Gurdonark's Simple Text Poorly Formatted Webpage
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Gurdonark's Simple Text Poorly Formatted Webpage
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Ten Things
1. My first date was at age four, when I served as an escort to an entrant in the "Little Miss Sunbeam" contest. I don't think I've been asked to serve as window-dressing since that time.
I looked very elegant in the photograph, in a dark suit and buzzed haircut.
2. I approach religious ecstasy much more often on rural country roads looking at frighteningly beautiful stretches of countryside than I do in the most imposing churches.
3. I do not have any special clues on the "big topics" like love and life's inner meaning. I do find, though, that love freely given helps one acquire self-awareness, and love given to acquire anything else usually fails in its goal. I like the Vonnegut notion that we should all "love" each other a little less, perhaps, and just be decent to each other once in a while. Even this brief paragraph seems unduly didactic, though, and therefore it misses the mark altogether.
4. It's not that I want to be eccentric; it's that I want to be myself, and you might find me eccentric.
5. I love a good read, a deep conversation, that "something glowing inside" that a truly shared moment can be, and a quiet walk alone.
6. To me, God is a reality, a presence. I can't prove that to you, as it's part of me, as if "hard-wired". But if for you there is no God, or a different view of things than mine, I'd rather see you pursue your path than spend your time trying to get you to pursue mine. I believe that the search for truth is in its own way God, and if your working hypothesis makes God non-existent or a sad, historical joke, then you must pursue your truth.
7. I like people who try really hard much better than people whose complacency means they don't try at all. I always feel connected to people who search inside for life's inner meaning. I also like people who can live "in the moment", without the need to acquire a feeling, a thing or an assurance.
8. I am much more inclined to worry that I was not nice enough than to worry that I was not firm enough.
9. I value simple integrity very much. Make few promises, keep the ones one makes. If one has to break a promise, do it quickly, cleanly and without recrimination.
10. I believe we all should periodically assess whether a particular trip is worth the travel.
The journey, and not the destination, is usually what we remember.
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Seven More Things
1. I got an undergraduate degree in physics in the Ozarks in Fayetteville, Arkansas. My science skills permit me to explain the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the concept of entropy at dinner parties, as well as read scientific magazines with a modicum of understanding of the terms.
2. I practice law in a suburb of Dallas. Imagine my surprise when it turned out at the Arkansas--Little Rock Law School that I was really good at law, and could make it my career.
I always thought I was to be an academic. Instead, I practice law in a two man firm doing civil work, and find it in the main enjoyable and interesting.
3. One of my hobbies is writing bad poetry. I've been published in small magazines that go the way of the Dodo and the like. In 1999, I wrote "Chess Poems for the Tournament Player",
mediocre poems about mediocre weekend chess players. I've sold several dozen copies on ebay.com, which helps confirm my theory that in the future, we will all self-publish.
4. I've been happily married since 1990. I was one of those people who had decided in my twenties that I was unlikely to ever marry, but
then was married by 31. We won't have children, but we love kids, and are not given to polemics about being "childfree".
5. I am grateful for a life in which my childhood and adulthood have been in the main very happy. I learn constantly from my friends and acquaintances that life deals different cards to different folks. I sometimes wish I accomplished a bit more with such a fun hand dealt to me. I feel that there is so much to do, and we are all here to do as much as we can.
6. My hobbies include hiking, playing chess, driving aimlessly in the middle of nowhere, sending out mail art to strangers I fancy are unmet friends, having long talks about everything and nothing, and fishing for sunfish which I promptly throw back.
7. If I could sum everything up in one sentence, the sentence would either be very short or very long.
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Three Additional Things
1. I think homepages like this are silly.
I con't mind being silly in a good cause, though.
2. My intellectual heroes include Mohandas Gandhi and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. My favorite writers include Jane Austen, Charles Dickens,
James Herriott, Miss Read, Anthony Trollope, Dorothy L. Sayers, Charles Williams, James Galsworthy, Ford Madox Ford, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, James Herriott, CP Snow, and Vera Brittain. In fact, I love almost any "good read", whether high art or genre fiction. I am not afraid to admit that I re-read Lord of the Rings at least once a year, nor that my personal "comfort food" is Goodbye, Mr. Chips. I like the poets Wilfrid Owen and Siegfried Sassoon very much. I love an eclectic array of music, from the ambient sounds of Jeff Pearce and Bill Nelson, to rock stuff like REM and the progressive bands, to new folk like Christine Lavin to Satie and Sibelius to Harry Partch and the Residents. My all time favorite album is Live! in the Air Age! by Be Bop Deluxe. I used to ask the question "does it rock?" but now I ask that question "do I like it?".
3. I think that the internet has changed everything, and that we are all in some senses
merely the dinosaurs. Web-savvy folks in future generations will marvel that we even existed without the things they have, in the same way that I marvel at all those charming people of the past who died at 40 for want of antibiotics.
I think that in the future, though, people will also marvel that we had the technology to solve inequity, hunger and want, but worked on other, lesser things instead.
My Livejournal weblog link is listed below.
If you did not come to this page from that link, please feel free to stop in there and join in the discussion. My e mail address is gurdonark@aol.com and my IM is Gurdonark.
Thanks for sharing this moment with me.
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