Did you know November 12th was my 3 year blogoversity?

...woah. Time flies.

"It's all just selling time, we've got a lot to lose. Paper and ticking clocks; we've got a lot to lose."

Popcorn Ceilings.

An excerpt from my last essay for Creative Nonfiction:

"Usually, I struggle; but sometimes, when the Trauma has passed and the Anguish has settled for the moment, I can rest, and let my center play. These times, I reflect on the kaleidoscope that my narrow field of vision allows. I can watch the stones around me shapeshift into phallic sculptures, or the dots on the ceiling cluster into scenes for my amusement or terror. I often wonder about the value in these things: can there be value in imposed meaning? Will the artwork in the ceiling be worth less if it doesn’t exist without an audience?"

People scream "context context context" here, but here's the context: Paul was talking to the people of Thesselonica. Or of Corrinth. Not you.

A verse before and a verse after is not context. If you are going to claim context, take the whole thing, please.

fuck

I was editing my short story for nonfiction, a collection of memories I have of swearing around my family, when I decided I wanted to use the bible verse that talks about words being a reflection of the soul or something along those lines. I googled "Bible verses about profanity." It was an autocomplete. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

What I found was a hodgepodge collection of bible verses quoted at me in youth group.

• Colossians 3:8 - "But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth."

• Matthew 5:10-11 - "And he called the people to him and said to them, 'Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.'"

• James 3:11-13 - "Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water. Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom."

• Matthew 12:36-37 - "I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

This is the argument against profanity? Funny, in that Colossians verse, it looks like "obscene talk" is the last thing addressed, at the end of a laundry list of things to avoid saying. And Matthew 5? I'm pretty sure there are things coming out of mouths that defile much more than profane language.

Here's the deal: I don't think these verses are talking about fuck, shit, damn, ass, or bitch. They're talking about some important stuff, but it's not "bad words."

When I was in The Lord's Bootcamp before spending 5 weeks in Egypt, we had a team leader whose name I cannot remember give us a lecture on "Christian Swearing." She explained to us, between our sessions on puppetry and digging ditches, that even the words darn and dang are profanity. She said that what mattered was what provoked the words, and what we were feeling in our hearts, and just because we substituted a tamer word, we aren't off the hook for what our heart was saying.

It brings me a little bit of twisted satisfaction knowing that this little talk inspired me to say fuck more. Cause she was right. It doesn't matter what we say, it matters what our intentions are. Because I know that for me, my darns and shoots for a substitution for my fear that if I swore, I would be unworthy, whether that be unworthy of the love of my family, of being a pastor's kid, or of god's love.

There are a lot of things that can come out of a person's mouth that can defile. A lot of these things are not swearwords.

I think today, I can take more responsibility for what I say because I swear. It reminds me that a lot of hurtful things can come from innocent words. After all, can a spring spit out both fresh and salt water? Probably, but I don't imagine the fresh water will stay fresh for long. I don't think I could say kind and hurtful things long before my kind words become hurtful.

And, in the end, I think that I am willing to be held accountable on the day of judgment or whatever for my profanity, because when I said fuck, I said "fuck what he said, you're worth more than that," and when I said shit, it was "I'm going through some really tough shit right now."

I think if jesus had seen all these verses thrown in the faces of young people to curb their tongues, he would have said "fuck this" too.

Sometimes, the way people say "Our God Reigns" sounds so much like "Go Lakers." What does that even mean?

What do I think?

Nothing. That's okay.

"This is a city for not sleeping
And the clocks are set by feel
At this moment from where I sit,
None of it seems real"

When I moved to APU, I found myself in a house living with two black men that I'd never met. In high school, I had plenty of hispanic friends and tons of asian friends, but I knew almost no black people. The ones I did know were "whitewashed," or not as entrenched in the African American culture. They made me feel comfortable, but the other black people at my high school scared me for some indefinite reason. When I moved to APU, I was nervous that I would not get along with my roommates.

As it turned out, living with them was one of the three best things that's happened to me at APU.

I discovered when I began my second year living with all black roommates that the reason I loved these guys so much, the reason that I felt more at home with them than with my fellow white students, was because while I am not an ethnic minority at APU, I am a religious and social minority. I discovered something amazing within AA (African American) culture: perseverance and acceptance. A person could argue that this is leftovers from slavery. I don't care what it's from, but I noticed it a lot in my roommates and the other black friends I began to make across the campus. Under almost every circumstance, it didn't matter what I looked like, believed, or listened to. If I was kind, my roommates were kind to me.

It was incredible the day that I realized how many of the black students at APU I know now. I recognized it as a drastic change in myself. It has been an awakening from the socialization that I wasn't even aware I was experiencing, the fear that I impulsively had when encountering a person I perceived to identify with AA culture.

One of my roommates grew up in one of the trashiest parts of LA, Inglewood. His dad walked out on his family, he lived across from drug dealers and convicts, and he was kicked out of his house at 18. Another one of my roommates had his dad walk out on his family too. They've both experienced racism in all its repulsive glory in their classes at APU. These guys came from rough backgrounds, and had the scars to prove it, and have survived at an ethnocentric university. But you know what I learned most about AA culture living with them? Black folk never stop laughing.

I know that's a generalization, and almost all generalizations about a group of people based on ethnicity, race, or culture are inherently inaccurate. It is, however, what I've experienced. The black guys I know joke. They never stop laughing, even when things are serious.

I've known my years at this school that when I feel isolated, like the only unchristian (unchristian rather than nonchristian) hiding in chapel, the only metalhead, the only person who supports gay marriage or doesn't spit on divorce, the only male feminist, or the only person sick and tired of christianese: my black friends will support me through it, because they've been marginalized way worse, and have survived. And man. We'll laugh the whole time. Sometimes, that's about all you can do anyways.

"There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive." - Jack London, "The Call of the Wild"

Regression to the animal. Taking it all for granted. Disrespect for the beauty of nature. When I reach the summit of life, I don't have time to appreciate it.

Forgetting that one is alive. Funny that it should be such a beautiful thing.

Glorious?

What does this mean?

I need to believe
But I still want more
With the cuts and the bruises
Don't close the door
On what you adore

Faith, it drives me away
But it turns me on
Like a strangers love
It rockets through the universe
It fuels the lies, it feeds the curse
and we too could be
Glorious

I can't figure it out.

They had already said good night some minutes earlier when the boy and girl heard their father's voice in the dark.

"Kids, I just remembered - I have some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first?"

It was his daughter who spoke. "Let's get it over with," she said. "Let's get the bad news over with."

The father smiled. They are all right, he decided. My kids are as right as this rain. He smiled at the exact spots he knew their heads were turned to his, and doubted he would ever feel - not better, but more than he did now.

"I lied," he said. "There is no bad news."

- Amy Hempel, "Today Will Be a Quiet Day"


Amy Hempel asked me how I know that the things that happen to me aren't good. She described first sex with the sentence "We take the length of the couch, squirming like maggots in ashes."

Amy Hempel said "I know that homes burn and that you should think what to save before they start to. Not because, in the heat of it, everything looks as valuable as everything else. But because nothing looks worth the bother, not even your life."


I need to remind myself that sleeping, working, and eating are more important than reading Hempel.

Nobody has ever given me a straight answer on whether it's better to go to bed angry or to work your shit out first.

I met a man named Rob today who reminded me why I really don't like going to church.

Rob is the pastor of a highly charismatic church thing called the Refuge House of Prayer, once associated with the International House of Prayer. That told me a lot right off the bat.

Rob explained to me how his church has encountered countless opposition from the Evangelical church in the city, even so far as to have his church labeled as a cult and being called a false prophet.

Rob told me about the prayer sessions they would have weekly that often would leave people paralyzed for hours. He said that praying often made the congregation drunk on the spirit, lumbering around, entirely out of control of their bodies. He said there were healings happening weekly and that they have entire rooms dedicated towards healing prayer.

Every time Rob and I stopped talking about something and I went somewhere else, he told me to "go in the spirit" or to "go with the fire of the Lord." So I filled up a pitcher of water in the spirit. I moved chairs with the fire of the Lord. Apparently.

Rob made a point of telling me about the worship leader that had come from his church who now is touring with Jeremy Camp. He said that his church members are doing some recording and making some amazing music. He told me about how he played drums for this worship leader and played in his band. He told me about all the different venues that he played for God.

Rob was very eager to hear about what my opinions on things were. He asked what church I went to, and I said none. Then I corrected myself and said I went to a small Anglican church a few times (my dad's church; "a few times" is an exaggeration. I've been twice). He asked why I didn't go to church, and I said I didn't get along with many church people. He wanted to know the issues that I was in disagreement with.

I was very lucky. Rob liked to talk about himself more than he liked to listen to what I had to say. This way, I was able to distract him and not answer his questions.

Rob asked me whether I was Evangelical or not.

"So, you're evangelical? Or...methodist?"
"No."
"What are you?"
pause
"I'm a...[stutter]...kind of a heavily deconstructed christian?"
"What's that?"
"Well, I'm not christian, depending on who you ask."
"Oh, me neither. I hate that label..."Christian." Following Christ is so much more of a lifestyle, you know? Those fad Christians make me not want to even associate with the term "Christian"........[continues for 5 or 10 minutes]"

I was lucky that Rob didn't really want to hear what I had to say. I think, at least, that I was lucky. But I kind of knew it right off the bat. That Rob didn't want to listen to me, that is. You should have seen the look of excitement when I mentioned that there were certain "issues" that I didn't agree with most churches on.

If Rob had wanted to listen to me, maybe I would have wanted to share. So maybe it's less that I didn't want to share, and more that I recognized that he wasn't interested in listening.

Seeing the flags in the corner of the room for worship flag spinning reminded me how much I can hate church.

It's really not fair. I say "to each, their own" and try my best to let people do whatever they're gonna do on their own. But I can't help but want to say "bullshit" every time I hear about a weekly prophecy meeting.

I want to cradle your entrails. I want your soul scraped inside my eyelids. I want to know you deeper than bone cancer, harsher than sunrise, more intensely than orgasm. I want to kiss your shattered bones and I want to feel your fingernails pulling my snarled skin back together. I want to know you in a way that makes sex look like a handshake. I want to know you stronger than wedding bands and further than hopelessness. I want to know you, stranger, and I want to be known.

Can you listen?

"These lies are ropes that I tied into my stomach, but they hold this ship together."

I'm sure the poet from Listener isn't the first person to recognize that he was living on lies.

"Come on and sew us together; we're just some tattered rags, stained forever. We only have what we remember."

It's weird that the concept of being a tattered rag is a hopeful one. Stained forever. Forever imperfect. The image in my mind is of the dude from castaway, trying to make a sail. His wasn't of tattered rags, but it's kind of the same; a heap of trash, washed up on the shore: that was his redemption. The shell of a port-a-potty. The walls of a toilet.

Sew us together because a tattered rag is small and full of holes. Because a tattered rag could be less tattered if there were more rags.

Tie me to you. Sew me to you. I'm talking to you, reader (fuck the fourth wall). I dare you to. I am tattered and stained, inadequate and rotten. I am a conglomerate of weaknesses fused together to form the spitting image of humanity's best bastardization of a god. I am the fourth removed tapestry of the Lady of Shalott, stitched from her tower: beautiful, but not real. Sewn by hands more able than I and worn by a world more caustic than I. I will never be the life she craved till death, and I will never haul a ship until you are me as well. Until we are one tattered rag, aching to find completeness, but reveling in our incompleteness.

I'm still talking to you. I don't know who you are. But I'm talking at you. Tell me about your church of shipwrecks. Tell me about the other rags you've sewn to yourself. Tell me about the other failures you are in congress with, because those wretched, stained, contemptible, glorious (I'm yelling now; can you hear?) people are the ones I want graphed into my skin. I can feel you, but you're far. I want to know you, but I can't.

Please. Lets stand here and be human. Or sit, and be mortal. Lets lay side by side, my friend, my family, and be stained. Indivine. Decidedly separate from the eternal. Ripped and torn, tattered rags stained forever, but sewn into the most beautiful tapestry of identity and divinity our minds can't handle.

"First, you have to know - not fear, KNOW - that someday, you're going to die."

I might have written about this before.

I heard somewhere that there is no such thing as an event. That events only occur in retrospect. Life isn't a series of events, but the opposite: a series of not-events, then compiled in hindsight into themes or patterns that we believe shaped our lives. Funny, then, how we like to read about events - good fiction works that way.

Maybe that's why I like movies like 21 Grams and There Will Be Blood. They don't offer any sort of conclusion or normal catharsis. They have events and plot because fiction mandates it, but in the end, nothing is solved, because life starts the next day.

Our lives cannot be summed up into a problem and solution. If we find our ultimate conflict, and resolve it, then we might as well die, because life starts again tomorrow.

Clifton StrengthsFinder says that I'm really good at making people like me, but it's not that easy. People are more complex than manipulation. Hope that means I'm valuable.

Safe beneath their wisdom and their feet

To be "safe from wisdom" is an interesting concept.



Dear prodigal you are my son and I
Supplied you not your spirit but your shape;
All Eden's wealth arrayed before your eyes
I fathomed not you wanted to escape.

And though I only ever gave you love,
Like every child, you've chosen to rebel;
Uprooted flowers and filled the holes with blood;
Ask for not whom they toll the solemn bells.

But child of dust your mother now returns
For every seed must die before it grows;
And though above the world may toil and turn,
No prying spade will find you here below.

Now safe beneath their wisdom and their feet;
Here I will teach you truly how to sleep

In the morning

I'm beginning to appreciate mornings more, despite hating being up early. I think there may be a pattern.

And so, like usual, I'll wait.

7:46 am - 10:46 pm.

Creatures of contradiction.

Or maybe not contradiction...rather, perhaps creatures of such limited comprehension that what is in actuality just richness and complexity appears to us as contradiction.

Everything I say has been said before. Similarly, everything I do has been done before. However, that can hardly steal the joy that I experience in saying and doing. I both rejoice and grieve the singular intelligence. The hive mind learns from each individual and contributes to the collective knowledge, but as the singular human, we learn from our own experience. It makes us stupider. But damn, we can feel stuff.

I guess I stopped trying to make logical sense when I write. The tendency towards structure and logic still shines through like sun through window blinds, but I'm beginning to wonder which is the blinds and which is the sun. I think many times structure and logic are the blinds severing what may otherwise be an unadulterated ray of sunshine.

At least the existentialist takes responsibility for his life and behavior. After his or her anguish, the existentialist encounters a great joy upon realizing that he or she is not only responsible for defining self purpose, but also participating in the purpose of all people. Often, the Christian is too busy waiting for god to do something, claiming god's will, or making excuses for god to do anything for themselves.

If Christianity was approached with the humility of creatures that realize their infinite capacity to not understand, then maybe bricolage could be a lifestyle. But here I am, like Ayn Rand, foolishly thinking of utopias. I guess I imagine a collection of people so aware of their shortcomings that each day anew must convince them again.

It's no surprise to me that Derrida called deconstruction the "playing" of language. No sane person can look at deconstruction and not lose his or her mind. If I try to explain and analyze it, then I am pulling the blinds over my light. Everything plays. Everything is a game to which I know no rules. Who knows, maybe I've more of the positivity strength than I thought. Such a thought causes me no despair, but the excitement of learning anew.

It's often hard for me to tread the same paths as my ancestors. I feel like there should be some sort of respect I am given for rediscovering the trails of thought blazed by older generations. I don't believe they were blazed by older generations. I believe they were there from the beginning of time. Nothing I say is new, but that makes it no less important. I'd do well to remember that the next time a skeptical, middle-aged educated person scoffs at my "college" beliefs.

Yes, Solomon! Grieve! For there is truly nothing new under the sun. And then celebrate, for everything is new, every day, because communication is impossible and inevitable, and because yesterday is gone.

But damn, my pride's a bitch. I have so much trouble remembering today that yesterday's tools are worn and pathetic. Yesterday's atheist is today's saint. The cynic is the polar-twin of the blind bible beater.

Recipe: 1 part despair, 3 parts humility, 1 part humor, 2 parts patience. Remind me again that perhaps the dead god of yesterday is the not-so-dead of today.

There's a lot more grey area with the word "love" than we'd like to think. Good thing, too. I don't want to love or be loved by some definitions.

Too bad that multiplicity fries the meaning. Does that make it less true? No, just...more ambiguous, I guess.

Drop and roll; repeat line for emphasis.

I’ll repeat it and repeat it until you believe it,

You're gonna be ok! Say it to me!

The answer is still silence; I’ll take it as a maybe.

I can't decide if I should knock down your door or on it.

Say the word and I’ll take an axe to your heart or a pin prick.

Cut right through the dark, let it spill out the contents,

on our knees sorting through the remnants.

Pour out your hate in my hands, I’ll let it slip through my fingers.

Damn. I expected to feel rejuvenated and refreshed tonight. And I don't.

This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization
It's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away
Your love will be
Safe with me

Here's something interesting. Humble = adjective. Make that a noun. Humility. Adverb? Humbly. Verb (present progressive, please)? <--the tricky one. Humbling? Or humiliating? If we go with the latter, make that a noun again. Humiliation. What the fuck?

People have been telling me my whole life that the lexical similarity between these two is a coincidence. I guess I'll find out for real in History of the English Language. But the more I am humbled, the more I wonder if they are truly separable. When I become truly humbled, it involves relinquishing the notion that I was right. And, it involves recognition that I may have believed wrongly. I don't know that an instance like that can occur without some sense of humiliation.

At the same time, true humility might mean the opposite; superseding the humiliation. I think maybe that a person truly humbled is so awestruck by a glimpse at truth previously hidden (the "real," if you will) that the notion of being right is entirely disassociated. In that sense, I don't experience a lot of humility.

There is a sense of joy in learning that I am wrong. When I learn that I am wrong, it means that I am molting; in a sense, shedding a form of myself that didn't know before. Peeling back layers of ignorance like wrapping paper. I believed wrong. But I believe right now.

However, there is a large part of me that wonders, if I was thinking wrong before, what am I wrong about now? I can't help but be both humbled and humiliated when I think of myself even three years ago. I know I acted to the best of my ability given the knowledge I had. But seriously.

What am I missing now? What part of my story is just outside of my peripheral vision? Or, what part of my story lingers in my peripheral vision, casting shadows, but dancing elusively enough for me to deny its existence?

I believe a lot of things, but am I ready and willing to abandon them for the tools of tomorrow? Rusty and broken tools are comforting and consistent, but they are flawed. It's a hard thing to be willing to abandon everything tomorrow. It requires the true, honest recognition that...holy shit...I don't know a FUCKING thing. After all, what person abandons the truth every day?

It's a bit ironic that I want to be the person that abandons truth every day. Or, not abandon truth, but abandons yesterday in pursuit of today's truth. If we're searching for god, well, a human consciousness could never begin to understand more than a miniscule, obscured reflection of god. What makes people think that the bit of god they see today is any more true than the bit their neighbor sees? Any god that can be understood is one not worth knowing.




Once, when I was attending LBF college group, I was told, or at least given the strong impression, that there was a conflicting message within philosophy and christianity. Philosophy teaches that all doubt is good and leads to great things. Christianity (then) taught me that doubt is necessary to christianity as long as it's interpreted within the confines of faith. When you doubt god's plan, have faith. When you doubt god's voice, have faith. etc etc.

I say: if you stop believing, then stop believing. Fuck god. If god wants you, (s)he'll come get you. But if you try your best and you don't hear god, then stop bullshitting yourself. That's what I have to do. It sickened me to live a lie, either way. It might be the most important thing that has happened to me. I rejected god. I rejected everything about religion. And years later, god shows up, uninvited. It's not a testimony. It's a chronicle of my rejection, and my honest belief that nothing in the whole world could have made me abandon yesterday's tools. It doesn't matter that today's tools look like the ones I started with. Nothing is the same.



And so, today, I'm humiliated, er, humbled by the recognition that I wasn't that far off to begin with, maybe. Or maybe I'm totally and entirely different now. Either way, I still don't know a fucking thing. I'm gradually becoming more and more grateful for that.



Oh, and just throwing this out there: I think Thomas gets a bad wrap of things in the bible. I thought that years ago, and I still think that. If there is anybody that I resemble from the bible, it's him. And I could never be more proud.

Time to be a brother. And a son. A good friend, and a boyfriend, and a responsible coworker. A privileged and comparatively wealthy individual, and the poorest in spirit. A straightforward and honest leader, and a patient and trusting follower.

I guess I'm just learning what the concept of adulthood means. It's none of those things, but I think a desire to do things like them. I'd say it's a shift from selfishness, but it's just another, more socially acceptable form of selfishness. All I know are a few key things:

1) I am impatient for something, and I don't know what it is.
2) I receive joy in success more than I have before
3) Things are changing
4) I am impatient for something, and I don't know what it is.

I have nothing to say, but for some reason wanted to write something anyways. Dunno how that works.

Oh, I'll put this. A stanza to a spoken word piece I wrote. I'm terribly embarrassed by it, but beneath the embarrassment is a strong hope that it's good.

"I became addicted to misery when my soul became bulimic
I would throw up my decision and then make myself re-eat it
Repeat it, believe it! There is nothing beautiful here,
Just everything you failed to follow through with. Peer
Into the midst of an electrical storm you conjured up with your smooth words and convenient vodka.
I must love this so much."

"We are all made out of shipwrecks, every single board
washed and bound like crooked teeth on these rocky shores
so come on and let’s wash each other with tears of joy and tears of grief
and fold our lives like crashing waves and run up on this beach
come on and sew us together, tattered rags stained forever
we only have what we remember

Because every church is made out of shipwrecks
from every hull these rocks have claimed
but we pick ourselves up, and try and grow better through the change"

- Listener

Bricolage pt. 2

I can't help speaking through other people's words.

"I've got another confession to make; I'm your fool"

"She parks her car outside of my house and takes her clothes off, says she's close to understanding Jesus. She knows she's more than just a little misunderstood; she has trouble acting normal when she's nervous"

"And who will stand to greet the blinding light? It's lonely when there's no one left to fight"

"I know you come like a thief in the night, but I've had some time alone to hone my lying techniques. I know you think that I'm someone you can trust, but I'm scared I'll get scared and I swear I'll try to nail you back up"

"Hailie's getting so big now, you should see her, she's beautiful, but you'll never see her; she won't even be at your funeral"

"Oh! How she cries from vicarious pain from the one he writes about! She must have been so sad for him to throw her out"

"Some days I can't believe. Others, I'm on my knees, trying to be heard"

"Would you shoot up, grow my garden? Please, my Eden, grow for me; show me how you decorate the streets that brought me misery!"

"Dark generations, poor expectations; can you find strength in this weakness?
Fallen nations, our limitations; can you find strength in this weakness?

Hallelujah! Living Water. Hallelujah! Abba Father."


Bricolage was never a concept, but a lifestyle. Bricolage is an admittance of my humanity and it's inevitable insufficiency. Bricolage is learning humility again.

Abandon, then, your tools of yesterday! Don't you know? The world has changed! You and your values of the past have been left, discarded like chaff. You fool! Your visage is cracked. Your formulated morals of concrete and mortar will collapse. Your reality is flawed. Your perception is weak. Do you want to see something true? Then, for the love of God, discard your faith! Do away with belief! Stop your clinging to reason and emotion, and recognize the narrowness of your field of vision! You miserable fool. You can know nothing. Pick up your tools of today. Relearn everything, every day. There is no center that you can know, only what you can glimpse. So peel the pride from your shoulders like rotten flesh. You do not know. And, as long as your hands are bound to yesterday's tools, you are doomed to repeat the same spiral.

Your God will be different tomorrow. You must start over. You must give up. Because, wesley, yesterday's tools are worn and blunt. Today is a new day.

Tidak apa apa. Fuck it. Shit happens, one day at a time.

Bricolage.

And, yet, a small part of me chuckles and shakes my head, wondering how furious Derrida would be to know that he has made me a christian again.

Somewhere inside of every person I've met is a screaming desire to be identified, as if no amount of behavior could ever truly identify a soul. We flock to personality tests like flies to carrion. To christian living books like clouds of minnows beneath the surface of the water. No matter our behavior, our lives, our goals, aspirations, or desires, we still crave someone else to tell us how to do it. Where is identity? It lies only in others. All of us crave to be intimately exposed, harshly realized, violently known. To have our skin torn away and our flesh peeled back to release what squirms desperately behind mortal visage. Tell me how to live. Tell me how to be. No matter what I choose, it is insufficient.

Define the masculine identity. I dare you.

A moment of divine success

I once heard that the concept of an event is a human construction; there are no events as we remember them, but everything is one giant, unbeginning, unending "event." Events occur when we attribute meaning to segments of that existence. Events, then, are outside of time. An event can never happen, but can only have already happened.

An event:

Once, when I was in sixth grade, I was at sixth grade camp. We as the collective sixth grade were given a task: each child, with the use of a single octagonal piece of foam, was to cross a field of snow without touching the snow itself. The task could only be completed as a unit, although the class immediately attempted to cross individually. I knew how to cross.

I thought, these girls I know, they are perfect students. My friends are smart. They know this and they are more prepared to show the class how. But nobody said anything. I thought, this is a simple puzzle. These girls know how to do it. Those girls later became the perfect grade, AP students at my high school. Valedictorians. Salutatorians. Whatever. nobody said anything.

I asked a camp leader, can I try something? He made the classes listen to me. I said, lets try this. We did. It worked. For that moment, I was smarter, more successful, more capable than the people that would be better than me for the rest of school. These girls are med students now. Graduated and working on their doctorates. I am trying to finish a BA in English. But I knew how to cross the snow in sixth grade.

Reflection

Reading old posts is good for me.

I will be okay.

Some more things

I never, ever stopped loving her. I questioned whether loving her would hurt us more tomorrow than stopping our love today. That's not a fair question.

Stop thinking. Go to sleep.

Tools

I have a lot of words, but I know that language loses value with numbers.

Heartbreak is terrifying because it's so dull, so indefinite, that there's no way to apply pressure. Things make no sense.

This is my Bricolage. When I woke up, I woke up with the knowledge that my tools today would be different than yesterdays, and that I must try to do my best with what I have. I tried. I really, really tried to do the right thing. I am afraid because I don't know whether I was right or not.

My Anguish of Existentialism is my fear that there is no right or wrong, but only what we make for ourselves. Does that mean my decision was a failure? To cite something so intangible that it could never be acquired as a reason for heartbreak? I don't know.



The worst part was watching her drive away knowing that it used to be my responsibility to care for those hurt emotions, and now it is my responsibility to have nothing to do with them. I flashed back to the doorstep in the village where I left chelsea crying. Press me from all sides like a pressure cooker. Refine me, I lost my words. My tool, abandoned for a new center.

Can I cry out to god and wonder if it is his plan? I don't believe in a plan. But I suppose that's my center, isn't it. So I can cry out and ask

God, was this the right decision? Was I anticipating misery? Or causing it?

More importantly, I can ask

God, can I borrow your comfort? I need some peace right about now, as I try to function.

And most importantly

God, can you do what I never could? Can you be a shoulder for her as she heals the wounds that I inflicted?



Shit happens, one day at a time.

The more I fuck up everything I have, the more I believe Jacques Derrida. Not necessary that whole there is no ultimate center bit, but definitely Bricolage. We do what we can with the tools we have, knowing that tomorrow, the tools may be completely different. Such is the state of human existence. If it wasn't for this, I might have stopped trying to live a long time ago. I suppose therein lies the appeal of ultimate grace. Forgiveness for fucking everything up, over and over again, endlessly. A constant cycle of failure. Atheists say there is no failure because there was no success. Sartre says how can we fail to live up to our purpose if we create our own purpose. Funny how I can still fuck up good things.

Maybe there is a bit of christian left in me yet. Oh well. Bricolage. Shit happens. One day at a time.

9:34 pm, 10 May 2011 - begin log

Subject: self
Topic: stress

There are two types of stress: functional stress and debilitating stress. Lets examine some key points of both.

Functional Stress:

- Causes sleepiness
- Causes exhaustion
- Result of responsibility/overwhelming feelings
- Often dealt with through avoidance
- Often can be productive
- Stress shows little in physical well-being
- Can be exhilarating in specific situations


Debilitating Stress:

- Lack of sleep
- Severe exhaustion
- Stress is carried in stomach; loss of appetite
- Never promotes productivity
- Cause through emotional dissonance
- Undermines communicative strengths
- Promotes depression
- Often related to romance
- Often spirals
- Fast beating heart/hyperventilation


Diagnosis: Debilitating Stress. All it takes is a walk across the room and my heart races and my stomach hurts. Circles, man. Circles.

I was told a hypocritical thing recently that was very important. Funny how double minded I can be. I can easily believe something for someone else when I don't believe it for myself.

You're safe when you sleep. God is watching.

"Come all you weary, who move through the earth; spurned at fine restaurants and kicked out of church"

"I know you're coming in the night like a thief, but I've had some time, O Lord, to hone my lying technique. I know you think that I'm someone you can trust, but I'm scared I'll get scared and I swear I'll try to nail you back up"

Decisions

Romans 8:28: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

The problem with decisions: in a Sandbox RPG, like Oblivion or Fallout, I have this awesome option. If I don't like my decision, I can reload to my last save point. It's phenomenal because then I can get everything right. If it doesn't work the first time, I have second tries.

There is also online walkthroughs. If I'm stuck, or don't know the best way to do things, I can do it that way. Follow the instructions, which tell me the outcome, and the fallout of each decision.

Everyone knows real life isn't like this.

Instead, we make decisions based on limited information with the hopes that we predict well enough to prepare ourselves for the fallout of our decisions.

Instead, we take a shot in the dark, and pray to god that our decision doesn't FUCK everything UP.

Instead, we take shelter in a book that tells us the maker of the game can work all our decisions together towards a happy ending.

The bible tells me that, no matter my decisions, if I'm a jesus person, god will work everything together "for my good," What a terribly, unfairly vague phrase.

I believe that god works nothing together for good because things work themselves to whatever.





Here's my problem:
You can argue that Chopin is a feminist, fighting the patriarchy, or that she is supporting stereotypes of women and facilitating the patriarchy. Both have enough evidence. Neither is wrong. If you write a paper about either, they both have potential to be fantastic essays.

Here's my problem:
No matter what decision I make, I know it will be. It wont be good, it wont be bad. It will just BE. It's neither right nor wrong, better nor worse. If I choose left, then I will go left, and the whole time I will either be glad that I am going left or disappointed that I went left. It doesn't MATTER. I cannot make a decision knowing this.


It is a fools errand that seeks to follow a cosmic plan. The futility of the desperate. So, I guess, people like me?

Just when I think I have shit figured out...shit happens. That's the theme of the world. The fucking universe. Shit happens. Why? Doesn't matter. How? Doesn't matter. The fact is, shit happens. It doesn't matter if you made it happen or if it happens to you. It's still happening. What decision to you HAVE? You can give shit or take shit. You can make shit or destroy shit. You can kill shit or you can be shit. I don't know what I'm saying anymore.



God might work all things together for the good of those who love him. Or god might watch shit happen, while we attribute our biological instinct to survive to him.

I can't make a decision. It's too terrifying. I want a save point. I want a walkthrough. I want to read the decisions of my character before I make them, and know what the reactions and fallout will be.

Show me a good idea.

Shit happens, already.

Quote: The AA approach to shit.

"Shit happens - one day at a time"

I can't believe I tear up when I read this. One day at a time. Shit happens, but only one day at a time. Is that hope?

Hospice

Funny, the last time I blogged, it was to post the lyrics to Two by The Antlers. Now I'm here again because I just want to post them again. I've probably listened to this song like 30 times in three days.



...These are hard songs to listen to. "Hospice" by The Antlers is a concept album that centers around a woman dying of cancer, the doctor who fell in love with her, and the intense emotional abuse that she subjects him to. When I was given this album, it was by a friend whose mother was dying of cancer, which somehow makes it much more real.

I think what terrifies me so much about this song and this album is the degree to which the line between love and hate has been erased. It questions marriage, and almost makes a mockery of it. It talks about being physically abused. It talks about co-dependance so overwhelmingly powerful that it cripples and disables. It talks about abortion and suicide and violence and hatred.

The climax of the song deserves a repost:

Well, no one's going to fix it for us; no one can. You say that no one's gonna listen, no one understands.

There's no open door, there's not way to get through. There's no other witnesses. Just us two.

Two people living in one small room, and your two half families tearing at you,

Two ways to tell the story (no one worries); two silver rings on our fingers in a hurry.

Two people talking inside your brain; Two people believing that I'm the one to blame.

Two different voices coming out of your mouth when I'm too cold to care and too sick to shout.


You could just tell a story with lines from the album. A sad, sad story.

• I wish that I had known in that first minute we met the unpayable debt that I owed you.

• Sylvia, you are unlike any other. Let me take your temperature, and you can throw the thermometer right back at me if that's what you want to, okay?

• We're not scared of making caves or finding food for him [our unborn child] to eat - we're terrified of one another; terrified of what that means.

• I'd gladly take all those bullets inside you and put them inside of myself.

• Sylvia, can't you see what I'm doing? Can't you see I'm scared to speak, and I hate my voice cause it only makes you angry.

• All the while, we'll know we're fucked and not getting unfucked soon.

• When you're awake, I'm impossible, constantly letting you down.

• Oh someone, anyone, tell me how to stop this. She's screaming, expiring, and I'm her only witness. I'm freezing, infected, and rigid in that room inside her. No one's gonna come as long as I lay still in bed beside her.

• Daddy was an asshole, he fucked you up, built the gears inside your head, now he greases them up. And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating; Eighty seven pounds! And this all bears repeating

What do you say to that? I just think of the man and woman and I grieve for the people that can identify with any of this.

Two - The Antlers

In the middle of the night I was sleeping sitting up
When a doctor came to tell me, "Enough is enough"

He brought me out into the hall (I could have sworn it was haunted)
And told me something that I didn't know that I wanted to hear:
That there was nothing that I could do to save you
The choir's going to sing, and this thing is going to kill you
Something in my throat made my next words shake
And something in the wires made the lightbulbs break
There was glass inside my feet and raining down from the ceiling
It opened up the scars that had just finished healing
It tore apart the canyon running down your femur
(I thought that it was beautiful, it made me a believer)
And as it opened I could hear you howling from your room
But I hid out in the hall until the hurricane blew
When I reappeared and tried to give you something for the pain
You came to hating me again and just sang your refrain

You had a new dream, it was more like a nightmare
You were just a little kid, and they cut your hair
Then they stuck you in machines, you came so close to dying
They should have listened, they thought that you were lying
Daddy was an asshole, he fucked you up
Built the gears in your head, now he greases them up
And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating
"Eighty-seven pounds!" and this all bears repeating

Tell me when you think that we became so unhappy
Wearing silver rings with nobody clapping
When we moved here together we were so disappointed
Sleeping out of tune with our dreams disjointed
It killed me to see you getting always rejected
But I didn't mind the things you threw, the phones I deflected
I didn't mind you blaming me for your mistakes
I just held you in the door-frame through all of the earthquakes
But you packed up your clothes in that bag every night
And I would try to grab your ankles (what a pitiful sight)
But after over a year, I stopped trying to stop you
From stomping out that door
Coming back like you always do
Well no one's going to fix it for us, no one can
You say that, "No one's going to listen, and no one understands"

So there's no open doors and there's no way to get through
There's no other witnesses, just us two

There's two people living in one small room
From your two half-families tearing at you
Two ways to tell the story (no one worries)
Two silver rings on our fingers in a hurry
Two people talking inside your brain
Two people believing that I'm the one to blame
Two different voices coming out of your mouth
While I'm too cold to care and too sick to shout

You had a new dream, it was more like a nightmare
You were just a little kid, and they cut your hair
Then they stuck you in machines, you came so close to dying
They should have listened, they thought that you were lying
Daddy was an asshole, he fucked you up
Built the gears in your head, now he greases them up
And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating
"Eighty-seven pounds!" and this all bears repeating

Fiction

I'm writing stuff for my Advanced Fiction Literary Topics class. A lot of it is single page stuff, just responding to a prompt, but occasionally one of them will grow out of control and so I let it go. I'll put a few here.

So it doesn’t really matter where it is. Lets say it’s in Mexico. Or Tibet. The important part is, people haven’t been here before. So you walk into this place…how about a cavern? Yeah, that sounds great. A cavern. Only, it was hard to get to. It wasn’t like a tourist cave, where the floodlights bolted to the dejected stone constantly pour light like sand into the cavern’s eye. It’s a hidden cave, a pocket of air tucked away from moth and rust. A lonely cave, and an old cave. This place has history, but not the history that culture births – it has the history that comes from being alone for a very, very long time. That type of history could never be known to a human, trapped in a time-bound sack of fat and flesh. That’s why you walk in and you feel your breath stolen from you, as if the room inhaled, craving the new oxygen you brought to it. Because this place is very old.

So you are alone on this discovery. Or you’re with one other person. Once again, it doesn’t matter – BUT – your friend/lover/hired hand is SILENT. There are no words in ancient. You cannot begin to mouth and sound this old magic, so fierce is its prehistoric tension. You are a vapor here. You are not real, because the hours and days you spend trying to osmose this ancient are pathetic, infinitesimal, microscopic to this place. You will come and go and never be remembered. You are nothing.

The high ceiling of the cave is a deep blue, like old glacier ice, but you cannot see this, because there is no light outside of your lantern. The auditorium of stalagmites is vast and immeasurable, not because of its size but because of your empirical shortcomings. This place is more than you. You are nothing. You are nothing.

You arrived here from water. Your scuba suit lies prostrate at the shore of the black-green pool. Barefoot, you stumble away from it, your arrival forgotten. That’s not all you have forgotten; you don’t remember who you are, or where you are. Are you in Mexico or Tibet? When did you get here? But you wonder only briefly because the echo of your thoughts begins to ricochet off the cavern’s walls. It is far too loud. You are disrespect. You need to be silent.

That divine moment when your hand reached the cavern wall, you fell to your knees, cutting on old mineral and mixed with cave water. Your blood is the biggest disrespect you bring, because it does not belong here. Silently, tearlessly, you weep in shame, for neither you nor any man is worthy to see the face of god. For moments or days you might cry, because time was left imprisoned in the oxygen gauge of your scuba tank. It is years until you begin to think.

This place has no life, you think. I cannot stay. You rise to your feet, your joints ancient and arthritic from your years. I cannot blaspheme this holy ground with blood anymore, you think. It is true, too: with you, you bring life, and with life you bring time and with time you bring death and death has no place here, and you know that, you damned fool. So out you go.

You retreat to the black-green pool, to your scuba tank and your bottled time, carefully smoothing over the footprints your wet flesh left. You turn off the lantern and sit. For a moment, you are mindless. You allow yourself this indulgence; there is no time, and so you are god, your hands and feet the size of kingdoms and coffee beans. And then, you accept the giftcurse of humanity and fall back into the black-green pool again.