gin blossoms - follow you down

i saw ryan today. it was more wonderful than i could have imagined. i keep telling myself i'm too tired to go into the details, but i really want to.
ryan's terrific. he's one of the greatest, most meaningful people in my life. when i met him, i hardly thought he would be anything more to me than a passing aquaintance. i'm not sure why he and i became friends, but i'm eternally thankful that we did. i trust him with every problem in my life, whether i actually tell him or not.
anyway, today was incredible. he came over and ate a taco, then we immediately set out to clean my room. unbelievably, it's actually clean now! he made my bed and threw away my empty soda cans, while i folded clothes and put things away. we sat around my room for a lot of the time and talked, exchanging the kind of conversation that i've been starving for. brent called at one point and i talked to him for a while. and it really sunk into me one point ryan made - he asked me to imagine how i would feel if brent were slowly killing himself, and there was nothing i could do about it except watch it happen. the pain at just the thought is staggering. i don't think i really conveyed to him how much i wish i could help. ... anyway.
we never did go on a walk. but it didn't rain, either, so i don't feel too bad. i think it was almost better, because at one point for about maybe 5 minutes max, ryan sat on my computer typing up his theory (it'll be at the end of this post) and i read my book. of course it didn't last, but that we managed that comfortable silence for even a little bit of time is reassuring to me. it's good to know that there are people i can sit in silence with, doing different things but still connected to each other on some level.
so, tuey came over for a little bit before she went to babysit. and later ryan and i went to see radio with tobias. that was fun, although i wish we'd had more time to stand around because i want ryan to meet the new people in my life. i want the little circle of us (him, steph, brenda, me) to expand. ... oh, i don't know, i'm starting to talk out of my ass now. but my dad drove ryan home and i drove back from tacoma, and i'm tired.
i put a bunch of pictures on the ceiling above my bed. they're beautiful.

ryan's philosophy:
There is an actual feeling of Heaven on Earth when you think of it...

“The thoughts brought forth from one man’s opinions can either make or break the lives that he touches. There be not evil nor justice behind his thoughts but a sense of what he has deemed right or wrong. Let him flourish in his thoughts and let him live by all means. There is not a need for death, nor the goal of harm to him, but the goal of self preservation to all who are willed to do so. When evil men are set on this earth, the hand of God has given all who are righteous a challenge to overcome and He has shed light on us, that some of His creations are not meant to remain pure after birth until death. God has shed light on all at one point of our lives or another, and also delivered us all from much peril, and evil, but there are those who choose to not accept that He has come down from His throne in Heaven and intervened in the lives that He has created. Do what thou wilt should be the whole of the law. If this were to be true, the rule being that one can do what one wants to until it impedes on the rights of others. This is how I have come to imagine that God wanted His people to have lived, based solely on the fact that God, in His everlasting power, wanted us to live our lives according to the rules and or laws that He set forth. With this logic, one can assume that the free man is wise, and the wise man is free, only because of the fact that if we know who our creator is, and we live by His rules and or laws, we can be free to learn more about the everlasting powers of God, in turn making us wise, while being wise we can be free from ignorance. For we know that the root of all of the evil in the world, derives from the ignorance that some people have within their brains and hearts; this ignorance can break the spirits and lives of the ones that these evil doers are ignorant about. Let me ask you this, if the world had no evil, will there be a standard for good? Good cannot exist without evil, so as much as I wish that evil would be no more, I cannot accept that solely on the basis that there would be no good in the world. God gave us the power of free will, the power to choose between right and wrong, but without one of them, the other could not exist. Think, be free, have peace, love, and equality to your neighbor, and remember that you can change the lives of people in this world.”
~ Ryan Burrell
10/25/03