In Des Moines, I have a friend.

Not just any friend. One of those people who they're talking about in the dictionary when they define the word friend. Not just a superficial relationship marked by occasionally talking to each other by the water cooler, but someone who knows me intimately.

Ever meet one of those people that you have a deep and special connection to? Some people might call it "chemistry". We can finish each other's sentences to the point of appearing to read one other's thoughts. We enjoy the same offbeat and wacky humor, and it's really hard for us to lie to each other because we can detect it so easily.

I don't have that here in Nashville, and I really miss it. I never knew how much I needed that. It's like a weight, sitting on your chest. It is oppressive. Like when you lose something but you don't have the time to look for it just then. It eats at you. It's always there in the back of your mind. You know you've lost something but you can't think of how you're going to restore it. I'm not sure if I'd call it loneliness - that's a factor, certainly, but there's more to it than that. I miss having someone to talk to who can understand my weird analogies. And more so than that is the feeling like I'm never going to be able to correct this. I don't make friends easily; never have. (It takes real effort on my part to appear outgoing.) I want someone close enough to be able to call at 22:00 and say "Let's have coffee, I need to talk to someone." And I know - I have friends that wouldn't mind if I called that late to talk to them but I need a really close face-to-face friend. Someone I can spend time with and enjoy their company. I'm surrounded by lots of really nice people at church...I don't know how to form a deep relationship. I mean, I guess I understand the mechanics of saying "Hey let's get together and do X" but becoming good friends is something that isn't easy. I dunno...maybe that's the way it should be.

I'm not really as depressed as the above sounds, I'm actually in a fairly good mood. The above thoughts had just been weighing on me and I felt the need to write them down.

I've been in the new apartment (Pictures!) for a couple of weeks now. I still have no real furniture (My piano bench, and indeed, the chair that I'm sitting on now, consists of some banana boxes.) though that will hopefully be solved in a month or two. Tennessee is nice in that it still has yet to get really cold down here...right now it's hovering around 284 kelvin, so I haven't yet needed to turn on the heat in my apartment. My next big expenditures will be dishes and a futon for a bed - as charming as eating off of a glass chessboard may sound, it gets old. And I'd like to graduate from the floor to something...off the floor.

Church is going well - as mentioned previously, I stopped attending The People's Church and started going to Mosaic Nashville. It feels a lot better, not being in a megachurch. Mosaic is small and the attitude of the pastor there seems to be less of "Here's twenty bullet points you can apply from the movie Evan Almighty to your life as a Christian." and more of "Hey, look, the Bible! Let's go exploring!". It's a very nice change.

Other snippits - I'm trying to learn the acoustic guitar...barre chords? WHO came up with THOSE? My fingers CANNOT do that! Any guitarist out there will know what I mean. I'll be back in Iowa on Christmas weekend through the 26th or 27th so hopefully all you cool people will be around for that.

Exit, stage left. Sparks