now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare...

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Her five year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before.

~ Star Trek

Space ain't man's final frontier. Man's final frontier is the soul, guided by someone more powerful than any human being, someone felt but never seen. You will be surprised of what resides in your insides...

~ Arrested Development

There's no frontier left way out west; Spaced cowgirl; Wasn't she the first to say, "I can't remember my lines today...."

~ John Wesley Harding

Sitting on the floor, sifting through boxes today, I was supposed to be sorting items for a yard sale next weekend. Instead I was pulling out papers (which don't sell, mind you) and reading through them. Once upon a time, I journaled. Or, at least, I tried to journal (with pen and paper and mark-outs and such). Now I have stacks of pages, ripped from the binding of momentarily-used notebooks. Sarah and I got a kick out of one particular entry, handwritten in green ink, and I felt obliged to post it here. My idealism amazes me, but not as much as my lack of ability to act upon it.

12-24-98 (12:39am)

One can never have too many journals, as one can never have too many thoughts. No amount of journals can ever capture the amount of sheer thought which actually occurs in our minds. Thousands upon thousands of creative ideas and profound insights are lost daily to the frailty of recollection and the limitations of language. If only we could store our thoughts somehow in raw form, unaltered by the necessity of symbolism. Or, if only we had words grand enough to capture the purity of our thoughts.

The ability to think and the ability to interact with other thinking beings are two of the most awesome miracles ever created by God. What a marvelous gift communication is.

Many considered America the last land-based frontier. Most now consider outer-space (and even some, the ocean depths) our "final frontier". But I must insist that the most crucial and difficult frontier is still wide open for brave souls to conquer - that of human relations. The greatest mysterious land to be explored and improved is society. We spend so much time focusing on expanding into every inch of space this universe has to offer, while ignoring the tragedy of the very thing we're trying to expand.

Overcoming hate, violence, greed and every other b-side to human interactions is the pressing issue facing us as we venture into the new millenium. Forget about Y2K - what about neglected children? So what if the threat of nuclear war looms - do we even have a world worth saving? THE HUMAN SOUL IS THE LAST GREAT FRONTIER - and it will be our greatest challenge yet.

Yeah, so I completely plagiarised Arrested Development. But I think that's ok for pen-and-ink journal entries - who even knew what an online journal was in '98 anyway? Perhaps tomorrow I'll make a "no-reading" rule, or else I'll be giving stuff away next weekend...