember me, anyways. If I leave now he won't even know the difference, and knowing my wife someone new will be 'daddy' before long anyways. THIS is the reason why I haven't expressed concern, not because I'm not actually concerned. I know my wife is a great mother and an excellent judge of character. Whoever she ends up with will probably be a decent guy, and if she stays single I know she'll do just fine and my kid won't even know he had a dad to miss out on in the first place.

I'll be taking the advice of bocephus, and giving the relationship another 5 months. That should be plenty of time to figure things out, although I feel I'm making an informed decision right now. (Since I've given it 5 years already.)

My wife has asked me to dinner on Sunday. Would that be an appropriate time to talk about these feelings, or would it be better to wait until afterwards?

Quote from convergekid

At my high school, seniors receive a bundle of letters on "Senior Breakfast," that friends and relatives write them. Usually the letters are just brief, quasi-sentimental sort of things, but sometimes people write especially heartfelt ones. I spent the last two months pouring myself into a letter for my ex-girlfriend, and I'm nervous about how she will respond. I left it on the windshield of her car Friday encased in a binder, and am sort of waiting for her to contact me. I'm not really sure what I expect, I just know that I'm nervous. Anyone have any guess at what she might do? We were in a serious relationship for a while, but she had to end it due to uncontrollable family circumstances. We mutually didn't want to end things, which makes this so weird...

Here is the letter:

L'espirit d'escalier

It was my Aunt Tracy’s. I couldn’t believe it. It just happened, and didn’t assimilate into my understanding until she was crying. Kip just brushed by the tree and it slipped off. That loose strand of twine in a loop--it only took a nudge. Time suspended itself; that glass ballerina, that pristine and perfect memento seemed to spin in the air; not an abrupt drop, but a winding twirl down an invisible spiral staircase. And then a sharp sound and shards of glass.

***

“What are you most afraid of?”
“…of being forgotten.”
“Why? Why does that bother you so much?”
“I…”
“Hm?”
“I just want people to remember me. If I’m not worth remembering or missing, then what am I worth? Like, for instance, my dad told me about some woman that added him on Facebook. She sent him a long, sentimental message about their friendship in high school, and he says he doesn’t even remember her. How sad is that? This lady feels like there’s something to talk about after 30 years and my dad has no clue who she is. He even told me, ‘Kerry, I didn’t even remember her name.’ I mean, what’s the point of existing if no one even remembers your name?”

***

We sat and talked while we were decorating the tree. She told me that her father was a glass blower. He made it for her when she was seven. They lived in a quiet Kansas suburb where the lots were big and the houses were small, and whenever she played in the snow, she would look through her little house’s little window and gaze at her little glass ballerina on the tree.

***

“I want you to understand something.”
“Yah?”
“We are all fundamentally ornamental.”
“…?”
“Humans are not made of blood and skin and bone and tissue. We are made of porcelain and straw. Fragility is absolute—strength is illusory.”

***

My Aunt Tracy had danced all of her life. It was her way of coping with things, she told me. When she spun and jumped as a girl maybe she would land in perfect form as a grown woman. And there she was, standing in front of me. A pirouette of the ages had delivered her.

***

I wrote once that I “wish more than anything that I could collect all the pieces of my boyhood, so I might hold myself together. I feel that as every new day progresses, I lose pieces of myself, and that I am becoming an incohesive twine-work of memory, that I am losing myself with the passage of time.” Perhaps this is what time does to us, or rather, what it is—a fossilization. I don’t think I can remember anything of my past in its entirety. Just snippets, bold fragments that never seem to lose definition. Our contemplation and reflection are grand excavations; we unearth immense skeletons from the cavities of our memory. Colossal Tyrannosaur skulls—god, what beast did this belong to? Pterodactyl vertebrae—what on earth did this creature look like? Raptor talons—if only we could uncover the full skeleton! The cohesion, the fullness is lost where remnants remain. There is a certain beauty in it, though. In the way a child might keep an old turtle shell, or how a widow might keep war letters from her husband on a dresser.

***

She was 43 years old. She told me her days in a company ended a long time ago. She taught at a school of dance, and in each pupil, she sought to instill an appreciation of a great beauty she felt carried her through her greatest tumults. They would understand. They would grasp the raw expressionism, the symbolism behind all those mechanically practiced twirls and steps. All those steps amounted to a spinning lotus. It spun awe and fabric and hair and life and time.

***

Whenever I am at a friend’s house, I always stop and look at pictures of them when they were young, maybe hanging on the wall or framed on a desk. I feel like I’m peering inside of the person when I look at them, like I can gather their essence just by seeing, by feeling. Like James at Disney World with his mother and father, holding both their hands, or David with a painted face and tomahawk for Halloween, or Caleb with stringy, long hair and a Pink Floyd shirt on. Or even me—how much of that little boy with a bowl cut and squinty eyes still resides within my being? How much of lemonade stands and cushion forts? How much of my father carrying me on his shoulders on the 4th of July? How much Pokemon, how much Captain Crunch, how much creek exploring? How much of me asking my grandfather how old he was and him saying, “as old as the dinosaurs and your mother.”

***

My aunt had a daughter. Her name was Hayley. Whenever the family was not forcibly united in some communal activity, Hayley would make her way to the hardwood and position herself in arabesque, poised for a spectral audience winding up the stairs across the floor. She was the spitting image of her mother. Young, graceful, passionate.

***

I remember us in turtle shells and war letters. I keep them on a dresser in my mind and look at them every morning and every night; when we sat and watched Jurassic Park and picked out the quintessential douche-child that seemed to have an identical role in every film he appeared; when we sat in that secret place at the park and every semblance of autumn seemed to coalesce on the ravine across from us; when you fell asleep on my chest at Leah’s house and I kept staring up at the ceiling fan all night thinking, “I think I’m happy. When was the last time I could say that? ‘I think I’m happy.’”; When you bought me a pack of glass Cokes and we sat out and smoked and talked on your golf course until early in the morning; when you would make fun of me for “the face”; when we would argue about 1984; when we walked around Suwanee Square and talked about your Vicadan high and how boys model themselves after their fathers; when you sat and stroked my hair while I was incapacitated and whispered until I was asleep, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have miles to go before I sleep, miles to go before I sleep.”

***

The rest of my immediate and extended family had left to go post-Christmas shopping. Only Aunt Tracy, Hayley and I were left at the house. Tracy and Hayley were practicing in a bedroom, and I was sitting in the living room by the tree reading. I glanced up away from my book for a brief second, just for a quick mind-break, when I noticed Kip brush by the bottom of the tree. The glass ballerina slipped off the tip end of a branch. It twirled downward. It twirled and twirled and twirled and twirled and twirled and crashed.

***

“Why did you do that?”
“…Because…I didn’t want to wake up.”
“…”
“I can’t believe I did that…my family, my mother…they didn’t talk to me for weeks.”
It was as if a centrifuge of heat polarity had long since imploded in her chest. Now at the epicenter rested something glacial, a numbing colossus. It wasn’t so much that she said words and I heard them and then I realized they were sad and then I was sad. It was more her mannerisms; the way her body quivered, the way her eyes were like porcelain plates, the way she breathed without any indication of doing so, the way she had to force the words from her mouth like they were immense boulders. I could feel the sad, not just comprehend it was there. And it was in that moment that I realized beneath Dani, buried under a contented, postulated exterior was a girl that hurt. A Daniela, a girl I had seen in picture frames around her house with red curls and a white dress; a girl wearing a leotard in old dance home videos; a girl playing the lead role as Annie at the Aurora Theater; a girl who loved to read literature and learn random bits of information to summon on hand; a girl with freckles and a lisp that sat across the room from me in Ms. Mayo’s third grade class; a girl who lived in New Jersey and Kansas and Georgia but was actually from Italy; a girl whose fingers were like liquid as they did ebb and flow on piano keys; a girl who wanted her mother to see her in herself; a girl who wanted her father to see that his genius had passed on to his daughter; a girl who worried for her brother and what would become of his future; a girl that loved her family; a girl oppressed by an external locus of control that did seem to tumble her in its evolving wilds; a girl who I knew in suggestion for 17 years, a distant and intimate intimation that spread through me while I was sleeping; a girl I knew now but felt I had known forever; a Daniela. And I wish I could have told her. My god, I wish I could have mustered the strength, the courage. Then she would understand why I told David that one night on the bridge that I totally understood what he was talking about and why I wrote that poem for her on Christmas and why I thought she was like a constellation and why I drove a bagel to her house at 6 AM and why I thought everything she hated about herself was beautiful. She was so cold…I wanted to warm her. Like that poet said--“a warm yellow light that pours over everyone I love.” I wanted to pour over her.

***

I wish more than anything that I could whirl back in time and zap myself. Zap myself from stupefied inaction so I might save that precious glass ballerina, so I might cradle it. I saw in it a quality so crystalline as to transcend the great metaphysicals—I saw just a shimmer, a trace of garnet—no, a brilliant swirl—that spoke of memory, that spoke of love, that spoke of beauty. It spoke to me as it spoke to time itself, in all of the clockwork’s thrashings and caresses.

Notes Upon Finishing

That is all I wanted to say, but felt like I never could. I care very much about you.

Love,
Kerry

fin.

Quote from Anubis_Ravenheart

Wow! New territory for me!

Anyway, sincere apologies for posting another "relationship thread", but this one is a bit difference.

Basically, it started out as a blind date, and has now taken out, however, I have learned that she was cheating on me from the person she was cheating on me with's brother...

She's the type who, regardless of whether cheating or not, is gonna get somewhat emotional about this, so I really wanna break it to her as gently as possible.

I suppose now's a time to give you guys ammo for telling me how much of an idiot I am. A few days in would have been a better time to break out, once I found out her previous track record with relationships (bad) realized she got drunk so much, and was just a tad too obsessed with weed...

So yeah, I was an idiot, and I know it's not anyone here's fault, but if you guys could just PLEASE help me out of this, I would REALLY appreciate it!


Thanks-
Anubis.

Quote from helpmehelpyou

snobby people?
awkward people? the type that dont make eye contact or smile or talk

me personaly I cant stand people who drag there monster children every where.
ones that run around and scream or get in your way or CRY insanely loud
I was at a store the other day and seen this lady who had a small child in the cart balling its eyes out. and 2 more running around yelling. she had absolutely no control over them and she looked like she wanted someone to just shoot her.

what are some of your least favorite types of people you dread being around in public??

yes its a pretty pointless topic.. but hey its water cooler talk right!

Quote from Extremist Moderate

http://www.alternet.org/belief/151086/high_school_student_stands_up_against_prayer_at_public_school_and_is_ostracized,_demeaned_and_threatened/?page=entire

Quote from LogicX

I am not homophobic. I support gay rights. But when I walk into the Student Union at my university and see rainbows everywhere and guys in drag dancing with each other, I'm not going to stick around. And when Glee shows a scene of two guys kissing, I'm going to make an "eww" face and look away (though this begs the question, why did I not leave the room immediately when Glee was on? Well, girlfriends can be persistent).

I am physically repulsed by it, and I can't help it. Yet I'm sure some people would consider me anti-gay. Which is stupid.

/endrant

Quote from vaguedescription

Before I start, I want to just list a few ground rules for this thread.

1. I am not here to question the Christian religion, or any other religion, for that matter. If you want to argue against religion, do it elsewhere.
2. I'm not looking for legal advice. I know that I am legally obligated to compensation. I'm looking for opinions.
3. Ignore your hatred for any and all books that are used in this scenario. "No, it doesn't matter, because it's a crappy book," is not acceptable. Personal bias toward the subject matter needs to be left at the door, please.

Now, here's the situation:

I have a friend whose mother is ridiculously Christian. We're talking 24/7 recitation of the Bible. Obviously, being this Christian, she abhors everything to do with Harry Potter. Recently, I was reading The Deathly Hallows for the.... fifth or sixth time (Don't laugh, I love Harry Potter :D). One day, I left my copy in my friend's car. So, I went over to his house the next day, and asked his mother if I could get into his car to grab my book.

She asked, "What book?" When I answered, she looked very angry and said, "Sorry, Chris, I burned it. You'll have to buy a new copy."

I was appalled. I didn't react right away, but I did manage to squeak out the words, "...Burned... it?"

She told me that I shouldn't read books like that, blah blah blah, Christians are jerks. At this point, I was pissed. I demanded that she buy me a new copy. She refused, and said that she had every right to burn the book, because that's what the Constitution protected. It was in her house, on her property, and it is against her religion.

I mentioned that it was, actually, in her son's car, which was NOT her property, to which she closed the door.

So, my questions are:
A. Do you think she had every right to burn my book?
B. Do you think that she is obligated to buy me a new book?
C. Do you like bacon?

Remember, I want your OPINION, not what the law says.


EDIT: By the way, I almost wouldn't care, except I'm sitting at the part RIGHT BEFORE Harry fights Voldemort. >:(