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