Meditations of Jesse Quebbeman-Turley

Ordo

2012-01-22T12:03:00.002-07:00

When I fear silence
I am born in a convent

No father for one hundred mothers
Needed cold when I was gone

When I was gone
A patchwork intelligence

When I was a patchwork
The “I”s is unfolding

When I was him
Born to a thousand mothers

When I feared silence
I am silent

The guffaws of asphalt the faultline moans
I am this I am that

My mothers sing Ordo Virtutum
I am bound on the flagstone

Voicless among the angels
Heartless among the stones.

2011-12-30T03:10:00.005-07:00

1.

There is a rock
that straddles order and schock--
that floats the film,
ever so ethereal,
between form and free.

I stretch my hands,
they are strong and good.

There is only art 'twitx me
and my soul.

2.

We meet as the shadows of the heart,

caught and froze on white sheaves with black ink.
We see through a novel darkly--
cary the scaffold of form before our eyes--
impose line on cycle.

We meet as shadows of the heart
and stay such, 'till the puppeteer deem fit.

3.

I am between things.

Stood as a stalk between wind and water--
a smothered dress between lovers.

I am between this and that,
will become either when I move--
when I step, or I fall, into the concrete storm,
motionless in fury--
furious in silence.

The ringing in my ears is no song.

Triad

2011-11-30T11:56:00.004-07:00

We have built a blind god

I have no interest in my generation

the same sun burns me as built babylon.

We split the alter and cary it in our pockets

These kids have pulled their eyes out for sockets

As have I, the all seeing eye.

I dream of pixels of far reaches of the earth

As though I did not live here

And walk upon it to get groceries

Lest I die of sloth.

III

Time was a good old lady, punctual.

She died.

Her grandaughter is filling in.

She's often late.

Ballance

2011-11-30T11:53:00.003-07:00

The cog and the flywheel kiss the sweat from each other's necks.

a mode of seamless execution--

a moan of perfect function--

Function dances with decay.

They are the same child, a different name.

The kids don't hear the bed posts break paint from the walls.

a mode of silent creation--

a muffled pronouncement of functional ecstasy--

Function dances with sin.

They are the same child, a different mother.

Every clock is a rusted clock.

Every child is a different child.

The cog and the flywheel watch the sun come up.

Work Poem

2011-07-23T18:13:00.003-06:00

For those of you who do not know, I have the privilege of working at Jimmy John's. I make and deliver sandwiches. Today it was very slow. Slow enough that I wrote this poem to stay sane. It has nothing to do with work.

In my hour of alone,

I saw the fight for sins atoned

and cheered the beast whose highest throne

we saw and did not see.

I cheered him then as now I write,

concerned with essence over right,

enamored of the starkest light--

I aim only to be.

In gardens of pretend desire,

heathens tame and tickle fire,

bind and break the sacred pyre,

and still they are not free;

and still we are not free.

Strict

2011-07-09T00:22:00.007-06:00

So we'll grapple the moon and demand of the stars

that they bow to their queen, render her what is ours,

'till she's drunk off the last pint of light for a toast,

and has left us, her suitor, to face him, our host,

and he'll bellow and rant 'till red faced he falls,

but we'll run, chasing laughter, 'till night covers all.

Then she'll come for her children, she'll come for her kin,

and blind us with mercy as dark as our sin.

Poetica

2011-06-23T19:05:00.003-06:00

I once read every poem ever written.

Or some of them.

I let the others fall

like over-ripe fruit.

And I stood and I spoke

words of burning--

words of molten gold

which struck those around me

and turned them into ornaments:

without life,

but with purpose.

Sonnet

2011-06-11T01:03:00.001-06:00

When the thunder jungled
and the swelter song skipped
I knew the world by the stiches
I had had. When I, too tall for bed,
arched a timelinetablegraph,
avoided the bottom line (the crass
no-face of the dead)
then I became a man.
The kind who can laugh alone
or together or never with crying moans
taste the alkaline bite of truth. The can't
kind who thinks in those,
and is aware of the adamant gate
he builds from a desire to create
a legacy, a continuity whose
kissless kiss the mother stole--
who touchless, touched the sacred fold.

that

2011-05-23T23:53:00.001-06:00

once when I looked up I saw
a smudge against the blue
bruised clouds

it stayed in the same place
while the sky moved
I watched it for hours
it stayed in the same place
while the sky moved

I thought I would build a city
with that smudge at it's heart

a city built on something stable
that wouldn't slide away every time
I went shopping at least

so I knelt and prayed in gratitude
then I looked up and didn't see.

Because

2011-05-14T23:55:00.000-06:00

a cloud called for its son
and left a handprint on a sliding glass door

I thought about grass
when the fading light made it no longer green
but charcoal drawings by god

we were never a community
we were never a corporation

when I find traces of a car
become a home for once
to a family of snakes

I noticed that sun the heated things unevenly
and the dark was hotter than the light

--Alive--

I find myself when the lights go low
and I find you when I do

--Alone--

I breathe slower when
than I did when
I lived only in your thoughts

--Again--

the road is open to the sky now
it admits now
that it is only earth with a mask
on

--Alivealoneagain--

the sun will find my pallid looks
no matter concrete blankets

--livealoneagain---

was I ever there when we wore the same shoes
and had the same haircuts

--ivealoneagain--

the houses we met in
and talked loudly
with painful guffaws
stand for themselves now

--inlifealone--

belong to the mountain now
as they always did

as from them
where wind strips your civilisation away
to see the valley of light as

an explosion of being
blinking then gone

when the wind tells you "it's happened
before and again and

you're a leftover
world shot from a broken bow a that stuck mark with force enough to carry

we are a bone house we are the family tree
we are the skirt of the great one
we are the dirty mirror who captures moments of her, the mistress
who graces us only slowly;
kisses then is gone

till dreams of her bring us to tears and tearing wars and we become a cry to echo from the peaks to valleys,
alone in our desire."

Nowed, Thened, and Nevered.

2011-04-02T01:53:00.000-06:00

In leaving my dome,
I come to a view of things as fresh.
I wish and wander to yearn. For when was man alive,
but by dreams of truth
or its equivelant.

Upon leaving bed,
I come to the abrupt awake of knee-pain,
and oft wish to could walk again
my dreams.

Upon breathing,
I signed a contract for blood-money,
and will stomp it for its worth.

By letting,
A mirage of days and nows, I live in each one
‘till airless become,
let.

The moment
I thought of you I forgot your name and remembered
the color of that very first sundress
whose name was starch.

You fall to sleep
and giant to know-where,
Where we were weak
in solidarity.

When I stop to tie my shoe,
And you leave me a coatail behind,
I stay that way,
‘till death puts the carrige on me.

Friday

2011-04-01T00:51:00.000-06:00

I speak words to an open book
then slam it shut,
hopeing to catch them.

I get up and bustle around for a while.

And there, from my desk, it seduces me--
I resist.

Later, it falls to the floor
and goes out with the trash.

I sleep much better.

Left

2011-03-26T14:35:00.000-06:00

It has become such
that we cross oceans of solitude
to islands of it;
crossed as lovers affixed with blinding lights,
searching to meet themselves there.

In my lake-- a cliff,
adorned and enamored of one such light--

in our waters-- a nation of them,
a glowing map of leftovers
surveyed from deep-space:
a midnight-sundial married to a full-moon-flashlight.

High ensign!
Lit for it, or us?
Streetlights for company, or warmth?

It has become such
that we wash in the cold water of alone
and cook in empty kitchens, over
treasured pieces of long-dead coal.

Sunday Words

2011-01-09T22:15:00.001-07:00

The archer in my chest makes arrows from my ancestors' bones,
tests them on my heartflesh,
waits for to end me.

Let's Talk

2010-11-14T22:21:00.000-07:00

You need to look at the mountains and to be still.

Alive

2010-11-09T23:25:00.000-07:00

A dead girl joked
that she'd made but enough of herself
to spread only on a piece of toast
to be carried
butlered
to Attila the Hun as a peace offering
which
being forthwith rejected
wound up
thrown out with the trash
which trash was then burned for heat
to boil water
to bake potatoes

Well, I said, were they good potatoes?

you sang 'till your throat broke and kissed 'till toothless

2010-11-06T01:33:00.000-06:00

whenever you remembered to breathe
you remembered you had forgotten to,
and had died from it

American Night Song

2010-10-13T01:17:00.000-06:00

We

have wonderful dermatologists and terrible doctors.

We

don't like clear glass,

we

like it dirty enough to hold us--

a dancing ghost--

up to our own inspection.

We

have all sung the same song

to a backwards drone,

sung the same song together,

sung harmony alone,

sung an unhip smile

that we come to become atoned,

sung hymns like sickle hums

against the rivered stone.

But you still dare to ask me questions.
Don't you ever do you shy?

Who Knows

2010-09-13T22:45:00.000-06:00

If you're quiet you can hear the world tick.
It chugs away through your life spent sitting
bored.

If you're quiet you can hear the world tick.
It's a clock with two hands, and
they're both exactly the same size, and
they only move when you look away.
So, we all wonder, what time is it?

If you're quiet you hear the world tick.
Hear it clack its tongue at you for searching.
It likes you to think its a stage, not a soldier.

If you're quiet you can hear the world click
like a bomb.

Warm Day

2010-08-22T01:52:00.001-06:00

I sit under two trees at once.
Cropped grass is a world unto itself.
The bright God
who ignites creation
but enflames my skin.
Criters touch and bite me.
I am to fragile for the green world.
But, God, it's beautiful here.

Mediations

2010-08-18T23:40:00.000-06:00

though my heart flutter and pound at its cage like a wild thing,
let it be stone.
though my soul crumble,
let it be strong to support all which it bears.
though my thoughts twist like the fickle wind,
let them be still as my skin, denying not their origin, desiring not to be separate from me.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

why do we worship those who struggle?
lions and tigers and bears will all battle their demise--
lets not;
let's close our eyes on our destruction
and hold to our poise as we are torn asunder.

let not storm or man cause in you fear--
only fear need be feared.

12/09/09

2010-08-08T00:13:00.001-06:00

There is no more American god;
Just two candy bars
Huddled in one wrapper for warmth.

There is no more American god;
Just the whisper-slide
Of gas-in-tank.

There is no more American god; just
All eyes on the warning light,
All lies in the light,
And the crying whine of a dying Chevy.

nothin'

2010-08-03T01:37:00.000-06:00

Ahead.
A head.
Ahem.
Aha!
Amen.

College

2010-07-19T00:14:00.000-06:00

A strange thought: I will be leaving home and going to college. I guess I'm all grown up now, or should be, or will never be. We look at the future and think that there will come a definitive moment,some second, in which we will know that our lives have changed for ever-- some moment in which we we realize "I am changing, now, in this second." But that's not to be.

It's the nature of change to fool us. Time and destiny lull us into believing that we are the sole arbitrators of out fate, that we control personality. We like to map our futures out-- not just our five year plans: we plan our personalities.

But, as in the words of Marcus Aurelius, "All is flux." Perception, reality, time, and personality are a river whose bed lies too deep for our short legs to reach. While we draw air we will change; we achieve constancy only upon death, if even then.

So yes: in this second, I am changing. I can control the flow of this river only so much. I flow now towards adulthood, but it is the very nature of this travel -- floating asleep in a river-- that I will not know when I am arrived. Who wakes one morning and says with unshakable conviction, "I am now an adult:" who but the child?

5/17/10

2010-07-19T00:11:00.001-06:00

Long live the Easter king! with wigs and wing of diamond rings and white powdered face that grins and winks with purple lipstick rank with berry thick and limp and swell of perfume from old and musk and dawn to dusk that pours from out his clothing gaps to slide deep in my spine and brain so I’d rather die than smell like him so I shudder shudder shake at nimble thimbles to song he makes and breathes so heavy and low and slow I bow nose to ground and hand over heart and eyes askew and lips just apart.

In a crowd of forty-thousand (at the Modest Mouse concert)

2010-07-13T12:29:00.001-06:00

I escape my own selfe
to this expanse of the big personality.
Heavy smiles immerse my head to toe--
we are cesium hung in oil,
our fire lost to time.

Music

2010-06-25T10:19:00.000-06:00

One must decide if it is a prescriptive or a descriptive art form.

A poem I wrote on band tour when I couldn't sleep

2010-04-04T10:25:00.000-06:00

Symphony of snores!
Like a joke
In this gym full of boys and girls.

Some pitter-pitter-peep.
Some sweep slow—
The wind and weeping willow.
Some angry claps
Cry at my ears with their harsh fears

Of soft and sure light
That Here—
Would enter;
And hear—
Be heard;
And feel
Suitcased for tomorrow’s performance.

Why joke or speak
Of sleep tonight? ‘Cuz

We—I—will fight inhibition with ability.
We’ll sing-song till sea change
Come. Lordy-lord
Come. Bubblegum—rum-bottle of bottled rum that ran a

Field-drum Kevlar stretched to break and crunch
And crush the bleary eyes that
Beg—that
Wish— that
Look—that
Search—that
Hope—
For –
Sleep:

Don’t weep bow-peep.
Close shop—close eyes—closed the book.

The Morality of Theft: why plagiarism doesn't feel like stealing

2010-02-23T22:00:00.000-07:00

Note: This is a story I wrote for the February, 2010 issue of my school newspaper.

Teachers at Timpview have come across some very blatant plagiarism: "Once, I got three of the exact same essays, from three different students," said English teacher Mrs. VanOrden. And Social Studies teacher Mr. Stevenson "had one student who turned in a book report that was plagiarized, I gave it back and said you need to do this in your own words, and they gave another one from a different book review website. I have students pulling things off Wikipedia, and you know those blue links Wikipedia has? Yea, they leave those in.” Why is the plagiarism problem so hard to tackle? Is it the problem with our youth, our education system, or in the way we view the act of taking another person’s idea?

Plagiarism, as defined by the random house dictionary, 2010, is "the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work." Plagiarism is using someone else's words and ideas without telling where you got them. Plagiarism is essentially stealing— isn't it?

Many Timpview students think it is. This is no surprise: In an attempt to deter plagiarism, teachers have pounded the idea that plagiarism is theft into students' heads. Teachers reason that, since the majority of students wouldn't steal a car, a handbag, or a movie, they wouldn't steal someone else's work. But this is where things get tricky.

A sentence from the previous paragraph may seem familiar to you: “You wouldn’t steal a car; You wouldn’t steal a handbag; You wouldn’t steal a movie.” This line is taken from an infamous advertisement that was made to combat the illegal downloading of pirated films. This comically dramatic video — in which various thug-like teens are shown, in grainy black-and-white, stealing a car, a handbag, a DVD, and, finally, downloading a movie from the internet, while intense techno music blasts in the background —uses the same strategy that teachers are so fond of: It tries to make young people feel bad for pirating films, tries to make them feel that pirating is stealing. But this strategy doesn’t work.

It doesn’t work, because no matter how many grainy, black-and-white adds you’ve seen: No matter how many times Mr. So-and-so says, “Copying and pasting form Wikipedia is theft:” No matter how often you’re threatened: Plagiarism just doesn’t feel like stealing. For some reason, taking someone else’s idea is not the same as taking someone else’s iPad.

Taking an idea doesn’t feel like stealing, because ideas are not a limited commodity. Malcolm Gladwell, in his 2009 Book “What the Dog Saw,” quotes Lawrence Lessig, who explains the problem with viewing ideas as property:
I understand what I am taking when I take the picnic table you put in your backyard. I am taking a thing, a picnic table, and after I take it, you don’t have it. But what am I taking when I take the good idea you had to put a picnic table in the back yard—by, for example, going to sears, buying a table, and putting it in my back yard? What am I taking then?
If taking an idea doesn’t hurt the person you are taking it from, who does it hurt?

It hurts you.

In trying to get that A, it’s easy to forget the point of this whole thing, to forget that it’s you, not you’re three-page essay that’s important. It is a teacher’s job to teach, and by passing someone else’s work off as your own, you are lying to your teacher. Homework and essays help teachers do their job; teachers use assigned work to see where you are, and to teach accordingly. “I think I’m teaching [my students], but it turns out I’m teaching Wikipedia,” Said English teacher.
Jim Davis

It’s easy to get caught up in the game: To think more about the grade than what the grade was meant to stand for (an A used to mean something, gosh-darn it!). But school is meant to be more than a game.

So students—don’t lie to your teachers about how well you can write or think. And if you think being honest about your abilities will hurt your grade, practice is a good place to start.

And teachers—don’t try the easy way out. Don’t think that you can convince your students’ emotions that plagiarism is stealing. Assign homework that encourages your students to think, not homework that encourages them to copy-and paste. Expect real ideas from your students, and you just might get some.

Plagiarism isn’t stealing—it’s lying.

The Return from California

2010-02-16T00:11:00.000-07:00

1. In soap bubbles we float. Or in iron cadges. Or Armani Suits. Do you remember what dirt smells like? So yea we can soar through the clouds and the moon’s placenta and the Ocean’s guts and all that—but we can’t smell the clouds or taste the moon or drink the ocean’s core. When we step on the 4 30 flight we trust only our eyes—trust eyes over hearts or feet or guts. When we do not smoke and keep our seats in a full upright position we observe a ritual as old as the sun—we pray to the turbines and they bless us with travel. Because the deep in us knows that to sit in a chair and sip ginger ale and watch a poorly-constructed chick-flick on a four-inch screen is not to punch through the air and outrun the sun’s own light.
2. He is cold and uncomfortable and turns the dial: red and blue travel towards each other’s poles, growing nearer and thinner, to accommodate opposition until both fade to nothing. He sighs in warmth and he fears only the serpent that whispers “You are tired—you have come far—you shall sleep.” He only fears the snake draped across his eyes and over his hands, pressing harder than deep sea pressure. And the warmth that falls out the vents mingles with, strengthens, its hissing whispers.
But to ignore the serpent he has his tricks: he keeps his bladder full and painful—its pressing on his gut reminds him of his body, keeps him grounded; he manipulates a piece of aluminum and foam cones in his doors bend the air and boom and whistle and crash and hum and he thinks they sing to him, talk to him; he lifts and pounds his left leg into the carpeted floor—he sings out loud songs of his youth. So for comfort he is warm. For warmth he should sleep. Against sleep he contracts his pubic muscles and listens and pounds and sings. Against sleep he fights. Against his steering-wheel he dies. He dies for comfort.

Wierd stuff I wrote on the road to California.

2010-02-12T21:49:00.000-07:00

At me in the eyes and his were squinty and black and he pointed to the half-built bank behind him and said, see that? that’s a whorehouse— you a Christian? – you ever looked the enemy in the eyes?— you ever felt the opposition pressed up right against your face so you can taste it in your mouth? He said, I spoke a prayer before I walked across that street there and a psychopath tried a run me down—you can feel it—when the enemy—ya know?—I spoke a prayer and you see that crosswalk?— car came ‘round that corner and tried a run me down—the enemy tried to run me down ‘cuz I just spoke a prayer. He said, you know what I done in my life?—I shut down thousands a bad banks—I’m a author. He looked at me the way that a bear looks at you when it’s told you its life story and hopes you care. He looked at me and he was a big man we he walked like he was tired all the time. He walked like his back hurts. He looked up across the sidewalk and saw me and smiled at my walking to him. He looked

spider spider on the wall

2009-09-21T22:02:00.000-06:00

I hunt you down

eight-legged fiend

and though I have nothing against you

pop you like the biggest zit

against mounds of bathroom-paper

your people must regard me a natural disaster

or a god

or maybe they see me for what I am

a dude who can't help but feel a pang when he throws a

crushed

broken

corpse into his toilet and flushes

an except from a conversation with a friend

2009-07-23T14:48:00.000-06:00

it was so late my brain didn't work

and the wind blew and the trees whispered and the moon wasn't quite full

and i loved the dark

because it used to scare me so bad

and i remembered being a little kid here

so grateful to be alive

because it's just so damn pretty

this whole thing

and all little kids are afraid of the dark

Summer Nights

2009-07-18T00:38:00.000-06:00

Time is later and the city you love spreads slowy away down the sides of the mountains that bore you and turns and winks at you with all its lights. Stars flutter like birds. The grand bergs above and behind rule this valley in splendour and you know that this kind of good can't last long. But you know how to trick yourself and forget about time and your cell phone and work. So when the wind breathes out through the canyon that is the world's mouth you can still grab a carefree breath. You can still smell summer. And you are happy.

The end of a good year (I go home)

2009-06-28T11:51:00.000-06:00

This return will be an end to a year of much living. Around this time 300 and some odd days ago I left for Austria and since then I have learned a lot and seen a lot and grown close to a lot of amazing people. And I would like to thank all that is greater than me for the people in my life. Because the more I see and the more I learn the more I learn the value of people and see God in friendship.

Drum and Circles

2009-06-15T07:15:00.000-06:00

Our ancestors beat drums in celebration and in war and at the shout of a drum those same ancestors stir deep in our guts; they awake feelings somewhere between jubilance and agression, and sometimes both. And our ancestors aren't as "diverse" as we now think we are.

So a struck hide tightly pulled across a wooden hoop awakes the "primative" in us. Makes us forget our pride and dance.

The rain in spain falls mostly on my Laudry.

2009-06-08T17:19:00.000-06:00

I can forgive the rain for drenching my clothes because of the beautiful way it smells.

I can forgive it for making me all wet as I take the sorted, hand-compacted, smelly, trash out to our Spainish dumpster. But only because it rains here the same is does in Provo; the water doesn't mind that it's falling on Spaniards. It doesn't mind that it falls on cobble stone rather than on the white cement to which I am accustomed.

People act pretty much the same when rains falls on their heads.

The do that little shuffle-run with their coats and t-shirts pulled all up over their giddy smiles.

If they're busy, they pretend that the rain doesn't bring that little kid who lives in the buisness suit outside to play. The busy ones resist the urge to ruin expensive leather stomping in puddles.

And when I'm taking out the trash, the rain makes me look up. I stare into the rain clouds gathered above the earth. The rain taps me on the shoulder and reminds me that people are not as different as we pretend to be; he reminds me that the rainclouds are much bigger than I am. He wets my lips and whispers "we live live in the arms of a benevolent god."

Spain

2009-06-07T03:29:00.000-06:00

It has been 6 years since I have been in Spain. My memory serves me well, and I recall much of what I see here from 2003. But things are not quite the same. You know how when you run into someone who used to be real important to you you notice every tiny change, every new line, every new scar-- the tiniest pain in her smile; and she notices the exact same in you. To me this is Spain. She is the same person, just a little older; much as I am the same, but also changed. In meeting her again I do not claim to understand the full extent of her change, cause she is so much greater, so much larger, than am I. But I can tell that she, in me, can see all but the smallest change. The same hallways and trains and century old stone breathe in my grown-up self-- they compare me to my childhood.

A short Story

2009-05-22T19:58:00.000-06:00

"No one understands me." says John.

"What?" says Jake.

To play the Drums at a good man's funeral.

2009-02-11T18:21:00.000-07:00

Steve Jacobs died. He was a really good dude.
The first time I ever played drums was at Steve's place-Steve had a way of teaching, a way of correcting what you were doing without correcting you. Steve loved bringing people together, he was a gatherer of people, music, film, and ideas. I thank Steve for everything that he gave me and my family, for his wonderful friend ship and the attention he payed me as a small child- something too few adults are comfortable doing.

Steve's funeral was Saturday. His brother Doug (a great guy) and my dad spoke (it was a great speech) in the chapel. Then we all moved into the concert hall where we had our instruments- after Steve's funeral we jammed in the cultural hall. Our band was made up of 8 people- my dad, my mom, Pat Boyer Sr., Pat Boyer Jr., Myself, a man named Rick Anderson, and Steve's nephew Danny Jacobs- all musicians who had played with Steve, either in bands (Pat Sr., Rick, my parents) or just in Steve's room (Pat Jr., myself, Danny).
We played blues, and Steve would'a dug it.

I miss you Steve.

The Death of the Chill

2009-02-10T22:31:00.000-07:00

"Chill" is something that us young people love to recommend parents, teachers, policemen, and each other. I find chill something to be done without.

To Chill is to hold back passion, to deny that anything in this beautiful word excites you. Chillsters are afraid of commitment, they are afraid to give themselves to anything too fully to quickly abandon. To be Chill is to be void, to be safe, to be boring. The Chill avoid any action that would show their beliefs, much as skirt wearers avoid action that would show their underwear; to believe, to burn with zeal, to care- this is all very un-Chill.

I choose not to be chill. I choose to engage. I choose to breathe. I choose to consume and digest life. I will seek and find that which entices me; I will live, life intact. I choose to interact with the world. I will not be cathartic- I will not be cool. I will burn with intensity for that which I love. I will commit, and if that to which I commit brings me unwanted attention, I will stand for my commitment. In investing my self in this green world I refuse the protected ice cube offered me by my peers, I leave them to their ice, chilled to death.

ps-I realize the my definition of chill does not align at all levels with the normal definition of that word. I hope this is a point that can be overlooked.

New Years

2009-01-01T12:22:00.000-07:00

New Years is a strange beast among hollidays. My expectations for new years are often over blown, and my planning -to provide myself with the expected new years expiriance- is usually null.

This year, I expected nothing, but i had a bomb. Two things to recomend.

1) Getting ones tush kicked by ones bishop at pool at three in the morning.

2) Playing three hour monopoly, beggening at three in the morning. Few things quite like it.

i am home

2008-12-13T13:39:00.000-07:00

i am home, i am looking at snow, i am not feeling guilty for speaking english. i am missing vienna, but its already so distant; i am already so american, i am already so home.

when i first walked in to the house, the ceiling seemed low, when reconded against our vienna flatt- but now its the only way things are, the only way they could be.

i am home.

The Continuing and Ending of Things

2008-12-03T16:00:00.001-07:00

So... this trip is close to its end.

Many moons ago, I(almost) was ready to be home. I was ready to be alone, to be my Motherland, ready to go to Dell Taco and purchase various varriations on the tradditional bean and cheese mottifs; I was ready. But oh, how things change, and a change is often(always) an end.

I learn more here the longer I stay, and this almost exponential growth of learning has a certain addictive quality to it- progress will be much harder to earn at home(here I can sleep through Math and still learn German, hehe). The pressure of real life will return, stripping away this beautiful dream; reality has a way of rendering the past into dream- the same looms that give us our seconds and breaths spin the threads of our lives into ornate garments, dream and fact are treated with the same dye, and in the end, not even the greatest of us knows what we've seen(or witch set of eyes we saw it with). In other words, it will be hard to leave Vienna.

But then again, what would Vienna be without Utah, what would Dream be without Day- and God knows how to make some pretty days.
I will be happy at home, I will love my Life, I will use the leasons Ive learned here to make me a better son, and a better man- but that doesnt mean that im not going to miss dreaming.

Oh yea- I will also totally miss the BYU students- you guys kick A.

-Jesse Nicholas Quebbeman-Turley
(I appologize sincerely for any inncoherance in my writing, its kinda late)

My Pathetic Blog

2008-11-25T15:10:00.000-07:00

To those relatives and friends of mine who looked forward to the writings I would enter in this blog, I would like to apologize. I would like to apologise for the many months my blog has wasted away without the care of its masters tender hand. I do not attempt to atone for my months of innaction, but rather to make pitiful excuses; escuses like, I am in Europe, I am busy, ect.ect.ect.

This week we go to Deutschland. I am very exited for this trip. We have seen alot in theese four months (more than doubling the amount of countries that i have seen) without enterering the great land of Germany. This allways disturbed me.

I felt, as a German student who had spent time in Europe -Austria namely- I was pathetic, having not set foot on the land of the languadge I am attempting to learn. How could I answer people who, upon learning of my German studies, would shurley ask if i had seen Germany. Furtunately, due to an unexpected temple trip, this scenario -a very unpleasant one, if I do say so myself- will never come to pass. Now when those questioners pose the aforefeared question I shall pull out my best fopish grin, and drawl in a P.G. Wodehouse fashion, "Oh, but of course dahrling."

ahhhh, fears assuaged.

The Alps

2008-10-02T14:48:00.000-06:00

The Alps are indescriabable, so i wont try. Just go see them, nothing else will work. This last week we hicked in the snowy peaks of dofgastein, we rocked the worlds oldest salt mine in hallstat, and were bored to death by our tourguides constant "the sound of music refrances" in salzburg. We travel with the students, by bus or train, and enjoy our selves quite emensly. Hallstat is one of the prietiest places i have seen in my whole life, only certain choice areas of spain compete. I would write more, but i am fatiguded. Sorry for the incompletness of my blog.

Vienna

2008-09-17T14:55:00.000-06:00

I am here in Vienna Austira as a student. I have been speaking german for one year, and it is quite a strecht to live in a country after having spoken its languadge for a mere year. I am here with my close friend Jacob, living with him, his parents, and his four brothers (the fifth is at college). We are living in a three bedroom apartment, lavishly large for Austria, but quite small to the Provo asthetic (also to the Provo family, Seven people in three bedrooms- do the math).

We attend Wassagasa gymnasium- it is a highly academic school, with a strong tradition of exellence ( two nobel prize winners have attended the school). Our school sits roughly two blocks from the appartment of the late Sigmund Freud (you may have hear of him) and a roughly ten minute strassenban(streetcar) ride from any where in Vienna. My walk to school is enough to bring me into a medative stupor, gazing at the centry old goliaths around me, buildings the kids around me seem so at home in; i do not feel out of place here, i feel like i am at another angle to the world- that i see things just a tiny bit different from the kids around me, this is inevitable, but still amazing to me.

Me and Jake attend classes in Latin (Jake takes French), Geography, Chemistry, Math, Physics, German, History, English, Ethics, Psycology. I have many interesting things to say about my calsses, but i feel that perhaps that is for another time, so- farewell.
-Jesse Nicholas Quebbeman-Turley