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.