Evolution of Human Relations (OR Reasons Why Blood is Thicker Than Water)

Ring... ring... ring....

"Hello?"
"Hey, I need a lift..."

Voice 1:"No."
Voice 2:"Can't."
Voice 3:"Be there in 45." (minutes, that is)
Voice 4:"On my way."

8/15

It was merely a Summer of interim, the space between two semesters. Two fairly important blocks of time, and between them, a unit of transition. It was fairly slow and smooth, one might even say blasé as far as summers have the potential of going.

But it was the foggy moods that plagued my mind almost constantly that summer that stood out the most, more than any events or friends or situations that threatened to define that season. They seemed to come on me in wave after wave of mind-altering haze.

Sometimes they were new and sometimes they were old illusions threatening to hold me hostage forever. How do you fight something that has housed itself in your mind, that refuses to leave, that becomes your vision, becomes a part of you, and then, sometimes, so suddenly, and only for a few flickering moments, looks so clearly like madness. Was I crazy most of the time and sane only in fleeting glimpses? Had the enemy gained ground in my own head?

I was tired of fighting...
tired...

you did go. past emphatic.

all the chairs in the living room are facing the tv
they are waiting for its sound advice.
waiting for its wisdom to teach them how they should pray.
my arms are cold.
it's almost christmastime.
i'm thinking of buying a christmas album this year.
the couch embraces me, and i feel like it's a relative.
i want to fall asleep here, but my mind is tied up with tiny pink ballet slippers
and things not lost but long forgotten.
you've weakened me considerably by your house of cards
forget about your house of cards
where did you go?

November

I am walking briskly in the cold
and think of you
and smile a little to myself in frustration
and amusement.
I have pushed and fled and fought so many
but you would not give yourself up to be treated thus
and I do not want to push or flee or fight you at all
And perhaps this is why I smirk at the irony and shrug and adjust my scarf.

upon finishing a history exam

i can't breathe
and i'm looking for a fight
i'm drowning in this passionless pit of waste
every second a waste
show me the injustice that i might remedy it
but leave me no more in this double-edged lie
this pseudo-life that exists only in the mind
i will not survive it.

i can't breathe.

stop

we are right
they are fools

we are intellectuals
they are fools

we are free
they are fools

we are the anti
they are fools

we are informed
they are ignorant fools

we are clever
they are fools

we are the periphery
they are fools

we are the glorified minority
they are the fools

we are better
they are fools

we are fools
we are fools
we are fools

predicament of stagnant and oppressive air patterns

i'm watching the ceiling fan blades chase infinity.
my mind runs after them
and my old friend jack white reads to me from a book.
but i'm not listening. not really.
tuesdays were never the days on which wars end anyway.
i have a heart condition.

the ceiling fan is being very still.
my face is sweating.
i can't think of anything but urethane.
i dreamed my hair was silver but my face was a baby's.
and all along i thought i would be sick soon
so i put on the red mocassins instead.
and turned on the box fan.

Metaphor from Music

This is lame and completely non-poetic. But I don’t care. It relates to what I’ve been experiencing.

Usually when I listen to an album for the first time I choose a random song based on the title and listen to it.

Most of the time I hate the song.

But I know that by choosing a random song completely out of order, I’ve ruined it for myself. It’s my fault I don’t like it.

So usually I’ll continue to preview the songs based on interesting titles until I find something I like. Then I’ll probably listen to that song over and over until I recognize the lyrics, and then I’ll find one I like almost as much and do the same thing, and then I start to like the songs that come on right after my most favorites because I get used to them starting up right after the best ones. Then, eventually, I like most of the songs on the album, and by now I’m convinced I really do like the band, so I begin listening to all of the tracks in a certain order, and maybe even by the time it’s all finished I listen to all of the tracks in their right order.

And this is when I really start to appreciate the story the album tells as a whole. The songs are pieces of a larger work of art. They each have a flavor that compliments or contrasts with the others to make the bigger picture. And if it really is a good album, each does not and can not reach its full potential without the others. It only makes the most sense in its original context. There may even be songs on the album I don’t like at all by themselves, but when I understand them in the context, in the flow of the story, I begin to see that they are necessary. That although they are unpleasant for a time, they are necessary to the bigger picture and someday in the future will probably bring me great joy. I end up loving the songs I once hated because I become clued in to the masterful artwork behind them. I start recognizing the genius. But only in context.

And then I can start to appreciate the richness of variety and the depth of the ups and downs. Every song is different. And it fits differently into every album. They can never be swapped or copied. They capture and describe and express totally uniquely.

Anyway, I’m sure you get the point by now. It’s a lot like life.

It always sounds so cheesy when people tell you that the hard times are there for a reason, that you’ll understand why later.

But I think it really goes even deeper than that. I think the hard moments, days, months, years become indispensible parts of who we are. They aren’t some mass produced item sprinkled in various amounts throughout everyone’s lives the way that a lot of people make them sound—generic, straight off the assembly line. Every person has their own unique set. In fact, they can’t even really be pulled out of the bigger story at all and make any kind of sense. Each is different. And each of us is who we are because of them.

Our souls bear the signature marks—or scars—of our stories and even those hellish moments are beautiful, deep, rich parts of the story. It helps me to look back on those times or even to be in the middle of them and think of them as just what they are—hard times.

I don’t have to make excuses for them or live in them. I can simply see them as they are, appreciate them, avoid dwelling on them, and live each time as it comes because it all makes the final work of art more human.

Rest Your Head

"You could tell me what you’re really after
Then, baby, just rest your head
Just rest your head
Now, now, now
Just rest your head
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, just rest your head
Just rest your head
Just rest your head."

--The Good Life

ignorance, bliss

joy equals pain.
and i am painfully unafraid.
and wisdom is folly to the one who watches his own heart break because he saw it long before it had a chance to die and stood ready to watch it anyway.
and he who lives the truth can never stand to live another way, but living true will kill him too.
it is no small thing to bear, the truth.
and sitting here just now, i feel the burden and my breath is hard to draw.
the one who knows. she knows more than she should ever want to know.

always detesting ignorance.

and always restless because she will never have it nor the peace it brings.

grown-up

Everyone around me has matured
Into mediocrity
Stiff
And static
We shall not decay, no, we shall turn into stone
It’s a high price to pay for an unholy security
A cheap exchange
A cowardly forfeit
It’s an ankle-deep façade, but you live too close to the surface to see it
And Oh! Guard it fiercely, Dear, for Truth seeks to devour the god of your lies.

mail-order reality comes crashing down

i think my worst fault is all the idealizing i do.
people
places
times.
especially people. i take the outline of an individual and color in the rest from some place in my mind. i take a persons existence in the real world and rework it in my head until they are a character in the ongoing fiction that exists really only in my mind. they become an idea.
an idea only.
so that im not sure i ever really know anyone at all.
i know the made-up person, but not the one outside of myself.
maybe i do this because i want to know them. i want to know them intimately enough to imagine their thoughts and feelings in my own head. but then the real person and i never get along quite like we did when they were merely imagined.
maybe i do it because i do not want to know them at all. i want to know them only as an extension of myself.
the truth is rarely ever what you would think it would be or like it to be.
im not sure what to make of such a habit. it seems to spring from some sort of preoccupation with illusion and self. which makes me a little more hesitant to diverge the information.
but then whats the point in hiding, as so many of us do, our failures. they are more real than many of our supposed virtues im sure.
anyway, i wonder if any of us really live in a world that is not in some way colored by our own imaginations. maybe we cant agree because we dont see the same things at all.
somehow i hope this isnt the case. its an awfully lonely case if it is true.

lifeboats

I’ve grown weary of people merely existing to please themselves.
And what more have many of our lives ever been but that? For what other purpose do I keep hearing the term “college experience”? Can they mean anything different than fitting the most “fun” as is possible into four years of life? And this is when the nausea starts for me…
We love ourselves so much that even college exists only to please and entertain us. This is kind of thinking is a sickness with which we have all been infected.
It is starvation of the soul. It is life on the sunshiney surface. It is rootless, passionless. It is bottom-dwelling, yellow cowardice. The absence of wisdom, nobility, intelligence, history, anything that resembles love, art, beauty, hope.
It is all pretend. The ones who are real do not even exist here anymore. They died long ago.
Our lives are collections. It is no longer as trendy to collect things in order to keep up with the Jones’. Now in order to impress our friends we collect crazy stories, facebook albums, a checklist of countries we went to on free travel, a camera full of pictures of us beside every monument or work of art we could spend two minutes desecrating rather than appreciating, all so we could mark it off some list that supposedly makes you a somebody. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t pretend to appreciate it, because art is cool. We may not be contesting for the highest salary, but we sure are still competing for worldly success. And still we are keeping the spirit of hoarding the most stuff. But we have disguised our lust for more by storing up instead, the latest ideas, causes, movements, subcultures. Trying to seal the status we hold in our own minds as ultimately superior to others by making as many intellectually snobby comments as can possibly be made by one human being in a lifetime. Readers of Donald Miller’s Searching for God Knows What will recognize this as fighting to the death to “stay in the lifeboat.” Why else is there a hierarchical structure created during pledge week? Im sure it really is to make kids “appreciate” their club. No, I think it is just one more chance for one human-being, being so full of pride they can barely function, to exert superiority over another.
And what’s worse is that we bring God into it. As if he could even stand to be near such hypocrisy. Jesus called the Pharisees white-washed tombs, and I think that description fits us pretty well. We call the name of Jesus because it is convenient to us, because it is trendy to be spiritual at our university, while buried in our heart of hearts there is an altar built to the one and only god we truly worship…
ourselves.

"well if you see her, make sure you tell, tell her that i'm gone to find a land beyond where i'll be free"

Theory

This is a mixture of thoughts that I believe are somehow related. I'm not exactly sure how yet, but I am almost certain there is a connection here...I don't know if it makes sense outside my head or not.
I think people have become ignorant in such a way that they believe themselves to be ignorant. They have this idea of a "professional" in their heads, the idea that titles themselves bring authority, knowledge. They entrust "real" education to an establishment, a school, rather than teaching the Truth at home. Parents have become passive. They had rather pass off as much responsibility as possible because society has suggested to them thay they know nothing about the great big world of science and politics, dinosaurs, and social security and that they should simply leave these things to the "experts." After all, the real bulk, the really impoortant, success-making, value-giving information is taught in universtities, right? The wisdom of this world is what will bring children "success." Everything you need in order to succeed in life, to become a citizen of the world, to pass into the realm of functioning adults, that all is taught at universities, right? Thatt comes with a degree. And without consciously thinking it, they say to themselves. We don't know anything. We aren't capable of teaching you the really important things because we don't know them ourselves. So we will send you away to school to become wise and educated. They no longer take action to instill values, life lessons, passion, heritage, a sense identity, but rather pass off that job to the state. Which is horrifyingly reminiscent of that Brave New World we all fear in which all intimacy, sense of tradition, pide, culture, family, heritage is lost. And maybe our move toward this brave new culture is why so many of us American kids can't figure out who the heck we are...no one will tell us, especially not our families. They feel that somehow this would be limiting us, so instead they tell us we can be whatever we want. But that isn't who we are. Whether we admit it or not, we all have an identity, a God, a family, a bloodline, and we not only have one, we need it. Without it, we are lost in a great big universe, directionless, with a million different directions before us and no man is an island...we are all part of the human organism, a little bit of each of us comes from behind us in our parents and a little bit of us goes after us into our children. We all have our history living in our own bodies. It is a part of the core of our being. It's there, and it only hurts us to ignore it. And I think a lot of parents don't know themselves. They don't know the hope to which they have been called, and this is the reason they can't teach it to their children. But they are capable. Real wisdom and real knowledge are found in knowing the living God. Righteousness, holiness, redemption...these are wisdom, intelligence, scholarship. The wisdom of the world is foolishness. The weak things of this world will shame the wise. The one who knows love, who knows the power of grace, who searches out the mystery of Jesus Christ and teaches this to his children, he is the one who possesses true intelligence, true scholarship, and he can attain it without the recognition of an earthly establishment.

1 Corinthians 1:20 Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

1 Corinthians 1:30 Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God--that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption.

poem

Witch Wife

by

Edna St. Vincent Millay

SHE is neither pink nor pale,

And she never will be all mine;

She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,

And her mouth on a valentine.


She has more hair than she needs;
5
In the sun ’tis a woe to me!

And her voice is a string of colored beads,

Or steps leading into the sea.


She loves me all that she can,

And her ways to my ways resign;
10
But she was not made for any man,

And she never will be all mine.

a work of genius by molly c. goyne.

Shuffle--

red light

power button

sing to me

fast forward to that gorgeous boy's voice

i wanna feel it

loud, strong, sure

sure i'll sing it back to you

volume up

hair on my neck is up

hushed&blaring

tranquilly pounding

stereo

The Creation of Man by Chagall

Bluebeard by Edna St. Vincent Millay

This door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed....Here is no treasure hid,
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain
For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,
But only what you see....Look yet again:
An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.
Yet this alone out of my life I kept
Unto myself, lest any know me quite;
And you did so profane me when you crept
Unto the threshold of theis room to-night
That I must never more behold your face.
This now is yours. I seek another place.

scraps

sometimes i like to think of God as if he was an old, black woman
sitting out on the porch in the summertime piecing together quilts from old scraps of material
each with its own rich pattern
character
soul
and then i think
each patch gets to be a person
and all of us get mixed up and spread out and placed in our right spots to make some pretty design
and also i like to think that maybe that old, black woman with worn, wrinkly, black hands
took her rusty, metal scissors and cut two pieces of patchwork from the same bright piece of fabric and called one of them you and one of them me
and maybe that's the reason when i'm with you i feel like another part of me is there
and maybe that's why also, once having been with you
i'm alright, but i'd be better if you were here

relative

people talk about truth and the relativity of truth in the postmodern world and whether or not there is absolute truth and the nature of reality. if this world were the true reality, we would know nothing of any other world, ask no questions about other worlds. we would have no reason to question our existence or our circumstances or our being. this is just a place of shifting shadows. the true reality, the truth, lies somewhere deeper than this place. and we have a part of it in us. that's why we know it's there. it's part of us. and because this world is just a metaphor for something better, we cannot trust it to be true to us. it contains truth but it is not truth itself. if we seek the truth in the things of this world we won't find it there. only inconsistency. a metaphor has to have some deeper meaning to convey, some point of reference in order to make sense. a shadow must have a source. a reflection must be reflected by something real. and our world is just a reflection, a shadow. and isn't that why man must explain his life and his world with religion? because somehow it is hardwired into our minds that our story must fit into some greater context. we are not the beginning and the end. only somewhere in between. we know this or we wouldn't even have to ask why we were here. there would be no reason to ask. this world makes sense only when it is placed within a bigger context. here we have the shadow, but the truth lies in the one who casts the shadow. in Christ we find the Truth. our God is reality. our God is.
and his reflection speaks of all his wonder and majesty and love and beauty, but none of it makes sense without him. but if he is given the point of reference, if he becomes the cornerstone, the one whose reflection we now see, then the rest falls into place. the true reality is in the heavenly realms, it is Spirit.
the physical world is less real than we would like to believe. and it is relative because it is not the truth itself, only a shifting tool which points us to a higher truth.



now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face
--1 Corinthians 13:12

A Noble Idea

Sometimes, when I was little, they would use this expression.
And they would say --Don't be ugly to each other-- And by this they meant
stop being hateful toward your playmates, stop pushing yourself to the top, always fighting to self-promote, to step on someone else.
Because it's ugly, it's the stuff of humanity's shame, the mark of the fall.
And I like this expression because it equates ugliness with evil, with sin against one another.
And this in turn associates beauty with love, redefines beauty as being where love is.
And isn't that the beauty and wonder of our God? His unfailing, never-fading love.
A love that he would lavish on us if we would only let him.
That would make us beautiful like he is beautiful.
Would make us like him.

And this, I think, is a noble idea to plant in the mind of a child...

Song

What if You

Joshua Radin

What if you

Could wish me away

What if you

Spoke those words today

I wonder if you'd miss me

When I'm gone

It's come to this, release me

I'll leave before the dawn

But for tonight

I'll stay here with you

Yes, for tonight

I'll lay here with you

But when the sun

Hits your eyes

Through your window

There'll be nothing you can do

What if you

Could hear this song

What if I

Felt like I belong

I might not be leaving

Oh so soon

Began the night believing

I loved you in the moonlight

So, for tonight

I'll stay here with you

Yes, for tonight

I'll lay here with you

But when the sun

Hits your eyes

Through your window

There'll be nothing you can do

I could've treated you better

Better than this

Well, I'm gone, this song's your letter

Can't stay in one place

So, for tonight

I'll stay here with you

Yes, for tonight

I'll lay here with you

But when the sun

Hits your eyes

Through your window

There'll be nothing you can do

Birds

I am sitting on a porch
The air is still, chilly
Sun dipping below trees and mountains
My hand is outstretched in front of me—still, chilly
It is covered by a tiny pile of slippery seeds
They slide between my fingers at the slightest interruption of the stillness
And birds fly back and forth around us
I am silent, still
Now and again little feet tickle my open palm and fingers, spilling seeds onto the porch- wood beneath my feet
And your presence is in the still of the air around us, and I breathe its sweetness
There is an absence of time and circumstance here
The suspension of a moment in the quiet, cool of November
No before
No after
Only here, now
There is peace
And I feel beautiful here.

It is the lack of circumstances I think, of strings, of the pains of history that make memories so welcome in our thoughts.
They require no commitment, no striving, no choice for self-denial
They are nice but then they are not so real as reality, more beautiful because of its hard truth.

Fever

I have fever in my bones.
I keep night-time in my soul.
Sing the blues all day,
I got fever in my bones.

Girl, you speak in un-tamed verse of greater men than me,
And I don’t need no other medicine to quiet me.

You’re playin’ soft rhythm and sweet melody. The stars are trippin’ out of line, and I don’t need no other medicine to quiet me.

Sing me somethin’ sultry, slow. You always rain on my parade. This fever in my bones is killin’ me, but I don’t need no other medicine to quiet me.

I was singin’ songs of pain on street corners and alleyways before you called me yours, blue eyes.
And our music was just in time, but hurtin’ songs ain’t like the lovin’ kind.

Lay a poor man’s money down. It’s all I ask of you.
I’m dancin’ with the Devil now, and Heaven don’t approve

There’s healin’ for our ugliness, but it ain’t in this, it ain’t in this.
Home is waitin’ warm and kind and callin’ us by name.
And I won’t rest til’ I find it Love, and you’re safe there with me. Cause’…

I have fever in my bones.
I keep night-time in my soul.
Sing the blues all day,
I got fever in my bones.

my first mass

Gloire a toi qui etais mort, gloire a toi qui est vivant,
Notre sauveur et notre Dieu, viens Seigneur Jesus!

So the irony is obvious enough. I went to my first Catholic Mass my first Sunday at the international program I'm attending as part of my studies at a small, private, Church of Christ university. Talk about opposite ends of the spectrum.
But there is truth at both ends. As well as truth forgotten.
I am more quick, I suppose naturally, to critique my own end and it's lack of color and mystery and to soak up the fresh perspective on the other side of the swinging pendulum, but I would like to think that's a sign of hunger for some sort of balance where I believe balance is seriously lacking.
Somewhere across the spectrum of Christianity I think the vision has been lost. Or really, maybe it's the relationship with Christ that has been lost. The body has been severed from the head.
And we are stumbling around without him.
The good news has lost its goodness, its power to redeem, restore, and unite. Or maybe we have forgotten the message altogether. Maybe we aren't even preaching the gospel anymore.
Somehow our familiarity is beginning to breed contempt. It certainly isn't breeding intimacy.
The church is characterized by division, lack of depth, and charade--not exactly the oneness Jesus prays for in John 17.
Bottom line is we've strayed. And it's time to remember who we are.

"I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." --John 17:22-23

groundhog's day

"wake
from your sleep. the drying of your tears. today....we escape
we escape"

i know the world is asleep
and having a bad dream
colorless
adventureless
soulless
dream.
sometimes i want to rip them, crying, from their safe indifference.
tear my own chest open first
thrust my beating heart in front of my own wide eyes
and know i have been alive all this time
after all
and live.