The Postmodern Beat

Objective Uncertainty

2011-09-20T23:19:00.002-04:00

My new blog, "Objective Uncertainty," is up and running. I've only got one post up as of now, but I've got a few in the works that should be up over the course of the week. Hope you get a chance to make it over there. Click the link below to check it out:

Objective Uncertainty

This is the End(ish)

2011-09-15T22:09:00.002-04:00

Hello readers (or what's left of you).

I haven't been here in awhile and it may be awhile before I come back.

But fear not, I have continued writing and will continue to write though at another website. The Postmodern Beat will not cease to exist and I don't rule out the idea of ever returning here. However, it seems that a new site with a much more focused theme is in order. So, I've decided to move over to wordpress (I know) and have a site dedicated to theological exploration, etc. So far I have decided to call it, "A Leap Into the Abyss," which is sort of a reference to both Kierkegaard and Barth. I'm not sold on the name but it's the best I have come up with so far. Don't be surprised if it changes.

I won't put the new address up just quite yet because I'm still tweaking a few things over there but I suppose if you searched around long enough you could find it (though there isn't much there to see yet). I'll link to the new address once everything is in order.

I've been writing on The Postmodern Beat since October of 2006 (5 years!). I'm a bit sad to see it go, but I'm excited about some of the possibilities with this new site. It's been fun. I hope you continue reading after I officially make the switch. I'm sure you all care.

thanks for reading,
isaac

Somebody Bigger Than You and I

2011-06-30T13:11:00.001-04:00

Reflection on Genesis 22

2011-06-15T02:31:00.003-04:00

This was an outline for a mini sermon I gave at The Mercy House teaching pool today on Genesis 22 (I did not edit this--expect grammatical errors, etc)

As Christians, we often rush to assume our own faith in God, as if it is a possession bought and sold at churches around the world. We are taught to simply “believe in our hearts” and arrive at faith. Faith becomes a starting point for which we base all our ministries and institutions and relationships. These things are not necessarily bad, but I believe the story of Abraham challenges to things in a different way.

Many chapters ago we began to read about the absurd notion of an old couple having a young child. Not only will they receive a child, but the larger covenant it represents and will represent for all of time.

While it seems to take him awhile, we can see Abraham begin to mentally and emotionally accept that maybe God is telling the truth, that maybe he will actually father a great nation. He has traveled to foreign lands and maintained his safety and his wife’s safety. He plead on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah for the sake of Lot.

Yet equally as much as he’s followed he has made attempts to circumvent certain situations by taking matters into his own hands. He slept with Hagar and In the previous chapter he attempted to care for them though sending them away ultimately to be protected by God.

After a lifetime of believing in the absurd notion that God will provide Isaac, he is born, and once again, Abraham is put to the test when God calls him to sacrifice the very promise that has taken nearly a lifetime to arrive.

The text is considerably reticent in terms of Abraham’s thoughts, feelings, and motives. In the first verse God calls and Abraham simply says, “Here I am.” After the command we are given no response on the part of Abraham. He does not plead for Isaac as he did Sodom and Gomorrah, but instead silently begins to prepare for the long journey ahead of him. Throughout the three-day journey, Abraham is strangely silent. The reader is left to imagine what must be going through his mind.

To add to the sense of ambiguity, in v.5 Abraham tells the servants that he and Isaac will go worship together and that the both of them will return. This can be read as a type of “white lie” from Abraham, as he does not want to reveal to the servants, or to Isaac, what they are going to do. However, it could also mean that Abraham does not believe that he will have to go through with the sacrifice, that he is convinced God will step in at the last moment. Lastly, it could be read that Abraham thinks he will indeed go through with the sacrifice but that he will somehow get Isaac back.

This same dilemma is found in v. 8 the reader does not know if he believes Isaac will be sacrificed but cannot face it, so analogizes “the lamb” as Isaac. He could also think that God will not make him follow through. Again, lastly, he may believe that he will have to sacrifice Isaac, but will receive him back, and a lamb will be provided.

In v. 11 we find out that God steps in at the last moment, and again it is repeated, “Abraham!” and his reply “Here I am.” These are the last recorded words that Abraham says to God.” This “Here I am” caps off the segment, and seems to show that throughout the entire ordeal, Abraham never wavered in his faith—both in his willingness to kill Isaac and in his belief that if he killed Isaac, he would somehow receive him back.”

It takes Abraham a lifetime to arrive at here. Yet we read the story of Abraham and think we can leave off where he ends. We often think that because we can intellectually ascend to certain doctrines or statements of belief that we have somehow experienced what it would be like to raise a knife to the throat of our own child. I’m rarely willing to give up the dusty clothes hiding in the back of my closet, yet I claim faith in God. This is nothing short of hypocrisy on my part.

Faith is so difficult because it is not simply a matter of the mind or the heart. One does not acquire faith by reading about it or by coming to some place where it “makes sense” to believe in God. One does not acquire faith based on the amount of tears they’ve shed at their own guilt nor by really really, really, no really, really, I mean really just knowing that God exists. These things are okay, but faith they are not.

At the Exodus House, we were once asked why it is we do what we do, i.e. what did we hoped to accomplish with the house. Were we trying to change the world, our community? Were we solving something? The reality is we’re fighting a losing battle. We’re not going to change the world. The Mercy House is not going to change the world. In fact, we’re most likely not going to solve the problems of the West Side, and we’re surely not going to solve the problems of the East Side, which are probably more damaging. I have no grand vision of an end to all things. Unemployment is on the rise. The drug cycle continues to devastate person after person, both the dealers and the users. The DOC continues to harden an already vulnerable and marginalized population. Our education system is falling apart, physically and figuratively, while consumerism continues to plague us—each class wishing to live one class ahead while turning up there noses at those below them.

Each individual concedes to the greater mass surrounding them. Judges and lawyers must play the part, every day putting aside personal beliefs for the sake of a system. The same goes for police officers, teachers, CEOs, students, pastors and program directors at transition homes called The Exodus House. We all fall prey to the sin of denying that we, as individuals, must stand before God and make a choice to have faith, despite the absurdity of that faith. There is no reason to have faith living in a world like ours where God more often that not seems far away if not a complete fabrication. One cannot look around and know that there is a God with any type of conscience—not considering the wars, poverty, hatred and greed surrounding us every day.

But it is with this in mind that we may occasionally have faith that God is there. It is only with this in mind that we may muster the strength to say, “Here I am, Lord,” when God calls our name. We must be willing to give up everything—physically and intellectually—as Abraham was willing to give up Isaac and with him God’s covenant, if we ever hope to come to a faith such as Abraham’s.

To go one step further, we must not only be willing to give up everything but we must actually do it. Abraham is not called the Father of Faith because he was simply willing to kill Isaac. God did not stop him when he saddled the donkey or chopped the wood. Surely God could have seen this as a sign that Abraham was willing. God did not stop him on the third day when the arrived at the mountain and began the walk to that dreadful place where Isaac was to die. God did not stop him as he built the altar and bound Isaac. God stopped Abraham only after he stretched out his arm, knife in hand, ready to strike and kill his son. Abraham can only be considered the Father of Faith if, had not God stopped him, he actually would have brought down the deadly blow; he had to risk looking like a madman and a hateful father.

We do not remember Abraham just for his willingness. We do not remember Jesus because he was willing to die on a cross. We remember them because they acted on an absurd notion of faith. We remember Abraham because he could hold the paradox in tact at every moment—that he would kill Isaac and that Isaac would not die. We remember Jesus because he could hold a similar paradox—that he would die and in death he would live.

It is faith that propelled Abraham yet it is faith where he arrived.

isaac

A Second Reflection on the Murder of Osama bin Laden

2011-05-06T17:38:00.004-04:00

My last post was not very well thought out, nor was it very mature. I leave it there so as to keep myself from denying that I thought those things. I am by no means well-educated when it comes to politics or current affairs, but these are just some of my observations with the help of Robert Fisk (articles are linked). Most of my other sources are from wikipedia, I know I know....

Upon further reading and reflection, I’m now more inclined to believe that Osama bin Laden was actually killed the night of May 1st, 2011. While I wouldn’t put it past certain people in Washington to develop such an elaborate scheme, I’m finding it harder to believe that even they could have pulled off something to this magnitude. However, I’m not fully convinced of this.

That in mind, there is still much to be said.

To begin, bin Laden’s relationship to the U.S. seems to be of alarming suspicion. According to Robert Fisk over at The Independent, Osama seemed to have had at least a minimal connection with the CIA during the Soviet/Afghanistan War. (Read the entire article by clicking here)

Of course both the CIA and bin Laden himself denied the connection, stating that while the U.S. did fund the Afghans against the Russians, none of these funds, weapons, or training ever got into the hands of Osama nor any of the other so-called “Afghan Arabs.” Even if the resources provided by the CIA did not literally reach bin Laden’s hands, its easy to see much of his activity since then as blowback from America’s involvement at all. This controversy, like all others surrounding the relationship between the Middle East and America, still shines a light on the fact that the United States government has gotten itself into a place where it garners little to no trust from its citizens, let alone those who live outside of the country.

Assuming bin Laden was killed by U.S. Navy Seals in his compound on May 1st and then “buried at sea” within 24 hours, many questions remain. It seems to be rather well-documented at this point that what Obama originally deemed a “firefight” was not true. From what I have gathered, Osama was unarmed and did not resist capture to the extent that he needed to be killed. Why not arrest him and put him on trial according to law? While even this would have been a poor example of “justice” as I see it, it would have at least been “fair” in terms of what is generally regarded as proper treatment of an enemy of the state. Not only did the U.S. soldiers kill an unarmed Osama bin Laden, they killed the woman he was supposedly using as a human shield. All of this seems absolutely unacceptable. Not only did they not capture him, but he was “buried at sea,” supposedly according to Islamic regulations, though this too is false, as one is only allowed to be buried at sea if they died at sea. I don’t so much care how he was buried, but why lie and tell the public that they followed all of the religious rites when they clearly did not?

Even looking at this from the standpoint of the American government, I do not understand why they chose to go about the whole Middle Eastern conflict in this way. According to Saif al-Adel's 2005 document "Al Quaeda's Strategy to the Year 2020", the five strategies of al-Qaeda are to:

1. Provoke the United States into invading a Muslim country.
2. Incite local resistance to occupying forces.
3. Expand the conflict to neighboring countries, and engage the U.S. in a long war of attrition.
4. Convert Al-Qaeda into an ideology and set of operating principles that can be loosely franchised in other countries without requiring direct command and control, and via these franchises incite attacks against countries allied with the U.S. until they withdraw from the conflict, as happened with the 2004 Madrid train bombings, but which did not have the same effect with the 7 July 2005 London bombings.
5. The U.S. economy will finally collapse under the strain of too many engagements in too many places, similarly to the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Arab regimes supported by the U.S. will collapse, and a Wahhabi Caliphate will be installed across the region. (taken from Wikipedia)

From what I can see, the United States has played right into every move on the list and seems to be tirelessly working its way toward number five.

What Fisk and others have pointed out, is that al-Qaeda and bin Laden should not have been of much concern to the U.S. Government in terms of an actual threat. As we have seen in Egypt, Tunisia, and soon Libya and Syria, corrupt dictators are overthrown by peaceable groups of people, not violent attacks from terrorists (bin Laden) or terrorist states (the U.S. and Israel). Fisk, who actually had multiple interactions with bin Laden, called him as “has been.” He believed that Osama knew his end was near and that his dreams of a militant Islamic nation were awaked by the reality of his failures. Both Osama, et al and Obama et al need to learn from history…that violence begets violence, etc.

Fisk also rightly points out that this whole ordeal has made the U.S. look even more hypocritical than it has in the past. For a country that preaches peace, our government bombs and kills a lot of people, both “enemies” and civilians. Fisk writes “The real problem (…) is that the West, which has constantly preached to the Arab world that legality and non-violence was the way forward in the Middle East, has taught a different lesson to the people of the region: that executing your opponents is perfectly acceptable.” (Read full article by clicking here) Not only do we preach peace, but Obama recently received the Nobel Peace Prize, and just about everyone in Washington at least claims Christianity, a religion founded on the teachings and life of a man of supreme self-sacrificial love, who himself was unjustly killed by a violent state government, Rome.

Since 9/11, somewhere between 62,570 to 1,124,000 Iraqis have died (civilian and combat), 10,960 and 49,600 Afghanis have died, 6,500 Somalian citizens have been killed, and it’s all cost over a trillion dollars (stats for wikipedia). This is many more than the 3,000 that died from the 9/11 attacks. Many of these deaths have been civilians, and the United States justifies killing these civilians in the same way al-Qaeda does, that it’s about a higher righteousness, a higher justice, and some lives are going to inevitably be lost in the pursuit of their ideals. Much like al-Qaeda, the United States attacks large areas killing enemies and civilians so as to incite terror in the minds of its opponents, demonstrating their willingness to sew massive destruction at the cost of innocent lives.

That’s the funny thing about Obama. A lot of people believed he’d be something different (I was not one of these people). He rallied everyone around an abstract and detached slogan of “Hope.” It turned out to be empty and the only thing he’s shown is that he, like our past presidents, will use his power to hunt down and kill a “has-been” symbol of terror using the very tactics he criticizes. My fear is that all of these minds being swayed by the death of Osama bin Laden are going to justify the deaths of all of these innocent people, justify the torturing at Gitmo and elsewhere to receive information, and justify the secrecy and propaganda it takes to carry out such horrendous acts. The truth is that Obama has done very little to distance himself from our last president, George W. Bush. Obama has increased troops in Afghanistan, left many of our troops in Iraq, bombed Lybia, unjustly ordered the murder of Osama bin Laden without trial, failed to shut down Gitmo, and continued the support of the fellow terrorist state of Israel. I do not say this because I do not like Barack Obama as he relates to other political candidates. I’m only pointing out the fact that any trust placed in the hands of a president of the United States of America is futile if not damaging.

I forget who said it, but there’s a quote that’s something along the lines of, “If voting made a difference it would be illegal.” And that’s true. The reality is, you do more good talking to that neighbor you’ve never talked to than you do standing in the voting booth. You do more good picking up trash along your street than you do signing a petition. You do more good physically handing your jacket to someone who’s cold than you do making a donation. The problem for most people is that none of these things immediately draw attention to you, nor do they allow you to sit comfortably and argue about things with your friends. These things don’t allow you to give responsibility to someone else for your actions nor to take credit for the actions of the one you voted for or campaigned for on your twitter or facebook page. They take endless amounts of dedication every day and an ability to affirm yourself when no one else is looking.

isaac

"I take no pleasure in the death of a wicked man" : a reflection on the murder of Osama bin Laden

2011-05-02T16:28:00.001-04:00

Today, while millions take pleasure in the death of a man they never knew, knowing only what he symbolized in their simple minds, the family members of those who have died as a result of Bush and Obama’s terrorism still live minus a father, a mother, a sister, a sister, a daughter, a son. No death has ever redeemed the sins of another, neither will this unnecessary loss of life.

The proof points in neither direction. If I were to take a stab at this situation what comes to mind is a scenario much different than the one the came seeping out of our president’s mouth last night. Bin Laden’s death has been rumored since 2002, and I would be very surprised, neigh, shocked, if his life was taken just last night. The politico’s sitting high up in the American Government have been holding on to this card for some time, if you’re’t’ask me. Obama has secured another term, where he will continue to go on masking the hate and fear he and every other president of this so-called nation have perpetuated throughout our world. The blood will continue to drip from his hands, as it drips from that hands of those who have pulled triggers or pushed bombs launching missiles to reap death and destruction on women children and men around the world, as it drips from the hands of all who put Obama into office, (to a lesser extent, so as not to offend those who voted for him despite warnings from me and a lot of others who have opted out of this pathetic excuse for a political process, tired of the tired rhetoric used to control the public, swaying them toward consumerism and greed as we all drift into a euphoric state of powerless ignorance and apathy) as it drips from any of our hands who have not taken steps to repair this broken world, to resist this government, to love instead of hate.

I’m not alone in my thoughts. Many others have said what I’m saying, yet those voices of hate will ring out much louder than ours as we mostly sit by feeling frustrated brooding and writing and so on.

Why can’t so many of us see it? The strings are being pulled right before our eyes. The powers that be stand in straight suits with white shiny smiles telling us—“All is well, just trust us, we’re taking care of things. See, this man who did these things is dead because we did not like him and the things he did. Neverind the fact that we previously supplied him with weapons and resources to fight our former enemies, the Russians. Nevermind the fact that our country is floundering. We’re in debt probably something like in the trillions of dollars—we’ll take care of it. We’ve spread war to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Palestine—we’re taking care of it. Nevermind the fact that our public school system is the worst its ever been, or the fact that our prison system is absolutely unjust and corrupted, or the fact that gas prices are skyrocketing, or the fact that the cycles of drug addiction and dealing are killing our citizens in outrageous numbers, or the fact that the relatively few corporations that control our country by exploiting the marginalized are fucking our economy and the economies around the world from behind, nevermind the fact that racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, and religious prejudice are infecting our national stomach from the inside out, or the fact that we spend more on our military than any other country in history, enough to end world hunger and economic poverty across the globeJust don’t think about any of that, goddammit, because we killed this guy and everything’s gonna be alright.”

They’ve all been saying it, every president in any of our lifetimes, and they’ll continue saying it.

And Mark Driscoll, my sworn enemy, that fuck, an antichrist, false prophet, has the gall to say the following “Finished long day of gospel preaching to hear the news that bin Laden is now dead…thank you Jesus for being his JUDGE” and “The cheering crowds remind us that justice is glorious & comes ultimately through Jesus cross or hell. Justice wins.” No! Mr. Driscoll, a resounding No! You are wrong, my fucked-up friend, you were not preaching the gospel but a false gospel of hate, judgment, murder, shame, and guilt. The very fact that you praise Jesus for the death of another human being means you have misunderstood Jesus’ gospel from beginning to end. If God is ever to judge a human being, you shall be first on the list, first to be leveled, first to reap the punishment of your sin as a symbol for Satan among us. The crowds you reference, Mr. Driscoll, remind me of the crowds calling for the blood of Jesus, a crowd that you surely would have been a part of had you been there on that day. Mr. Driscoll, it is you who will ultimately be responsible for the stream of steaming shit and hatred that comes pouring out of your mouth on a daily basis.

But Driscoll, too, is just a symbol and stands not alone as Christians across the world dance in the streets, spurred to euphoria by their own bloodlust, the very bloodlust that killed Christ.

Let us not forgot those who died alongside Osama yesterday, most notably the woman who was shot and killed by a coward after being used as a human shield at the hands of another coward. Let us not forget her or her family or friends. Surely her death is just as important as the death of Osama bin Laden. No, surely her death is more important than the death of Osama bin Laden, for first of all she was a human being full of life freedom and dignity, but also because her death now serves as a symbol to the ruined logic of humanity today, that we would shoot through an innocent woman to kill our enemies, that we would not only do this but say that it was an unfortunate necessity.

These are dark times, my friends, getting darker each day.

isaac

His God. His Sin. (draft)

2011-03-31T10:38:00.000-04:00

Sitting in class one day, a young man was asked to draw a picture of God. The idea was not to realistically conceive of an image of God, but to put down the first thing that came to mind when the one asking said the word “God.” The young man thought for a time before putting anything down. His classmates began to doodle little sketches of old men with white beards. Others drew popular images like a burning bush or a pillar of fire and smoke. Being who the young man was, he did not wish to put down images such as these, nor really any image at all, both because he could not conceive of any image he thought appropriate and because he thought the whole idea to be rather silly.

In an attempt to be clever, the young man drew a sort of stick figure, though this stick figure, because of how it was drawn, was quite obviously a woman. The young man sat back and smiled, thinking he’d cleverly won a little game inside his head, refusing to be trapped by rendering a stereotypical God.

The class continued on. His classmates held up their pictures and gave explanation for their pictures. Some of them had drawn abstract types of swirls and scribbles, often circular, with shading in some areas and other areas completely white.

The professor stood silently in front of the class. “This silly exercise proves an important point. What comes to mind when we think of God? Very often our thoughts go toward that which we understand as the ideal. Thinking of God often tells us more about our shortcomings and ourselves than it does God. We imagine that which we are not but wish we were, or perhaps what we wish we had. We are imperfect; God must be perfect. We are finite; God must be infinite. That is not to say that God is not all of these things. But I doubt very much that God is what we think of when we think of God.”

A great fear suddenly overcame the young man as he sat there adrift in thought. He looked down at his drawing—a woman. His god.

The professor went on. “It is not all that uncommon for people to talk about the idea of placing our faith in the wrong things. People worship money as a God, there’s surely no doubt about that. Yet I wonder if we don’t all, at times, worship a false God—the God we’ve created, if only subconsciously. We become so secure in our beliefs about who or what God is that we actually begin to believe in a God of our own creation, or worse, we begin to believe that we are God. If there is a cardinal sin, surely this is it.”

The young man reached for his paper and crumpled it up, quickly as if involuntary. He looked around at his classmates, most of whom had somewhat confused looks on their faces. He stuffed the paper into his bag, shaken and slightly disturbed to have been tricked into revealing his most inward wound, to come face to face with the truth of his sin.

isaac

Hell Becomes Heaven at the P.J.C.F.

2011-03-25T23:43:00.006-04:00

My Dad taught me a valuable lesson early on, which I think he learned from one of his professors at Winebrenner in Findlay. He said always write your theology in pencil, or some such thing. This here internet is probably the furthest thing there is from a pencil, but at least in terms of how I conceptualize my theological thoughts, they are always in pencil and subject to vast amounts of erasing. This is a very very brief outline of some major theological beliefs. This is by no means comprehensive--please understand that. I’ve been toying with the idea of writing some thoughts on theology so this is just sort of a survey of different things and by no means represents the whole of what I believe. I hardly cover anything that has to do with ethics or what I think it might mean to LIVE as a Christian until the very end and that topic warrants its own discussion all together. Also, I don’t give citations because this is not an academic piece, I also don’t directly quote from anyone. In general I’m heavily influenced by Soren Kierkegaard and my professors at Anderson University: Brian Barlow, Willard Reed, Fred Burnett, Marian Osborne Berky, Shane Kirkpatrick, and Merle Strege. Also Rudolf Bultmann, Karl Barth, Gerhard Ebeling, Paul Tillich and I should probably say Dostoevsky and hell even Henry Miller.

A note before I begin. I often tend to use very strong language. This is somewhat intentional but is in no way intended to but hurtful to those who hold the beliefs I cover (other than perhaps those who are called out by name). I discuss a great deal of theological beliefs (the nature of God, Scripture, Jesus, Sin, Salvation, Heaven, Hell, etc) in this little essay or whatever you might call it. I argue against just about every possible belief there is at one time or another, many of which are held by people very close to me. I want it to be very clear from the get go that I have nothing but respect for these people and I am in no way attempting to attack individuals (except, as I said, those mentioned by name). This is an attempt to work out my own theology. If you are worried that what I write may offend you to the point of being upset with me, please do not continue to read this. I post these things because I think they can be beneficial for some people. I am not writing this to get into an argument or to tear down beliefs, except perhaps those that I think are damaging. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. Also I didn't proofread before I posted.

What follows are the lowly words of an often bitter young man. I’ve been left out of many a conversation for my inability to stay within the lines of what passes for acceptable or comfortable speech. I’ve attempted to write these words a number of times but quit mid-sentence for a variety of reasons. It’s too offensive, too disorganized, or simply un-important. I’m not an expert of theology, nor all that well-educated on the subject, yet I throw my thoughts into the tired discussion that swarms around the cesspool passing as Christianity these days. I thought about writing this as an open letter to Mark Driscoll et al, but decided not to, both because no one outside of my circle of friends will ever read it, and because none of those it would’ve been addressed to deserve a letter from me or anyone else.

I first caught wind of what will forever be referred to as the “Rob Bell Controversy” almost a month after it began. I’m not surprised the discussion is still going on, tired though it may be (and the book’s not even out yet!). At first I was merely curious, not realizing the immensity of the discussion. “Interesting,” I thought, “Bell’s actually coming around.” Nothing he was saying seemed all that shocking to me. Universalism isn’t quite the buzzword it used to be, at least not amongst anyone I’m usually around, and certainly not in any of my classes at the University outside of freshman year, when it was all we talked about. Curious as I was, I went from article to article, interview to interview, until it became quite apparent that most of the so-called Christian celebrity elite had turned their backs on that cool pastor from Wheaton.

The criticism ranged from the well-meaning worriers to those who seemed to be spoken with foam dripping at the mouth. Others like the aforementioned Driscoll neo-reformed what have you and Co. responded with such bastardly smugness that I was ready to send them to that fiery pit of despair I don’t even believe in anymore. I think it was Brian McLaren, who’s pretty much said everything Bell’s saying already, who said that maybe only the Universalists will go to heaven (something like that), whereas I was thinking maybe only the people who believe in hell will go to hell.

The most striking thing to me is the absolute certainty of those lashing out at Bell (who, by the way, is still conservative for the most part). Driscoll and Co. speak as if the puppets of God, barking out doctrine and dogma like the automatons they are. I don’t believe any of them have fully wrestled with what it means to be a Christian.

This whole ordeal is really the symptom of a much larger issue. What we are witnessing is the first crack in the eventual shattering of American Evangelicalism/Fundamentalism (primarily as it has existed in the latter half of the 20th Century). To call both myself and someone like Driscoll a Christian is to make an illogical statement.

Before I get into individual topics, I think it’s beneficial to say that I believe orthodoxy is a myth. There is a great deal of research out there to support this claim, as it seems very likely that there has never been ONE dominant view of anything when it comes to Christianity. Arguably, many of the beliefs that have come to be understood as Orthodox are understood as such because those who were in power believed them to be true.

We’ll begin with God. I can say with a good deal of certainty that when I utter the word “God” I mean something vastly different than most individuals who utter the word. In fact, it is reasonable to think that almost every single person has a slightly nuanced definition for such a mighty word. Unlike most Christians I do not believe in God as “a being” who “exists” (as defined by time and space) “out there” in some other-worldly place called Heaven. I would also argue, as many do, that this understanding of God as a male-like figure who exists as a being in some other worldly place who chooses to do certain things on the earth, is no more “Biblical” than any other conception of God. There is no one single Biblical concept of God. The “character” God changes almost form book to book in the Hebrew Scriptures. It is only recently (relatively) that we’ve had so many hang-ups about this.

If one were to ask me exactly what I mean when I say the word “God” I would not have an answer, because I simply do not know, nor will I ever claim to know exactly what I mean. I will also never claim that any understanding of “God” that I might have will ever actually be God. I believe God to be love, an action, I believe God is surprising and found in the lowliest places of this our human existence. I believe God confronts us in the Other and sometimes within ourselves as we come to understand ourselves. I don’t believe God can ever be “reached” so to speak through any type of rational thinking or logic, nor any system of thought, etc. Yet God confronts us in certain moments. For one to claim objective certainty, to claim to objectively know what God is and that God exists, rules out any chance of inwardly, subjectively, believing in who God is.

What of Scripture? Clearly there is some disconnect in how Christians across the globe interpret scripture. Almost all at one point or another refer to Scripture as “The Word of God.” What exactly does this mean? Some go so far as to say that God (that white and wooly bearded man up in that other-worldly sky) reached down his heavenly hand and actually grabbed hold of the one’s writing the words. Others believed God spoke, literally and audibly, the words and the writers took simple dictation. Some believe God took possession of their minds, like, and did all the work through them. Any way you look at it most believe God had something to do with what’s in that book. Because of this, you get a hostfull of ways of looking at them words. Some think every single word should be taken literally, every dot and tittle, as they say. Others say well it’s not all literal but it’s all “true” and we can’t just go around throwing things out we don’t like and making it “say what we want it to say.” So you get those neo-reformers and them fundamentalists saying things like women shouldn’t be pastors and more they should always submit to men, especially the married ones. They say things like homosexuals are gonna burn for eternity in that hell of theirs and that Jesus’s gonna come back one day and cause a big shitstorm of righteous fury fighting the devil and some guys on horses and dragons and so on.

So what do I think of Scripture? What do I mean when I say “Word of God?” To answer that question I have to go back to the first question, which is God. The word “word” is really only one aspect of what it means to say a word. For example, I am wearing shoes. The word “shoe” is not a shoe. The word “shoe” is the name of a shoe, but real “shoe-ness” so to speak, is only demonstrated in putting on a shoe and walking around in it, and looking at it, and smelling it, and so on. So it is with God. The word “God” is not God. God is experienced, so to speak, and so the “Word of God” is how we experience this. So I could say for instance that I see the Word of God when I look into the eyes of that girl I love. Or I might read the Word of God in many of the speeches and writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. Or I could say I feel the Word of God when I walk out into the garage with cigarette and coffee and the sun comes out and warms my face. Or, often, I read the Word of God in the Bible in “Love your neighbor as yourself,” or in some of the stuff attributed to Paul and in most all the stuff they have Jesus saying in there. But I (specifically I) don’t read The Word of God in, let’s say, 2nd Timothy, for example, or in things like wives submit to your husbands. Those’re worldly words as far as I’m concerned, and I feel no obligation to have anything to do with them. I interpret most of the New Testament as a case study of how the teachings of Jesus were muddied up by institutionalization, which is both inevitable and dangerous. When whoever was wrote that women weren’t worth as much as men, they were getting it wrong cause they lost sight of Jesus, and I can learn from that, but I certainly don’t agree with it, and I don’t read it as The Word of God.

Which brings me to Jesus. What of Jesus? Many say he’s God, and the Son of God, and the Son of Man (somewhat specific Jewish titles). Some say Christ, Savior, Messiah, what have you. To some he’s both literally God in flesh and a man. Others say he’s fully Divine and fully human. They say he was literally born of a virgin named Mary (though this is not in all the gospels), that he taught some things, performed miracles, was killed by the Jews (not accurate) and was literally raised from the dead, went up into the clouds where heaven is, and will come down someday soon (though they’ve been saying soon since the day this all happened). They say he came to die for the sins of the world, and that if you “believe in him” (again, another intellectual idea, i.e. that salvation has to do with knowledge and or intellectual ascent to certain ideas) then you will get to go to heaven when you die and that if you don’t “believe” in him, you go to hell. This is really the crux of the whole Rob Bell debacle.

There are certainly a number of ways to look at Jesus. Historically, it is reasonable to think a few things. One, he is an historical person. This obviously cannot be proven beyond a doubt but there’s enough evidence to suggest he wasn’t made up. Two, he was Jewish and thus a relatively oppressed minority in the Roman Empire. Three, he was a sort of Pharisee in the sense that he held a job (carpentry) but also thought about and debated scripture. There is very little evidence to suggest that Jesus was technically a Rabbi, as some have suggested. Four, his teachings were unique for his time, though not all of them. One of the most unique teachings of Jesus was his understanding of the Kingdom of God. The predominant Jewish belief of his time, from what I can gather, was that God was distant from the Jewish people, and the only way to get close to God was through various rituals and a rather strict adherence to Jewish law. Jesus clearly went against this. He not only went against (or some would argue above) the Jewish law, but he claimed the Kingdom of God was within us, that God was here amongst the human beings, not “out there” in some other place. Because of this, Jesus went against the dominant belief in spiritual “cleanliness,” and chose to spend his time with societal outcasts, including prostitutes and revolutionaries (Zealots). I believe it’s important to understand that Jesus was criticized from all sides. He was (probably) not an advocate of violent revolution (though it’s very possible that some or many of his followers were). He did not seem to believe that the religious should be involved in the political structure (as were the Sadducees). He advocated love, tolerance, forgiveness, cultivation of relationships, self-sacrifice, etc. He also seemed to advocate a lifestyle that rejected worldly wealth (as seen in many of his teachings and his actions at the temple as well as his overall lifestyle), violence (love the enemy, turn the other cheek, live and die by sword, letting himself be crucified), prejudice, discrimination, and judgment (log in your own eye, etc). He had no home, in at least one instance he essentially ate stolen food (which he and his disciples grazed from the fields), and he was accused of being a drunkard.

(Jesus the man was a product of his time. I think it’s important to remember that Heaven and Hell are not Christian or even Jewish concepts. The pagans of Greece and Rome had concepts very similar to heaven and hell, and they had nothing to do with Jesus or God. The character Abraham as seen in Genesis had no concept of monotheism or an afterlife (thus the importance on having children as was how they understood the idea of “living on”). Plato and Socrates talk about places similar to heaven, and Hades was around before Christ. Because Christ lived at this time, he understood things in terms of a three-tier universe. Heaven was up, Hell was below, and the World was flat. Hopefully people don’t’ still believe this. I believe, because of the world being a sphere and the universe expanding, that there is no “real” up and down, though that’s an easier way to conceive of things being. For instance, “North” really becomes “South” if you go far enough).

It is unreasonable to believe that the Jews crucified Jesus. For one, Jews never practiced crucifixion, nor were they respected enough by the Romans to be listened to on such matters. Further, Jesus didn’t do or say anything that would have warranted execution from the Jews. Jesus was crucified, it seems, by the Romans. It’s important to note that crucifixion was specifically dished out to those who went against or were suspected to go against and or resist the Roman government. Crucifixion was an execution for political prisoners. Those thieves to the left and right of Christ would not have been ordinary burglars, but thieves for some political cause. This begs the question as to what Jesus meant when he called on us to take up our cross. Is this some call to action against the government? Probably not, but the questions should be considered.

I’ve discussed Jesus that man but what of Jesus the God-man. What would it mean for God, not the God of Driscoll et al, but what would it mean for my understanding of God, whatever that might be, to become a human being? It could not be understood historically or scientifically, nor would I ever attempt such an understanding. I do believe, somehow, beautifully, somehow like music, that Jesus was and is God. But I believe this belief is absurd and illogical and it must be. To make sense of it would be to deny it. Yet to attempt some other explanation as if Jesus was just some great man…this I can no longer do though I have tried. I believe Jesus was a man and I believe Jesus was and is God. This is a paradox. That’s all it is and everything it should be. It is beyond me or any of us to comprehend, though there are quiet moments where I truly believe it as surely as I believe anything else, even though it may fall away in the next moment, or the next 100 moments. It is not a belief in the sense of some intellectual undertaking, nor is it some overflow of emotion, it is the totality of experience within a moment, it is a leap across the chasm of all understanding. To believe it once is an accomplishment. Yet so many want to assume this as fact without any wrestling whatever. They assume it, presuppose it, and move on to doctrine and belief and baptism and they ruin it right then and there. To believe Jesus was and is God...

What does this get me? I have no theory of atonement, nor do I wish to have one. I believe Jesus was crucified for defying or potentially defying the Roman government. I don’t believe anything cosmic happened, that we’re “saved” so to speak, from some punishment in the afterlife. I think it’s a poetic thought, I think it is a meaningful idea to explore, there is beauty and wonder in that thought, the idea of Jesus’ everlasting and sacrificial love for every human being…but I refuse to believe in a God that requires blood for sin (which should make more sense considering some of my ideas concerning God).

What of Sin? Many who choose to take sides and draw lines say that any time we do something we’re not supposed to do we are committing a sin. When we break one of the Big Ten (not the conference), when we go against something Jesus talked about, etc etc. Many believe all of us were born into sin via their interpretation of Genesis early on, and that God holds us accountable for all of these sins until we give intellectual ascent to the idea that Jesus died for them. Essentially, many believe that God is up in heaven keeping a tally on every bad thing we do and every good thing we do (or every time we ask forgiveness for one of that bad ones) and that when we die we’d better have more good ones, or we’d better have asked forgiveness right before we died, or else it’s time to gnash teeth. It kind of depends, but some people think that no matter what bad things you might’ve done, as long as you’ve given intellectual ascent to the idea that Jesus died for your sins, then you’re safe. Others believe that if you do something bad, some individual insignificant little nothing, but you maybe forgot to say sorry to God about it, then it’s hell for you. Others believe you have to do good things to make up for the bad things, and still some others think you go to a place like purgatory and wait around until maybe other people have prayed for you or I don’t know maybe there’s work in purgatory and you can get out of it or something it’s all nonsense anyway.

In my opinion the first misstep is to think of Sin as Sins (with an added “s” on the second one). I don’t believe there are such things as sins. I think there are really awful things you can do to people, and to yourself, but that’s what they are, awful things you’ve done. It doesn’t make them good, it doesn’t mean they don’t matter, but I don’t think it has anything to do with Christianity, per se. Sin, I believe, is like a state of being. As that great Danish disciple once said, the opposite of sin isn’t virtue but faith. To live in Sin is to live in such a way that is opposed to who you were meant to be. Often times when one is living in Sin they do awful things to people, they might lie or objectify people or have sex before they’re married, but I don’t believe any of those things are in and of themselves “sinful” nor are they in and of themselves to be considered “sins.” However, I can imagine a scenario where it would be sinful of a person to lie to someone else. That being said, I can imagine many a situation where it would not be sinful to lie. Again, it’s about a state of being, which means the total person. So it makes no sense to say that a homosexual is living in sin by doing homosexual things with other homosexuals. In some way, I can imagine it being a sin for a homosexual to deny their homosexuality and try to be a heterosexual, in the same way that it would be sinful for a heterosexual to attempt to be a homosexual. And anyway, all of us at one time or another have lived in such a state, because I believe sinfulness is part of what it means to be a human. The wages of sin is death, or something like that, and I think that’s absolutely true. A person who refused to be the person they are supposed to be will essentially live a life of death. And in a literal sense, many people refuse to be themselves, and literally die because of the choices they make (addictions, etc etc etc). However, I also believe the Grace and Love of God overcomes that…I simply don’t think the crucifixion “accomplished” that for all time, though it was symbolic of that love.

So what of Salvation? This was somewhat touched on in the above paragraph. Many people see salvation as the opposite of what happens to the sinners. If they can give intellectual ascent to the idea of Jesus dying for their sins, then when they die they will go to heaven. This is the only way, according to many people, for anyone to go to Heaven, which is, for them, some place outside of our Universe (?) yet somehow still conceived of as having many of the same physical properties of our universe or our Earth even.

I believe Heaven and Hell should be understood as spiritual realities of our human existence. They exist within us and around us on a daily basis. Many people attempt to ignore hell on earth by never going to places that make them uncomfortable, even though these are they very places Jesus told us to find him. I experience Hell on earth when I get to know a stranger like a brother, and I sit and talk with him even though we come from completely different places. I find out about the hell of his childhood growing up in foster homes and never meeting his dad until he was 27. I hear about and have seen Hell as it exists in prisons all across the world. I experience Hell when my friend relapses back into a crippling addiction. There is a real hell for you, hopelessness, choosing addiction every day as opposed to choosing to be himself. Yet…yet…there are moments of Heaven. I experienced Heaven once, when, sitting across from a friend I had come to know while visiting the Juvenile prison in Pendleton…I was sitting there with him and I bought him something from the vending machine, some cinnamon role or some such thing, and this kid has had nothing his entire life, he’d been abused, sexually and physically, he’d never known his father, his mother died away from him while he was in prison, and he took the cinnamon role, a big bright beaming smile on his face and broke it in half saying, “You want some?” and I said, “Awww no you go ahead you can have it” me in my white honky well-meaning condescension you haven’t had anything so why should you give ME something? bullshit. And he looked at me and smiled again and said, “Let’s break bread” and I nearly wept, dammit. So we sat and had a more beautiful communion than they’ve ever seen at Rome. And for some twenty minutes the visitation room at the Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility in nowhere Indiana was transformed from its daily hellishness to some beautiful Heaven all the vending machines painted Gold. And God was there not some distant man figure but as the depth mystery that existed between us, and Jesus was there in the eyes of the one society had called prisoner, and the Word of God was spoken between us and felt within our hearts, and for maybe a second we were both Saved form this wretched world.

And if Mark Driscoll or whoever else wants to tell me that this kid and I are going to hell, then I can honestly say I don’t believe Mark Driscoll has ever experienced God or Jesus or salvation, and he’ll probably never experience Heaven either, though I would never claim to know such a thing.

isaac

Finding Meaning at the 29th Street Cafe

2011-03-12T22:23:00.002-05:00

We were sitting in the coffee shop, everyone sitting across the way each with there own perfect little coffee cup getting just the right mixture of cream (and sugar for some) with the tall red tinted glass of water half-full of ice and the little black hole ashtray center stage for all to share. I don’t remember who all was there that night, most importantly Miles, for he’ll be the only other so-called character of mine to show up in the story…which began as follows.

But before that, I should say: The last few weeks, or months really, I hadn’t been able to write much of anything save for sorts of love letters to Frankie away in Spain. It wasn’t that I wasn’t thinking of writing, that the mind was empty of thought, but nothing would come out.

Back to the point, which really isn’t a point at all—but that’s beside the point—that night began with a sort of thought meditation I had while sitting there in the coffee shop as often does happen when in these types of settings. Conversations passed back and forth from art to music to politics to television and so forth, and I began to get somewhat beside myself. Anyway the whole thing started with Kanye West and Charlie Sheen. So I thought:

One day in the future Kanye West will probably write a verse about Charlie Sheen, and the cool kids of tomorrow will reminisce about this specific pathetic little time in our history which they think is some time of unprecedented artistic achievement, and the whole world will roll on as it rolls, the sun of yesterday today and tomorrow rising and setting as it does, and no one will remember a thing. Art, I can hardly speak the word, will continue down the spiral as the kids rush into the streets for the make-up artists and costume designers, the paper thin model, collage-artists stringing together clichés and the sayings of others, the rich man in the shades who stands atop a stage saying empty words while the mass of tangled limbs beneath him gyrates to recycled rhythms from times past, all of em guzzling down alcohol to dilute their souls and numb their minds to the simple reality that they are sucking the life out of the universe itself. Our artists will not be forgotten, for there are none to speak of, this tired music, these tired books, and poems, and essays, what of it? Miller was right when he said we could put a stop to any further artistic development and live full and happy lives simply enjoying all that has been created before us.

Which seems true enough. But all that got me thinking about a lot of other things, which are somewhat sensitive to talk about because a lot of people I love are invested in these sorts of things, and hell so am I, but you can’t contain your own mind most of the time, so I started thinking to myself:

There will always be times of war, as they say, and each revolution will topple the one that came before, every generation thinking it’s the first and last, we will all bend toward the separation of our selves, most never moving beyond the idea of an idea, endlessly talking about what we’ll one day accomplish, the rights we’ll one day secure, our children’s children, smart-ass picket signs and the same worn out old tired sayings from the 60s dead-end generation of failures reducing King and X and whoever else to some sort of Community Organizers or some such post-hippy no-soul academics or politicos, listen, the day I’ll finally be able to…when everyone will be free too…is a day that will never come. Sadness will always fill our eyes at the loss of love or as we stare out into dark oceans or high atop the peaks of nowhere, where we’re all going one day, and the powers will always be unjust, planning secrets and pushing agendas on the least of these. There’ll always be more potholes on the West side of town, and there’ll be arguments upon arguments of justification for it until the ends of time. No office will save us, no speech will speak the words of redemption, whosoever pulleth the strings is damned from the beginning, but cast yer vote anyway and pretend to make a difference by letting someone else make your difference for you, just know that it ruined itself, as all our ideals come crashing down around us, and the so-called movements destroy the soul that first planted their seeds, the way environmentalism ruined itself, or socialism, or feminism, or any other -ism that never knew its own, that never cared to know its own but used the same tactics as its detractors and became the problem it created. God must be crying at the sight of it as we creatures run and scurry behind our fig leaves and illusions. But we generally turned our backs on God long ago, collectively speaking, crucifying Christ time and again in our everyday blasphemies and inability to see each other as human beings, I myself the prime example, as is evidenced in the above nonsense, yet why stop?

Suddenly Miles broke my brooding little reverie and, looking straight at me amidst the hearty conversation said simply, “Life is meaningless,” and I smiled and nodded, because I both agreed and disagreed wholeheartedly. “Every day,” he went on, “I try to do something that makes my life worth living. It hardly ever happens. The last truly meaningful thing I did was win the sectional wrestling tournament in 1998! Almost every night I pray to God to just end it all, to make it go away, to kill me right there in my sleep. Then I wake up in the morning, Oh no! I have to do it all over again.” And I thought about my day, my sleepy-eyed day of coffee in the morning driving toward the school to substitute teach little 4th grade angels sometimes devils just pounding it out through the day thinking, at least I’m getting paid, making my way home to slouch down eating cereal on the bed falling asleep till evening to go out and drink coffee (the one highlight and true meaningful moment being my conversation with Frankie) and I think maybe life is mostly meaningless…so I tell Miles and we get to talking about it but we eventually agree that maybe the only reason to live is for the hope that tomorrow will be that day—nah that’s not it—it’s meaningful, says Miles, because I say it’s meaningful. And I suppose that’s about as far as you can go, in the end, when you’ve asked most all the questions. Or better, it isn’t meaningful because I say it’s meaningful or because I think it is or because I know it is or hope it is but simply because I believe it is, and that’s that, that’s all there is and all there ever will be, a belief that something is so as opposed to not being so. Perhaps I am wrong about that and everything else, perhaps they will win in the end, all those that claim to know what is and isn’t, but they too will one day fall and all their knowledge will not save them in their quiet last moments. But in my final moments I will be able to say I had a meaningful moment that night in the 29th Street Café, because I believe I'm in love with a girl in Spain. That I believe I love and am loved all those around me. That there is no search beyond that, one mustn't travel away from the ones they love to accomplish some feat, and no degree is required, nor any sum of money, nor any other validation from anything the world has to offer.

isaac

A Damn Good Day

2011-03-07T22:35:00.006-05:00

We were sitting downstairs in the campus coffee shop, Saul and I, like we always did in those days, when we were both much younger (though it was only about a year ago). Thinking back on things I don't remember exactly what he and I were discussing, though I could probably make a good guess. Saul and I covered a wide range of topics in those days, traveling through the starry space of our theological universe, branching off on shooting stars sometimes or often covering issues of race, obsessing over that certain picture of Huey Newton standing there black and beautiful holding Highway 61, the sun coming through the window accenting the muscles as if carved by God into his skin, the books and magazines scattered about the room behind him--some force of nature, looking as if a mythological God himself of the United States of America.

Saul and I talked about more than just those things though. Often times, especially in those days, we'd get onto the topic of girls, specifically girls that I might be interested in, as I think Saul always saw himself a type of matchmaker for me and if I'm honest he was usually right. At that time in our lives Saul and I were drawn to trouble in some way we couldn't describe, but it was more than that. It wasn't the idea of getting into trouble, it was the idea of somehow achieving greatness as we saw it in whatever our surrounding was going to be, without compromise, and it just so happened we were going to Anderson University at that time, and so we set out to change our own little world and in some way I think we do. I say all of that to say this: we talked more about life, women and relationships and sexual things and what-does-it-all-come-to, and things of the soul though not necessarily things of the supernatural, than we really did anything else. I think even when we were talking about politics or so-called social issues, which, don't get me wrong, we discussed them a lot. But we didn't discuss them as things of this world but as transcendent sorts of things. Everything was discussed in reference to how it affected our total beings, for all of eternity, for the whole world to see. In our own way we were under a great deal of stress, and to combat that stress, we told an awful lot of dirty and inappropriate jokes, and we talked a lot about who I should ask on dates.

I remember this specific day perfectly, at least the image of it. We were sitting near the back of the room, near the stage, on a couple of couches. Saul was sitting opposite me, facing the stage, whereas I was sitting facing the rest of the coffee shop, specifically setting my gaze on a certain girl named Frankie who had recently caught my attention. "You should ask her out," he said. "I will, I will, Saul. Don't worry about me. I gotta get a feel for her first though. My guess is she's going to be at the next meeting to discuss the homosexuality forum. I'll ask her then." -- "I don't buy it," he said, staring right into me, knowing me more than I knew myself, "You're either gonna ask her out right now or you're not going to at all." -- "You don't understand, Saul. You're always telling me I should ask out these girls I've never even talked to, and I'm telling you things just don't work that way around here. And even if they did, I'm not the guy to do it. I don't know what I'd say. There's no use." -- "Sure there is! You asked out what's-her-face that worked at the Nurse's office" -- "She said no!" -- "I know she did, but you asked her and right afterward you said it wasn't that bad. You said it was like conquering a fear. If I remember correctly you were pretty happy about it right after it happened." -- "Of course I was then but you should know me enough by now to know that I was full of shit when I said all of that stuff about conquering my fears. I'm scared to death to go over there and ask her out out of the blue. Hell I don't know anything about her except her name's Frankie and I think she once dated a football player" -- "Bullshit. She's been coming to the meetings lately and she's actually got intelligent things to say. I hate to break it to you, Isaac, but from the way things are looking with her, she fits pretty much every one of your very strict criterion." I said nothing, we both laughed and shook our heads. "Here's what's gonna happen," he continued, "I'm gonna walk outta here right now. Then you're gonna get off your ass and go talk to her." -- "Saul, please, come on man don't do that. Come on don't get up, where are you going? Oh okay I see how it is, just leave me, fine, okay, yeah bye. Asshole."

I sat there alone. Saul waved at Frankie as he passed her table. I gathered my thoughts. Okay bud, it's now or never. You can do this. It's 2010, this is your year. First things first, ask her if you can sit down. Right, sit down, that's simple enough. No, wait. First make sure she knows who you are--damn it you know she knows who you are just like you know who she is. Okay, just say hello. Hello, that's not too bad. How's it going, that works. Okay ask her that first then ask to sit down. Just be casual, see if she'd like to get coffee. There's nothing threatening about coffee. And anyway you ran for Student Body president and lost in a close race, you're an interesting guy. Aw who are you kidding bud? You didn't do shit and no one knows who the hell you are or how interesting you are. Either way, what's she gonna do, say no? Psh...what's it to you? You'll find someone else. What's your problem, you're ruining it before you even go talk to her. Just quit being an idiot, stand up, grow a pair, and walk over there!

I stood up and began to walk over. Saul was standing in the doorway behind Frankie so she couldn't see him. He laughed at me, though I have to say I was happy he was there, and never would have done it without him. I walked up to her table where she was sitting with headphones in probably listening to some kind of beautiful music and studying her Spanish or Literature homework, sitting there in her little world of Frankie, a world I would one day enter though at the time was completely unaware. I caught a simple glance at her the moment before the words came out of my mouth. Now looking back, thinking, here sits the girl of your dreams existing here in her last moment before knowing you...and there you stand, existing in your last moment without knowing her. You were inches apart, about to collide in some strange way that neither of you will ever understand except to call it love.

"Hey, Frankie, hey, what's up?" I stuttered
"Hey Isaac, what's up?"
"Oh not much how are you?"
"I'm doing pretty good, just workin on some homework."
Saul was now visibly laughing at me.
"Do you mind if I sit down?"
"Not at all," she said, probably smiling. Her face was red now, a moment like this a girl pretty much knows what's coming. Maybe not exactly what she's in for, but something is definitely about to happen, and the heat grows, the heart pounds, and we're all breathing in and out.
"Well, basically, I was just wondering if you'd be interested in getting coffee sometime..."
"Yeah, definitely, when were you thinkin?"
"Oh I don't know, it doesn't matter to me. Is there a good time for you?"
"Not really, I mean anytime is good."
"Yeah me too...you decide."
"No, honestly, I'm free whenever, it's up to you."
I'm really terrible at making decisions."
"So am I."
"Are you free tonight?"
"Yes"
"Okay, well how about I just give you a call later and we'll figure out where to go. That work?"
"Yeah that'd be great."
"Sounds good. Well I'll give you a call sometime tonight then."

We said our little pleasant goodbyes and exchanged phone numbers. Looking back now I don't think we went out that night. I distinctly remember her looking through a planner at one point, maybe we went out a couple days later but that's beside the point.

I walked out into the hall, Saul was beaming with curiosity, "What happened, man?" -- "Ha!," I shoved him, "I got a date" -- "See how ridiculous you are, man? I told you she'd say yes. You always doubt me and I'm always right." -- "I know, I know, you were right. You're always right, Saul."

Things went so well for about a month until I ruined them thinking about my ex girlfriend at the time. After Frankie and I broke up then I went through probably some of the darkest days I've ever been through. I made a lot of mistakes, I gained and pretty much lost a very good friend and almost ruined something really good in the process. Anyway, despite all odds I came back around and Frankie and I are together again, though the whole process was pretty absurd. I'm sure I'll write about it one day in the future. But what I've just described here, that day in the coffee shop with Saul, really talking to Frankie for the first time...it was just a good day, a damn good day, and I wouldn't change it for anything. That's all.

isaac

Salamanca

2011-03-04T00:06:00.002-05:00

I once spent six days in heaven. I’d awake in some haze with no conception of the time of day nor any understanding of where I was. I was everywhere and nowhere at the same time, a part of earth and yet my feet barely touched the ground at all. The first day was the strangest of them all, opening my eyes blurred vision in a tangle of sheets, the sun coming through the window, the fourth floor of what they called The Hotel Don Juan, though I knew it as the Seventh Level of Paradise. Frankie was already off to class so I stretched every limb as far as it’d go, covering the entirety of the two twin beds we’d pushed together to make one queen or king sized bed with an uncomfortable crack down the middle. After the obligatory scratch and yawn here and there, I’d go over and open up the window, light a cigarette and stand there looking out over the rooftops, some strange land I’d never imagined being in, the sounds and the traffic the same as any other city yet somehow different because this was Europe and further in was Spain, adding a certain flair to it all that I’d never known before and still can’t put my finger on. I’d look over to the bell-tower across the way and study the storks that’d nested up near the top, listening to their strange sounds, clapping together their beaks and probably laughing and singing in their storkish ways.

Frankie’d come back around two or two thirty, each time as if I was seeing her for the first time, neither of us being able to comprehend the immensity of it nor the fact that I’d come all this way, that we were together in some place other than Anderson, or that we were together at all really after everything that’d happened to the both of us. We’d fall into bed just to stare at one another, hoping to slow down time so as to avoid the fact that I’d have to leave back to the States and we’d be apart for another month or so.

But after awhile we’d go out into the streets, arm in arm, to track down some café con leche, not eating lunch until almost three o’clock or later, as is Spanish custom, supposedly. The whole thing was and still is like some dream of coffee and cigarettes and food, stranger’s faces speaking a stranger language, as if Frankie and I had discovered something real, or perhaps the only thing that truly is real. The food was always of the highest quality and everything came with wine and dessert. Money was of no concern. It was a dream in which everything that I wished to happen was right at my fingertips. All I had to do was imagine it and there it was, her most of all.

Each morning I would wake up expecting to snap out of the dream, and each morning I was pleasantly surprised to find myself still floating amongst the clouds. The weekends presented even greater joys as I awoke to her beautiful face next to mine. There was no need to change a thing, no obligations for which to sacrifice our time together, no meetings, no appointments, no friends, no phones, no e-mails. We were free, in those six days, to live outside of any constraints society puts on normal individuals. It was privileged, yes, to the highest degree, but I accepted it without guilt. We’d endured a good month and a half without each other and felt no need to waste time feeling bad about enjoying our time together.

One morning after eating breakfast with Frankie, I went back up to the room while she went to class. I feel back to sleep and awoke to a nock on the door again not knowing what time it was, nor did I have any familiar feeling of what time it could possibly be. The whole feeling was absolutely foreign, as if being lost in space for years, having no idea what day or year it is, only to find out its been a couple of hours.

I scrambled out of the bed for the door, hoping it was Frankie returning from classes. It was the maid. She said something in Spanish. I grasped for at least one word but found nothing. I nodded, smiled, “Si.” She looked at me and began to talk again, repeating the same sounds. “No hablo espanol,” I mumbled, confusedly. Again she spoke, this time I opened the door wider and motioned her to come in.

She began cleaning straight away. Because I knew no way of talking to her I too began to pick up around the room, folding my clothes and straightening my books, emptying the ashtray, collecting change from around the room. I’ve always felt uncomfortable with the idea of another person picking up after me, though my parents did it for years. I went into the bathroom to move around the soaps and a comb, back into the main room to pull things out of place just to put them back. I stood in the doorway to the bathroom, looking off into nowhere. “Bano,” she said, pointing to me. “Ah, si si, “ I responded, moving so she could get in. I picked up a towel and began to fold it, “Ah,” she said with a smile, taking it from me and putting it with the rest of the dirty things.

This is a strange feeling, knowing that there stands another human being with which there are an infinite number of commonalities, feelings, desires, fears, and dreams, yet I stood dumbstruck at the gap between us, humiliated at the disorganized state of the room and my ignorance of the Spanish language, wanting only to communicate to her: “My dear woman, there is no need to worry yourself with these things. We will have the place spotless by the time we leave. Instead, take this time to relax, or better, let me come to your place and pick up your things for a change as I’m sure you could use a much needed rest.” Yet I could only sit dumb on the bed that she’d just made and stare blankly at the TV, which was showing a Spanish-dubbed version of Family Matters that I did not understand at all.

Frankie eventually came to my rescue, though after the Maid had already left. Each morning was as if the first and last morning, each afternoon as if the first and last afternoon, and each night as if the first and last night of my life. Yet as the days died it become painfully obvious that I’d have to leave, that we’d wake up from the heavenly dream and return to life apart. We left that last Tuesday morning at 5 AM, silently walking to the taxi. For the ten-minute ride to the train station we said hardly a word. We got out, hugged and kissed and said our goodbyes. I remember it now so vividly, the shock of saying goodbye again after just arriving. The next 24 hours of travel were some of loneliest hours of my life, and I’ve been pretty lonely before, actually shedding tears aboard Delta flight 127 from Madrid to New York (JFK) while staring down at a chocolate chip cookie dramatically wondering what’s the point in eating dessert anymore?

isaac

the knowledge of good and evil (draft)

2011-02-28T00:16:00.000-05:00

the knowledge of good and evil
dangling in a tree
the wily slithering scapegoat
demonized for all eternity

one reads of
lust and murder
guilt shame and fear
the beginning of the end

one can see
the separation
of sinful man
and jealous god

but I don’t read it that way

instead I see
the beauty and
the pain
of daily decisions

we did not fall in the garden
but became ourselves
a bridge between
this world and the next
it reads that
we became like the gods
no longer free
of responsibility
of pain
of regret
of shame
yet now free
to choose to live
to choose to lament
to choose to laugh
to choose to love

we are forced into life
yet once here we are
guaranteed nothing
but dazzling possibilities
and mystifying consequences

isaac

Untitled and Unfinished Poem

2011-02-27T00:12:00.001-05:00

sat crying aloud
into open palms,
knees to the floor,
heart and hands to heaven,
the tree of good and evil
veiled beneath my wings.
no sound escapes as
silent screams exit wounds
head to foot.
sound could not contain
helpless pain bound
by time
to love
to hate
in the same shattered moment.
I’d fallen onto the floor
grasping at the roots
of understanding itself.
the sun peering through
window beating down at me,
nature’s cruelty reminding
me of
all is lost and meaningless.

now not a moment goes by without her
always at the
tips of my fingers,
framed by tree and sky
before my eyes,
sight and sound emanating
from her love
colors, vibrant,
set against the dull gray of loneliness.
all the world revolves around her,
or should anyway.
the spring birds sing her song
and the sun's rays shine
from the light in her eyes.

isaac

When I Can't Write

2011-02-04T23:39:00.001-05:00

When I can’t write
I write anyway
hoping that at any moment
that which will not speak
will suddenly speak.

Every night it doesn’t happen
I’m afraid it’s all over
that it’s all been a waste of time
all dried up.
Failure.
Embarrassment.

But sometime down the line
the fire always burns again
and the voice won’t be silenced.
But that’s not tonight.

isaac

All Creation Is Our Range

2011-01-30T00:37:00.003-05:00

My favorite passage for the second year in a row to commemorate the day life ended and began again:

And so the analyst says "Adapt yourself!" He does not mean, as some wish to think--adapt yourself to this rotten state of affairs! He means: adapt yourself in life! Become an adept! That is the highest adjustment--to make oneself an adept.

The delicate flowers are the first to perish in a storm; the giant is laid low by a slingshot. For every height that is gained new and more baffling dangers menace us. The coward is often buried beneath the very wall against which he huddled in fear and anguish. The finest coat of mail can be penetrated by a skillful thrust. The greatest armadas are eventually sunk; Maginot lines are always circumvented. The Trojan horse is always waiting to be trotted out. Where then does security lie? What protection can you invent that has not already been thought of? It is hopeless to think of security: there is none. The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.

In the insect world is where we see the defense system par excellence. In the gregarious life of the animal world we see another kind of defense system. By comparison the human being seems a helpless creature. In the sense that he lives a more exposed life he is. But this ability to expose himself to every risk is precisely his strength. A god would have no recognizable defense whatever. He would be one with life, moving in all dimensions freely.

Fear, hydra-headed fear, which is rampant in all of us, is a hang-over from lower forms of life. We are straddling two worlds, the one from which we have emerged and the one towards which we are heading. That is the deepest meaning of the word "human," that we are a link, a bridge, a promise. It is in us that the life process is being carried to fulfillment. We have a tremendous responsibility, and it is the gravity that which awakens our fears. We know that if we do not move forward, if we do not realize our potential being, we shall relapse, sputter out, and drag the world down with us. We carry Heaven and Hell within us; we are the cosmogonic builders. We have choice--and all creation is our range.

For some it is a terrifying prospect. It would be better, think they, if Heaven were above and Hell below--anywhere outside, but not within. But that comfort has been knocked from under us. There are no places to go to, either for reward or punishment. The place is always here and now, in your own person and according to your own fancy. They world is exactly what you picture it to be, always, every instant. It is impossible to shift the scenery about and pretend that you will enjoy another, a different act. The setting is permanent, changing with he mind and heart, not according to the dictates of an invisible stage director. You are the author, director and actor all in one: the drama is always going to be your own life, not someone else's. A beautiful, terrible, ineluctable drama, like a suit made of your own skin. Would you want it otherwise? Could you invent a better drama?

Lie down, then, on the soft couch which the analyst provides, and try to think up something different. The analyst has endless time and patience; every minute you detain him means money in his pocket. He is like God, in a sense--the God of your own creation. Whether you whine, howl, beg, weep, implore, cajole, pray or curse--he listens. He is just a big ear minus a sympathetic nervous system. He is impervious to everything but truth. If you think it pays to fool him then fool him. Who will be the loser? If you think he can help you, and not yourself, then stick to him until you rot. He has nothing to lose. But if your realize that he is not a god but a human being like yourself, with worries, defects, ambitions, frailties, that he is not the repository of an all-encompassing wisdom but a wanderer, like yourself, along the path, perhaps you will cease pouring it out like a sewer, however melodious and sing with your own God-given voice. To confess, to whine, to complain, to commiserate, always demands a toll. To sing it doesn't cost you a penny. Not only does it cost nothing--you actually enrich others. Sing the praises of the Lord, it is enjoined. Aye, sing out! Sing out, O Master-builder! Sing out, glad warrior! But, you quibble, how can I sing when the world is crumbling, when all about me is bathed in blood and tears? Do you realize that the martyrs sang when they were being burned at the stake? They saw nothing crumbling, they heard no shrieks of pain. They sang because they were full of faith. Who can demolish faith? Who can wipe out joy? Men have tried, in every age. But they have not succeeded. Joy and faith are inherent in the universe. In growth there is pain and struggle; in accomplishment there is joy and exuberance; in fulfillment there is peace and serenity. Between the planes and spheres of existence, terrestrial and superterrestrial, there are ladders and lattices. Thee one who mounts sings. He is made drunk and exalted by unfolding vistas. He ascends sure-footedly, thinking not of what lies below, should he slip and lose his grasp, but of what lies ahead. Everything lies ahead. The way is endless, and the farther one reaches the more the road opens up. The bogs and quagmires, the marshes and sinkholes, the pits and snares, are all in the mind. They lurk in waiting, ready to swallow one up the moment one ceases to advance. The phantasmal world is the world which has not been fully conquered over. It is the world of the past, never of the future. To move forward clinging to the past is like dragging a ball and chain. The prisoner is not the one who has committed a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over. We are all guilty of crime, the great crime of not living life to the full. But we are all potentially free. We can stop thinking of what we have failed to do and do whatever lies within our power. What these powers that are in us may be no one has truly dared to imagine. That they are infinite we will realize the day we admit to ourselves that imagination is everything. Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything God-like about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.

isaac

Excerpt from Henry Miller's "Sexus," Grove Press, 1965, pgs. 339-341

The Real Issue(s)

2011-01-21T10:54:00.005-05:00

I don't do this very much, but I thought this was a very well-written and timely article on the current state of the U.S. as related to the words of Dr. King.

The Real Issue to be Faced by Paul Street

isaac

Childhood

2011-01-13T00:24:00.002-05:00

I used to be a little boy who often would cross his legs in front while standing, spending every lazy no-school afternoon in living room on soft brown carpet alone creating an imaginary reality, standing on couch corner fighting imaginary villains of darkness, chest-puffed out, a green hat atop my head with one hand on heart the other with dagger raised faithfully to the air: “Who am I, Captain Hook? I’m youth, I’m joy, I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg!” swoosh-swash! goes the dagger and I’d leap and tumble to the floor—God was the open blue sky, a cardboard box, a hug from mom and dad, and my dog Charlie, who often buried holes in the backyard, the deeper the cooler, so as to sit in while heat sweltered on unendingly—as a boy amongst others, I often retreated somewhere within myself, encountering, perhaps for the first time, My Creator—see how they run with such confidence, see how they don’t miss their mothers while at school, and in those moments the pain of shy childhood choked up childlike tears, at a young age wondering, "Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos,” essentially thinking that anyway, perhaps reading that Schultz quote at a young age or else it was implanted within me by God as it is implanted in every child at one point or another, the unending questioning of pain and sorrow—why does it have to hurt so? why do we have to leave home? why can’t I just stay home all day with you? why do we need to work and toil when all we have is provided for us right here?—but the wee little birds are thrown tossed from the nest and forced to fly or else die flightless struggle on the floor, eaten probably by cats or dogs or slow painful starving death by insects—even then wondering what is this world we live in where things have to die, where we leave the ones we love either by distance or death?

Now twenty-two years old I often cross my legs in front while standing, every day spending time staring off into either blue sky or golden sunset or unpaintable nightsky and wondering what is this world we live in where things have to die, where we leave the ones we love either by distance or death and why are there people sleeping outside rejected in the cold and others sleeping warmly safely a’sound and why doesn’t anyone feel responsible for the troubles we all endure? why must we worry work and toil when all we have surrounds us and cannot be built or bought but only destroyed by our own selfish hands and mouths? –yet also every day now closing eyes so as to focus on deep breaths, whereupon I find myself with her maybe in some citystreets of Spain or else here in Anderson maybe just falling asleep in my cozy room still no door but just handmade blanket tacked up in the doorframe, drifting away down the endless river—and I think of soon newborn baby to enter our world, the first to do so, this world the five of us (grand) mother (grand) father (mother) sister and (father) brother-and-law and me (uncle) brother, and the swirls of surrounding family and friends, wonder perhaps if newborn baby will ever one day wonder about this our world, that holds all within it, the fresh spring of life and the dark separation of death, the bright face of an eternal flower, golden-haired angels from Indiana, hoping that one day this about-to-be newborn might one day get to see my golden-haired guardian angel, newborn baby wide-eyed open staring into loving gaze of strong mother and father who’ll raise her right and true and strong and beautiful.

As a teenager I would often go out with my best friend to drive down hidden roads of the inky black Indiana countryside, where we’d drive for what was like hours at a time, going nowhere in circles—eventually we’d pull of to the side of the road, getting out standing in the fall wind, the brisk breeze brushing against our blushing cheeks, wind in our hair, climbing up onto the roof of my nothing old maroon car, sometimes and in those moments-(sometimes I’d go alone)-we’d stand there together though individually, and pulling from somewhere deep within us we’d let out some holy cry and roar release, casting out the demons of our loneliness, casting out the demons of our fear and insecurity, and standing there above the earth we became sorts of adults in our own way, which was to grow with age, unavoidable, and to grow in character and maturity, but never to let go of the imaginative force that drove us to, or me personally, to create my own world of cardboard boxes and cartoon characters—later on in life, in college, often at parties sometimes drunken parties Lou and I (Lou being this great friend of mine though this name is made up) would see each other across a room whilst everyone else was complete mad in escapist drunkanism, and we’d look there one at the other and maybe nod or smirk or shrug our shoulders both of us sober in those moments imagining ourselves atop our cars out in the Midwestern Desert (country roads) where we made our subconscious oath to never grow up the way the world ever wanted us to, and we haven’t.

What brought on all this sentimental remembering? It was her picture of her of course! –sitting at the corner of my desk her dark angel eyes and seraphic smile calling forth everything from within me, her stare bringing out my soul, lovingly forcing me to look back over all my time spent here and reconfigure it as it relates to who she is now in my life, all of it making me who I am, her becoming more of me as I become more of her, over time, though in a way occurring instantly—the heavens have blessed our unity.

isaac

Staring Into The Face Of God

2011-01-11T00:28:00.001-05:00

I stood outside in the garage cold hands in pockets my head turned upward toward the darkened sky. Just arriving home from Denver, though home feels some thousand miles away currently asleep probably six hours ahead of time nestled in Spanish sheets under Spanish moon—she won’t be coming here tonight, nor the next night, nor many nights after that, the reality of it sinking deep within the recesses of my being, located somewhere within my midsection, hidden in the blood and guts of longing in love. I stand alone, alone-alone, sending heart-signals to heaven some beacon of light to bounce of sky-ceiling to descend down into her, comfort, confidence, understanding, happiness, etc only 79 more days of melancholy misery, though not really misery, attempting to enjoy one’s time apart but always wondering the necessity of why? Nighttime the worst, imagining all things soft and warm now alone against the cold, the coldness of reality, the coldness of apartness wondering what are they doing today hoping beyond all that everything is okay that everyone is safe that no one forgets who they are forgets the warmth forgets the touch and scent and sight of it, the beauty of it, of being together, being togetherness.

(I stare at her picture, newly framed and at the corner of my desk—though this frame is not new, once containing a picture that for the longest time brought tears to my eyes, a photograph representing a time that seems now alien to me, when I was someone else, a foreigner of the present—today it contains golden joy radiating from her face beyond my comprehension—which is who she is, thinking back to our beginning (and second beginning) simultaneously the two of us reaching down and up to one another, finding ourselves within ourselves and the other, she walks the line between our reality and some world beyond the reaches of my creative ability to construct—words will not do—she is not of the world that I inhabit, but of one above, though she has, for whatever reason, decided to open my eyes to the universe she exists within).

Closing my eyes I imagined some day soon, in some eighty days or so, when we'll be together again, and I'll scoop her up into my arms and we'll forget everything for days, escaping into one another's skin while the sun sets high up, trading places with the moon and the stars, and for days and nights we'll be there two as one in the same, as some unnamable force of feeling passes between us, something neither her nor I can fully comprehend except when acting it out with one another between sheets, or holding hands, or riding in truck or jeep together, frozen in time, frozen in love...until then, the bitter sweet pain of life lived apart, though still together when I see her in the sight of the sun’s rays, feeling her breath like the breath of God the wind, and anyway all is not as it seems, this distance non-existent, as is time a fiction, so it is. She stares with the eyes of an angel through a picture frame, that which gives me hope in these my dark days without her. I have but to close my eyes and imagine her soft face and the whole world smiles, I have but to remember a single moment spent with her and all of life shines before me, my guiding light, my source of strength, and the breath that fills my lungs—forget that this all sounds so sappy for a second, and just accept, as I try to accept, the true nature of what it might actually mean to love another individual. How, amidst this type of love, do we ever worry or fear? One day far from now in some unknowable future the likes of which even the most imaginative artist could not foresee, I will look back on this life, this life, which has more in front of it than behind, it will rise above me like a great wave and I will notice two distinct times, that is, the time before and the time after, all previous distinctions which I held to be true will be erased, before it all I will be brought to my knees as the ability to outwardly communicate the purity of our own inwardness will fail me. To reach the precipice of our human speech is to stare into the face of God, one must either bow down or else retreat. This is a choice we are faced with every moment of every day if we are willing to see and hear, every time I stare into her eyes (even if through computer screen) every time I bury my face in her heart, feeling her fingers run through my hair, when saying goodbye, when saying hello, each time a death and rebirth, never once taking the form of routine or obligation. Instead love is a blessed duty from above, the conviction to constantly become wholly more human amidst all the other humans in all our wandering sacred madness, being made eternally significant in our absurd acceptance of temporal doom, placing our trust in that which goes against all the ways of the world with no guarantee of happiness or glory, instead being filled with the joy of the present moment, whether alone or together, because to be alone is really not to be alone in love.

I stood in awe, gazing with the wind toward Salamanca, my hands outstretched heavenward making demands to the Almighty, inwardly saying: keep her joyful, keep her safe, and delight in your own creation. Let her know that she is loved, by You and by me. Do not spare her the difficulties of life (as you have not so far), for in these difficulties we become more human, more the humans we are meant to be, but see her through them, through the suffering to the joy which comes through the endurance of suffering, see her through the temporary difficulties of this distance, and help the both of us realize that it is in the end an illusory pain, though we should not experience it as such. And when she returns, let us re-begin our time in close proximity, and never forget this longing we now endure. Amen and Amen.

isaac

Eighty-Four Days

2011-01-06T02:18:00.002-05:00

Two days can and will forevermore change the entirety of the world around us—two days, a moment, the blink of the eye, all eternity, all here and gone forever like eighty four days. These were forty eight hours in perfect soulful symmetry, I never left her side and she never left mine and for once in life, again, it all felt right and good—the Earth was blowing us sweet kisses and we lived inside the snowglobe of our love.

“Any moment now I’m going to hit pause on all of this and freeze our time forever,” she said swimming in a sea of sheets beside me, our arms outstretched toward the ceiling, we’ll live here forever and get lost inside ourselves, we’d say, being silly though in all honesty actually believing perhaps it was possible for us to live forever at ages twenty one and twenty two, being youth, being joy, being love in all its misguided youthful curiosity and tenderness—we’ll sail to the moon, we’d say, jumping on the wind’s back and flying on the fuel of wonderful thoughts—I’d of died happy that night, last night, dying death, in life, all being one big adventure from one eternal life into the next (as long as she was there with me). Because that’s when it hit me, lying there next to her in all natural harmony and peace, that it could all fall away, every friend and enemy could fall away, everything I’d built up (though not much), if I woke up tomorrow and everything was gone save her—with golden hair, seraphic smile, eyes that see all the way into my everything-ness, her hands which hold me up—then I’d still call myself a happy man, and not only happy but lucky, blessed beyond anything I’d ever dared to imagine again. And furthermore I knew that if tomorrow, or the next day, or a year from now, she were to leave my life physically, emotionally, or spiritually, I could live happy because for even a moment I knew what it meant to love and be loved.

This morning as I sat over my eggs, across from her at our little table at the airport, I lost my appetite at the thought of eighty four days without her. But the things of life and love are not bound by our primitive conceptions of time and space. How quickly we forget the eternal nature of the bonds that bind us together as humans, as humans in love. How quickly we forget that, in many ways, we are still frozen in time, we forget that we’re still with each other right now as I type these words, two pictures of her resting neatly beside my computer. Eighty four days. Eighty four days is no time at all once one has accepted love, eighty four days is but a blink of the eye when set against the life we have yet to live. Eighty four days and an ocean cannot contain us, the anxiety of the unknown cannot faze the confidence of this our commitment, no breathtaking scenery can erase the image of the beloved upon waking up side by side. I would endure eight four months apart if it meant getting one more day together, one more touch, one more glance.

The world will go to sleep tonight happier than it was yesterday because two people decided that their adventures together just may be more adventurous than would they’ve stayed apart. Tomorrow we’ll wake up ever surer of our love, and we’ll face eighty three days.

isaac

christmas night

2010-12-26T00:29:00.002-05:00

I sit still apathetically in front of everyday television set remembering the scene outside—staring out across snow covered prairie, the moonless sky at Christmas time, the snow falling sideways, out here you can see as far as your eyes will take you, the red blinking cell phone tower a mile away, Christmas lights white line an old forgotten farmhouse, fire in the chimney, hope in your heart, cars drive by thinking, who’s out driving at midnight on Christmas, where are they headed? A familiar sadness fills my heart as I look over at the lone yellow street light of yoder road, the same light I’ve gazed at for the last ten or more years on all my lonesome nights standing out in the back yard staring up to the heavens wondering what my place is on this rock called earth. Looking up and asking big questions, no answers, mourning the losses of others and myself. Wondering where she is, what she’s doing—though tonight not thinking these things, instead waiting with Christmas day anticipation for tomorrow night, savoring the minutes as they pass by until the day it happens, January 5th, when she leaves and I’m left alone in the United States for two months to fend for myself against the anxieties across an ocean and a continent of men who speak a different tongue, competing with foreign continents, the mountains, warm beaches, foods I’ve never seen nor smelled nor tasted, stoney streets filled withal eclectic market vendors, poets and painters, romantic street bums and street children crowded outside ancient cathedrals with all their time-worn Spanish wisdom, fighting against the trains and the strangers (strange men), the nights that start at eleven pm and end around the time I’m getting up for morning prayers in Indiana, boring ole’ Anderson though no one believes it (not her or I anyway)……this is no contest, not from her side, but the worries of my little brain, the worries that disappear when she’s close but that come inside of me when sitting still apathetically, though, paralyzed as I am at the moment, I find myself alone and apathetic regularly, not wanting to read nor write but sit and waste away time. Out in back of house sneaking late-night cigarette gazing across darksky prairie, the cold wind in my face, I feel no fear nor really sadness as I look over at my lamppost and remember her, I only wish she were here, that we could stand still inside the snow and freeze the wheels of time, where we could sneak away to Spain together while the rest of the world waited. We could go for days, years, lifetimes, come back and begin again Christmas day, two-thousand ten. But as always time moves on and I come into silent living room afraid to write because it's been so long, not going as planned, and I don't want to read or write but just slow down time as much as possible while I'm with her. I must wait until tomorrow. Until then, per usual, I will probably fall asleep on couch with tv on.

isaac

Our Skin Unfolds Beneath the Stars

2010-12-13T00:27:00.004-05:00

In my childlike state I accept
that which was once unacceptable.
A giddy dance of the heart,
two minds made up,
grazing in the green pastures of
our simple sensitivity and
undivided honesty.

Her sunlit eyes a mirror
reflecting a clearer image
than that which had
previously been seen.
Eyes wide awake,
we yawn at daybreak,
welcoming with open arms
the Almighty Maker’s
morning provisions.

Our skin unfolds beneath the stars,
revealing remnants of
angelic fingerprints.
We lie awake, unsure, but
believing in ourselves,
dreaming the dreams of children,
living in reality beyond,
as the night stands still at our feet.

Never will time’s temptation
gain the upper hand,
nor the doubt of distance
take root in the soil of our commitment.
For these moments are eternal,
forever unbound by the rigid
constraints of worldly existence,
They occur not on this plane,
but above, in the world
made anew with every breath.
There they remain
beyond the grasp of all
worldly worries,
becoming one
with the light of life.

isaac

I Became Like A Child

2010-12-12T02:29:00.001-05:00

That night I sank beneath the sheets, escaping into a world without end. The body takes on a new angelic form, one that is detached from the past or the future, giving birth to the moment referred to as present. Interlocking lips erase my mind of memories by creating new ones and in her arms I begin to believe that I may actually be someone, or become someone. In those moments the fear subsides; the fear of failure, of never getting my true mind out onto the page, of draining myself of every drop of those divine creative juices. There is a fear that exists within me, that those moments will be so blessed that I feel no need to write another word, that this happiness will numb my senses, ruin my imagination. I’ve seen so many go down that path. But through the sunshine of her soul I find the strength that she so boldly possess in the green of her eyes.

Once, near midnight, I became like a child in her embrace, releasing all my worries with one great big drawn out exhale. And there it was, when I knew, through no logic or mind-math, that within these arms I was in a certain kind of home. I was overtaken with the feeling of acceptance, as if stepping firmly and confidently into a place of vulnerability. For so long I’d written word after word about the loss of love. Every ounce of energy was devoted to an exploration of the truth, of who I really was, who I really wanted to be, who I really was becoming. It was a journey that led to that embrace, though, if I have any sense of the possibilities of this my life, it was the start of some new journey, the heights and depths of which are far beyond my sight.

I no longer long for an abstraction. I no longer have to search my mind for memories, grasping into the vapors of the past for something solid to hold onto. Instead I long for someone flesh and blood, whose warmth is still lingering right next to me, whose scent is still on the pillow and interwoven into the fabrics of my sweater. Hers are hands that can caress the surface of my face, whose fingers can run through my hair, whose eyes and lips become my eyes and lips, whose mind, heart, and soul are distinctly hers though each day dancing with mine.

Tonight as we stood in the rain, delaying our departure, time became a fiction, my heart leapt forth into a world of unification and perfect symmetry, which is perfect in its imperfection. I saw a vision of myself that was both set-apart from and a continuation of the person I once was. In that moment, together under dark and clouded nightsky, life took on an added significance, the point of departure for all that is to come.

isaac

Miles (A Poem) draft

2010-12-05T01:17:00.003-05:00

His mind contains the soil and the seed. His tongue, rain showers and the light of the sun. From the chaos of his speech one could catch a gleam of the Spirit’s sprouting splendor, a whisper from the celestial strings of Springtime.

Yet always behind the glimmer of his eyes is sulfur and fire from beneath our feet. Head low in reverie, he is often a brooding manifestation of an eternal disdain for the mediocrity of the masses, within him is all the weight of sin and shame, contained within a silent stare.

isaac

The Approaching Light

2010-12-02T00:07:00.006-05:00

A silent sun sets on flowers' bloom as I heroically resist my urges to flee from the hydra-headed fear of intimacy. I see myself as four divided selves, all facing different directions and running fast toward their unknown blessed ends. I feel a heat within my bones that has for so long been relegated to the past, so much so that I shudder to think of what might become of it, the possibilities it might hold for me, for her, the for the future of the world itself. What was once a threat has taken the form of a mighty fortress, or at least taken on the skeletal shape--all is potential always--the dark chasm still exists but behold the approaching light from unexpected places. I come back to the warmth, warmth where once was cold.

Dare I plunge to these depths so soon? I fear I may not have the oxygen to make it back out. Yet they say that before death one begins to experience a euphoric acceptance of the world and one's place in it. One takes on an intense love for all of humankind. Death is forever one step around the corner, there is no risk in experiencing the life-giving power of knowing this, of dying death, etc.

It seems wise to not get ahead of one's self in such matters, to pull back on the reigns every now and again, so to speak. But then again, when one becomes intoxicated with the life-breath of another, when all touch becomes a transfusion of heart and body, and the Almighty begins to bridge the divide that separates her eyes from mine, filling the smallest cracks of creation, down down down infinitely beyond the most micromicroscopic levels into the unknown realm of soul-depth mystery that exists between my hand as it rests on her seraphic cheeks--when this happens, not when I remember it happening, not when I long for the loss of it, not when I re-collect the images of it, but when it happens (and it is happening)--then joy becomes a reality once again. It is on the level of of losing one's breath at the sight of the Grand Canyon at sunrise, or the sight of the sun settling down behind the ocean line, or the awe-inspiring sight of the vast Midwestern cloud kingdoms floating overhead on a drive down State Road 9, it is this and more. It is the great acceptance of my place in the holy cosmogonic order of all things. May it never fade.

isaac

On a Still Night

2010-11-27T00:51:00.001-05:00

That morning she appeared to me like ship sailing in the distance, somehow, escaping the horizon. The moment slowed as she walked home, the sleep still in her eyes, and perhaps it was all a dream. She presented a comment earlier on the phone, “don’t make fun of me when you see me…I just woke up.” Contained within this momentary glimpse of her hidden humanity was a quiet whisper: believe me beautiful. My response, in silence, in awe and denial of myself: it is so. I stood still, a frozen statue of incessant inward discussion and dumbfounded deliberation...remembering the words she’d written nights before, knocked off of my feat to lay facedown in the reality of feelings I thought I’d abandoned for good. Thanks, was her response, and at that she lightly took hold of my jacket, an inconsequential nothing, a petite platonic pat on the back, so to speak. With that I turned, saying happy thanksgiving, and walked head-down into the rain, cigarette already in mouth, thought already in mind, bent toward home up north a ways…

The image never faded. Throughout the day it would go away from time to time, but when it appeared it was as vivid as when it happened and I found myself standing in the doorway, once again frozen, once again afraid of what was happening, what seemed to be happening, what I could not contain, within my heart. Even as I was completely engulfed in the warmth and love of my family I could not shake her image that was resting in my mind. As I drifted into sleep for the aftermeal nap, there she was once again, a ship in the distance.

I tried to break the spell the only way I knew how. Under darkness of night I drove on like a thief, taking the long way back to Anderson. This detour was known by heart, soul, mind, and body. This was once the path of light, beauty, youth, innocence. This was once the doorway to blissful discoveries and the fumblings and mumblings of adolescent love. Now it represented the dark corridor of a haunted past. I took the road, out of the way, that would lead past her home, the place our hearts once met. I experienced a repetition. The gods were blowing wind from the west as the old drunk truck rattled on down the road. I played the same familiar songs from that Fall, the album she bought me, no less. Off to the distance I began to make out the dark outlines of the two-story farmhouse that had been, at one time, my second home. I saw the barns like giants and the fence-row of haunted trees. I looked down the long gravel path that lead to the steps where I had my first kiss, at once in absolute awe of what it meant, truly with deep appreciation, to be humbled in the presence of another. I looked up to the second story window where at one time I would look out into the moon and say a prayer of thanksgiving to the starry heavens above.

And suddenly, just as I passed the house, my worst fears were realized: the memories began to fade, slowly at first. Gone were the pond and the pier where we formed our own constellations, gone were barking dogs and elusive gray cats, those nights of Chinese food and dimly lit living rooms, gone was the walk-up the narrow staircase and the big bed of my dreams and imagination, gone were my bareskin backdrawing masterpieces, running in the rain, escaping the scene to go lay in the road, driving just to get lost, gone were the days of the road-trip relationship, forcing myself to like her friends and failing with heroic clumsiness, the endless hours of painful paranoia and honest anxiety at the thought of…what?...I couldn’t remember. It was as if all of my memories of that place began to float on through the crack in the window, riding on the ash and smoke. Worst of all, that image from the morning began to take hold of me. No matter how much I resisted, I could not force it from my mind. The more I tried to hold on to the past the weaker my grip became; the more I tried to resist her image, the more it began to overpower me.

The rest of my drive was filled with the fear of what is to come, the fear of what it means to be on the other side of these memories for the first time since they were more than my past. The fear of what it might mean to hope in something, the fear of what it might mean to fail. The fear of what could become of me if this image never leaves, if the light takes hold of me. Worst of all…the fear that this moment could be but a fleeting feeling of empty admiration, the fear that in the morning it could all be gone. Another rash notion of lost love, plastic particularities, a tragic wild goose chase for romantic deliverance, another mask of false familiarity and selfish immaturity disguised as … hidden tenderness … raptured desires …

I imagine a face so close to mine I can inhale its spirit, I imagine a wound healed by the soft hands of commitment…the sting of commitment! I cannot help but rest my head in my hands at the thought of it, my God. Yet I cannot shake it and there light breaks where no sun shines. Logic dies and within my hands my head lies still as I await the Almighty Maker’s move. What would You have me do? This coward needs direction, quick, send me to the place of most creation, wherever it may be. Let me live my life of love, a man bent on expressing the magnitude, the magnificence, the surprising nature of Your hand. Eliminate from me any of my own hindrances, even myself, if need be. My only wish is to play a part in this symphony life, be it first chair or last. I just wish to play, to rejoice, to sing, to create, to make manifest, no matter how lowly or insignificant, the soul-depth of Your Mystery.

isaac

We're All Going to Survive

2010-11-24T20:07:00.006-05:00

We're all going to survive
or, at least, I think
we'll all be okay
while we die,
in the end, anyway.

When it happened...when it happened I said things that should not have been said. I made certain promises that will not, promises that have not been kept. "I'm sold on you," said I amidst the helpless tears, choking down my understanding of all things. "I'll always be here." These things I said, in moment, caught up in the abstraction I'd created. For so long I saw things not as they were, but as some kind of fantasy show of the jealous mind. Everything was pulling apart and now it would all be physically represented right in front of me. You say things in these situations, you believe them, in shock, thinking there is only one person for you and that they are right here in front of you and you'll never see them again. Maybe there really is only one person for you, though she always told me this wasn't the case, that I'd find someone else, that she'd find someone else. I never wanted her to be right. That's not to say I've found someone, but I know now that if I ever do find someone, it's not going to be her. I'm not angry anymore, as I once was not so long ago. The battle scars of time have healed me through and through...

Heaven is upon us, though we go about with heads pointed down toward sand and stone, wishing beyond ourselves to be somewhere other than here. We fail to recognize, more often than not, that the presence of the Almighty is always at our fingertips, that it radiates throughout our gaze like so many golden columns of sunlight bursting through gray clouds. Don't you realize, darling, that every time you move your hips you are like a flower beneath the sun? That the moon is contained within your eyelids? Never has a flower questioned its purpose to always be radiant and life-giving and never has the moon refused to reflect its silver light. Why then do we question our brokenness that is beautiful? Why do we second-guess or tendencies to be perfectly human, which means flawed. God is not surprised that we sinful creations often stray from the path. Yet there is rejoicing in heaven when the sinner realizes redemption is just around the corner, always possible, if only we'd realize our own abilities, which requires an acknowledgment of our unlimited flaws.

So I pass through each blazing fire more refined in my flaws, what is character really anyway? I don't know what love is but I desperately attempt to chase after it in my own strange ways. I see the beauty in everything, in everyone, even as I sometimes trample them under my feet. No one has ever been just one amongst many, interchangeable, to be admired ever so often when something catches my eye. I simply wish I had an eternity to spend with everyone I've ever come across, be they enemy or friend, lover or acquaintance. I would sit with each of them as we journeyed into our own cosmogenetic creation of human connectedness. We would carve our own unique niche in this new neverending universe and commit ourselves to one another wholly and undivided.

....I'm really tired (this is unfinished)

isaac

tonight, verse

2010-11-24T00:40:00.003-05:00

I don't write verse
but tonight, verse
without guts.

Tonight I can’t write
what’s on my mind.
It would be too bold
carelessness bordering the obscene.

I couldn’t write it
even if I could write it.
Thoughts are weightless
within my mind,
fluttering and flowing,
churning on as mental machine.
But heaviness rests on fingertips,
the mind goes mute,
the blank page stares
blankly.

Think, write, delete.
Repeat.

If only every novel,
every poem,
originated as tracings on the
skin of someone’s back.
I’d be a Pulitzer Prizewinner
in every category.
If I could only translate
the rhyme and rhythm
of a kiss, a wink, a stare
into ink.
Hell, I don’t even know
what that would mean.
But it sounds like
something I’d be into.

I write this,
I show it,
so as to appreciate
better things
I’ve written.

isaac

The Struggle and The Moment

2010-11-23T00:23:00.000-05:00

“You are a jealous man. Worse, you often envy those who do not deserve your attention.”

“Perhaps, but—“

“Listen. You have become tangled within yourself, to the point where I’m not even sure there is a tangible exit strategy. Yours is the mind of a man trapped by its own ideals, its own honesty, its own sense of what is real and what is of your vast creative imagination. If you’re not careful, you might wind up destroying all of the beauty that surrounds you. You’ve become obsessed with worry. Always worrying of where everyone is, who they’re with, what they’re doing, what they think of you, ad infinitum. You always see your worst in others. You imagine what awful things you might do in a given situation and you project on others much stronger that yourself. I’ve begun to wonder how far you will go, how loose you will let your grip become, just how much you will be able to hold the two opposing sides, contradictory sides, together. It’s become such a tragic waste of time, because you’re potential is there and you know it more than anyone else. You know your capacity for goodness, for generosity, for tolerance, even, dare I say it, love. Don’t worry just yet; I’ve not lost all faith in you. Perhaps you will be able to pull it off, and you’ll be lucky enough to have those around you see you through despite your subconscious attempts at sabotaging the good in your life—the good people, mostly.”

“Yes, I understand but this time it’s unique, I promise. I’ve never really felt this way before—no, listen to me this time—it may seem like a familiar path, but pay attention to the nuances of my soul. I want to live as the light lives, what I mean is…throughout the years I’ve been able to light the wick from time to time, but it always goes out, or better yet, I end up finding a way to put it out. But this time there’s not only a flame but a real heat. This is warmth, and light, there is both function and beauty.”

“I have faith that things will be different this time, as you say, but just because it’s different doesn’t mean you won’t find a way to ruin it. Even when you think it’s being put out from something outside of yourself, make no mistake; you’re the one to be blamed. You’ve gotten off relatively easy thus far. You’ve been hurt, for sure, but you’re still young. And others, there’s no doubt there have been others on the receiving end of your selfishness, and they’ve felt the pain, but luckily they haven’t all abandoned you, though I have no idea why. There may come a time when you won’t make it through to the next fight. Worse, there may come a time when, facing the enemy, you’ll look around yourself and all your comrades will have found better battles for which to risk their lives…”

I went on like this through the night, hour after hour, conversing with myself. I come to a point in life where I believe things have settled down, or will settle down. Yet with a passing glance, an accidental touch, an unreflected choice and action, it begins again: the struggle. The struggle exists mostly within, against myself, my perceptions of what life is for, who it’s meant to be lived with, how it’s mean to be lived with them. The struggle overtakes my ability to make decisions, my ability to see with clarity. The struggle sits at the pit of my stomach, it swells up in salty pools beneath my eyes, it fills my lungs and stains my fingertips, it causes my heart to race, it makes my hands tremble. There is no freedom within this eternal struggle. Not yet, anyway. But this time, as I see the approaching struggle ahead, I am filled with an unutterable sense of calm, though this too belongs to those too-rare moments of divine confrontation. Isn’t that really the heart of it, though? The struggle is essentially rooted in time. Fear of the non-existent future and the possibilities we believe it holds. What if there were no time, which is the same way of saying, what if we could actually believe that we had all of the time in the world. Perhaps we would stop worrying about the fulfillment of so many of our unnecessary obligations. Perhaps the worries of tomorrow would melt away. Tonight I sat around a table in triangle, discussing lands I’ll probably never see, discussing the wisdom of the elderly, as the rain from heaven came down, and souls were illuminated by the presence of caring others. And time did not exist, or rather, the hours were experienced as one transcendent moment, without thought for the future or the past. If only we could experience all of life this way, as one glorious gift—the moment that is life.

isaac

The Sun and Moon

2010-11-22T01:17:00.002-05:00

I lay nestled between the sun and the moon. The yellow headlights and streetlights filter through the fog, our extra-terrestrial beings from above. These are the watchful eyes that illuminate our wandering hearts. The train goes barreling down the tracks as my fingers run across the smooth wet windows, making vulgar doodles in the nighttime window-dew. We drive on through the night toward our own humanity; finding freedom huddled around the warmth of our shared experience. The rainclouds of my mind were torn to pieces in the face of these glowing heavenly bodies. I am torn in every imaginable direction, and those unimaginable. There are no appropriate answers…is it even worth asking questions anymore?

Well, what is a kiss but an expression of our innermost being? Sometimes a kiss of love, sometimes a kiss of doubt, sometimes a kiss brokenness, sometimes a kiss of commitment, sometimes a kiss of betrayal, sometimes a kiss of friendship, sometimes a kiss of confusion—always a kiss, always an expression, always our innermost being. Never should lips touch in despair, nor jealousy, nor fear, nor intimidation, and all will turn out okay in the end. But the darkness comes so quickly these days, and the wind will always blow temptation our way. The cold air beats down beneath our bones and we shudder to think of what might come of these our desperate decisions.

From now on all my moments will be magical. Is there not a divine beauty in the consistency of the tide? The fire of the sunset and the glow of the frosty moon are no less sublime because of their routine nature—they remain daily gifts from the Creator. If only I could translate this to romance. If only I could find it within me to adore the golden sunset of a smile, the moon that glows within the eyes. Every day, every day, every day, every day…

The preacher once said, “Rest, and spend time figuring out who you are. Figure out why you do what you do, why you are the person you are.” Perhaps most everyone is right, and all of my problems are a result of my shortcomings, that is to say, a result of my poor decisions: my selfish mind, my foolish heart, my mirror-image, my loose tongue. Or perhaps I am who I am, which is someone who, for whatever reason, is destined for the fringes of society. The fringes of love, the fringes of belief, the fringes of reason. What if it is on these fringes that I find myself? Not where I am the happiest or most successful or most adjusted—but where I am who am, who I will be, who I am becoming.

I will continue to walk down these Anderson sidewalks with hands in pockets and head toward the sky in communion with the Force of Creation. I will walk with those who wish to walk with me. I will leave behind those who do not care to come along. And I will l have no hard feelings one way or the other. We will see many sunrises, and watch as the birds fly high above in the high sky ceiling of morning blue and gray. At night the silver moon will lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. No one will understand us, and we will not try to be understood.

isaac

Penance

2010-11-18T12:15:00.007-05:00

I awoke wishing the last twelve hours had been a dream. So this is shame? I arose in the darkness, down the stairs to my morning addictions, not saying a word nor thinking any thought, only feeling: the worldweight, embarrassment, the worminess of being...a worm. So in the garage I sat believing in the cold and the fog, silenced by the deafening clank and clatter of my mouth.

I went to Rick's Food Mart, a daily destination, settling for chocolate milk. "How you doin, man?" said my friendly middle eastern soul brother. "Good," I lied, hoping, hoping with everything I had left, that he'd spot me for the liar I was and give me a hug. "How are you?" I replied, searchingly, "Good, man. You want smokes?"--"yeah, sure" I said, as he went and got the brand he knew I smoked. We smiled as we often smile. I want to be his friend. He often asks me about school, if or where I went. He was probably some kind of professional or academic back home. Now he works at Rick's, selling chocolate milk and Pall Malls to idiots like me. But I left before we could talk about anything like that.

I wanted chocolate milk because it reminded me of childhood, before I was who I am. I took a drink and it tasted sour as if it had green olive juice mixed in with it. I checked the expiration date: Nov. 18, 2010. Fitting. I drank it anyway. Today felt like a good day for a stomach ache. I wanted my stomach to boil. I wanted to freeze my bones, to slice my hands and fracture my brow, to suffocate my lungs, and blister the bottoms of my feet. Eyes squinted, destroying myself for the folly of my sins. I wished to make the physical match the emotional, to make sure I not only knew my faults but felt them in physical form, to be poured out like water so my bones were out of joint; my heart like wax melted within my breast.

Ah, to learn humility....

isaac

Another Dream

2010-11-17T00:46:00.001-05:00

The corners and edges of realities begin to fade, there is no color, no vividness or starbursts, the sun becomes like an egg, the clouds a flat ball of cotton, what’s left is only haze and glaze. The mind becomes a vacuum, the earth a womb. My hands and feet afire, too hot to move, too heavy to lift, I sink deep into the folds of sleep inside the evening rain...

There is a face like glass with shining smiling teeth but beneath them is the bitter boiling blood of post-adolescence. I stagger toward certain death, to be in their line of sight, enveloped in their green gaze, draining and drowning in the salty tears of strain, tears of boredom, tears of laughter. These are the helpless tears of one who’s lost the way of the river life, swimming against the current too soon without knowing how to float on downstream. I enter willingly, though unknowingly, only now knowing what tears awaited me. An act, in the moment and unreflected, though not without the torments of rigorous mental preparation. I’ve never been here before. In the dream I am a hero, without regret or hesitation, though as my body splits (as does happen in dreams) I sink into a type of dream within a dream (though not completely) wherein I experience myself from above, floating in the corner of the room, living both as my hero dreamself and my coward dreamself, experiencing the two simultaneously, not a synthesis but a contradiction.

What heaven is this? Where the pain of yesterday, yesterhour, yesterminute, and yestersecond become obliterated in the obscenity of the act in which flowers bloom and the magnetic forces that bind us become chocolate flavored with vanilla swirls. Suddenly there is sand between my toes and I shout my secrets aloud to the sea, which vanishes like a flash before my eyes, closed, and here I am again amidst the waves of future regret, future being key, regret not yet. The lights are out, I see with my skin and wits, rooted in fun for once, even if fun is all we share, experiencing a moment for once, even if it’s all despair.

Suddenly I find myself a member of another breed. I feel four feet beneath me; I wag my tail, sniffing at the ground around. Woof! Alone I trounce about these Anderson city streets, when who do I come upon but that glassy face with green gaze, though now, looking at her from down here, she seems a giant of menace, a moral anarchist on the prowl. “Shoo!” she says, “There’s no place for you here.” Woof! Woof! “I said get!” Up comes another familiar face, “Don’t say such things, he’s only a mutt,” she says, bending down to stroke my fur, “His bark is loud but I promise he’s harmless.” My tail now wagging, I let out another woof for good measure. “I suppose he can stay,” says the first girl, bending the corners of her mouth in halfsmile. “Really he’s not so bad, a bit dirty I suppose, but not so bad for a stray. He can stay as long as he doesn’t bark, he doesn’t hump, and he sleeps on the floor!” Woof! Woof!

(That last bit was a shameless robbery of Henry Miller, but I wanted to experiment with the idea).

isaac

this will be written in haste

2010-11-15T01:11:00.005-05:00

this will be written in haste from the top of my mind and gazing out the front window of my heart.

i know the secrets behind your eyes, we shared them once in the dark--anyway things never go right and after all this time, this some odd time from then until now, summer that is, she's the one i think about though she's but a small stone in the river life, a stone that skipped and skipped and skipped (and still skips) and i never got a real good hold on her. it was nothing though, to worry about, it just gets at me like a sliver that's slipped just beneath my skin, the pain is in knowing it's there and beyond your grasp.

she's most likely already forgotten me, this one. she was never particularly good to me. i was never particularly good to her. it was based on sand, spit--nothing you could make a house out of, so to speak. i was naive. i am naive. but a dreamer dreams.

switching thoughts. i gave up that ghost from before realizing there is no ghost or better that we are all ghosts and all haunted. one day they define you, their absence defines you. then, no longer, just like that. poof! the magic tricks of the mind are forgetfulness, projection, addiction, justification, narcissism, inebriation, co-dependance. the miracle, on the other hand, is resurrection. i'll never forget her, nor do i wish to, but she...it...is finally buried. i speak too soon, usually.

one time i sat a lunch table with two beautiful women i'd always dreamed of perhaps one day being with (either of them, really). and i told them i never wanted to marry. that i'd done away with the idea. accepted. and was happy. and they laughed and said it wasn't so. not for me. that within me there was the desire to be with another person for the rest of my life. that i was being, how was it? ridiculous (some such word). i said there never was such a girl i'd met that I could consider marrying (a lie). they said she would come along one day. (she had actually, a few times, taking different forms, always with a boyfriend.)

i can't ever imagine taking marriage vows. short-term relationships, if you could call that what i've had recently, are often sad and draining often hurtful to one person or the other. i stand at a crossroads. i choose the road less travelled, tee hee. there are no roads. we must hack away and form our own path. it's what i intend to do. this is a joke.

isaac

sweeping out my garage

2010-11-12T11:33:00.003-05:00

youre so sad the way you sit there and stare off into the blue nothingness future and past separated from self alone and cold stranded on your own lonely land of fear coward i despise what you represent to the world the fiction of happiness sell out your love for toy love and plastic bottles of worldly despair racking your brain for answers that stare you in the face endlessly though you turn your own eyes teary ignoring the tears theyve caused in eyes of others your mindless wandering toward shit nothing soulless generation stuck in infinite broken mirrors of selfishness empty generosity fake sensitivity faux intellect plastic passion never use the word love around me again dont speak that word to my face you have no idea what the fuck youre talking about die in your progress fall asleep at the wheel of your flawed technology dont come knocking at my door the next time you ruin your own life your fear astounds me oh generation of socalled potential ruiners of grace ruiners of mercy ruiners of righteousness mess of tangled limbs gyrating to music of forgetfullness forgetting childlike innocence of fire inside you future pornographers delusional and have tricked yourself into thinking you are romantic not knowing what is on the other side of addiction vomit shit shakes withdrawals into the mind of the mad your children will leave you your wives and husbands will leave you your god will leave you nay! you will run away from it all and already have begun your selfish race down lonely road of forever loss in life go down your list of lovers why dont cha and pick one for the night knowing youre going toward your doom pouring water on the true fire of heart that beats the blood of the redeemed and i will be your priest young lovers as you come confess my sins so i can silently nod out soiled absolution how have you for so long forced that somnambulist smile and wave walking down corridors of insecurity failing to acknowledge your own rotting insides oh my generation of mediocrity no one past or future knows what we could know would we not squander it away in the pools of our piss fear and tears had we the strength to be ourselves had we the integrity to walk away had we the courage to love go now and sin no more

isaac

The Moment

2010-11-09T23:29:00.003-05:00

I can't exactly say what took place that day. Looking back I'm not even certain it did take place, that is to say, that it happened, so to speak, in time or space as we know it. It is as if my self that stands outside of existence--my eternal self--suddenly become something more than a far-reaching possibility.

That feeling that had for so long overtaken me, that of being wholly divided against myself, seemed not much more than than a faint whisper, an echo. That's not to say that I had reached the peak of existence, that I'd fully actualized. I did not see myself a god, but began to see at least a glimmer of what it meant to be truly human. And not a human of this present age, that is, not a human assimilated to society, in fact it was quite the contrary.

To put it another way, it was no longer a matter of seeing myself one way or the other, as it had been for so long, desperately wishing to be something, someone, more than I was. I was no longer longing for my past, hoping to regain some lost innocence of a time before guilt or shame had entered the stream of life. I was myself becoming myself. More importantly, I was no longer looking to her, the memory of her, as some type of solution. That relationship no longer garnered special attention. Significant thought it was, I was no longer bound to it. When she left, physically, I'd placed her in the cage of my mind and swallowed the key whole. This has all been, this past year and half or more, has been one long process of regurgitation. Now, key in hand, I'd set her free. In doing so, setting her free, setting it free, I was set free.

But happiness is fleeting--anyway this was joy, and my work was not finished but only beginning.

isaac

Resurrection

2010-11-08T22:28:00.000-05:00

From Mahler's Second....

O believe, my heart, O believe:
Nothing to you is lost!
Yours is, yes yours, is what you desired
Yours, what you have loved
What you have fought for!
O believe,
You were not born for nothing!
Have not for nothing, lived, suffered!
What was created
Must perish,
What perished, rise again!
Cease from trembling!
Prepare yourself to live!
O Pain, You piercer of all things,
From you, I have been wrested!
O Death, You masterer of all things,
Now, are you conquered!
With wings which I have won for myself,
In love’s fierce striving,
I shall soar upwards
To the light which no eye has penetrated!
Its wing that I won is expanded,
and I fly up.
Die shall I in order to live.
Rise again, yes, rise again,
Will you, my heart, in an instant!
That for which you suffered,
To God will it lead you!

isaac

nightthoughts (in progress)

2010-11-02T00:36:00.006-04:00

Tonight, when you lie down to shut your eyes and drift off into dream consciousness, awaken to your own subjective reality, which is the inspired truth. Do not ignore the cries inside, that anxiety that is real, that haunting ghost from a forever past, that heart riddled with mystery escaping the clutches of waking life—let it wash over you, the river life, and accept yourself a lotus sitting atop it all—but only after you’ve gone deep down into the cleansing waters of your own absurd suffering—(In the end, may you see that the real problem is that your problems are not really problems. This is just a broken heart. This is just a haunted past. There have been many lives before, there will be many after, and yours is not so bad)—always pass through the blazing furnace.

and sleep is almost here…

the pain inside is green, boiling beneath my stomach, a silent rage I can contain only in daytime. i wince inwardly at the thought, at the sight, at the sound of it, to be jolted back by the force of denial. can one reach a point where love is spread out across the pastures of time, and but a tiny drop in each and every glass from which I wish to drink? is this a point one reaches or a point to which one descends?

We’re questioning everything, even the questioning. Were toppling, pressing, engaging, digging deep deep down down down. What if the answer turned out to be the question, and the end led us back to a familiar beginning? Who would have the courage to search anyway? None of us know where we’re going, friends. We’ve been to hell and back time and time again—yet still, our wings are not singed but for the tips!

a dream…

I thought I was lost, and perhaps I was, when all darkness seemed to have overtaken me. The captain was thrown overboard, and there was no land in sight. I found myself hurled into the air and plunged into the deep blue below. For a moment I began to panic though all was futile, the raging waves moving me every which way. Suddenly the gray hands of despair gripped at my ankles and I began the slow descent, becoming weightless in water, like floating up into the clouds. It was here that I was met with a terrible peace that so ruptured my soul—my God the beauty of it. If only I could have shared it with you! As the moments began to fade into icy death, I suddenly came to love every one of you in your own unique way. I came to see all of us as a part of one another, not one of us being complete without the other. Even those of us that had moved away were somehow not far from the beating heart of our love; even those of us that have gone inward for a time, to go through the furnace of grief and despair, were somehow not far from our collective joy; even those of us that had fractured relationships within our tribe, who had loved one another so dearly only to be violently ripped apart, or who so longed for one another with no chance or hope of success…we all became like a tree that holds firm so as to bend without breaking no matter how strong the flood-currents of life rush at our roots of love. And this thought alone, which was not of my own creation but perhaps implanted within me, a thought to which I had to surrender, this thought alone manifest within me a lightness, so much so that I was lifted out of the raging seas, the storm now quieting, and set straight and firm at the ship's helm, thinking: "Peace, be still..."

isaac

The Rosy Crucifixion

2010-10-27T23:48:00.004-04:00

Rolling on Miller again. Here is an excerpt from the last page of Plexus:The Rosy Crucifixion II, which far too few individuals will ever read in this lifetime. I've begun the third book of the trilogy, which, as a whole, is probably my favorite piece of literature.

In the days to come, when it will seem as if I were entombed, when the very firmament threatens to come crashing down upon my head, I shall be forced to abandon everything except what these sprits implanted in me. I shall be crushed, debased, humiliated. I shall be frustrated in every fiber of my being. I shall even take to howling like a dog. But I shall not be utterly lost! Eventually a day is to dawn when, glancing over my own life as though it were a story or history, I can detect in it a form, a pattern, a meaning. From then on the word defeat becomes meaningless. It will be impossible ever to relapse.

For on that day I become and I remain one with my creation.

On another day, in a foreign land, there will appear before me a young man who, aware of the change which has come over me, will dub me "The Happy Rock." That is the moniker I shall tender when the great Cosmocrator demands--"Who art though?"

Yes, beyond a doubt I shall answer: "The Happy Rock!"

And if it be asked--"Didst thou enjoy thy stay on earth?"--I shall reply: "My life was one long rosy crucifixion."

As to the meaning of this, if it is not already clear, it shall be elucidated. If I fail then am I but a dog in the manger.

Once I thought that I had been wounded as no man ever had. Because I felt thus I vowed to write this book. But long before I began the book the wound had healed. Since I had sworn to fulfill my task I reopened the horrible wound.

Let me put it another way....Perhaps in opening the wound, my own wound, I closed other wounds, other people's wounds. Something dies, something blossoms. To suffer in ignorance is horrible. To suffer deliberately, in order to understand the nature of suffering and abolish it forever, is quite another matter. The Buddha had one fixed thought in mind all his life, as we know. It was to eliminate human suffering.

Suffering is unnecessary. But one has to suffer before he is able to realize that this is so. It is only then, moreover, that the true significance of human suffering becomes clear. At the last desperate moment--when one can suffer no more!--something happens which is in the nature of a miracle. The great open wound which was draining the blood of life closes up, the organism blossoms like a rose. One is "free" at last, and not "with a yearning for Russia," but with a yearning for ever more freedom, ever more bliss. The tree of life is kept alive not by tears but the knowledge that freedom is real and everlasting.

Henry Miller. Plexus.. pg. 640. Grove Press. 1961.

tonight we stand inside the stars

2010-10-25T01:47:00.001-04:00

tonight we stand inside the stars
the still moon out eternal kiss
blessed be this
our night of bliss
where sorrow has no sting
where all of heaven can be reached ‘
with one pure and simple thought:
the seraphic corners of her mouth up-turned
the cold chill of waking in winter
greeted by the orange sun
this our new morning
a fresh new face brightened
by unsullied introductions
in the dining rooms of our hearts
(or hidden behind steamy darkened eyes
knowing…she knows…
that every stare contains
an element of the sexual spark).
All is past
even yesterday is pre-present
it’s in the now that I must live
if I’m going to live.

isaac

An Excerpt From A Recent Reflection

2010-10-22T00:42:00.005-04:00

"The dragon snorting fire and smoke from his nostrils is only expelling his fears. The dragon does not stand guard at the heart of the world--he stands at the entrance to the cave of wisdom. The dragon has reality only in the phantasmal world of superstition."

--Henry Miller, Plexus pg. 633

......The most fundamental problem was that I simply could not trust her, though this was no fault of her own. I couldn’t overcome my own jealousy, toward her and anyone else she might spend her time with. Why had I asked her to stay the night? That was clear: I couldn’t imagine the thought of her staying the night with someone else, and I couldn’t trust her not to do it. In reality she didn’t owe me that trust and the thought of that alone put me out for the rest of the evening. I just didn’t know what I wanted more: to spend the night with her or for her not to spend the night with someone else. I thought maybe I could save her, and in so doing safe myself, but a savior can never be rooted in their own self-interest, which was where I found myself. To do so would be to save one’s self, and I’d seen enough of this world to know that salvation can never come completely from within.

Before I knew her, and even while I was getting to know her, I’d spent so much time trying to distance myself from all of it, all of them, her included. But instead of distancing myself I’d actually become buried in the thick of it. I was at their parties, always keeping a watchful eye out, keenly aware of how I might come across. I sensed I had some power over most everyone there, the power of the stranger, but hiding within me was my childhood self that eagerly wanted to be accepted, if only so that I could decline the offer. When the offer never came, or more accurately, when it was so short lived and then withdrawn, I hadn’t the will power to turn it away. Soon enough I found myself back where I was, where I needed to be, where I wanted to be—alone—but I wanted to be alone on my own terms.

It got to a point where I so desperately wanted out of all of it. To be above, floating amidst the clouds in total anonymity. To find my strength in the Eternal. To transcend. All around me I see those that I love, mouths wide open, awaiting the leftover crumbs as they fall from the life-banquet above, not knowing that their seat at the table sits empty, itself wondering where they are. And I couldn’t let go either and simply take my place. It’s one thing to be trapped, it’s another to be trapped and know you’re trapped. One further, to know and simply not care—a Stockholm Syndrome of despair.

But for the first time I didn’t want to leap in an act of resistance, but in the embrace of surrender.

I’d always seen the shortcomings, the inevitable failure of this life that for so long I’d held up on a wretched pedestal of my own creation. But I’d bow down no longer. I simply didn’t know where to go once I was raised up on my own two feet. Perhaps this whole process, from Sara until now, was a way to reach some sort of terra firma before liftoff. I’d had my moments of flight before, but I was always under the delusion that my wings came from pain and self-destruction. But that was only a passageway. “Suffering is unnecessary. But one has to suffer before he is able to realize that this is so.” I’d read such things before, but I’d never given any meat to the bones. The moment I finally did so it was as if all fear had ceased, things suddenly became supremely attached and detached simultaneously. To live in the world but not of it began to take on some new light that came bursting forth through a darkness that had for so long shadowed the life within me......

isaac

have you not yet found your wings?

2010-10-20T01:43:00.002-04:00

the rain speaks quietly with watery whispers
a false hope for all our fears
saying cease this your selfish guilt and worry
dare to recognize the purity
of that fire searing within your soul
you belittle yourself in your own
well-intentioned trepidation
most are not actually afraid of what is to come
most are not actually held back by guilt
nor misguided passions of the past
but fear of their own imaginative capacities
most are not fooled by the colorful masks of self-righteousness
but the fear that comes with being good
but the fear that comes from wishing to be better
death is dead and all our sins are washed away
yet it is we who cannot forget that
redemption will be found in every blink of the eye
in every beat of the heart
in every breath, in and out
in the welcome eyes of our stranger and our enemy
in the dirt resting under the tips of our fingers
at the end of every sentence
it will be there waiting
as we regret our past
as we long for love and lament love lost
as we shy away from our own honest images
reflected back in the shattered glass of creation
have you not yet found your wings
which allow you to take flight at any moment
to every heaven and hell within you?
to fly one must simply create
for only creation can overtake destruction
no matter how much one wishes to play the fool
this creation from destruction will not last
for there is a season for everything
and creation, in its most fascinating form, will spring forth
from the fiery spirit within you

isaac

Love and the Midwest

2010-10-17T00:43:00.004-04:00

I haven't had much time to write lately at home or here in Illinois on "vacation." These are some very limited reflections I jotted down in some spare time I had tonight.

Writing now from Bureau County, Illinois, the land of my father's father and my mother's mother where this afternoon I stood alone looking out across mile after mile of Godly creation--The light blue sky of evening holding within it the purple cloud kingdoms of the world above, seeing in the distance the red barns of yesteryear, those same barns that I've set my eyes upon from the day I was born--the salt of the earth--farmers farming through the boiling heat of Midwestern August, perhaps enjoying a cool rest on the porch when the skies turn gray and the great winds meet with the crashing lightening out on the plains, the thirsty earth's thirst quenched from heaven's rain.

This is my heart's home. Here, in Illinois as it is in Indiana. This is my land: the Midwest. I find more beauty in the architecture of a wheat field than I do walking along all the streets of New York City, or Boston, or D.C. Here in the Midwest, where, if one wants to, you can still look up at the stars and name your own constellations. Where sunsets are not beautiful because of their reflection over the ocean or the way they disappear behind a mountain, but in the purity that is the sun meeting the horizon.

And all of it makes me wish I were in Love again. Where the thought of it did "not break my heart but dismissed me tears." To see the beauty in another person as I see it out along the horizon. To be swept up in the life of another as I am swept up in the great open sky looking upward. To experience with her the freedom and love of the wind brushing by my face or the cool green grass between my fingers. Eh, but life is a dream anyway...............................

The Other Day I Saw A Wedding

2010-10-12T01:22:00.003-04:00

The other day I saw a wedding. I saw her a woman, the sun radiating from her face in anticipation for the glowing agony of love. I saw him a man, his eyes set ablaze in the mystery of new union. I saw them as children, wonderful and fresh, united as their souls inverted outward manifesting spiritual mist slowly setting over everyone in attendance creating a beautiful rainbow above and below. I saw mothers and fathers, generations upon generations, swelling with satisfaction, smiling in progenitive delight, all weeping in awe of the possibility of happiness. I myself felt the familiar heaviness of the throat, holding back, ‘best I could, the outward expression of my uncharacteristic reverence for such a courageous act of romantic Love. And then, without any reflection whatever, I was confronted. In that moment, as I saw all that I have described, I knew, somewhere within, that I would never experience this holy ritual. Try as I did, and have since, I could not imagine myself giving another person this type of joy. Secretly, I mourned the future loss of nuptial euphoria. It was not that I suddenly thought I could never love another person in such a way, that this minor heartbreak of mine has somehow damaged me to the perpetual single life. Nor was it some adolescent distaste or non-belief in sacred marriage for the sake of promiscuity disguised as independence or self-affirmation. Many who know me well will know that deep within I have a profound appreciation for exclusive commitment, that I have at least the potential to be swept away in romantic forgetfulness—forgetting time, space, obligations, commitments—which is young loving devotion. But I simply saw it all, this wedding, and while I held it in the highest of esteem…I did not want it for myself.

And in some absurd way I simply feel called out of it, or away from it…the weariness of it all….sometimes I wish only to transcend my blessed attractions for a more spiritual commitment and connectedness. Do not read this as a declaration of celibacy, for I have not the will or the strength for such a declaration, though I have always admired such a life. Perhaps this all really is rooted in my past relationship failures, but then again, healing and new light are often rooted in the shattered remnants of yesterday. If the love of a woman ever came to me, I would accept it, but for now, yes, at least for now, I believe I will cease what has been my embarrassing search for such a Love in favor of a different Love that comes about both within and without a person, a Love from above that manifests itself between others, self-sacrificially, with no hidden sensual intentions. This Love, to Love God, neighbor, and enemy alike with no preference, will be the recipient of my devotion. Or so I pray.

isaac

A Confession

2010-10-11T15:40:00.001-04:00

For some time now I’ve been living in the hollow fear of my past. My mind moans, numbed from nugatory worry, regret, shame—these thoughts roaming moment by moment…”I was no good for her,” I think slowly resting on each word, each in their infinite individual and collective significance. Paralyzed have I become by this banal banter, infinitely regressing toward the swampy muck of self-pity, loathing, and general inactivity of the soul-body-mind of self. What happened to me? A child of God, I quit acting my age and tried to grow up. I lost sight of wondrous innocence and sold out to experience for experience’s sake. When I was child, I acted like a child—in pure creative Faith—and all was beauty and possibility. I felt not guilt for there was not yet guilt to be felt. So I confess my nostalgic mind-wanderings in despair, there, I made a prayer out of it. Take it for what you will oh eternal God of Giving, Almighty Maker of Mystery, Good Lord of Loneliness. I confess! I took the pictures out and the notebook too, and I sat in lonesome misery, bleeding from the eyes and nose, swept up by memories that matter to me no more.

I confess to you my jealous God, that I think of her often, as often as I ponder the great mystery of You. There’s no place that I’ve walked or wandered where she’s not been there within my mind. There’s no place I’ve gone to sleep where she’s not been there within my mind. (“I wonder if she remembers me at all, many times I’ve often prayed, in the darkness of my night, and in the brightness of my day.”) All of this I confess to You in weakness and agitated awe.

But as the Good Book says: le soir, les pleurs viennent loger avec nous, et le matin il y a un chant de joie. So I look on toward tomorrow, or better, I humbly await the next moment made possible to me. God give me the strength to pass through this good night, no matter the broken bitterness it may bring. May I find healing as I weep for the world in the bracing winds of darkness, and in the morning I shall smile in the warmth of Your Love.

isaac

God of Each Moment (A Prayer)

2010-10-08T00:01:00.002-04:00

God of each moment, in this time of great uncertainty, give me the courage to live but one breath at a time. Humble me in this fear so that I may become confident in Your loving endurance. Though I know not what awaits me tomorrow or the day after, let me awaken each morning to a new birth in You. When the time comes to wake up, let me die to the self that was asleep and be reborn as one who is awake. When the time comes to go out, let me die to the self that was in and be reborn as one who goes out. When the time comes to speak, let me die to the self that was silent and be reborn as one who speaks. When the time comes to be silent, let me die the self that spoke and be reborn as one who is silent. Let me live each moment in Faith, by the strength of the absurd. Do not let me be overtaken by the painful memories of my past, nor be swept up in the dizzying possibilities of my future, but always remain in You in the present. Above all, may I see each moment as an opportunity to die to the self and be reborn in Love.

isaac

God of the Lonely (A Prayer)

2010-10-07T01:45:00.001-04:00

God of the lonely, hear my cry as it echoes through the eternity of time. Let these tears one day manifest themselves in outward acts of Love; let them not find their final end rested on my cheeks. Let not these cries remain concealed between You and me, but let them one day become a voice for justice for those whose voices have be discouraged and humiliated into silence. God of the lonely, do you feel the pain in my hands as they strike these walls in futility? Feel it. Ease this anxiety that has so overtaken my mind and heart. Fill this void that has for so long been empty despite my embarrassing attempts to satisfy it with genuine though incomplete attempts to find love in the arms of another. Help me to see Your face and feel Your presence in the quiet stillness of night when all that I can see and feel is the helplessness of isolation. Remind me with every breath that You are here. Remind me with every heartbeat that You are here. Remind me that as long as I am here, You are not far away. Help me always to remember that standing before You I am always alone; in her arms, standing before You, I am alone; in their company, standing before You, I am alone. God of the lonely, help me always to remember that this solitude is a blessed gift. Grant me the strength to see it through.

isaac

On Those Nights/Theological Meditation On Love

2010-10-06T03:16:00.003-04:00

On Those Nights

On those nights…those nights of driving around for hours maybe, at one o’clock in the morning, sometimes even Friday nights, I’d go around Anderson just trying to find acceptance, I suppose, acceptance from myself, for being who I was and who I am. Those streets that are dark like all city streets, where every now and then you’d catch a glimpse of some other night-wanderer maybe coming back home from the job or just out for a stroll though most people don’t seem to be out for a stroll. I don’t imagine, however, that many people who might have seen me out driving imagined me out for a night stroll in my truck either, but imagined me going somewhere with some destination in mind but I never did, I never do. Even still tonight when I went out for a drive I had no particular place to go, although I must admit I did get a craving for hot chocolate at one point and so stopped at a gasstation for some.

Of course, when you go out driving your mind begins to wander as does your vehicle, and you catch yourself driving to familiar places. In my case, tonight, that meant the University. So I drove over to the school and around the block as one does and remembered those long walks I used to go on in the cold nights of winter, wearing my long gray coat and scarf which is continuously unraveling, down University and across Nursery then winding back toward the apartment on Fifth Street. And I thought to myself, “Why do such a thing?” Honestly I have no answer for it. There is no rational reason I can think of to go out driving at night or to take walks in the snow except perhaps to clear the mind of its usual surroundings and to move in a direction, any direction. And that physical act of movement takes on some sort of symbolic quality and the idea of going out alone and moving for no apparent reason as opposed to sitting in front of a screen as we are now becomes something of a compulsion toward a freedom to act as an end in itself. One notices things when going out at night to move, especially on walks, that one cannot experience in stillness indoors. One breathes in fresh air, for one, and senses that feeling of disappearing beneath the great weight of the amaranthine sky above.

Some nights one knows they must go out and be amongst strangers under the harsh lights of a twenty-four-hour night-time establishment. For it is too easy to forget that the whole world of universal human qualities exists on the other side of the walls of our homes; that there is a tired old man behind the counter at Gas America; that there are waitresses wearing out their already warn out feet as they rush to pour coffee over at 29th Street—everyone wrapped up in the difficulties of their days; the constant struggle to find meaning in each moment that tick-tocks off the clock on the wall; that gnawing pain of wasted potential that sits in the pits of our stomachs; the paranoia of care forcing us to trust that the ones we love are being Watched Over though we can do nothing from the infinite distance of the heart; that bitter longing to experience the warmth of intimacy in those eyes that reflect back to us our truest selves; the “dizziness of freedom” driving us toward actualizing our own frightening possibilities…

Considering Love (As A Type of Theological Meditation)

In the end I have become convinced that all of life—every action, decision, or belief—is somehow rooted in our desire to be loved. I have never encountered an individual that was not in desperate need to be wrapped up in the arms of their family, their friends, or themself, no matter how adamantly they may deny this. Perhaps this is too presumptuous of me, but I make no apologies. I’ll state it again though differently: all of life, every act and decision, and every ensuing consequence…all of violence, all of hatred, all of lust…and all of beauty, all of spirit, all of expression in art and dance and sound…are the beautiful and tragic results of our need as human beings to love and be loved and our inability to do so.

And Love, like God, is a word so used that it is paradoxically meaningless and the root of all meaning. This is why it is both possible and disgusting to say that one Loves all people and so absolutely profound and dangerous to say that one Loves another single individual. The fact that I ever once uttered the word in reference to another person in a romantic context, or the notion that I could ever again utter it, is so absolutely terrifying that I shudder to even think of it and doubt its possibility for ever again occurring.

For Love no definition will suffice. Even to say that it exists is to corrupt it. Love simply is... Love is all things possible and thus cannot be one thing as opposed to another. Therefore I agree with that writer of Corinthians, for love is patient and kind...but more it surpasses all language and knowledge. And I cannot settle for a definition of Love that is simply called “deep affection,” for deep affection is deep affection, and Love becomes unnecessary. For Love is Word and not simply a word. To even consider the possibility that this Word could become flesh, in human form, or in time today amongst individuals, is so terrifying and beautiful an idea that now as I ponder it I am moved to tears. To Love is to have Faith; to have Faith is to Love; both are absurd and all the more so perfect.

And yet Love, when experienced in those rare occasions, takes on an indescribable ease—one simply “knows”—this common phrase being the result of our ability to experience that which is beyond our own rational capabilities to comprehend. Thus Joy, which is not intense happiness as some would have you believe, but the result of accepting Love as the expression and root of all being.

May I have the faith to love and experience joy.

isaac

Don't You Know That God Is Pooh Bear?

2010-10-04T15:53:00.004-04:00

Really gets going around the 2:07 mark.

isaac

The Exodus House

2010-10-01T10:50:00.005-04:00

I hate the idea of using my blog for this, but The Exodus House, the transitional community I'm working on starting, is trying to get a grant through pepsi. Winners are determined by number of votes (I know it's ridiculous).

If you would, go to OUR PAGE on Pepsi's website and vote for us. You'll need to sign up but it only takes 20 seconds.

Perhaps more importantly, for those of you with Facebook and Twitter, please post some kind of link as many times as possible (every day?) for people to go to.

Alright, I'm done prostituting myself.

isaac

I'm Fine, I Sigh (Attempt No. 2)

2010-09-25T20:40:00.001-04:00

After another twenty minutes or so...

I don’t need someone with which to hold hands while we walk down citystreets under stars, chasing our shadows from the midnight lamplights, walking instep with fingers interlocking. And I don’t need an arm of encouragement draped around my shoulders in exclusive admiration—this doesn’t make me a man nor will it make me the man I need to be.

But I’d like to stare back into those green eyes every now and then, in the morning as we wake, for awhile.

I don’t need to sit across from a woman on Friday or Saturday nights, our napkins in our laps, chewing and digesting and pushing our food around with silver forks and spoons, grasping for topics of conversation. I don’t need someone to wait up and greet me as I walk into my haunted house alone each night.

But I’d like to stare back into those green eyes every now and then, in the morning as we wake, for awhile.

And I don’t need thoughtgul gifts on Valentines Day, Christmas Day, Birth Day, Anniversary Day. I don’t need security in the expectation of good things. I don’t want the worry of needing to know where she is at any given point in the day, nor the stress of knowing she needs to know where I might be.

But I’d like to stare back into those green eyes every now and then, in the morning as we wake, for awhile.

I’m fine, I sigh, living in these sunsets alone. And maybe one day I’ll go out and make my home in the wind—lord, lord, lord—in the wind. I’ll be fine, I sigh again, as long as every morning upon my rebirth I can sit in the garage over coffee watching the rustling trees as they rest in the blue-grey sky backdrop, or watching the storm form in the dark western winds. I’ll be fine, I sigh, as long as I can drive down these roads at night, held firm in the hands of the Lord.

But I’d still like to stare back into those green eyes every now and then, in the morning as we wake, for awhile.

isaac

A Poem About Green Eyes In The Morning

2010-09-25T18:10:00.004-04:00

I had like fifteen minutes to write and this is what I came up with. This little poem of sorts was inspired by the lyrics to the song "Northern Lights" by Bowerbirds. It's really not about anyone in particular, I've just always had a thing for green eyes. I'll probably make some changes to it later tonight.

Right now I don’t need someone to hold hands with walking down sidestreets and along bridges passing over rocky rivers under midnight lamplights, our interlocking fingers symbolizing the union of two souls. And I don’t need the encouragement of one fine girl in exclusive admiration—this doesn’t make me a man nor will it make me the man I need to be.

But I’d like to stare back into those green eyes every now and then, in the morning, as we wait for awhile.

I don’t need to sit across from someone over overpriced dinners on Fridays or Saturday nights, pushing our food around with silver forks and spoons, grasping for topics of conversation. I don’t need someone waiting up for me to greet me as I walk into my haunted house alone.

But I’d like to stare back into those green eyes every now and then, in the morning, as we wait for awhile.

And I don’t need gifts on Valentines Day, Christmas Day, Birth Day, Anniversary Day. I don’t need the security of expectation. I don’t want the worry of needing to know where someone is at any given point in the day, nor the stress of knowing someone needs to know where I am at any given point in the day.

But I’d like to stare back into those green eyes every now and then, in the morning, as we wait for awhile.

I’m fine living in these sunsets alone, and I’ll go out one day and make my home in the wind, lord lord lord, the wind. I’ll be fine as long as every morning, upon rebirth, I can sit in the garage over coffee watching the rustling trees as they rest in the blue-grey sky backdrop. I’ll be fine as long as I can drive down these roads at night, held firm in the hands of the Lord. “Pretty people disappear like smoke, and friends will arrive, and friends will disappear,” but I fear not, for inside myself is a foolish heart that continues to beat despite my best efforts to see it set still.

But I’d still like to stare back into those green eyes every now and then, in the morning, as we wait for awhile.

isaac

Spontaneous Prose Exercise #1

2010-09-25T03:02:00.010-04:00

I wrote this last night under the influence of petty confusion, not an alcoholic drink though just as potent, if not more-so. It is perhaps my most authentic attempt at so-called spontaneous prose. no real editing, going from thought to page in an instant, without regard for consequences of who reads or how one interprets. It's not great but I think it's honest. I need to work out a lot of the kinks but it was a good exercise. My guess is most of it won't make any sense.

Hello Three O'clock AM. Hello liquid headache, which surprised me but did not eat enough. This will be a great Kerouacian feat of spontaneous prose! Hello world--I'm not stopping tonight except for breath and maybe to munch on steak that friend gave me from work. Hello world--I'm typing fast and not evern correcting the typos!

(eat eat eat)

Once and for all I've finally realized everything---which is--that nobody really knows any more than the next person how to do anything in this their life. And what is life but timing and luck? Perhaps there are ways to put the odds more in your favor, but doing so only leads to greater dissapointment when your luck finally runs out and your timing is all off, which will happen in this your life.

So I've made a decision, or more, I've admited to myself, after much wasted time of denial that I really do have feelings for this girl who came out of nowhere in life and has single handedly altered much of my plans. What those feelings are I do not know, but at least now, at least for the time being, I've accepted I have something. And, per usual (hello Andrew Camp), my timing is all off and I confront her in her bitter beautiful brokenness (though it never seems so beautiful to the broken one) and so I go on through my time, my wasted feelings. But like I said earlier, I know my place in this here game of love, and it's easy to know when youur'e bening used, which we all are, so I smile and maybe laugh at the absurdity of all that is life on earth as a human being. I'm born each day and I die each night, always awaiting the next sunrise of rejuvination and the moonrise of peaceful death.

(eating food now)

This now marks the fifth time (five being the number I counted to off the top of my head), the fifth time (almost five in a row) that I have found my feelings, no matter how mellow they may be, unreciprocated, which I'm not even sure is a word. What I'm trying to say is this--and here now I reference myself and also that great goof George Costanza: The ones (women) I want don't want me and the ones that want me I don't want, or something along those lines. In other words, so to speak, so much of our lives is beyond our control. I can't control where she sits, or who puts his hand on her back, and further I can't control how my mind biologically reacts to witnessing such an occurance. It's certainly not anger, nor fear really though that's closer, it's maybe just sadness--and not heartbreak--and not even the sadness of seeing that which I do not want to see nor the sadness of jealousy--it's the sadness that comes from recognizing that this world of ours is not whole, that people, in general, every day, do things they do not want to do, or are subjected to things they cannot control. And no one can control how others will react. She cannot control who does what or how I react to what who does. This of course leads to the maddening though beneficial task of affirmation, which is truth, human dignity, life assurance, the opening of greens eyes, breathing the breath of joy, interlocking fingers in codependent loneliness, tender kisses like friends with some ununderstandable bond from nowhere, or maybe we're just fooling ourselves but I have a feeling we're not.

Aw man why can't it all just work out for everybody? I know this is a niaive plea for goodness, but dammit couldn't it happen just once? But then again, maybe I (we, all of us now) prevent it from happening by making the same mistakes over adn over while mistaking them for freedom or pleasure or fun or pain etc etc etc. But no, I believe I've done the best I can, which is admitadly, sometimes, not that great.

Simply beacuse I'm in the mood to do so, let me relate to you a story that happened to me tonight. I was standing in a room talking to my good friend Jonathan (not real name). I had just arrived at a party as what used to be my house. Needless to say most of the people there were not in the most sober state of mind (I had had nothing at this point). As he's talking to me about his attempts at flirtatiousness, I spot out of the corner of my eye the tall blonde--now being truly a friend of mine whom I care deeply about in a unique sort of way--and so I see her being blatantly hit on by some giant of a man, a baseball player I later found out, probably a nice enough young man but here he was blatantly hitting on her, trying to get her to sit on his lap or some such non-sense. At this point I had such an amalgamation of emotions it was difficult to understand how I felt or what to do but she looked so goddamn uncomfortable saying no to him and all and he kept insisting. So, somewhat out of character (though not really) I simply walked up to her, placed my hand gently on her arm or back, and whispered something to her about going out on the porch, to which she nodded and smiled. I saw out of the corner of my eye and magnificent frown form on the face of this University athlete, which of course brought to my face a grin. So we went out on the porch and I was nervous as hell because who was I to know whether or not she really wanted to talk to this guy or even really if she wanted to talk to me and then to make me even more confused we went out to the porch and didn't really talk that much at all, it being in public and us having a relationship taking place almost entirely in private...so she went back inside in no time, and I spent the rest of the night wondering what the fuck I'd just done, though, to be completely honest, the guy seemed like a real jerk-off and I hate to see a girl have to resist a guy for so long only to give in. But who am I to claim the right of protection? I'm no one. I'm nothing. And anyway I hardly even saw her the rest of the night, this great friend of mine--but I'm always that way with women--I'm great one on one, at night, alone, and there are feelings there that are real and returned and received--but give me a night out in a crowd and i become lost in the confusion and reflection of insecurity. Ah!

But if I'm going to be honest, and I always am, then I have to say I was pretty proud of myself going over there like that because I can see through the sinister intentions of a guy like that who doesn't really care about much of anything other than a quick fix, in the sensual sense, and it's bullshit and I'm not going to stand around a watch it anymore, come what may! A guy's gotta be perceptive, and perhaps I'm too much so, but this guy was oblivious as far as I could tell--but then again, my worst fear is that I'm the one who knows nothing, and perhaps she really wanted to talk to such a guy and spend time with him, and then who the hell am I to want to spend time with a girl who wants to spend time with a guy like that? c'est la vie, to quote the french.

In the end it comes down to this: I'm sitting alone now in a six-bedroom house writing nonsense, eating cold steak from a friend, listening to Dave Brubeck, wishing I wasn't alone now in a six-bedroom house writing nonsense, eating cold steak from a friend, listening to Dave Brubeck, wishing I wasn't wishing not to want to be alone now in a six-bedroom house writing nonsense, eating cold steak from a friend, listening to Dave Brubeck. In other words, I wish the timing was better and I had a little more luck, or maybe I wish I cared a little bit more, or maybe a little bit less. Until then, though, I don't expect a single thing, and so I will die tonight and in the morning be reborn.

isaac

It's Getting There

2010-09-24T17:43:00.002-04:00

Truth from Bob Dylan

"Not Dark Yet"

Shadows are falling and I’ve been here all day
It’s too hot to sleep, time is running away
Feel like my soul has turned into steel
I’ve still got the scars that the sun didn’t heal
There’s not even room enough to be anywhere
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

Well, my sense of humanity has gone down the drain
Behind every beautiful thing there’s been some kind of pain
She wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind
She put down in writing what was in her mind
I just don’t see why I should even care
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

Well, I’ve been to London and I’ve been to gay Paree
I’ve followed the river and I got to the sea
I’ve been down on the bottom of a world full of lies
I ain’t looking for nothing in anyone’s eyes
Sometimes my burden seems more than I can bear
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

I was born here and I’ll die here against my will
I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standing still
Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb
I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from
Don’t even hear a murmur of a prayer
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

isaac

Another Goodbye

2010-09-19T02:49:00.003-04:00

I once walked down soggy sidewalks of inner-city Indianapolis with a woman I considered more beautiful than any I’d ever seen or met. I had on a tan suit and she a blue dress with golden ropish necklace. We’d just seen Mahler’s 2nd, The Resurrection, enjoying God as music for an hour and a half with no interruptions while she sipped Champaign and I, Crown and Coke. At one especially rapturous moment during the performance she looked over at me, eyes wide, and raised an eyebrow as we both silently acknowledged to one another that we’d simultaneously felt the Spirit of Sound swell within us. As we walked down those damp streets to meet our friends at some forgettable bar, I quietly imagined that her and I shared intimate secrets, love, trust, and the other intangible necessities of committed relationships. I imagined it quietly and inwardly because it simply was not true by any means. She was only one of many recipients of my unrequited love (small “l”), a beautiful friend, so to speak, whom I’d included in this little exercise of self-deceit. So secretly I had created my own alternate reality, the reality of strangers, who would walk past us as they’d walk past any couple on a night out in the city and think happily to themselves, “Ah, what a nice young couple.” And what a nice young couple we were inside my mind.

To deny reality often forces it to crash down upon you, violently as if taking its own bitter revenge. It is an assault upon the senses, of both the body-soul and the mind. Knowingly playing tricks with your own perception of what is real in time and space is dangerous territory with, I have found, nothing but disastrous implications for your life and relations with others. To say you know one thing but to secretly believe another, perhaps even subconsciously, is an everyday occurrence in the small stuff of life. But to take it all upon yourself, or perhaps within yourself—to choose to believe despite all evidence, when pertaining to the heart of existence, love, and death, is the root of both faith and despair. How is one to ever know which one is rooted in?

In my darkest and most beautiful places of contemplation I have often stumbled up my own secrets as they are revealed to me from Above. How freighting, to be confronted with that which one holds to be true, because such a confrontation births possibility and thus necessitates choice. How convenient, one might think, to be able to catch a glimpse of what one should do—yet a glimpse is all we mere mortals can stomach, for that Great Greek Teacher was wrong: One does not make the best decision by way of accruing knowledge. This I have disproved, in my own life, with my own actions. And one does not need only the Will to do that which one might should do, this again I have disproved, if only for myself, with my own actions. Perhaps your will is stronger than mine, and for that I applaud you endlessly and forever. What then can I do but surrender to the Almighty all that I know I cannot do in and of myself? I know many reading may cringe at such a lowly choice of words, and I say: cringe with me. Critique Paul’s theology all you want, but I believe he had it right in saying we do that which we do not wish to do, and often times I find myself avoiding that which I believe I should do. Perhaps this is weakness and stupidity, and to that I say: But I am nothing but a pitiful fool. Explain it away psychologically, sociologically, linguistically, philosophically, metaphysically…do as you wish—but none such compartmentalizations of death and love have ever gripped me with holy awe and fear. None such explanations have ever warmed me on a cold night of brokenheartedness. The Academy, for all its invaluable worth, has never once helped me appreciate the sun that warms my face nor the beautiful brokenness of solitary nights of cigarettesmoke in the cool-night breeze of the hallowed midwestern countryside.

Often, on nights like this, I sit and write and grasp for all that I know is beyond my reach. I would not grasp but for the fact that this incomprehensible More is felt and known somewhere deep inside. It comes to me in the form of idealistic visions as I imagine and can nearly see all of love woven within our lives. I see the vibrant tenderness of human care as enacted in the ones I love, and just as vivid is our individual and collective inability to make this love manifest in all that we do, in our relationships, our thoughts and dreams, our desires, our actions. Yet I have experienced on occasions moments between friends and lovers that are so real it is as if I can reach out and touch the Holy Other as its disguise is lifted in our Love, sitting over coffee, in the garage, on the road, in the bowling alley, or at night as we’ve fallen asleep.

But there are still nights like tonight, where earlier, when confronted with the emotional violence of reality neglected, I stood alone amongst friends at the bowling alley contemplating all that is beyond my grasp in my life and relationships. Those moments where I cannot help but wonder where she is, who she’s with, and what they’re doing, and unfortunately for me, the she is not singular but encompasses all those I cannot seem to forget nor remain detached from. Good friend Charley, noticing my inability to cope, said simply, “Brush it off, champ.” I smiled my half-smile and ran my fingers through my hair saying, “I still haven’t figured out how to do that yet.” As the others bowled I brooded and became lost in my own apprehension of the power of love to overcome the power of loss. I became trapped in reflection, to either trust in something beyond all reality or to give in to that which was before me and once again lose hope in the divine absurdity of the reconciliation of all things. I knew that last night, on the couch with Ivan, I had accepted once and for all that I was unable to keep separate my emotions and my actions, yet here I was, considering the devilish lure of self-deception once again.

Has my exterior soul become so hardened that entry is impossible, or have I subconsciously locked away my inner-love for so long that it has given up any attempt to break free from me? The type of cultivation necessary to create any type of meaningful love relationship seems so far from possible, and yet the alternative has left me alone on a false island with nothing to drink but the brackish water of guilt, insecurity, jealously, and anxiety. Yet it is me who has put myself here, who has excluded myself from the imaginary groupings of the youth that make up my everyday. And so I reflect constantly, from one broken-mirror reflection to the other, either letting go, breathing, or saying to hell with all of it.

And so I sit now near the end of my page, in childish tears, because outside of family and certain friends, this lonesome act of writing has become my only means of consistent happiness in the last year and a half. When inspiration sparks it is as if my heart is momentarily mended in the expression of that which has been given to me within—and to end even the silliest little writing exercise as this becomes another painful goodbye.

isaac

Understanding in Darkness

2010-09-18T22:12:00.003-04:00

Until later tonight....I have this from Saint John:

The fire begins to take hold of the soul in this night of painful contemplation. The understanding is in darkness. The spirit feels itself to be deeply and passionately in love. The touch of this love and Divine fire dries up the spirit and enkindles its desires, so much so that it turns upon itself a thousand times and desires God in a thousand ways. In the midst of thes dark and loving afflictions the soul feels within itself a certain companionship and strength, which bears it company and so greatly strengthens it that, if this burden of grevious darkness be taken away, it often feels itself to be alone, empty and weak.

isaac

Growing Young

2010-09-18T02:48:00.011-04:00

We're not children anymore, though I desperately wish we were. Certain events make their mark on our lives, first times. Maybe this is a problem of mine, taking on other people's problems, but some of my marks are other people's firsts. Loss of innocence. People tell me things, my friends, they tell me things about their lives a lot, regret or happiness or insecurities or generally the fear of wading in dark waters and uncertain territory. Their marks become mine.

I've found myself in uncertain territory and tonight as I was sitting on the couch feeling lonely and unsure I looked at myself in the sad reflection of Ivan's eye-glasses and I found myself confiding in him and feeling bad. No, not bad, sad is the word. Sad because I wasn't eight years old again. Sad because I'd grown up and grown ups do things they never thought they'd do. They do things they said they'd never do. They don't really trust people anymore. And while what I was confiding wasn't by most people's standards really that momentous, I could see in his eyes that he saw in my eyes that I just wanted to go play catch with my Dad in our back yard.

(vague bit of dialogue for my own edification. when this shit comes out in print some day you'll get the full story!)
"I wouldn't worry about it," he said.
"You're probably right."
"But I wouldn't be surprised either way."
"I know, I know, I know. I just want to believe that maybe somehow..."
He shook his head, "I wouldn't get your hopes up."
"I know, shit, I know. It's what I signed up for. And really, fuck it, I don't care either way."

But I did care because I have accepted, once and for all, me, that I, Isaac Horwedel, I cannot help but care. I can play it cool for awhile, I can act as if things don't really get to me, as if it doesn't matter to me one way or the other--but it's not true. Everything matters to me, and when things aren't as they should be as far as I see them, I cannot help but speak up to whoever is there to hear me, I can't help but question, I can't help but wonder what if, I can't help but imagine it somehow better than it is. And sometimes I just can't take it. I can't breathe. I can't let go. I can't let live. I just want to play catch, though. I know that. I don't want to think about girls anymore, the ones that left or the ones that just showed up. I don't want to just be another option for someone. I want to mean something to someone again and I want someone to mean something to me, even if that never happens for me in this life. I want to hold hands with someone again, outdoors, on sunny days and on rainy days, in front of other people, intimately, unashamed. It all sounds so wonderful again, but it's never seemed so far from possible. It's some abstract ideal desire but I have no way of going about getting there again, so I'll probably just end up staying around here being miserable most of the time with little spurts of empty happiness every now and then until I go back to the mundane melancholy of it all....but it's not so bad. Going through what I went through has made it nearly impossible for me to experience anything too earth-shattering in terms of relationships. Its' just another break, another heart, and then morning. No one should feel sorry for me (not that anyone's saying they do). Get that, my life is pretty easy on the whole, I'm just awful at making things really work with the opposite sex (my own fault entirely). And why? Because I create problems that aren't really there....or maybe they are but I'm the only one that sees them. Eh.

A lot of my friends give me shit because I'm predictable when it comes to any of my relationships, and no matter how many times they tell me, I always act surprised when it turns out they were right. I also always act like I discovered it for myself, even though they were telling me all along. So when Ivan told me what I needed to do I agreed with him. But even then, and even sitting here now, I just don't know that I have the balls to do it. Why? Because I grew up, I guess, and now I just gotta figure a way to grow young again, like I used to be.

isaac

Peter Pan

2010-09-17T02:02:00.004-04:00

I sat down to write. After about 45 minutes or so, these are the 1200 words of nonsense I could come up with. I'm unhappy with them.

Miles turned to look at me, “It’s one thing to say that I don’t know where I’m going in life….but truthfully, there’s just nowhere to go.”

Where was everybody going? I didn’t really know where, just that people were moving, or at least planning on it. Pretty soon there wouldn’t be too many of us left in this town. People have to have their dreams, I suppose, I just wished everyone had dreamed closer to home. But life is moving on, and really, I’d been saying goodbye to someone or some place since I was a kid moving away from family or friends, or saying that great goodbye however long ago. Every time someone leaves your life you think it’ll never be the same again, but you get up that next morning without them, and then the next, and then the next, and pretty soon time as smoothed over all those sharp edges of goodbye-sadness. That’s not to say that I don’t still miss all of those people that have moved on or moved away or just moved out of my life, only that life forces you to forget them little by little each day. No matter how hard I’ve tried, and believe me I’ve tried hard, I don’t miss them all today as much as I did the day they left or the day after. The strange thing is, most of the time I was the one moving away, and now all of the sudden it’s like everyone’s been moving on from me, or is going to anyway. Across the state, across the country, across the pond, whether for school or for love or for career. And it’s impossible to think outside yourself, so as far as you’re concerned, in some ways, they don’t really exist anymore, and no matter how many e-mails or what have you you send back and forth, you can’t grasp the fact that they go on living somewhere else with new friends or new loves or new towns, so what else is there to do but try to remember as best you can, and if you’re lucky maybe you see them every so often and are reminded that they’re still a person and all, and that you’re still friends or whatever.

Life has a way of bringing new faces around, though, and all of your friends or family or lovers that left you are left wondering who the new faces in your life are, and they won’t really believe it, and they’ll think, like you think, that all the new faces are much prettier than theirs. For no matter who did the leaving, everyone thinks the one they left or the one that left them is somehow doing better off than they are--but in life no one is really better off than anyone else when all of spirituality is factored in, and anyone who thinks they are is kidding themselves. That’s not to say that there aren’t certain situations that a person might need to get out of to be better off, but nothing is for all time, and every situation has the potential to turn sour.

For more than a year and a half I’ve imagined her as living the life she’d always wanted without me, when in reality her life is essentially the same as all lives are, as is mine, which is as they say, comme ci, comme ca. Sometimes, on certain nights or afternoons during certain conversations or goings-on, I realize that I’m not thinking about her, or that I haven’t thought about her for awhile, and I smile, then backtrack because realizing I haven’t thought about her actually makes me, for just a moment, think about her, but then I press ahead and intentionally enjoy the present, which is a present without her. It’s not happiness. It’s not sadness. Nor is it regret. It’s just life, and it’s a life without her. And sometimes a life with someone else. Because there really have been times when I can look into someone else’s eyes and not think of hers, and this fact did not bring about the end of all things as I one day thought it would. But that’s the thing, your life will not end up the way you planned it, and there’s a good chance you’ll be better of because of that.

So in a year from now, when almost everyone else has left, I’ll be lonely like I’m lonely tonight, and I’ll wish they were all here and we were all out bowling or drinking wine, but I’ll wake up the next day and it will have been easier than the day before. Not because their love isn’t important to me, not because relationships aren’t dangerously meaningful, but because every moment is beautiful--even those without them.

Maybe some day we’ll all be back together again, and this unremarkable town will once again be filled with remarkable people who for whatever reason were all here together at the same time---but I’m not getting my hopes up. I don’t want to go around, already, moping, spending all my time hoping people come back before most of them have even gone, but I feel that the time is coming and already it’s getting to me. And sure not everyone is leaving--at least not for awhile--but things change and people get married, people have kids and need jobs, and suddenly I’ve found myself feeling like Peter Pan when all the Lost Boys want to grow up.

Miles went on, “Society doesn’t have anything to offer me anymore. I can’t ever see myself getting married. I don’t want a job. I’m always going to live with my parents….”

And he was right. What happens to those of us that just can’t seem to find ourselves a place in society’s mold? What of us that can’t see ourselves ever married? With “real” jobs? With children? All great things, yes! I say yes! to them. Even still, I can’t find my place within them, and outside of about half a year of my life, I can’t remember a time any of those things ever really made sense for me.

I have no “real” relationship to speak of (though I can’t say I’m totally unhappy in my current situation). I’m losing money, fast, trying to follow two ridiculous God-given dreams (though I can’t say money has ever meant anything to me). By society’s standards I’m on a fast track to failure, or already there, though in many ways I’m more at peace with life then I’ve ever been, or at least I’m getting by. Because “happiness” has never really made me happy.

Suddenly I was reminded of that phrase of Jesus' that had one day, or only a moment, helped me see things clearly--“Let the dead bury the dead,” which I took to mean, live in this moment, now, and let the dead rotting things of the past bury themselves, let those dead relationships die and quit trying to dig them up within yourself. And if they are one day resurrected, rejoice and praise the Lord, but until then, be and become who you were made to be without them. Perhaps I’m reading them wrong, but then so is everyone else according to someone else, so I say read what you can…

Eh, I don’t like how this is written.

isaac

Night Always Gives Way To Day

2010-09-14T02:18:00.000-04:00

The other night I came home late, buzzed off of too much coffee and lack of sleep. In my mind and heart were the minds and hearts of those closest to me, literally, spiritually, figuratively, etc. And so I sat down knowing something was on my mind but could not put words to it. That familiar feeling of longing for that which needs to be written but is beyond our reach. You sense it staring into the eyes of the one you love; remembering the dead; gazing out across bean fields; camping out in the yard for the hell of it---it is that feeling of The Other made manifest in time and space.

I thought to myself:

Close your eyes and open up inward to the Lord. Look past yourself to find yourself amidst this wreckage called life. There is a heart beating inside of you that will, despite your best efforts, continue its blessed beating; you are a gift of creation and within you is contained the spirit of life beyond--beyond lust's slick invitations; beyond the unrelenting dizziness of the future; beyond the vulgar past of regret and shame. Remember that you are always the you of this moment and no other.

Opening my eyes I remembered a time when, once, in a moment of humiliating desperation, I put a cigarette out on the soft inside of my left forearm. Often I have found that those of us who find ourselves still green in pain will resort to uninspired cliches to gain attention from ourselves. When those embers momentarily wedded my silly flesh I was suddenly shocked into the realization that I am not that bad off.

We are not that bad off.

Yet I found myself continually spiraling downward, and tonight, now, as I write this, I continue to find myself going further and further down this sordid slide of youth. Slowly coming into focus at the end of this slide I see the great mud-puddle of perspective.

Closing my eyes again I saw brokenness facing me in all directions. I am cornered. Yet it is often those confrontations with others that are more broken that send me back toward my true self. After a short conversation with a close friend of mine who's been in five mental institutions in the last ten years, I realize perhaps I am not so depressed. My friend who, if he were to stop taking his medication for even a day would be back in a straight jacket. If for a week, he could be close to death. My friend who easily convinced me with his eyes that he has actually been to hell on earth, and not just symbolically. My friend who, on occasion cannot speak out of paranoid schizophrenic fears that he will literally destroy the fabric that holds together our universe. Oh perspective!

And yet I still lie awake at night. I fear judgment from others and myself. I truly believe I am as awful as I sometimes see myself. I perpetuate low self-esteem with decisions that give me low self-esteem. I sometimes enjoy the flesh and regret it. I am too afraid of a real relationship to do anything about it. I sometimes break hearts as vengeance. I sometimes deny my own heartbreak.

But I do not wish to wash away all of my guilt just yet, and I do not know exactly what I mean by saying such a thing.

What is that magnificent security in choosing that easy siren song? To survey the land of life and sigh--to give in--and say, in hushed whispered voices, "....so be it." Christianity, in perhaps its most honest yet still flawed form, is a religion of paradox; a swarming dialectic of righteousness and guilt; where certain weakness is strength and yet, other times so disgustingly pathetic, predictable, leading to guilt, or I fear, for some, numbness--until that moment when one is once again confronted, and, all too rarely, we may hope to achieve momentary faith. It is that religion of knowing what it might take to reach perfection but being so aware of our own fallenness that we sabotage ourselves from achieving it. And the sirens sing on....

I am a man who at times achieves soaring flights of inwardness and who at times is content to lie facedown in a pile of shit. I was once told that in 90% of my life I am mature well beyond my years but in other parts (relationships with women) I am stuck in the quicksand of adolescence. Perhaps you can relate to me, dear reader, though I know many of you have been able to move beyond my current position in this life. You have my deepest and sincerest admiration.

But night will always give way to day.

Pain knows no companion in the bitter race toward life's only end, in death, which all will come to know alone, in the self's subtle acceptance of fear as the necessary prerequisite to Love. Oh Grace why do you hide your sunlight rays from my face? I see you shine down on all those around me yet we remain unacquainted, or perhaps it's me who's been the stranger.

And night will always give way to day.

But what of our collective evil, fellow travelers? Have we so insulated ourselves that we've come to believe in our own ability to accomplish our own misguided ends? Why are we wasting our time with society's present rust and dust? iGods, eh! So I scream "FUCK" to the heavens as I fall to my knees and paradoxically praise and curse the holy ground I set upon, wishing for once Love would mean something other than the pain of my past! My tears melt the ground beneath my feat, my tears for her, my tears for them, that stinging arrow that's forever been stuck in my side, the stinging arrow of mine and others' guilt, that arrow of all the world's greed and disdain, mistrust, manipulation.

And night will always give way to day.

God grant us the strength to stand tall in our uncertainty, nevermind our questions and second-guessing, look inward to our beating hearts for the truth we possess in You. But who am I to say such things? I was born with lungs filled with the breath of defiance, you created me to defy You, to an extent, to push every boundary to its limit----I can't hold my hands up any longer in the face of this dialectic of fear and hope, faith and despair, love and loss. Knowledge has given way to belief. One must lie with pain to know the eternal bliss of happiness. We are doomed! Everyone loves to be encouraged, but life will not be grabbed by the reins in the ways we so confidently think it will. LIfe is not about happiness. I've danced on into the night, drunk and staggering, hugging and kissing friends and fellow lovers, all is illusions, delusion! Think of those that sit alone tonight in fear of what the present darkness brings, its violence and disease, its bitter cold, its blistering heat----think of it! Guilt, you devil.

And night will always give way to day.

So we press on toward the unknown of tomorrow's bright dizziness. Night always gives way to day--but the sun sets, too. Yet we press on, fellow travelers, and I pray we gain the wisdom and courage to believe we can be better people, that somewhere we are good people, and that others truly deserve our love and trust. I have no optimism for the future, yet I am called to Love and so I must love others, and, perhaps most difficultly, even myself.

isaac

Rest

2010-09-12T23:12:00.001-04:00

One of my favorite songs about God from one of my favorite people--Jill Potter. Cry and enjoy.

Rest

When prayers become pathetic pleas that leave you wailing on your knees,
It’s hard not to curse the one you came from
But I am certain of a God who loves me still, despite my thoughts
My bitterness could never overwhelm that

Teach me how to know you; I forget
Hold me; Don’t let go, you are my Rest

We drive our cars until the roads run out of places we can go
Far enough to not deal with the distance
But once we reach the oceans shore, we see its waves and hear its roar
Humility reminds us where we came from

Teach me how to know you; I forget
Hold me; Don’t let go, you are my Rest

If I’m lonely, Lord be there
If I’m mourning, Lord be there
If I’m hurting, Lord be there
Your sons and daughters show your care

I don’t remember how to pray, so show yourself in all your ways
Remind me of the truths that have been spoken
When I start to lose all trust and blame you for what I have done
I’ll think of how my travels always end

Teach me how to know you; I forget
Hold me; Don’t let go, you are my Rest

isaac

Tall Blondes (or My Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds or Why Feminists Will Probably Always Hate Me)

2010-09-08T01:08:00.004-04:00

There's no way this isn't going to offend. C'est la vie.

Tall blondes will always be dangerous. Tall blondes usually have blue eyes, or green eyes, or gray eyes, and they will look at you, always at you but never through you. You can never tell what look at you eyes are thinking. Look at you eyes are masks for a painful unknown, unknown because a mask, painful because will always be unknown, y’ask me. Tall blondes. Read: danger. Tall blondes are tall and thus have legs that inspire awe, reminding me of tree trunks, the root of all life on earth, that Indian spirit of sound and spit and clay, I carve my name in them. “The legs of a thoroughbred,” what Charley always says, and Charley is always right. Tall blondes, the American ideal, hell the German ideal at one time. I now understand why. Tall blondes always walking toward you or walking away from you but rarely ever sitting in your truck with you, in your bed with you, discussing books with you, though I have found out this is in fact a real possibility. Perfect teeth. Tan skin, and smooth, so much so you want to have them lie down on their stomach so you can curl up like a cat on the small of their backs and fall asleep in the sunlight coming through the window, or so I’ve read in books. You spot a tall blonde across the room somewhere and you think you’ll straighten your tie and pull some rabbit out of a hat, so to speak, make magic, do alchemy, but believe me, they’ve already spotted you and you will lose this fight—by the end of the night it is you who will be eating out of the palm of their hand. Not because of any malicious manipulation, but it’s just sort of surprising to have such great conversations with someone so tall and so blonde (I know, I know, a horrible stereotype, but this is writing, so one exaggerates for humorous effect). I do not get easily attached to women these days, but tall blondes, they’ve managed to hypnotize me and now every time I hear the word “Amsterdam” I bark like a dog (woof!). You go into a situation with a tall blonde selfishly, per usual, attempting to escape the present lonely reality with a momentary bit of fun, but are surprised at the relaxed nature of the evening, the ease at which you converse and flow from one subject to the next, and of course the utter beauty as has been described thus far has you forgetting what time it is, etc. Before you know it it’s tomorrow and you’re checking you’re phone for missed messages….but there are none, and suddenly you know what it means to feel used. And you deserve it. And it's a small victory for all the women you've probably hurt. Eh! For tall blondes are better an unsolved mystery of the mind, though the process of figuring this out is well worth your time. I’ve been duped! I tell you, and am totally innocent. Nowhere is there a person powerful enough to resist the tall blonde. Run for dear life. Forget that golden hair of heaven. Blot out those tree trunk thighs you just want to grab handfuls of. Don’t think about the pearly white-teeth smiles. Never mind the strange fascination with a woman who stands three or so inches above you. Quit staring at those blue or green or gray eyes. And curse the day you ever felt tanned skinned so soft. Take it from me, once you’ve been trapped, there is no escape. Run…run!

Untitled #433

2010-08-31T02:01:00.000-04:00

To the one who stares blindly at the stars blinking bleakly at the upsidedown cavernous heavens; who sheds skin on Friday and Saturday nights so as to hide the hide of broken regret and shame; who builds up walls of fat and oversaturated tenderness at even the thought of the risk of honest humility; who stands still while staring out the kitchen window in holy awe of the green grass grown of black earth; who sighs at the sight of brotherhood, sisterhood, motherhood, fatherhood, Robin Hood; who walks alone on sandy beaches of time and space as hurled into the unknown and unnamed calamities of birth (i.e. life); who puts hands in pockets while brooding on street corner, full of regret, full of possibility, going nowhere, watching voluptuous passersby and drooling at the mouth; who finds themself crying at the sound of Autumn trees as they hush and rush in the chilled October wind; who each day turns the gears of society’s clockwork; who sits on the backs of heels in the humble alleys of City and Town of World; who closes eyes and disappears; who imagines warmth when there is only vacancy; who dries off in front of mirror after shower; who cleans fingernails with pocketknife; who constantly licks lips; who forgets to condition hair or check the oil in car; who sometimes sits down in the bathtub while taking a shower; who enjoys the feeling of rubbing naked feet on shag carpet; who cannot quite do a handstand; who trips often; who lingers; who interrupts; who overcooks; who questions the inevitability of happiness as a result of doing what seems to make one happy; who is numb to deep breath, to passions’ flair, to belly fire, to reason’s necessary limitations, to the joy of self-contradiction; who does not realize that they are forever lost amongst the reeds and cattails of the River Life; who awakes to a quiet morning of eggs, toast, coffee, and abandoned dreams….

I say forget not that death has no sting in the face of creation. Creation that is too often trampled under the feet of consumers and producers, or contaminated by the poison of doubt, or quieted by the deafening shrieks and shouts of the nearest crowd. Creation moves you neither Right nor Left, nor is it in bed with a cosmic Up or Down. Creation is the gift within you that allows you to Create and that which allows for the possibility of possibilities...

I lost my train of thought.

isaac

Untitled Prose Poem No. 44

2010-08-22T02:21:00.001-04:00

I closed the door behind me hoping no one would follow me inside. Once in my room I collapsed onto the bed, trying to regain focus, every thought bending toward her that I knew years ago…

I remember us not as we are but as we could have been: My memory tells tricky tales of love’s deception through long nights of innocent nudity in the cool evening air, cracked windows and fingers pulling down fabric, revealing the sacred softness of your holy femininity. My sweaty palms, your cool skin, anxiously awaiting my passionate advances. Attack and retreat. An innocent war of two lover’s journey toward selflessness. Were we free or are we now free? Was love’s false stability too much for our malleable souls? My heart bled for the chance to be yours, my body ached for your sensual curiosity, to be trapped by your cunning indifference, to suck the nectar of life’s first fruits, to lick life’s slick invitation, to believe God’s promise of love’s prosperity, to behold the glory of the night’s subtle beauty found hidden beneath the warm covers of bold acceptance, to make the decisive choice to be of the beloved, to belong to thee, to make the final sacrifice, a decision made and now nullified by circumstantial insensitivity.

We gave and gave and gave expecting only to be received. But rejection’s sting has caused the mind to wander into uncharted and unknown crevices of brokenness. The fallen angel of innocence caught in the trap of humanity’s sick obsessions. To be free from love, to ruin that which is worthy of preservation, to call into question the most innocent of beliefs for the sake of the mind’s false comfort. To be free of love’s responsibility, to be free of the other, to accept only the self’s haunted desires.

I only wish my head were a fountain so that I may adequately cry for the lost union of two innocent hearts, who found one another by life’s gift of chance but are now ruined by the frigid realities of time. I am not a man; I am a shadow of a man. Ruined by the destruction of my own false sense of self, in despair I wish I were who I was with you. But now you have moved on, to the mature task of life’s laughable lies, to be on your own, to be on your own by yourself, so I too will go alone, into the depths of drunken wishy-washyness. I am a failure, a naked skeleton of the potential man, a joke, a surd, a fuck-up, eh!

isaac

My Ridiculous Reflection

2010-08-20T02:45:00.007-04:00

This is a ridiculous reflection of sorts. A reflection on a living poem called life. My life poem is mostly about Christian guilt covered in love leading to romanticism, cynicism, bursts of joy and faith, etc.

The other day, after my newest stanza was completed, in other words, lived out, around eleven o’clock, when I was sitting in the garage smoking cigarettes with Miles like we do every day at eleven o’clock, I looked up through the pink morning clouds and saw a shining silver plane flying thousands of miles above me like some early morning star in the distance. Like a flash the faces of the passengers came to me, their faces and their feelings, their problems along with images of runny noses, noisy children, hot flashes, divorce, erectile dysfunction, lost wedding rings, broken cell phones, foot fetishes, drug addictions, shopping addictions, lost affirmation, acne, ear infections, budding young love, post traumatic stress disorder, premature ejaculation, victims of burglary, obsessive compulsive disorder, herpes, pregnancy, self-esteem issues, bad haircuts, missing shirt buttons, fly is undone, contacts are foggy, forgot to wear a belt, sticky hands from an orange, uncomfortable underwear, death in the family, questioning God’s existence, cheating spouses, pissing blood, workaholics, annoying friends, boring job, jealous boyfriend, etc etc. People from all over the world experiencing all of the same trivialities, all of them up there flying away unaware that I had spotted them from my open garage door. I began to think of that which connects us all, that being the universal human necessity of accepting that which is forced upon us, namely, accepting our birth. If only we could have made the choice to be born, I thought to myself, and not the choice of where or to whom or at what time, but the choice to be born at all. King Solomon, in all his worldly wisdom, perhaps sitting on piles of gold surrounded by naked slave women from his successful conquests, said that the unborn were to be the recipients of our envy, for they will forever be the only ones never to have experienced the evils and torments of the wicked world of humanity and its great capacity for destruction. And all is vanity. Only the original choice would guarantee true freedom and responsibility. But neither you nor I chose to born, and all of our talk of freedom becomes our own creation. And neither you nor I chose to be born, so why this sense of responsibility and guilt?

Birth is forced upon every one of us. Well, you might as well make it meaningful for yourself, they say. Well, you might as well eat and drink and try to have a good time, they say. Well, you might as well love the others, they say. Well, you might as well make some money, they say. Well, you might as well just look out for yourself, they say. All the pragmatists preach on. All the idealists preach on. All the cynics preach on. All the materialists preach on. Realists preach on. Anti-realists preach on. Politicians preach on. Teachers preach on. Preach on. Preach on. Well, you’re here so you’d better take care of the earth, they say. Well, you're here so you'd better be good and get to heaven or enlightenment or some such place. Well, you’re here so you’d better help others, they say. Well, you’re here so you’d better vote, they say. Preach on.

But I didn’t choose it.

I began to imagine a beautiful woman, as I often do, which was not difficult because I had just recently the night before been in the presence of one, which does not happen very often. And I recalled Paul’s words in Romans regarding the flesh and what seems to be a common inability in this species called humans to control our own actions—doing that which we do not want to do, and not doing that which we want to do, and so on—in other words, we are rarely ourselves. Sitting there I began to envision four types of people. The first being a person totally unaware of their potential, not potential talents necessarily, but the potential of the human body and soul to be beyond that which is was a moment ago, unaware of the ability to love and give and sacrifice and cry alone, who was not what one would even call an individual, but a faceless being awash in the mass of tangled limbs called society, a person totally unaware of freedom and responsibility, a non-self. The second was a romantic individual at odds with their own potential, who saw themselves as a type of worm of creation, a boil on the skin of existence who, if they could only get past themselves, might become some kind of beautiful birthmark on a woman’s cheek or breast, little freedom and much responsibility. The third was a type of lowly individual, who accepted their limitations but quietly pursued, quietly but with great vigor and strength, that which was the origin and giver of truth and meaning, and thus became excellent in freedom and responsibility, though unknown. The fourth person was a person of power, one who truly believed there were no limitations set upon them, that in and of themselves they could achieve all they set out to achieve, they believed that they grasped their own freedom tightly within their fingertips, that their human accomplishments would see them through toward death and beyond, that the will was the only necessity, all freedom no responsibility. I wept first for the first, and most mournfully for the fourth. The third person seemed an impossibility.

Looking out the garage a second time I saw a bird perched on a wire. Oh how I wished to fly. How I wish I could take flight at all times, to hover as a storm cloud and bring rain down on all that is below me. Or more, how I wish I could simply accept the impossibility of flight, to ignore the seduction of supreme possibility, to accept the finality of my existence and realize my own impotence. Or perhaps flight is possible, though inwardly, quietly, in moments of transcendence, in ways that all the world is unaccustomed to, in ways that are holy and unique to each individual. Transcendence of the illusion of life and death, the eternal acceptance of my own end, which begins in life. And I realized life was like a game, and God was not the mover of the pieces but the movement of the pieces. And I realized that every moment was mine alone, given to me, in some sense, and that that fact, the singularity of my time and experience, was enough to allow me to smile in that moment, that time is linear and every moment original, that the past is fiction, that the future is fiction, and that only the present is

isaac

The Rebellious Art of Creation

2010-08-04T02:11:00.004-04:00

I already regret posting this. Hopefully what I've written here will explain a little bit of why I thought I was going to take a break and why I haven't really. But also why I still want to.

In dreams I look down at this body that I loved and caressed, though still held back by some innocent guilt that stifled my soul’s drive toward the unencumbered joy of inverted sexual symmetry. I covered every inch of irresistible skin made blue by blue-moon moonlight through windows, softly, slowly moving flatted hand, heat, along warm-blooded curves and mounds of holy femininity, stopping every so often to enjoy some particularly comforting rest-stop in slow exhilaration, stretching every second in sexual anticipation of the Spirit’s coming. Did Love pass between us on nights like this? What now of our so-called Love? Where has it gone? It remains frozen in time or else waits in muted minds of waking life to float in on dream cloud of sleep, where none of reality’s boundaries can contain the soul’s true desire, the wholeness of self, the purity of honest woman and man, which wishes only to see you again—And so creates you, or re-creates you from not-yet-forgotten memories manifesting in the possibilities which are dream. I keep falling in love with falling in Love, but with no object of desire, only desiring desire, which is not Love at all but just sadness. Love tempts me with its timelessness. If ever I Loved you once then perhaps I really do Love you still, I think to myself.

Though in the inner-mind nightmares of waking life I don’t look down and see this body but instead two bodies, one unknown altogether and the other some fading impressionistic rendering of the one I was once drawn to by some mysterious calling force that is beyond all nature, beyond all science, beyond all rational ways of attempting to understand the force and ground of all being which is Love, which is sometimes called God, which is sometimes called Love. How is it that Love fades? How is it that time somehow gets the upper hand against the ground of all being? I fight back in futile attempts to win against time and so remember. Remember… Remember…

That night after Sara had left and gone up to Muncie to be comforted in the arms of friends I went down to Joe’s Coffee Shop on the college campus to be surrounded by the familiar faces of strangers and watch a friend sing sad songs set to happy musical melodies. I slouched down on the sofa in my gray sweatshirt which I had bought on one lovely afternoon adventure with Sara, this now being the beginning of the tiresome trend of immaterial objects bringing a whole flood of once happy memories turned gray and bitter and broken.

I sat alone and silently cried with each heartbreaking song, my mind not knowing where to settle in its sudden abandoned disposition. Certain events such as this cause such a momentous switch in the way one comprehends their own understanding of reality; as the mind and body are bombarded with emotions there comes a time when numbness overtakes the whole of your being and you do nothing but sit still and sulk and soak up anything you can which is at times everything. Nothing is seen nor heard nor felt that is not somehow now associated with the simple fact that you alone are sensing it with no relation whatever to them. Each note is your note and every breeze that blows by brushes only against your face. Though you both see the same stars and stare up at the same moon, you’ll never again seem them from the same angle.

After the show I sat still as all my friends gathered around carrying on conversations, ignorant of the fact that time was somehow standing still for me. “What’s wrong?” Jane asked, tapping me on the shoulder, “Sara break up with you or something?” I looked up at her with red eyes as her face went from a smile to a frown, “Yeah,” I said. She put her hands up to her mouth and let out a deep breath both for me and for herself, probably, as her and good friend Elliott had just ended their own shot at love. She opened up her arms wide and I stood up and hugged her, finding some solace and realizing that I was not the first person ever to experience some sadness in life. “I hate to tell you this, but it’s only going to get worse,” she said, holding me now at arms length. “Thanks, Jane,” I said and we laughed. Though I did not believe her at the time her words have certainly come true as is evidenced by the entirety of nearly everything I’ve ever put on the page.

As others rattled on continuing tired conversations I was overcome with the urge to escape and so I left quickly and lightly, literally running out of the room and up the stairs into cold wintery nighttime. I immediately felt the freeze on my face and took off down the sidewalk of University Boulevard in some clichéd attempt to outrun my feelings. It’s the type of thing you see in the movies and so you actually do it and it helps a little though I was quickly out of breath. I found myself outside of the University Chapel, staring up at the haunting images of Jesus in stained glass, blue and yellow and red. I was overcome with some desire to go pray in a real church pew but the doors were locked. I thought to myself, “Who locks the doors to a church? There’s people out here who need prayer, goddammit!” I tried and tried to pry open the doors but to no use. Up walked a security guard in his mid forties, one of the more well-meaning members of campus security. “Are you alright, son?” he asked, seeming genuinely concerned. “Oh sure, I’m fine,” said I, though wanting only to hug this man and weep. “Well those doors have a silent alarm connected to them so when you try to open them up we get a call” – “Oh that’s fine, that’s fine. I just left something in there, that’s all. I’ll get it some other time” I lied. He walked away and I sunk down to the ground, my back against the cold brick exterior wall of the chapel. I picked up a piece of ice that had fallen from the frozen roof and held it in my hand for a moment gazing at its purity perhaps even smiling before smashing it against the wall in some act of pathetic life-symbolism.

And it’s all weakness now and humiliation even at the thought of looking back on all of it and saying the word Love with capital-L. You know a friend once asked me if I was still in Love and without a whole lot of thought, though some, I replied simply “no” and kind of smiled and felt good though I was only saying it because I liked my friend and didn’t want her thinking I was still in Love with someone else and all. Nonetheless it seemed to be some defining moment of defiance, some courageous act of the self against the gods of sadness and their divine bondage of loneliness. Yet on other nights of jazz music and driving around in the rain, Love seems to be the only defiant act I have left. It’s Love as rebellion against the tides of time and the darkness of the present age. It becomes wholly and purely and innocently romantic…romantic with all its connotations, both positive and negative.

But it can’t be Love that means devotion, for I have said these words in reference to more than one woman. What was once Love has now been shattered and projected in a million ways onto a million different women all of them fulfilling some small part of what I can only believe I once had, though I was young, though I was foolish, though I was jealous, though I was anxious. And now every so often I see some woman and like some spark I see a light in her and it’s some nearly missable broken piece of Love that reflects off of her and shines into me. So I become a collector of sparkling reflections hoping to piece them together though they are infinite and will forever remain incomplete. These are the reflections that make up the reality of my dreams.

Remembering and writing everything, as much as possible, with as much vigor and honesty as possible, becomes some attempt to piece together my past before much of what I believed I Loved was shattered. Writing becomes, for me, the attempt to make a present physical manifestation of the world of my dreams. It is the art of deceiving one’s self. It is the art of balancing the mind between sanity and insanity. Yet still it is the rebellious art of creation. It is the attempt to, as much as possible, pull out and put forth the spiritual world of holiness that is within me and all of us. It is the attempt to view all of that which is heaven and hell inside of me and wrench it out onto the page. It is the violent act of purging and purifying myself that is not unlike exorcism.

I do not write for anyone, but for purely selfish reasons. I do not write so that you can keep updated with my life. This is why I have such a hard time putting anything up here, because to do so seems pointless and I fear motivated by some hidden and dishonest and borderline manipulative intentions that involve a single individual with whom I no longer have any communication.

In a more direct way, I feel like writing on here somehow hinders me from what I believe to be a more serious writing project that I’m almost too embarrassed to admit I’ve started. So I post on here in some way because of the fear that if I don’t then everything I write will stay electronically locked in my computer and never read by anyone. I just wish that were enough for me. I post on hear because of a very real fear of technology and its effects on books with paper pages that can be turned, torn, smelled, felt, etc. Essentially I have this blog out of convenience and the instant gratification of at least a minimal amount of readership. But my aspirations are much higher and more ridiculous. So I return, though not with full force. Just hope that I spend more time writing dutifully that which does not satisfy my desire for quick affirmation but will hopefully lead to a truer type of expression.

isaac

The Postmodern Beat

2010-07-22T14:52:00.001-04:00

Whenever I think I'm doing something good it always seems to turn out bad. So it is with the Postmodern Beat.

Thanks for reading, those of you who did. I think it's time I took a break.

Bye for now.

isaac

An Artist's Eye

2010-07-21T00:35:00.000-04:00

I pulled up into our driveway with two cups of coffee, one for me, large with three little cups of cream, and one for Miles, small and decaffeinated. The stars were out, shining humbly, shining stars long dead though still burning for us to see. I arrived just as Charley was leaving for the night and so sat down across the table from Miles and surveyed overflowing ashtrays and abandoned coffee cups, the chess-board centerpiece, all blessed by the presence of a Third, as does happen when two or more often come to meet.

“What time is it?” Miles asked me. “About ten thirty,” I replied. “You go to bed around what—twelve, one, two?” – “Somewhere around there”—“Well we can’t waste these hours then, let’s do something creative with our time. I’ll tell you a story and you write as I tell it, and you can write what I say or you can write anything, write whatever you want, just be inspired by what I say or what you think or feel and let’s just express ourselves purely.” He handed me his yellow legal pad as I took out my pen. He lit a cigarette and began:

“Call it 'An Artist's Eye.' When I was a child, maybe five years old, there was this big white house on a hill overlooking the river near where I lived. I went walking one night with my dad and he told me a garbage man he knew lived there. Being a kid I just assumed they were friends and when we stopped so they could talked they just went on talking like they knew each other so I thought for sure they were friends. I wandered around in the yard in some child-like daze and I found a stump to stand on so I stepped up and stood tall nearly as tall as my father and his friend, me being about four or five feet high on a two-foot stump. Being up a little higher a saw an airport and suddenly spotted this bright red biplane, shining and sparkling with black crosses on its wings. It took off down the runway and went up up up, up into the sky, its engines roaring, and as is it came soaring above my head a leapt with all my youthful strength! up! toward heaven and tried to touch God, who’d taken the form of this plane. And I felt free, like flying, or almost like dying.

“Some thirteen years later, I was around eighteen at this point, I was going completely out of my mind with schizophrenia walking under the silent silhouetted set against this beautiful orange sky and here was this house again and this airport again and I found myself with my dad again and he was talking to me but I couldn’t understand a word he was saying because I was so focused on this life-image, this repetition of being here again some decade and a half later, a different person though the same or the same person but different. I wanted to capture this image forever in my mind’s eye. I wanted it to be frozen in me, spiritually, so that some future artist could be possessed by its spirit, this spirit of my life, and I would send it along to him and he would recreate my repetition.

“A couple years later, two in the morning, I was walking alone this time and I remember it was fall because I had my sweater on. I went walking in this same neighborhood though into the woods and I came upon this Girl Scout’s camp, and it was this perfect pitch black, so dark that fear became to form in my mind but I kept pushing through, pushing ahead on into the trail looking for ghosts. I came up on this—what do you call it—and officer’s bar that I’d remembered from my youth and the memory of it began to blur with what I was seeing before me. There were bikes out front, in my memory and now as I stood there and the lights were on peeking out through the windows destroying the darkness that sat just outside them. I went in and saw these beautiful tables set up with silver spoons and forks and knives but there was hardly anyone sitting down, I mean there was hardly anyone there at all and I realized the tables were set up for veterans who were still dead somewhere in Vietnam or some such place. And I’d found my ghosts sitting there at the dinner table. I can’t get the image of it out of my head. It’s stuck in my artist’s eye, these images of life that are somehow beyond their own physical reality. The End.”

I read it back to him as we both sat drinking coffee, smiling, nearly cheering within ourselves, happy we were that we’d truly not wasted our time. We continued on into the night discussing women, love, politics, God, and Religion. At one point he said to, “People are so worried about other people believing in Jesus, and I believe Jesus is God you know, Jesus is God, but there are compassionate Buddhists, and loving Muslim families, and I mean—its’ like, anyone who is humble enough to believe that humanity needs a loving God.” And at that I was struck dumb at the truth—anyone humble enough to believe that humanity needs a God. And I see so many who are so bold to believe humanity is God, or that humanity will save itself, I saw myself believing these things and I wept inside. Thinking: Humanity, where is your sense? Don’t you see you’ve lost all of your love in stock markets and web-blogs? Humanity, what have you done with science? You’ve raped all that is right in this world and wronged it with the inky black bones of dinosaurs. Humanity, why have you severed yourself? Humanity you’ve lost sight of what it means to be human, as bums sit drunken in dark allies with heads in hands whispering mad lonesome lullabies to the Lord who sits next to them. You worship the celebrities of your time which will fade into tomorrow’s dust, forgetting the timelessness of love and humble compassion as you salivate at high fashion, high art and design, letting time swallow you up into its unforgiving obscurity. Humanity you are losing your own civil war and the innocent bystanders of the future are painfully being trampled with each new iPhone application. Humanity, you’ve missed all the signposts of failure.

Miles and I said goodbye, throwing away our empty coffee cups, not recycling and adding to our horrible sense of failure as a species. I walked inside and sighed, smiling though, that I hadn’t wasted time. Then I wrote this down.

isaac

Visions of Miles

2010-07-20T01:49:00.007-04:00

I stepped outside into the garage and was met with the hot death-breath of mid July. Miles was sitting in the dusty brown chair, huffing and puffing on his Basic Menthol Lights, caught up in Visions of Cody, rocking back and forth, big and powerful and innocent child-like. I plopped down on a seat at the table, pulled out a Pall Mall and stared up into the sky, blue, and white, clouds overhead. He began, “Do you ever get that feeling? It’s like this feeling, I’m not sure if other people get it. It’s this feeling, it’s cold like ice but it’s inside you, and it’s blue and beautiful. I don’t know if I can explain it. It’s pain, it, it’s painful but it’s beautiful and after it goes away you look back on it and you don’t see the pain you just see the beauty”—“Tell me a story about it, make it make more sense to me,” – “Here’s an example that captures it beautifully: Have you ever been to Ball State” – “Sure” – “I used to go into these piano rooms, these practice rooms, and I’d just sit there for four hours playing Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn, or I’d just play Bach fugues for four hours or more until two in the morning and I’d walk out into this icy cold and they sky would be green and the snow is falling and I’d walk down the streets toward sleep and I’d walk past the bars and see all these girls dancing and drinking and just being silly and it was like this disconnect, this sort of—intellectual disconnect, I can’t explain it, this icy cold disconnectedness and pain and beauty. Or I have another story, at Ball State there is this place Pruis Hall and I’d go there at night and it was this big empty room (he raises his hands) and it was just black darkness and I’d walk in and I had it memorized and there was this pure perfect pitch black Steinway piano and I’d go sit down and just play Mendelssohn or Bill Evans or Schubert and just pour my heart out and I could feel this whole world of beautiful pain inside me.” And as he told me I looked straight into his eyes which were somehow hypnotizing me and I understood perfectly everything he was saying and I was having the same feeling he was describing as he said it and in that moment nothing really mattered to me other than the garage and Miles and the chair I was in and the cigarette I was holding and the sky and the clouds and nothing before mattered and nothing that was to come mattered, none of the loss or future loss, none of the dreams, none of the love but I simply sat there in silence, unable to say what I was feeling for fear that saying it would somehow ruin it all. Miles went on, “I think that’s why I love Russia so much, or the thought of it. Cause it’s cold, I mean cold, and just pure spirit, with no stimulus. I mean I get in my car and there’s 30 CD’s to choose from, and I drive down the street and there’s honking horns and McDonald’s signs, and houses and people and TVs and billboards and no silence and no pure thought or pure spirit” – “Everyone’s distracted from actually feeling anything at all for the most part” – “I know man.” And we sat there, imagining ourselves Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy, respectively, pondering the depth’s of life’s mysteries which Miles could somehow see because often, in moments like this, he becomes like a pillar of smoke and spirit, pure and unfiltered creative imagination which doctors have called schizophrenia, etc etc etc

Later that night Miles came back over with three colorful tubes of paint, red yellow black, and said “I feel like painting” so he put on his favorite jazz records of Miles Davis (his favorite) and we set out as explorers in creative chaos, “Man I’ve never painted before,” he said, to which I replied, “Don’t worry about it. This is going to be pure artistic creativity because neither of us know what the hell we’re doing and have no technique, we’ll just put everything out there as we feel it.” Miles decided to paint on a pane of glass and I tore apart a shoe-box he brought for me and we began as Sir. Davis’ trumpet traveled through our ears. Miles stood hunched over, his glass pane on the garage floor, cigarette smoke sneaking up past his eyes and nose, brush in hand, painting a pure black and beautiful solid portrait of Mr. Davis, the sound of his trumpet manifesting itself into a beautiful woman. I stood over to the side, painting thick red-yellow-becoming-orange swirls, a backdrop for some such silhouetted person I imagined standing amongst the bright glow. “Ah fuck,” I hear, “I ruined it.” I looked over and Miles pane of glass was almost covered entirely in thick black paint. “What’d you do,” I asked. He laughed, “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” we both broke up hollering with laughter, “Man I don’t know what I’m doing either,” said I as I looked down at my mess of paint and cardboard.” We both threw our paintings away and sat down laughing and smiling, “I guess you’re probably supposed to have someone teach you how to do that,” he said, “nah man,” I replied, “we just need more practice.”

“Johanna painted me a picture,” I said. He asked to see it so I went and brought it out of my room, proud papa to a brand new painting that I immediately cherished, “You like it?” I asked holding it up for him. He said nothing. I smiled. He smiled. He said nothing. I said nothing. “I like it,” I said. “I don’t know if I like it,” he said, “let me see it.” Miles sat in big brown recliner, the painting eight or ten inches from his face. “I’m not gonna tell you I like it just to say I like it,” he said, “I gotta really see it first, you know? I mean I gotta really look at it.” He said nothing. I watched him watch it. “You think it’s her?” he asked. “I don’t know, I can’t tell, I guess it could be” – “I bet it is. I mean you know how hard it is to keep yourself out of your art. She looks like she wants to be worshiped, the girl in the painting" -- "Worshiped? I don't know about that. I think she looks sad" -- "She looks like she wants to be worshiped in despair, like she's not worshiped but she wants to feel like she is. I don’t know, I don’t know much about art, man. I mean I don’t even know what this is,” he said pointing. “That’s the armrest of the couch” – “Oh she’s laying on a couch oh I see. I really like this here, this flower or whatever it is. I like this a lot. I like this” – “I like the hair, the texture of it, I want to run my fingers through it” – “It’s beautiful hair, man. I still bet it’s her and she gave it to you,” he began to laugh, “she wants you to wake up and see this every morning,” he began to laugh harder, “Man she wants you to wake up to her every day,” I began to laugh, “Maybe, maybe” – “But no man,” he said now serious, “This is beautiful, man. I mean this girl, this woman, this woman gave you a piece of art, a piece of herself and she made it for you man. You know how personal art is and she made this just for you. Cherish this, man,” he said handing it to me, “I will,” I beamed, and I set it on the chair next to me.

We sat in silence awhile. “You ever have a dream about a girl and then the next day, after you wake up, you can’t get her out of your head,” I said. He laughed, “Oh man I know exactly what you’re talking about.” I went on, “Last night man I was thinking about my friend Jane, you know Jane she was at that party this past weekend where we were, well anyway I used to have this little thing for Jane or whatever but it never really went anywhere cause she had a boyfriend and she still does, which is fine you know. Well last night I had this dream about her,” I closed my eyes. “—–and I saw this smile, Miles, it was this smile that made me mad with gladness, I mean it was just pure gladness and goodness, and I saw her there with her brown hair, and it’s a dream so you don’t think anything, you don’t think anything of it, you know, you don’t think about life’s more compromising situations, you just think—beautiful girl, beautiful smile, beautiful world, and it’s beauty I haven’t seen in a while, you know—dream perfectness because in dreams time slows down for us. In dreams time slows down for us to be happy like children. And even when sex is involved in a dream it’s unaffected by any of my guilt about it (which has made me abstain in waking life), so of course it happens all the time in dreams. But it’s none of that that got me, Miles, it was that smile, eyes squinted in pure joy—joy that armies lay down their swords for—joy that world leaders choose not to go to war for—joy that mends broken relationships, and tips the scales of justice, leaving high-priced crooked lawyers speechless. But you wake up from a dream and it breaks up all that other-wordly meaning you’d found asleep in your mind. And Jane was nowhere to be found when I woke up, she was gone even though a second ago she’d been right there. Eh but what do you I know, friend, she’s better off without me I’m sure of that.” Miles got a glimmer in his eyes and just smiled a joyful smile as smoke spilled out his mouth and laughed in a way I understood but never understand. For a moment I was happy I wasn’t with Jane or Johanna, or Sara or Sophia, or anyone else at all. I was happy to spend my afternoons with Miles in the garage, talking about our icy cold painful and beautiful insides, and Dostoevsky and Kerouac, and women we neither understood nor cared, really, to understand. We sat there single and happy for a moment, probably him more than me, realizing that maybe we’re meant not to be married with children and jobs and homes of our own. We were playing like children, though not with trucks and sand but instead attempting to creatively imagine ways of speaking about all those things that are beyond speech. We were daring to dream up our own reality in which pure joy and energy manifests itself in our everyday selfsame routines of life. And my life was more like a dream than it had been for some time.

isaac

I Saw A Girl

2010-07-17T03:32:00.001-04:00

Tonight I saw a girl, a beautiful girl. She was. Her hair was golden dirty and blonde, and it fell softly and coolly down the sides of her tan-skinned face. I looked at her, stared really, momentarily imagining things like skin and like sweat but quickly switching to another beautiful girl from my recent memories, darker hair, who was stuck in my mind. But anyway I walked up to this beautiful golden haired girl, about 19 or so, who was sitting behind a table selling pictures and postcards at our local church coffee and music gathering and I said “Hey Rose, how’s goes it?” and she smiled and batted her eyes a little and said “Hey Lou,” and I laughed and said, “Lou? It’s not Lou it’s Isaac, how dare you!?” with a smile. And she blushed her tan cheeks now tainted red and through her white-smiling teeth she let out an “Oh I’m so sorry, Isaac, I don’t know why I called you that” as she ran her curious little hands through her hair.” “No worries, I—,” and before I could finish my sentence she grabbed hold of my hand and raised it to her perfect lips, soft and young and what have you, and would you know it she kissed my hand right there in front of everyone. Little did she know that while I was looking at her big blue eyes kiss my confused hand I didn’t even see her but instead I saw someone else, that same beautiful young woman from before, darker hair, and I thought “Awww man why d’you spend so much time thinking about girls who don’t think about you?” But anyways Rose had a boyfriend in the other room so it was all useless once again in the end. And as I walked away I thought to my self, “What would possess a girl who has a man, in the next room mind you, to kiss my hand, and for no apparent reason? What would he think if he walked out in the hallway and saw us? And at a church function, no less!” Rose didn’t seem to think anything of kissing my hand, and really I suppose it’s nothing of any importance, but I just don’t understand the motivation, you see. Perhaps plain old flirtation, a simple flirtation with no direction or purpose other than to please some side of our young human desires. A fleeting flirtation that has absolutely no duration once her lips left my hand. And it was over just like that before it really even got started. And I can’t understand why I’ve given it to much thought cause the whole time my mind was on a flirtation of some other kind. Something far away, so to speak, though also right here in these Bill Evans chords I’m listening to. I probably shouldda just kept my mouth shut last night writing about all that strange happiness, though at the time I did feel it. Perhaps it’s just one of those momentary life-pauses of understanding whereas tonight is back to a darker shade of blue. I mean, Jake LaMotta didn’t go down but he did lose, afterall. And I forgot to mention that after that fight with Sugar Ray he really went down by the way-side, or whatever it’s called, put on some sixty pounds and told jokes in broken down old nightclubs, eventually got arrested for some such risky business with a fourteen year old girl and basically just went on poor and lonely, at least that’s how it ended in the movie. I suppose joy doesn’t always endure in these our tough times of loneliness and grief. Oh Bill, Oh Bill Evans, why did you have to put so much pain into your pianokey strokes? Every time you strike a chord I feel that old familiar feeling, that stinging arrow of loss striking my heart. How can you hold so much beauty in your left hand and so much brokenness in your right hand? It’s no wonder you had to hunch over that piano of yours, your head down and cigarette lit, in sorrow, in guilt, in love, and in suffering you let all that life-mystery pass through your heart and into my ears. You’re killing me Bill, because in your music I feel her and as long as you’re playing I can’t let go. Oh well, play on brother Bill, play on so I can fall asleep with some company in my mind if not at my side.

isaac

A Love Song To Life

2010-07-16T02:23:00.003-04:00

I’ve been going through this rough time but I sit awake tonight happy and I can’t understand why. It’s not as if things are going well, cause things are going downright bad, hell, for me, in a way. But then there’s this feeling all the sudden somewhere deep down in my bones or somewhere like on my fingertips where I just got this sensation or some leaping be-doodle-be confidence that things will be okay, ya know, everything will be okay at the end of the day, even if they aren’t. Some quirk in my step telling me happiness isn’t about circumstance but about feelin good about yourself from time’t’time, or maybe it’s like I know a secret that the worries of life can’t touch, like maybe I feel like someone riding along in a funeral procession and they’re riding along in the dull gray complexity of funeral days, like dazed, and as they ride along through town they see a kid flying a kite, red with golden streamers, flying it way up high up in the sky and the kid she’s smiling and they think to themselves, “Well hell the funeral’s no good and death is still some absurd objectionable tragedy, but would you look at that kid smiling, happily, and that kite drifting along in the wind?” Or like some solider somewhere ducking down in the dull tan war sand, and he puts his head down in the dust to hide from death and he spots a dandelion and gets stuck on it and in that moment he’s suddenly confronted with all of the harsh realities of evil and death but simultaneously the beauty of green creation. I’m not sitting here confusing the two, goodness and evilness, tragedies and comedies, but simply stating the state I’m in, which is: I’m not as bad off as I thought I was. Because I know my desire is real and that feeling alone, whether it gets felt one way or the other, is enough to allow me a smile and a heartskip and a glimmer of the eye. And the Dave Brubeck quartet plays the same sensuous polyrythms whether I’m laughing or crying, you know? I suppose it’s joy I feel, joy which isn’t about yes’s and no’s but more about a big yes to life no matter how many no’s one goes through. It’s the same feeling I had that one woebegone mononucleosis morning in the fog when I asked Mary out for dinner as she sat behind the counter in the nurse’s office and she gave me a flat out “No” and I simply said, “Thank you, ma’am,” tipped my hat and skipped out the door smiling cause I was floored I had the balls to ask out such a beautiful blonde (and anyway she turned out to be a real bore of a gal, y’ask me). I imagine it’s the same feeling Jake LaMotta musta had after he fought Sugar Ray Robinson for the ten-thousandth time and he came out bloodied and beaten but do y’know what he had the balls to say to the victorious Sugar Ray? He said, “You never got me down, Ray! You never got me down!” And he didn’t cause LaMotta never hit the floor though most men wouldda been down twenty times or more in that fight. But ole’ Raging Bull Jake LaMotta lost on his feet, proudly, with a sort of quiet confidence that he’d won even though the numbers had him down and out and overwith. So what if I’m down in the numbers? I’m still standing, aint I? And maybe from time to time I still got a tear in my eye, but cryin’can sometimes be wonderful if yer laughing too. I guess maybe there are many different shades of blue, and tonight, I’m Royal, or maybe Robin’s egg! And you should be too, cause baby that sun’s gonna be up bright an early tomorrow morning, and though I might be sleepin in, in my mind I’ll be imagining grandma’s farm-house, the coffee perkilatin, an Billy Holliday will be singin “I hear music, mighty fine music” while birds sing songs in all our ears. I gotta find a way to find happy right now or I’m not gonna want’ta wake up for coffee and birds in the morning much longer, and I don’t wanna sleep in all day—I want’ta sing a love song to life again.

isaac

The Holy Bible. In My Dreams. Love. A Wedding. A Prayer

2010-07-15T02:48:00.005-04:00

NOTE: I wrote this all tonight but it was so fragmented I decided to break it up and give each section a different title. Consider them all different parts of one thought, I suppose.

The Holy Bible

Jesus Christ sat alone in his Gethsemane garden and bled the blood of a savior while we all snoozed down the way drunk-tired from too much wine. Jesus Christ, whose name sits on the tongue-tip of so many slimy sinners, young and old, was once slandered for saving a society whore and saying, “Go now and sin no more.” Jesus Christ was hung up on a cross, holy and humiliated, and would you know it he recited poetry from King David. King David, adulterer, murderer, poet, of all people. King David, who saw bathing Bathsheba up on Middle Eastern probably mud-hut rooftop, and said, “Beautiful Bathsheba, I gotta have ya!” and so sent her then husband to the front lines to die. And I’m sure as her husband breathed his last breath he imagined: beautiful Bathsheba bathing on the rooftop. King David, shepherd, slayer of goliaths, adulterer, murderer, poet, king, called a Son of God, supreme jerk, after God’s own heart. Like father like son, Solomon sat brooding in a pile of gold, bright and brilliant, surrounded by beautiful women, wives and concubines, gazing at the clouds and the dirt and the sand, depressed at having everything in his royal lonesomeness, saying, “All is dust.” Solomon, the wisest of the wise, king, poet, cynic, sex fiend. So goes the Holy Bible….

In My Dreams

In my dreams I am a famous writer floating on clouds miles above the land and oceans, peering down on the heads of humanity watching their pre-patterned lives of pain, regret and sorrow. In my dreams I am a famous cloud who sits on writers and says, “Put down your pen and look at me for once!” In my dreams all my warmth is derived from a single body at my side, where smooth skin smothers all my schizophrenic stupidities and worries. In my dreams I’m driving down a desolate road, the windows down, and she’s sipping red wine, $3.99, from a coffee mug that reads, “Las Vegas,” in big block letters on the side, and beside it is a dark silhouette of a lonesome ole-west cowboy and his horse, Jake. Behind them is the red-orange and yellow sunset setting below the red sands of Utah or Arizona. In my dreams we are all children again, innocent and forever young, never forgetting the truth or failing to see the light that surrounds us from above. We are children righteously affirmed in all our beautiful brokenness and tenderness. In my dreams we are children who sit on mountain tops so close to the sun that it becomes a part of us and we become a part of the mountain, and above us the blue skies of eternity smile and sing us to sleep. In my dreams there is no society with all its false labels. In my dreams the sands of time never slip through to the other side and instead we all just stand and sway pressed firmly together under the moonlight and the whole world is our dancefloor. In my dreams I am piano keys that, when pressed down, play her what she wants to hear. And, once pressed, I become the sound waves that brush past her ear…

Love?

Last night I drove along alone smoking sinful cigarettes that I know are no good for me, and I listened to the sounds of silence, almost happily, happy I was not, though free, I was. I had this painful memory I thought would never leave me alone, you see, but I figured out it took a little bit of pain on its own level and the thing seemed to fly away up on into the stars. Some have said that pain is only an illusion. Some have said that pain is a decision. In my mind pain is altogether absurd, paradoxical, funnily a lot like Love. Love, I spoke the word but wonder whether I’ve ever known it romantically. Love, or is it Luck? Everyone I hear everywhere talk about Love like it’s loose in their fingertips. I never listen to people who talk about Love without ever having known Loss. Love that must transcend beyond any sort of physical manifestation in time or space. Love that lets go. Love that cannot caress the object of its affection. Love that’s been through the garden and hung up on the cross. This type of Love I’ve seen only from the outside, peering through window, blurred, as a happy couple sat spooning on the couch, his arms wrapped around hers, as they breathed and believed as one body does…

A Wedding

The other day I went up Wisconsin way and sat in the afternoon sunlight to watch my friend get married to a beautiful woman. Boy were they beautiful up there together deciding decisions I envied from a distance. Together they shone like the sun, reflecting their radiance on everyone, making us all a bit happier, I like to think. In the back of my mind were other matters that made me feel like a fool, though a fool I probably am and will always be. Six hours we drove up, me and Lou, stuck in traffic reminding ourselves that we’ll always and forever be friends, and six hours we drove back and though I got back late and missed meeting my favorite female friend, it was all worth it to see two people make a rare and holy commitment to one another. It was worth it to see such a perfect display of Love and Choice, which are there capitalized out of awe and reverence.

A Prayer

God of all that is good, sometimes I turn toward You and think, “You don’t seem so good.” God that is mystery and grace, I often wonder why I wait for You to will what I want. Can’tcha send a bit of patience my way once in a while? I sat and sighed the other night thinking of You and wondering what it is I’m s’posed to do, ‘specially in a situation like this where I gotta face a reality that I don’t want to. But we been here before, I s’pose, though it seems we been here an awful lot lately sitting on the floor, by little pools of my tears. And where were you today when I started spouting off all that shit I probably shouldn’t say? Hey God, I thought I been pretty good to You all these years but I feel like I aint got nothin to show for it, at least in terms of women, which I often get confused with You from time’t’time. David fucked Bathsheba you know, and had her husband killed, or did You forget? And all I’m askin for is a female friend to call dear and honey baby and the like. I’m too vulgar, I know it. I forget that You are not of time and space and for all intents and purposes do not even exist, so to speak. I forget that the moon and sun and stars are all I really need, and that I got a good family and good friends and that some people just aint meant to find Love and that anyway I’m only twenty two. I forget that prayer aint me influencing You, but You, somehow inexplicably through all of Your depth mystery and irrational inner-soul confrontation, influencing me. But even knowing all that, this pain sure still seems real, more real than You sometime if I’m gonna be honest. God this pain and this longing won’t go away, and all day I’s just thinking “why can’t things work out?” And some people say it’s cause You don’t want them to work out so you somehow make them not work out and I think those people don’t know anything about You or themselves. From what I’ve gathered, You don’t seem too interested in influencing what happens one way or another, only in somehow helping us figure out who we are and who we’re supposed to be. Well I can’t argue with that. Don't worry though, pal, I aint goin nowhere. Goodnight, God! hehe.

isaac

Hey Henry Miller

2010-07-08T00:59:00.003-04:00

Henry Miller is staring at my soul. Henry Miller, with one eyebrow arched up matching the right side of his mouth, also up-turned, seeing me with gray eyes, understanding maybe things about myself that even I don’t understand here on this again another dark Anderson night alone. Henry Miller, when you went on your lonely night-walks through your famous Fourteenth Ward, were you ever followed by an ex-lover’s ghost? You described yourself an angel hiding holy wings beneath your overcoat, at any moment ready to release yourself and rise up past the sun’s rays and reach heaven. Henry Miller, won’t you take me with you?

I think I think too much. ‘People always telling me I think too much and though I never thought I thought too much I’m beginning to think I do. ‘Think so much you start thinking things you never thought you’d think and never shouldda thunk in the first place. Start thinking about like sittin on the edge of a bed and she walks over to you, standing there still in front of you and runs her hands through your hair and you press the side of your face firmly against her flat belly, smooth and soft, and tie your arms around her hips, holding her there what seems like forever, or you hope it will be. Thinking: well who’s there now in my forever place of happiness? Who’s in that first-class edge-of-the-bed seat? Thinking: who’s hips are these I’m holding now? Thinking: My do my arms feel so empty holding these hollow hips of air. Thinking: Boy I’d sure like to hold them new hips! Ah why didn't we ever get drunk together and go dancing till dawn downtown somewhere in that city of hers? Why didn't I write her no poetry? no songs? and not enough love letters. Why was I always worrying and wondering about the worst that could happen? Thinking: Why'd I wreck everything?

Hell I don’t wanna think no more. Who’s thinking who’s happy? No one. Happy people don’t think, they feel the one they’re happy with. Happy people feel the hand they’re holding but not their feet touching the ground. See these happy people don’t even really feel, they float! (But floating’s not flying I suppose.) Right now I just wanna get off the ground one way or another. I don’t wanna think no more—I said it once before—but you can’t fill an empty space with nothin. But all the somethin’s I filled it with turned out to be nothin, and all the nothin’s I want so to be somethin’s are already somethin or nothin somewhere else, or something like that.

Henry Miller, why did you go? Didn’t you know no one could ever take the place you left? Time takes care of all of us I suppose—I just hope I can find a way to fly like you did if I’m never gonna float again.

isaac

These Indiana Nights

2010-07-05T01:20:00.002-04:00

“Let’s be children again,” he said, looking at me happily with something glittering behind his eyes. Me and Miles we sat there leaning up against the brick wall of the broken down old schoolbuidling on 14th street that some of us call church and some of us call corrupt, breathing in the breath that only cookouts bring. America the beautiful, hotdogs and hotdog buns, ketchup, mustard, potato salad, and get a load of this macaroni and cheese casserole. You aint never seen no mac and cheese like this. Could we, please, just sit here awhile in the sunshine and watch the children play like we used to play on Sunday sunny day afternoons? This is real childhood life, creating memories at 22 and 26 and 31 talking to beat old black women, Miss Sue, come and sit down talking to me and Charlie telling us about her neighborhood that we live in, the neighborhood she’s lived in for how many decades, who knows? But she knows, knows everyone and everything about everyone and she tells her jokes about so-and-so always wanting a girlfriend and so-and-so being a tired old alcyholic but still havin a way with them ladies. And she said she missed Saul living in that schoolbuilding and she agreed with us, “Things shore aint the way they used to be”—“Mmm-hmm” we nodded at 22 and 26 years old sipping on sodas sittin on asphalt enjoying one of the last true great small-town Midwestern neighborhoods I’ve ever heard of. Miles turned to me and said, “Remember when you were a kid and you could just play and someone said ‘go play’ and you knew exactly what they meant and you could just run around, go around, play around and it didn’t matter what you did or if there was any organization to it or anything. Half the kids you played with you didn’t even know but it didn’t matter, man, ahh I miss being a kid. You can’t do that when you’re an adult, man”—“Yeah,” said I, “and we even had special play clothes we took along with us and we got dressed up in our play clothes to just go play”—“Isn’t like that anymore”—“Maybe it could be. Sometimes I still feel like a kid inside, and I just want to put aside what’s expected of me and maybe…paint a picture or write a poem for no special reason other than to resist what seems to be this inevitable expectation of what it means to be an adult…” and on and on we went till darkness set in.

Me and Charlie and the gang went up on the schoolbuilding roof and looked out over all of Anderson and saw the beautiful town which was ours to call home. We saw fireworks in every direction shooting up into the night air BOOMing and PSHEEWing across the gray sky in brilliant reds and golds, not so much celebrating some dead country’s independence, but maybe just celebrating what it means to be a kid again and forget about the everyday stresses and strains of minimum wage work and child support bills and everyday lonesomeness and loss of love and the I’m out of work and I got this bad back blues. So we loaded all that worry and heartbreak into a tube and shot it up into the air getting it as close to God as we could. And even though it didn’t reach heaven, necessarily, it sure made a valiant effort destroying itself on the way there in a fit of beautiful passionate forgetfulness. Miles was down below playing America the Beautiful on his guitar setting the most perfect most fitting little bit of musical irony and holy sentimentality—ah go fuck yourself you cold hard critics of community cookout gatherings in small towns on the 4th of July—I may hate just about all that america stands for these days, but there’s something hidden and holy deep within these Indiana nights.

isaac

Skipping Stones

2010-07-01T13:35:00.003-04:00

The other day I heard a young atheist say something about God being some silly superstition he’d grown out of—he said this with a grin wearing a green bow-tie and a monocle, wetting his lips sipping on champaign—and I thought, how sad, this boy must’ve never looked into the eyes of beautiful woman before and spends too much time tweeting and twittering on his iPhone to feel the real soul-depth of two human beings. And he and all his friends laughed and chuckled on about the absurdity of religion and all its violence, how science provided all their much-needed and much-important answers on all of life’s much-needed-to-be-answered-questions. I of course sat there silent, soulfully brooding on in my own little reverie, loosening my tie and laughing my own inward laughs at how funny they all suddenly appeared to me. It wasn’t so much his non-belief that got to me, honestly I couldn’t have cared any less one way or another what this guy thought about anything, it was that simple notion that he seemed to think anyone cared what he thought about God or America or Money. The boy had no emotion, and instead of whispering into the lovely ear of the beauty of a girl next to him he sat their masturbating in front of all of us, so to speak, talking on about Thomas Jefferson and Richard Dawkins and a bunch of other rich white liberal hard-ons who’ve never walked down a cracked sidewalk or cried in the shower, probably. The trouble with most (most) Christians and Atheists is that one keeps trying to prove a God that doesn’t make sense and one keeps trying to prove why the God that doesn’t make sense doesn’t make sense and they keep yelling at one another—it’s gotten so loud, man—they’ve drowned out Bill Evans and Thelonius Monk over in the corner, neither of whom mind, so I suppose. And I sat there and thought, “Thanks a lot my friend for ruining an otherwise beautiful evening with your white-toothed wise cracks about the beliefs of others—I know there aint no big man up in the sky with a wooly white beard and blue eyes, but there’s still a deep mystery between me and her on Saturday nights that can’t be explained by cosmology or anatomy or physiology or even depth-psychology, no matter how much you might think you might have made it make sense to you. So let God be love-relational or word-depth or sign-and-symbol or just a lonely wanderer dying on a cross or—eh, what’s the use.” Don’t misunderstand this as some sort of misguided apologetics, man, I’ll leave that to you at Christopher Hitchens. Meanwhile me and Christopher Robbins’ll go walk down by the pond t’skip stones with the fireflies and the bullfrogs.

(I once looked at a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. and was mesmerized by the deep sadness hidden somewhere inside his sad brown eyes. I felt all of jazz in his sorrowful soul-stare. I felt the rain, no rainbow, like a man alone up on a cross and don’t you know “Charlie Parker looked like Buddah…and his expression on his face was as calm, beautiful, and profound as the image of the Buddah represented in the East.”*)?

Selfless acts are not acts rooted in superstition, nor are beautifully unnecessary works of love nor leaps of faith. Anyone who’s ever longed for the rare touch of someone’s skin has disproved all rationality and anyone who’s ever peeled back their own flesh in front of another face or begged for bread in the back-alleys of a broken-down neighborhood in all shattered honesty has made a human advance far greater than all the halls of academia or government, as far as I’m concerned. Take away all your technology and hand me another glass of wine, the cheapest kind, and go out into the streets and invite all the strangers you can find and tell them the house of so-called superstition is having a party for all ages races and genders and only those who belittle others are not allowed in (ah hell, even they can come).

isaac

*the quote is from Jack Kerouac in "Poetry for the Beat Generation"

Ms. Kittycat and Mr. Moon

2010-06-30T01:40:00.001-04:00

I've posted a song at the bottom that you can listen to while you read. It's what I listened to while I wrote.

That night the cat was my peculiar little playmate on the floor—fluffy gray, scruffy and puffy in her pure feline form—Hey cat, hey cat, purr for me once more why don’tcha?—I got down on all fours and looked into her little yellow angel eyes and said to my self, I’ve always been a dog person, hey what? –don’t mind me little cat, don’t mind me like you don’t mind no-bod-ee, ever and forever by yourself and alone. Meow for now and later we’ll purrrr on into the moonlit night—silver rays coming in through powderblue curtains, the window open breeze floating in on a canoe, moon river, peeking up at the black nightsky just a silver sliver slowly sliding down through time and space falling on our mysterious eyes that look up innocently expecting to see angels for the first time floating on gray heavenly clouds that roll by disguised as horses, sailboats, snails, butterflies, dandelions…but tonight you’re my only true friends, Mr. Moon and Ms. Kittycat, serenely staring back at me in your wildly exotic glance of voluntary lonesomeness—surely you know what it feels like to be alone—though I must admit you’re are often distracted by the silliest little string things, furry fuzzy things, on you go skitchy and scratchy on disappearing somewhere not to be seen for hours at a time finally re-emerging against the side of my leg unexpectedly. It’s a shame I can’t pick you up, friend, but the gods, damn them, made me allergic to you though often times I find myself unable to resist so I scratch your head as you squint your eyes pleasurably, hopefully, worth it I suppose, and what’s a night of watery eyes and wheezing and sneezing? It’ll happen some way somehow anyway. Oh Mr. Moon, tell me or your problems so I feel a little better about mine sometime. Sitting up there all night a bright beacon of melancholy resignation—your big brother the Sun getting so much credit, whereas I say you’re just as good and perhaps maybe even a little more poetic in your own way. Mr. Moon my companion in nighttime meditations, a beautiful backdrop for all our angelic conversations of soul on the porch with wine and cigarettes or at the café with coffee and cigarettes—no regrets on my part shedding the shell of self-deception in hope of some more beatific reception of her or anybody else I suppose, but hey what do I know? Oh how vivid a moonlit memory can be, especially when those silver rays peer through cracked car windows late at night and that cool breeze—ooey—that cool breeze brushing by bringing in its joy and gladness mixing in with that warmth of that person beside you who’s just right, just right for the night, the moonlight—and the breeze, oh that heavenly midwestern windowsdown countryside breath from above—take me there just one more time and let me die myself a happy man.

isaac

the road. the town.

2010-06-28T01:30:00.005-04:00

short exercise in spontaneous prose while listening mostly to "Bebop" by Dizzy Gillespie. I encourage listening to it (you can find it at the bottom of the post) while you read along...

here’s an idea, a girl, say, yeah say I ever find a girl again one day. she’d be a real smooth talkin’girl, the smoothest I’d ever heard or seen and in her Natalie Wood ways she’d smile like a little devil child and I’d give her everything she ever wanted in as much as it was within my means to give it t’her. and we’d tell jokes and sing along to all the sing along songs we could find the strength to sing along too. off we’d go down the road in and out and through towns, up and down hills, roaring along huffing and puffing in my beat up ol’ truck—really pull up our stakes and roll. Roll on along the road, roll down our sleeves and roll up the windows me in the driver’s seat bebop bappin and slappin that wheel with my gap-toothed grin and brand new sharp driving hat (a gift from my parents) and she’d be over in that other seat with her own wide-brimmed lovely sun hat grinning and tee heeing with her feet sticking out the window, smoothed tanned legs providing the perfect backdrop for her wet toenails painted red or yellow or even white drying in the breeze that would come in through our windows churning up some great whirlwind of love and bravery. and every so often along the way I’d say “Hey! you there, you know what?” and she’d say “what’s that?” and I’d say “you’re beautiful” and then smack-a-rooni I’d lay one on her with one hand holding the wheel and another hand unbuckling her seatbelt and then putting my arm around her sitting bench-seat-style staring out that windshield window to the world. but where’d we go? who knows? who knows where road goes, the road goes where it flows, some mad civilized river stretching out across this country which, despite the complex technicalities of my nuanced political views, is still the country of jazz and baseball, apple pie and the grand canyon, Jack Kerouac and Big Sur, Henry Miller and American girls (not that they’re so much better that the ladies from across either ocean necessarily). we’d churn on across this country and see everything everyone else has missed and it’d be the easiest way to ease this American malaise that has so struck the young souls of my generation.

but after long even the ol’ road has its own sort of loss, its own melancholy perturbations. So we come back and settle down here in Anderson awhile and get a grip on the essentials of life. you can still roll down the windows and slap that bappy wheel down along 14th street on your way to the Trainstop Deli on a warm afternoon, and you can still feel your heartdepths in the plain rain of the Midwest while you work your way along Columbus avenue toward the 29th Street Café for a coffee and apple pie (warmed, with a scoop of delicious vanilla icecream). and three fourths of the year you can still find romance somewhere between lanes 3 and 5 at Brown’s Bowling on Broadway and you can feel all the soul and joy and tenderness of the world shooting pool with the big gang of Mexicans, grinning happy and drinking Miller Light, over at the Three Pigs Bar and Restaurant. so we’d go to all these places and we’d accept and commit ourselves to a real town for once, a town with real character and simple joys with only the rarest sighting of silly hipster kids and their bastardized sense of purpose and style. if I ever find a girl again one day she’ll be the type of girl that could love a place like Anderson and not need a city to her affirm her existence (and Im being honest when I say this, that’s not a reference to anyone I’ve ever known romantically, really I mean that, this is something completely different altogether in my new life now without her) and not need the big shining city lights to feel real soul energy between two people.

ah but enough of this negativity, what I’m trying to say is I love my two homes, one on the road and one in the town, and sure I’ll go to the city every now and then to check up on it, but never long enough to let it rub off on me, yet hope-full-ee long enough that maybe I’ll rub off on it, though the city doesn’t deserve any of the love from the town.

anyway, i gotta get me a girl again somehow somewhere preferably one from around here who doesn't fear here and wants to stay near here and then on we'll go down our road home in love and happiness and beautiful broken joy.

isaac

My Foolish Heart

2010-06-27T02:13:00.005-04:00

Note: Listen along to Bill Evans play "my foolish heart" while you read. it's at the bottom of the post.

It’s dark here in Anderson again and so my mind moans and roams to its darkest corners looking for one more drop of sunlight to hold me up till morning. My heart moans and groans and roams alone, alone, and rests nowhere, constantly moving forward unceasingly searching for some unforeseen destination, some place to own. I fear home is here, right here near the darknight Anderson thoughts that swim through past present future all becoming one split second of my time forever to be remembered (or forgotten) but who cares really? I’m used to opening my mind and remembering my thoughts and the thoughts of others. It’s finding a way to get my self to be so open that I can take flight and the others can remember my thoughts, there’s the real trick of life, that’s what keeps me up at night.

These sad sidewalks know no names and don’t care to, so it seems to me. These sad lonesome sidewalks of shame that contain all my precious little moments of bliss, remembering now thinking, “so this is the closest I will ever be to her” and shedding a tear but not caring then or now really I suppose, telling myself it means something to get so close even if I never reach real togetherness joy. Boy, who am I kidding, when that big orange oval sets down to rest each night getting close doesn’t keep me comfortable lying there alone in bed.

One has to try to find some sort of happiness amidst the wreckage of life, so they say, but the they’s of this sort of talk seem to be the people who have what they want or want what they have, which is not to say that I don’t have or want, or want or have, but my search is to have little and to want much, to want the thunderstorm and the sound, to want the rain that comes down making little pools in my eyes as I stare heavenward. Is one right to not have love and want to have it not? Supposing I did have love to hold, wanting would come only in the spirit’s swelling and in waiting for the rare desire to knowingly wound one’s self in the wedding of two souls. Would this rare wounding desire ever take form in me again, I’d surely hope to want what I had, though, then again, perhaps some fresh new wreckage would find its way into my lonesome sidewalk wanderings.

My foolish heart beats hard in my chest deceiveing itself into believing it’s about to beat its last beat. I know this fleeting fear of the end is only cheating me of enjoying what’s left of my eternally significant finitude, but knowing never was believing and believing never was acting or changing so on I go along these dark Anderson sidewalks somehow always knowing and believing but never seeming to see the right time to become my thunderstorm, always looking up but never flying. Yes I suppose it’s dark here in Anderson again.

isaac

In My Darkness Let Me Dwell*

2010-06-17T03:22:00.002-04:00

When the sun is pulled down behind that flat Indiana horizon and darkness envelops me and all that I can see, I faintly remember some fine touch now foreign, some mystery blue and gray like some unpaintable night sky. This faceless nameless feeling finds me hidden under covers, helpless against its uncompromising desire to be felt. Feel me! it whispers, forcing me to accept its non-existence. And so I’m powerless and I must give in. I must relinquish my grasp on forgetting by remembering that I’m alone. Let me sleep, say I, let me fall into my own restful dream-consciousness where she’s with me, where they’re all with me, where I am that man who I want to be. But I lie their, restless, and there she sits in my mind’s eye a possibility never to be known and I go on unceasingly imagining what it must be like to live a life that exists outside of my dreams. The waves of anxiety crash against my inner skull walls and I retreat further and further back in time when I had someone to call mine. Ah, but she was never mine: a false sense of security. The mind vaults forward into the unknowable future and some rich color, bold and blue and beautiful and broken drips down into my inky nighttime bedthoughts. A smile, a wave, a wink, a touch here and there—oh they all add up to love eventually. But the brighter the future-colors, the darker the present darkness darkens, the heavier the heart grows, the lower the stomach sinks, the more lonesome that sad foreign touch becomes. If there ever is a day when the sun refuses to set, and the darkness never comes, let me catch no glimpse of it before the day of its arrival. In my darkness let me dwell, until that very moment when the eternal light breaks the heavy dust of loneliness and heaven’s golden glance sets upon me. In my darkness let me dwell, so that I never again neglect that holy healing light of love. And when this happy day of love returns let me never forget the darkness that nearly overwhelmed it’s fragile beauty. And never again let me confuse the two.

isaac

* I stole this, without permission, from a poem (I think...maybe a song?) called "In Darkness Let Me Dwell" by an author whose name escapes me at the moment. I've actually never read it but I heard a piano piece based on it. Also, I wrote this listening to the music of Ralph Von Williams--mostly his 5th.

At What Expense?

2010-06-08T12:03:00.000-04:00

When did good become confused with bad? Closing my eyes, I remember some time that perhaps never existed, when the time made sense and we’d walk along happy-go sidewalks waving at genuine faces. But, but, was there ever a time such as this? This world’s gone crazy, they say, and I must admit that the darkness seems to have the upper hand—and yet, at the expense of what? They cracked wicked whips against the black backs of those involuntary warriors and heroes and we’d smile lily-white smiles down those happy-go sidewalks. Isn’t it so? Isn’t it so? These kids today!—what of those kids? Fresh faces hid their crooked lies and today our lies are on our sleeves. Not mine, not mine. Where goes that timeless figure, shadowed, solitary, hunched in inward silence? Where goes that single individual, shape-shifting, bound not by land nor time, who refuses all of your categorization and stands tall yet defeated, who waits and attacks, who is silly in all seriousness and yet at any moment stops time in that eternally significant moment? When all the crowds have swallowed up the faceless in their universal everyday despair—there goes that single individual down the lonesome sidewalk of sentimental remembrance, holy embrace, that work of love, fondly remembering, re-collecting, and pre-constructing new possibilities to re-collect at a time yet determined. What of community? Community! Community! Their cries ring empty in their own shallow projections. Their communal façade hides their lusts, green, rotten, hiding secret power trips and misinformation. Ah, m’boy, but you’ve forgotten that there is no reality. There is no “no,” and any attempt to form “no” means you’ve yet to leave childhood, which also does not exist. He! He! He! Look at all the silly children running and playing in their “yeses” and “noes,” he! he! And their laughter pierces the heart as the head sinks lower and lower into confusion beyond good and bad. At what expense? At what expense? But we’re Free now, m’boy, free to be whoever we want to be, free to change the rules, or eliminate them all together! Listen, m’boy, don’t you hear that sound called progress knocking down your door? This is the most exciting time for Life there has ever been. We’re almost there, m’boy, where? you ask, to the only Truth that matters—that there is no Truth! He! He! Shut up, my man, say I, shut up and go live your life somewhere else. All of you! Go misinterpret the meaning of my life somewhere else—All ye long dead white men, go die somewhere else, all ye younger Ivy League future life-ruiners, ye East and West Coasters and Big Cityers with no love for the cornfields of America, all ye smalltowners with no love for the life and electricity of the citystreets, all ye misinterpreters of Ti-Jean and R. Zimmerman and that Single Individual, all ye sex-crazed lunatics of academia, all ye political hard-ons (ye who’s members bend left or right whenever convenient), all ye broods of vipers spreading your venom amidst the pews and pulpits of God’s Church (with one hand stuck down the corporate underpants with another hand in yer own underpants), all ye youngsters with no respect for those gray-haired heroes of time, all ye gray-haired cowards with no respect for our young souls, all ye believers in technological progress regardless of the costs, all ye Fundamentalists of Religion or Science or Truth or Nihilism or Capitalism or Socialism or IsmIsm—Away with ye! Away, Away! I don’t pretend to believe Love Exists either, but I do believe it can Exist when two people are willing to let it take form, which is God. God who is all things are possible; All things are possible who is God.

(How many times are we to forgive, master? Seven times? Seven seems like more than enough, don’t you think? One offends me seven times and I’ll forgive them seven, but one more and the cops I will call! NO! Seventy times seven, my friend. Which means forever forgive. And that Single Individual once said, are we not only forgiven as much as we are willing to forgive? And so I said, what an interesting and peculiar and lovely and difficult thing to do, and he nodded and smiled at its strange beautiful absurdity).

I too want to experience life. I want to see that which I have not seen and do what I have not done and believe what I have no believed and taste what I have not tasted and feel what I have not felt. At what expense? I hear whispered in the wind and rustling amidst the trees. At whose expense? I hear trickling down the tears of her face and beating in the blood of my heart. I too want to have fun and forget the too big worries of life, but again I see it in my friend’s face, in the burning cherry at the end of his cigarette, in the swirling cream-swirls of his coffee—at what and whose expense? And I nodded in agreement and once again believed in my funny little predicament in life and smiled and felt that feeling of knowing I was doing and believing in and being and becoming exactly what and who and where I want to be, with a friend who once saved my life and continues to save it. If you worry about me don’t worry about my lack of purpose, and be happy I still believe in purpose, as I believe most have done away with believing. If you worry about me don’t worry about my lack of drive to do what I believe is good, as I still believe in goodness, though I believe most have done away with believing. If you must worry, then worry only that I may fulfill my good purpose in a society that often harms those who attempt to fulfill their good purposes. For is not harm often good proof of a purpose fulfilled?

isaac

Most of the Time

2010-05-30T14:02:00.004-04:00

These lyrics make more sense to me now than just about anything else. Was watching High Fidelity and this song played that I never heard and it was this one. I've always thought High Fidelity was somewhat of an overrated movie in terms of being a movie, but in terms of relating to my life and having a sort of emotional impact or whatever--it's incredible.

MOST OF THE TIME
by Bob Dylan

Most of the time
I’m clear focused all around
Most of the time
I can keep both feet on the ground
I can follow the path, I can read the signs
Stay right with it when the road unwinds
I can handle whatever I stumble upon
I don’t even notice she’s gone
Most of the time

Most of the time
It’s well understood
Most of the time
I wouldn’t change it if I could
I can make it all match up, I can hold my own
I can deal with the situation right down to the bone
I can survive, I can endure
And I don’t even think about her
Most of the time

Most of the time
My head is on straight
Most of the time
I’m strong enough not to hate
I don’t build up illusion ’til it makes me sick
I ain’t afraid of confusion no matter how thick
I can smile in the face of mankind
Don’t even remember what her lips felt like on mine
Most of the time

Most of the time
She ain’t even in my mind
I wouldn’t know her if I saw her
She’s that far behind
Most of the time
I can’t even be sure
If she was ever with me
Or if I was with her

Most of the time
I’m halfway content
Most of the time
I know exactly where it went
I don’t cheat on myself, I don’t run and hide
Hide from the feelings that are buried inside
I don’t compromise and I don’t pretend
I don’t even care if I ever see her again
Most of the time

isaac

Going Nowhere

2010-05-30T01:43:00.004-04:00

Two men sat at a bar.
It was the middle of their conversation.

"I just don't understand," one of them said, rubbing his eyes and running his fingers through his hair. "Love, love love, I've said the word, you've said it. It's nothing, though, I mean it means nothing, when you really think about it. Some nights I'll look up at the great cosmos of twinkling stars or the big cloud kingdoms raging overhead, or I'll stand still and see the trees sway in an afternoon breeze, or I remember the tan-lines on her back, smooth, fresh somehow, or maybe that's not it, do you know? I can see the corners of her mouth and...all I'd want was to squeeze in there somehow, find my way in and curl up and go to sleep just resting there in the corners of her mouth. Do you understand what I'm saying? I can tell you don't and I can tell you think I'm going crazy and I have to admit, maybe I agree with you, but don't you understand! It has to be this way, or better--I have to be this way because there is no other way."

"Calm down and have another drink, you'll come off it." This one was a bit older.

"I don't want to calm down! That's the whole point, I don't want to come off it. What if I'm right? Did you ever think of that? What if everyone's just kidding themselves when they make it easy, or perhaps, in an even more frightening way--what if this is the first time in history things are the way they are? People don't settle down as much as they used to, it's rare, you know? What if we're on the brink of something new and awful and we're witnessing it right before our eyes, the breakdown of all of the fabric of society and religion and love and everything that was held dear for so many thousands of years? Did you ever think of that? Have you ever stayed up at night wondering about those sorts of things? Well I did, last night even, and I couldn't find sleep anywhere."

"What were you thinking about last night?"

"Last night? Oh last night was one for the books. You remember that girl, Sara, I told you about?"

"Vaguely."

"She's the one I was with for however long, that one that got away, the one that broke my heart, and on and on..."

"Oh that's right, I remember, from high school..."

"Right, so last night I'm thinking why not?, hey?"

"What do you mean why not?"

"I mean why the fuck not in the grandest sense! Why not find her and drive to wherever she is and recite poetry to her and bleed right there in front of her and tell all. Why not try again a third time, what? I mean why not? you see? What do I have to lose? People forget that life isn't some thing that's supposed to be one way or another, or some thing that's predetermined to go in such-and-such a way. We are our decisions, I keep telling you that and you never listen, pal. I've had it stuck in my head that I can't call her or I can't write her because I'm not supposed to for some reason, like it's some rule of life that you can't just talk to any old person, and you especially can't call back to someone from your past, who you loved, no less, you can't just call them up and say everything you think and tell them about all you've been doing because it goes against some sort of social convention."

"Well then, why don't you do it?"

"Why don't I do it?!" he said, almost frantic now. "Exactly, why don't I? I don't know! I don't know anything anymore. What if it ruined everything? Well what am I talking about, there isn't much to ruin. It's fear is all it is. Or I guess maybe some belief I have somewhere in the back of my head that you're supposed to move on from things, whatever that means. I guess maybe I'm afraid I'd be disappointed either way."

"Disappointed? How so?"

"Well let's say I see her and she's not the way I remember her--"

"It has been over a year now."

"Exactly, over a year now and God knows I've changed quite a bit so I can only imagined she has too. Let's say she's changed a lot. Well what if I go to all this trouble, this emotional and spiritual torment, just to see her again and then I'm let down with who she's become."

"At least you'd know then"

"Ah, exactly as I thought, at first! At least I'd know. But then again, don't I know who she is now? Or more, don't I at least know who she was when I loved her? I have that, no one can touch that. But it'll all be shattered then if I see her and she's changed so much over time. Then what will I have? Nothing, that's what. Nothing to hold on to. If I never see her again then she'll stay forever frozen in my mind, my friend."

"I'm confused. I thought you had it for this other girl nowdays, Sophia, or something like that."

"Goddamit, I know, I know. It doesn't matter what their names are it's all the same. It's all the same girl who wants nothing to do with me because I'm an absolute mess. I annoy people, it's what i do. I'm tiring to be around, for a lot of people anyway, usually women I like. I'm too much for them because I'm obsessed and I get all worked up and I can't let go and have fun and be normal. Anyway I think the whole thing with Sophia was bullshit to begin with. Eh! I'm over it already!"

"I've seen you that way before though, having fun, being normal, enjoying life..."

"Of course I can be that way but no one remembers that when their stuck in some sort of dramatic little moment. All they remember is the jealousy and the paranoia and, God, the anxiety. I can't take it. I stay up at night imagining all of these scenarios that haven't happened yet and I go over them back and forth 'maybe this will happen and then maybe that will happen and if this happens then that will happen' and on and on it goes. Then I go backward, into my past, and I re-collect my memories, even the bad ones, and I make them good and then I fix myself right there in the good ones and I repeat them over and over again. Then life smacks me right on my ass and I realize that real life isn't as good as those memories and that the future rarely ever turns out to be as good as I imagine it could be. The more I try to make it happen as I wish it would the more I fail, and I fail hard."

The both sat in silence, sipping beers and puffing cigarettes.

"What do you want?" said the older one.

He sat for awhile in silence, "I want to look at my life and say that I am the person I know I need to be. I want to be able to do that and I want to be able to do it happily with another person, with someone I love and someone who wants that for themself. I want to be able to go to bed at night alongside someone and not want them to leave in the morning, or not want to leave myself as soon as I wake up and go look for the girl I really love. I want to lose myself in someone again, to want what's best for them over and above what's best for myself. I want to be willing to sacrifice for someone."

They sat in silence again.

He continued, "Ah fuck it, though. It'll never happen cause I got this strange feeling that it won't and that's all it takes. I know no matter who it is they'll leave me unfulfilled like they always do. Maybe you only get one shot at this thing and I just took a bit shit on my shot at happiness and now I'm paying for it. Sara, sara, sara. I get depressed just thinking about it, the fact that it was so long ago and I'm still stuck on it, still thinking about her every night and I don't even know her anymore. I'm caught up in my past and I can't get on with my life and I don't even want to. I told her goodbye once in this big long letter and stuck it in her mailbox. But a letter isn't shit when you haven't seen her. And i haven't seen her face in over a year, my friend. This beautiful face I used to see every day of my life. I saw her face when it shone with happiness and when it was covered in tears, I saw her face asleep and wide awake, soft while comforting and cringed in anger...and now it's all gone and has been for so long. Sometimes I have to strain to even remember what she looks like, goddammit. And then when it comes to me I can't hardly control myself from the complete helplessness of never being able to see it again.

"Why not?"

"Ha! Why not...why not. Can you imagine that? Wouldn't that really just make me the most selfish bastard in all of history? Showing up like that. I act as if that's all it take, like the movies. You know I've dated girls who had ex-boyfriends who were probably just like me and they always got annoyed as hell whenever he'd send em letter or call them up all the time--and that's all I'd be, some annoying old ex-boyfriend still stuck on things, bothering her. Damn it, friend. Is that all I've become? An annoyance. I'm just some old ex-boyfriend who bothers, like an insect buzzing in her ear. No siree, I don't need that. I don't need that humiliation and I certainly don't need to realize that about myself. I'm tired of being the one to contact her. That goes both ways, you know! The only thing is, is I know she'll never say anything to me. But to hell with it anyway. I hope she's happy, somewhere in me. Of course I also hope she's miserable without me. Ah I don't know what I think."

And on and on they went into the night, not understanding anything and going nowhere, forever.

isaac

Lonesome Fragment # 999

2010-05-24T23:42:00.015-04:00

Proud Christopher stood tall and straight in front of the human-size mirror his mother had placed on a nail the day they moved in. He was wearing his father's old brown corduroy sports jacket and his older brother's tan pants which were one half size too small, the pant legs ending just above the bowed laces of his shoes. Straightening his necktie, Christopher imagined himself a handsome Hollywood actor. His light brown hair was parted and slightly slicked back and to the left. He looked exactly how he wanted to.

"Tonight will be a night I will remember for years to come," he thought to himself. He checked his watch. 6:15pm. "In five minutes I will leave, fill up the car, which will give me seven minutes to pull in front of Emily's house. That will give us a half hour to drive out to the city, find parking, and honor our reservation at La Bergerie." Christopher had saved two week's paychecks to take Emily for a nice night out.

Christopher walked down the steps to the wide open living room. His father sat in his large leather armchair in the corner of the room puffing on a pipe and leafing through his newspaper. His mother sat quietly knitting on the couch. "Well don't you look like a man," she said. "Doesn't he just look like a man, Joe?" His father looked up over his eyeglasses with a smirk and a grunt. "That Emily sure is lucky to be going out with a nice-looking young man like you, Christopher." - "I aint such a young man, ma. And anyway it wouldn't matter how good I looked cause Emily isn't looking to have a boyfriend right now. We're just friends is all." - "Well!" she said, "you still look handsome to me."

Christopher secretly hoped he did look just good enough that Emily might change her mind and actually want to call him her boyfriend. If he could be Emily's boyfriend then he was sure he'd be the happiest he'd ever been. As he stood filling the car with gas he imagined how the night might go. He'd go to Emily's house and be invited in to meet her parents. Christopher always enjoyed meeting girl's mothers because they always seemed to take quite a liking to him. He'd be sure to give her father a firm mature handshake. Emily's father was a prominent businessman in town who was known for being rather stern. Christopher made sure to go to the last couple of high school football games so as to have something to talk about with her father. Emily's brother was the starting tight end for the team and one of the most popular guys in school. After meeting the parents he would open the door for Emily and as he walked around to his door she would lean over unlock for him. They would then drive down to La Bergerie and talk about all of life. Emily, like him, was an avid reader and they'd had more than one serious conversation about The Great Gatsby and Catch-22 in their honor's English class. He would be sure to discuss all of his sociological observations of Glenndale High School. Of course he would enrapture her with his well-informed opinion of the latest music and movies he'd enjoyed, and humor her with his witty comments on the tastelessness of most of their peers. He'd talk of humanity's depths and mysteries, from the most grand to the most intimate. He'd talk of God and the self and the soul and the sun and the moon and the stars. They would arrive at the restaurant and he would escort her in. As they walked through the door he would delicately place his hand on the small of her back and she would sweetly turn up the corners of her mouth and lovingly and beautifully glance at him. He would pull out her chair for her and she would sit and smile and neatly fold her hands in her lap, just happy to be sitting across from him. Then he would go on in greater detail discussing politics and literature and oil paintings, french architecture and Vincent Van Gogh. She would gaze at him wide-eyed in wild wonderment not be able to conceive of how she'd somehow never realized how brilliant and charming he had always been. After dinner they would cruise through the open midwestern windowsdown countryside glancing innocently back and forth at one another. "Have you ever wanted to just go?" he would yell through the wind as it blew between them, "Just pick up and leave and move move move?" -- "Not until I met you," she would say and giggle. Then on they would press through the night together in love and madness, hardly saying a word yet sensing that the whole world was somehow hinged on the beautiful connection between them. After hours of adolescent roaming they would quietly creep up the wooden steps of her house, into her wonderful little bedroom which he imagined contained the softest and prettiest things there were. She would hold tightly to his hands and guide him into the middle of her room in the great October darkness as all of her family snoozed away. Without hesitation they would undress and stand facing one another naked but more they would peel away their skin and see God's often-hidden fingerprints just beneath the skin. They would make love in the cool darkness, every part of one body touching every part of the other. Love would pass between them and it would be pure and eternal forever.

He paid for the gas and sped off toward his dream. When he pulled up to her house Emily was already walking out the front door. She was wearing a navy blue sundress that ended just above her knees and a gray cardigan sweater. Christopher had never seen a more beautiful woman in all his life. She opened the passenger-side door and flopped down into the seat. "Well don't you look nice," she said and smiled. "So do you," he said, suddenly realizing he was nervous.

As he drove toward the restaurant he searched for what exactly to say. "How was your day, Emily?" - "Oh not so bad. You know how it is. Mother wanted me to help her make cupcakes for little Richie's birthday party he's having tonight. All of his friends are staying over tonight so we worked on those all day. I don't know, it was pretty boring." - "Oh, that sounds nice," he said, clearing his throat. The conversation continued in a similar fashion all the way into the city. Christopher could not manage to get a grasp on any thought of significance. Emily mostly sat quietly looking at the world outside the window.

They walked into the restaurant and immediately as they entered they saw a group of Emily's friends out on a double-date. They all nearly burst with enthusiasm and quickly began discussing school-related events and relationships that Christopher knew nothing about. These were Emily's friends that he did not know and usually felt extremely uncomfortable around. He and Emily had met in English class and rarely socialized outside of the classroom. Most of her friends were cheerleaders and football players, although she was also friends with a great deal of musicians, Christopher had noticed. As they continued on Christopher looked around the restaurant, down at the floor, straightened his tie and smiled a lonesome smile as he began to realize that Emily had no intention of introducing him and that her friends were not at all interested in being introduced. Her friends took their seat as he and Emily walked to their table. "Who were they?" he asked. "Oh just some friends of mine," she side. "Samantha and Marcus just started dating, even though no one really thinks it's a good idea because Marcus is really good friends with Samantha's ex, Brian. Anyway, the other two were Cherry and Tom. They've been dating for like forever but Tom just got accepted to State and Cherry still has a year left at Glenndale and no one thinks they're gonna make it." Christopher had no idea how to respond and so just smiled. "This is such a nice restaurant Chris, thanks so much for asking me to come with you," said Emily. "Well I thought it would be nice to have a sophisticated night out," he said, proudly. "It's too nice though Chris, I can't let you pay for me, okay? Don't make me beg. Daddy gave me money to pay for myself because I just can't bear thinking of you having to pay so much for me. Don't make that face, okay? I insist." - "I suppose if you insist," he said, forcing a smile.

The night continued on in that way. The two of them sat together at the restaurant in the most humdrum everyday way that all two people do. On the drive home Emily began talking to Christopher about a guy at school who had a crush on her and how she wasn't sure exactly how to respond to it but that she was flattered and "he is cute, afterall." Christopher drove on toward her house, his elbow on the door, supporting his head. He made the decisive choice to make one last attempt at redemption and so asked her a question he knew he would most likely not like the answer to: "What do you yearn for, Emily?" - "What do you mean," she asked smiling in confusion. "I mean what gets you going, you know? Don't you ever just want to live, I mean really live? Sometimes I feel like no one's really doing anything or being anything they really want to be. People just accept that what they have is what they'll always have and they don't burn to become something more. Don't you ever just want to do something absolutely and purely free and spontaneous and beautiful?" - "I suppose I understand what you're saying. I guess, I don't know, I just don't think about it." - "Well what do you think about? What do you wanna do?" - "Well I wanna finish school and go to college and maybe be a teacher, I suppose. Get married and have a family, be stable." - "Why do you wanna do that?" - "What's wrong with it" - "Nothing's wrong with it, nothing at all, but do you burn to do it? I mean what makes you want to do it?" - "You're being silly, Christopher. I guess maybe I don't know what you mean. I feel like I'm not telling you what you want to hear." - "I'm sorry. Maybe I don't even know what I mean, just forget it."

He pulled up in front of her house. She told him goodnight and that she'd had a real swell time and she'd see him on Monday in class. Christopher drove home feeling lost and crushed by the world which had suddenly felt heavy and unforgiving. He saw Emily in his mirrors and felt that sad lonesome feeling of every goodbye. The God-sense of being near to another flesh and blood human being with all his love and sickness over how he'd imagined her. That lonely pulling apart, all the romantic particles moving further and further away--touch, sound, sight, and smell. The only thing left were his imaginary dream and memory particles. Off she went alone and he was sure her thoughts were not with him, no matter how many of his were fixed on her. His mind's gaze locked religiously on her and her soul-depth which even she did not see but could if she only took off her clothes once in awhile, so to speak, and pulled of her skin and let him see God's fingerprints like he'd imagined. If she could only became who she was sitting across from him in English class discussing Nick Carraway all the time, when she was beautiful and golden, a radiant light in his darkness world. But they would never know what possibilities they could face together and she would never see it unless God suddenly confronted her and the whole world made drastic changes.

Christopher went up to his room and looked once again in the mirror, embarrassed by his second-hand clothes and embarrassed that he'd ever felt proud wearing them before. He undressed and retreated under his covers, trying to hid from the world and Emily's friends. His mind wandered back to the night as he'd hoped it happened. He thought about Emily and how beautiful she had looked in her dress. And for twenty minutes he re-lived his past forward. He saw them sitting at the restaurant discussing Gatsby and laughing and drinking and driving madly out in the October-night countryside, rolling down the windows and yelling up to heaven's angles, creeping up her stairs and making love on her soft beautiful bed. He saw them nestled together under her covers, falling asleep in each other's arms. Christopher re-collected the entire night the way he'd imagined it would happen. And slowly he faded from his waking dream to a quiet happy sleeping dream.

isaac

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These silly little stories keep popping into my head so I write them down. I can't tell if I like them or not but I enjoy writing them. I've rarely written in third person so it's a good exercise, I suppose. If you're confused about the time of this then join the club, I honestly I have no idea. Maybe it doesn't matter. Some of this story takes place in the fifties, other parts of it take place in the present--at any given point when you're reading it just make up when it takes place and that should work. Change when necessary. Anyway, I hope it's not too sentimental or nostalgic but then again I don't care at all.

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Oh, and just for the record, everything I write on here is a first/rough draft in the purest sense. I sit down, I write it out, and I put it up (the whole process takes a couple hours from thought to post). I say all of that to say this--I don't see these as completed ideas, necessarily. So if these stories seem really really rough, it's because they are. Okay, that's enough self-deprecation and qualification

So This Is Growing Up

2010-05-20T01:28:00.005-04:00

Young Peter Martin lie awake in bed on a warm lonely June night, his sheets down to his waste, unable to sleep. Thoughts drifted in and out of his head like turning the dial on an old car radio. Did Mary Stevenson really kiss Joe Steadmen at the party on Friday night? Why would she kiss Joe but not him? Was he going to make the college basketball team next season? I gotta start running more, he thought to himself. Why would Mary kiss Joe anyway? Joe's a lousy guy and everyone knows it, even he knows it, but the girls like him all the more for it it seems. He thought of his mother who seemed to have acquired some kind of lost sadness-look in her eyes. Every time he walked out the door to go to Henry's for work or out to James' house it seemed as if she thought it would be the last time they'd ever see each other.

Peter had just graduated high school and would be traveling the long way down Highway 61 in August to start school in Memphis. This being his last summer at home he thought he'd try his hardest to finally make it with a girl, the girl of his dreams no less. Mary Stevenson had brown shoulder-length hair and the biggest greenest eyes he'd ever seen. She reflected some kind of light from inside herself so that even when she looked outwardly nervous there was interweaved a kind of security. It’s not from any sort of personal confidence but instead the security that comes from being loved by a loving family and believing in God’s love, too. Mary and Peter had become fast friends but nothing more than that. She told him once that she thought he was the most interesting guy she'd ever met, but at the time she was dating point guard Jimmy Hayhurst, who by the way got caught feeling up Stefani Peterson while he and Mary were still dating, something Peter made sure to remind Mary of whenever he got the opportunity.

One night Mary called him right after her and Jimmy had slept together for the first time. Peter felt miserable on the inside but he tried not to let it show. "I feel rotten," she told him. "Why do you say that?" he asked her. "I don't know Pete. All I know is once it was over I wanted him out of my room. The whole time he was stretched out next to me asleep, you know after it was over, I just kept thinking get out of here! I wanted to do it, though. To know what it felt like with him. I guess it wasn't so bad but I know we shouldn't do it again." Peter had no idea how to respond. He had hardly kissed a girl much less slept with one. For whatever reason he felt like it was wrong although he couldn't exactly say why. "You think you're gonna sleep with Jimmy again, Mary?" he asked, nervous about the answer. "Oh I don't know Pete, probably, if he asks me too, I guess."

Lying there awake, Peter began to fear all that would happen to him in college. He began to imagine the type of person he might become and who his friends would be. Maybe in college he'd sleep with a girl and not feel bad about it. Maybe he'd go to parties on Friday nights and feel up girls after he'd gotten them drunk. Is that what we're supposed to do? he thought.

Peter was not necessarily a moral person one way or the other. The most appropriate term would probably be innocent, but even this does not adequately describe him. He spent a great deal of time worrying about those who were close to him. Everyone seemed so unhappy about everything they did with their lives. Most of his friends spent their time talking about regrets or guilt, even the ones that didn't believe in regret or guilt. Some nights when he couldn't sleep he would go sit on the window ledge of his two-story farmhouse looking out over the sprawling midwestern cornfields, shimmering a type of silver in the big open-sky moonlit darkness, and wonder why it seemed so hard to be happy. He would look down at the shallow creek on the outskirts of his family's land and remember his childhood days of imaginary adventures hunting crawfish and tadpoles. He remembered his epic bike-rides speeding up and down the winding country roads. Come winter he and his friends and family would all bundle up and make the long trek out to the timbre where the would sled down hills that seemed as though they were mountains in the eyes of a child.

Back then he never spent time wondering about whether Mary Stevenson liked getting felt up by other boys or why she never seemed to want to get felt up by Peter. He never felt that feeling he got whenever one of his friends confessed they'd cheated on their girlfriend and that most likely they were going to do it again. Back then he never drove around town aimlessly, just longing to run into Mary unexpectedly and have her tell him that this whole time she was really in love with him too. Back then he never saw that long lonely look in his mother's eyes whenever he walked out the door. Manhood seemed so far away and love was something that seemed real between friends and family. Now love seemed to be something almost made-up that he told himself he felt for Mary or any other girl he might fancy from time to time.

Peter began to drift off to sleep, now lying on his stomach, his face pressed firmly in the middle of his pillow. His pillow became moist under his eyes. He did all he could to tell himself that things were okay and that things were going to be okay forever, despite the strange feeling that began to bother him in the pit of his stomach. Mary probably really did make out with Joe Steadman, and she was probably going to keep doing it, and he was going to have to learn to live with it. In the end it probably didn't really matter either way. She'd move away to Ohio and he'd go down to Memphis. As he began to fall asleep he felt the cold reality of resignation sweep over him. So this is growing up Just before he lost consciousness he made a promise to himself that he'd do whatever he could to hold on to those happy memories of childhood, and to resist anyone or anything that ever tried to make him lose his way, even if it meant being alone for the rest of his life. After one last long sigh, he fell asleep.

isaac

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I should say, this is somewhat of an exercise in imitation. I stole the name Peter Martin, as well as some of the ideas here, from Kerouac's "The Town and the City"

I'm Probably The Worst Person I Know

2010-05-14T00:32:00.003-04:00

Sitting on the porch staring at screen for over an hour. Everything I write fades away into nothing blandness. It's all lifeless. Every thought, every word, every action. Type type type and none of my soul can get through my fingertips up on the screen.

I'm bored with sadness. I'm bored with loneliness. I'm bored with boredom.

I've felt this way before. What I do is try to find a girl to get rid of the boredom for awhile. They get rid of my boredom and it makes me happy and I spend all my time with them and I kiss them and I try to make them happy and I think "Hey, this gal's alright and she makes me happy and I want her to be happy too" and we are happy, dammit. And it feels good to be happy. I really like them and they really like me. Then I tell them too much about myself. I say "I like to be truly purely honest about everything all the time" and I seem more interesting than I probably am. I tell them all about my past heartbreak and how I don't know what to do with myself now and how I don't know what it means to be in love or what it means to believe in God and it's all true and I mean all of it but when the sadness kicks in there's no stopping it. The sadness comes and the boredom comes back and I end up ending it and I end up hurting people. Good people. Real sweet girls full of life. All of the girls I've ever been with have been some of the greatest girls I've ever known and they all deserve someone much better than me.

So it ends and I feel like shit and I'm sure they're confused and pissed and sad but they move on like everyone does. Whenever they find someone else and I find out about it I get jealous. I get jealous and I think well hell they were better off with me. I'm real interesting, you know. I speak the honest truth all the time, come what may. I listen to interesting music and I read interesting books and I'm a real good kisser (and real good at other things too). I end up believing my own pathetic facade. I'm probably in love with myself. I'm probably the worst person I know.

I look back on all of it and I wish that just once I would have realized what a great girl I had. Or I wish I never would have mustered up the courage to ask any of em and just spared everyone the heartbreak. I wish I wouldn't have taken all of those nights for granted, driving around to nowhere and making nothingfood in our nothingkitchen like you wrote about (much better than I could ever write about it, by the way).

There's nothing to do but say "I'm sorry" and hope they know you mean it. You see em later and it's probably awkward "Hey" "Hey" and walk on by both of you thinking "Shit, did I just say 'hey' and that's all, after all we had together?" Those true blue moments, beautiful, you shared, together, wrapped up in each others arms--disappearing into the past only to crop up in your most lonely of moments.

My friend Andrew told me "it's like Elliott Smith once wrote, 'They want you or they don't.'" It's the simple truth and it hurts no matter which end you're on. Knowing it doesn't make it any better. Maybe worse.

All I know is that if was up to me I would have stayed around for good. If I could put the stars in their place and tell the wind which way to blow then I'd of kept us (and us and us and us) nestled sweetly together in baby soft blankets on rainy cold November days (no matter which season it was). Just keep believing in love despite the evidence to the contrary. Don't let me fool you and lead you astray. Pray that I wise up one day. I think I'm starting to but I just have to get dragged through this shit till it finally hits me square in the gut where it always does.

I wish I could say that this all applied to one person but it doesn't. I suppose nothing ever does.

isaac

My Life In Short

2010-05-08T00:09:00.003-04:00

I drove alone (alone, that's important now) in the windowsdown countryside of midwestern central indiana not a day before graduating from college and I saw before me everything I could remember--two great horses set before my eyes, one old ginger red and one wily speckled gray white, The Great Farmhouse of rural Illinois filled to the brim with happy family members gathered around grandmas kitchen table with plates of roast beef and mounds of mashed potatoes in our weekly after-church sleepy afternoon playclothes Sundays. I saw before me run-down apartments in relative poverty my father following his god-given dreams and my mother my rock my love and my grace, sister becoming a woman, leaving Ohio behind to head toward my heart in Indiana before us the great sweeping fields of the crossroad of America. First days of inner-city school life afraid and alone growing stronger--off to the lily white faces of rural private but public Norwell School meeting my soul friend forever young, forever chasing our dreams, forever united in some bond beyond all other friendships that have or will ever have existed (except perhaps Jack and Neal), pushing through to high school music music music forever music, driving around late-nights screaming up to the dark Indiana heavens crying out for the Search "God where have you gone? Who the fuck are we???!!!" discovering for the first time the beauty and magic of late-night diners just two boys trying to become men. Spanish class of Junior year "Shall we go to the prom?" a question one stranger asked another and the whole world has been different ever since, innocent young lovers discovering nakedness of soul, mind, body, heart. Oh! That old two story house with its long gravel driveway that I so often drove along every night not knowing what awaited me. Off to Anderson! Oh! Anderson! you angelic whore of a town. Finding out the joys and sorrows of private higher education reading reading. Down to Indianapolis we went following our hearts but not necessarily our minds buying pizzas by the dozens thinking pizza changed a goddamn thing but I spose WE changed. Living together all eight of us trying to figure out how to live eight in one abandoned school-building fighting and crying and thinking together and alone, I'd left love behind for another love--but more of that later!--reconnecting with young love now really finding out what it means to stand naked in front of another human being, metaphorically, literally, and only true nakedness can lead to true heartbreak and who would have it any other way? Up she walked into my apartment green sweatshirt falling down one shoulder we collapse in tears onto the couch not a word spoken and already I know the worst. The walls slowly closing in and then expanding in all directions the 12 inches between us become miles and miles of love distance. I put my head on her lap one last time knowing its the last time and hoping time will stop just so I can cry on her till death not wanting to know what was on the other side of her walking out that door. But up she got and out she walked that image of her tear covered face forever frozen in my mind's eye. Throw off the chains that keep you in the bondage of your fear! Heave them with all your might! Be broken, experience loss, stick your middle finger in the nose of administrators, of managers, of experts, of specialists, of life. I see myself sitting alone in the shower of life. Who is there if not her? How can I go on without sharing all that I have with her? I move move move to get away from her. We go off to California, Sunset cliffs and sierra mountains bringing a tear to my eye the way they meet that big blue sky, down through death valley's darkness Philip Glass ringing in our ears, through the desert cumstain of Las Vegas and up to God's greatest manifestation in America--the Grand canyon--giving me the gift of realizing my own finitude. Coming back and she's still here! On we go through time and space in my nighttime drive seeing before me my useless attempts at finding her in the eyes of another, all nationalities, in other countries, oh the regret, who the joy, oh the pleasure and the pain and the "ah oh well at least---" At the end of my rope a shining light comes toward me in the form of friend offering me perhaps my last chance to do that which I believe with all my heart I should be doing as we sit together in that blessed booth on 29th Street "Let's buy a house!" And now i see before me my future, graduation, at a loss for words, hoping to follow through, hoping to capture my unicorn and ride it to the promised land, hoping to believe again like I did before. You know why I love you Alyosha? Because you tell the truth and the whole truth. I want to tell the truth someday, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I want to take flight at any moment and soar to the highest heights and the lowest depths, to put forth the whole human being, to write my soul and not give a shit for grammar and syntax or dangling clauses or any number of other things to think about when all I should be thinking about is that jewel center of my minds that Ti Jean wrote about some years before I was born. Let us press on, raise the sails, and wait for that heavenly breath to blow us along straight into the swirling cyclone of life. And I will stand proudly the captain of my ship with a cigarette in my mouth with my dirtied bloodied hands raised to the sky, cracking my sidemouth smile knowing all the while that that storm ahead stands no chance and shouting at the top of my lungs, "I may be damned, I may be base and despicable, but I kiss the hem of the robe that envelops my God; I may be serving the devil at the same moment, but I'm still your son, O Lord, and I love you and feel that joy without which the world could not exist(!!!)"

isaac

My Heart Is Laughing, Sometimes

2010-05-06T19:45:00.003-04:00

I've posted this before, but it just seems appropriate to put up here again--for me, my friends, and everyone we've ever loved.

"the laughing heart" by Charles Bukowski

your life is your life.
don't let it be clubbed into dank
submission.
be on the watch .
there is light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the
darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you
chances.
know them, take them.
you can't beat death
but you can beat death
in life,
sometimes.
and the more often you
learn to do it,
the more light there will
be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have
it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in
you

Up to Me

2010-05-01T11:02:00.002-04:00

After a night like that one can only hope to wake up listening to a song like this. Somehow I'd missed this Dylan outtake from Blood on the Tracks. This morning on the porch was my first listen and i was moved to tears more than once. This is a strange time of love and some kind of strange lonely responsibility that I'm sure not everyone reading will understand. But for those of you who do (and even those of you who don't) here is Dylan's "Up to Me," maybe my new favorite song.

Everything went from bad to worse, money never changed a thing
Death kept followin’, trackin’ us down, at least I heard your bluebird sing
Now somebody’s got to show their hand, time is an enemy
I know you’re long gone, I guess it must be up to me

If I’d thought about it I never would’ve done it, I guess I would’ve let it slide
If I’d lived my life by what others were thinkin’, the heart inside me would’ve died
I was just too stubborn to ever be governed by enforced insanity
Someone had to reach for the risin’ star, I guess it was up to me

Oh, the Union Central is pullin’ out and the orchids are in bloom
I’ve only got me one good shirt left and it smells of stale perfume
In fourteen months I’ve only smiled once and I didn’t do it consciously
Somebody’s got to find your trail, I guess it must be up to me

It was like a revelation when you betrayed me with your touch
I’d just about convinced myself that nothin’ had changed that much
The old Rounder in the iron mask slipped me the master key
Somebody had to unlock your heart, he said it was up to me

Well, I watched you slowly disappear down into the officers’ club
I would’ve followed you in the door but I didn’t have a ticket stub
So I waited all night ’til the break of day, hopin’ one of us could get free
When the dawn came over the river bridge, I knew it was up to me

Oh, the only decent thing I did when I worked as a postal clerk
Was to haul your picture down off the wall near the cage where I used to work
Was I a fool or not to try to protect your identity?
You looked a little burned out, my friend, I thought it might be up to me

Well, I met somebody face to face and I had to remove my hat
She’s everything I need and love but I can’t be swayed by that
It frightens me, the awful truth of how sweet life can be
But she ain’t a-gonna make me move, I guess it must be up to me

We heard the Sermon on the Mount and I knew it was too complex
It didn’t amount to anything more than what the broken glass reflects
When you bite off more than you can chew you pay the penalty
Somebody’s got to tell the tale, I guess it must be up to me

Well, Dupree came in pimpin’ tonight to the Thunderbird Café
Crystal wanted to talk to him, I had to look the other way
Well, I just can’t rest without you, love, I need your company
But you ain’t a-gonna cross the line, I guess it must be up to me

There’s a note left in the bottle, you can give it to Estelle
She’s the one you been wond’rin’ about, but there’s really nothin’ much to tell
We both heard voices for a while, now the rest is history
Somebody’s got to cry some tears, I guess it must be up to me

So go on, boys, and play your hands, life is a pantomime
The ringleaders from the county seat say you don’t have all that much time
And the girl with me behind the shades, she ain’t my property
One of us has got to hit the road, I guess it must be up to me

And if we never meet again, baby, remember me
How my lone guitar played sweet for you that old-time melody
And the harmonica around my neck, I blew it for you, free
No one else could play that tune, you know it was up to me

isaac

Boredom Groans

2010-04-30T00:03:00.005-04:00

Tonight boredom groans--not even old Henry Miller can satisfy me (a true sign something has gone terribly wrong). I do my regular pacing from room to room, sit and listen to music, try to read awhile, fix my mind on a woman, gaze into the schoolless jobless homeless future that awaits me, maybe think about working on my short stories for school but they're no longer interesting because they're not my stories anymore. She wants them to be her stories (she being my professor) and to read like all of their stories. It's no use. It's impossible to think about who you are when you're this bored. I sit in class all day talking about authentic existence and escaping the everydayness only to come home and find myself in the thick of it. Worst yet is that I'm bored and all alone. I could die and no one would know for hours. It's not that I couldn't probably find myself some company but even that sounds boring on a night like this and I hate asking people to hang out or asking to come over--I want to be asked goddammit. But no one I want to ask is gonna be callin me up anytime soon, that's for sure. Usually I don't really want to hang out with the ones that end up asking me to hang out.

Finally I go curl up in a ball, shivering cold, outside on the porch and study the insects and twigs and leaves and cigarette butts that have accumulated on the porchfloor. Perhaps if I study every inch of this thing with the utmost attention and sincerity I will escape my boredom. Things only get worse. My boredom is at its worst when I began making up my own past and future. Sure I did this, or at least I could have, and sure this will happen in a week or so, why wouldn't it? In fact, it probably already has. And even if it doesn't happen, who cares? A few weeks after it doesn't happen I'll remember it as if it had happened anyway. Everyone's happy. Everyone's bored. I begin to imagine all the girls I've ever been with or wanted to be with sitting around and enjoying the company of some all-american swimteam captain in a gray t-shirt with straight teeth and toned arms and faded jeans, with sunglasses sitting up on top of his Ball State baseball cap (or any ole team who gives a shit it's not important), wearing little socks that escape down under his shoeline. He's tall and tan and manages to smile without speaking so much so that she just thinks he's actually saying things when in reality he's as boring as I am only he's so boring he doesn't even realize it. I bet he never sits around alone and imagines any of them enjoying my company, which is probably why they never do. The problem is that at the same time I think I'm better than this phantom man I also think I'm much much worse than he is or ever could be. I know a lot of guys like this and they're usually nice. Nicer to me than I am to them. And they don't think about things that I think they think about usually. They're usually a lot more innocent than I make them out to be (not always but hey sometimes) and in the end it just makes them all the more terrible to me. It bothers me that they're not bothered by the same things I'm bothered by, and further it bothers me that I'm bothered by that. Shit.

I don't think who I am is determined by society's image of the ideal person, which is a common problem, and I rarely do things to fit into some kind of crowd, another common problem. In general I am the type of person I want to be. But I have this problem where I have this ideal image of who I want myself to be and I want everyone else to see this ideal as the ideal Person and I want them to think that the actual me has actualized this ideal. Say what you will about how ridiculous and silly and downright pathetic this is and I'll be the first to tell you I agree, in fact you won't be telling me anything I haven't thought about and written about (and I won't ask you how it is you've come to be who you are). I know what I should do for the most part, but it's gonna take some force above me to get it done if it's ever gonna happen. Or maybe one day I'll just up and do it, who knows. Instead l I usually just stay inside and pace around and get bored. You get bored long enough you get sad. You get sad long enough you start writing nonsense. You write nonsense long enough you gotta stop.

isaac

Someday Soon, He Hoped

2010-04-24T02:32:00.006-04:00

He stepped into the church, out of breath, running his fingers through his hair that had become wet in the midnight rain. Immediately his eyes met the crucified Christ at the head of the room. He scanned the smooth plastic hands and feet, the despairing face turned downward in defeat. He took a seat toward the back and rested his head against the back of the pew behind him. Suddenly he began to remember his childhood.

When he was young all it took was his mother (usually) sitting somewhere close to him and he felt true safety, security, you know? Lying there in the warm darkness he could drift off into some deep childish sleep dreaming of whatever it is children dream of. There came a time when she didn't sit there anymore and he felt okay but every now and then he'd get the frights and call for her or go running to the parents room and sleep on the floor and the world was right, no thunder or lighting could reach in and snatch him away. Morning'd come and he'd feel a kind of embarrassment--"I'm too old for this," he'd think. You grow up and it's not the dark you're afraid of but some deeper darkness. He's more afraid of himself now than anything else. He sleeps alone now, every night, and the fear he feels or thinks on some nights is more intense than any fear he felt as a child. The fear of true loss. Loneliness (call it solitude if it makes you feel better). Anxiety. You realize things aren't planned out for you and there's a real chance you might really just fuck everything up.

Some thought came to his mind today where he realized that every person who has ever died was no different than he was. Though it would probably be impossible to quantify there was some real moment of consciousness before death that they experienced and every single one of us will have to experience that. And no matter how many friends or family members or lovers you got--your gonna face that one completely alone. Truly alone. Some say it's the only guaranteed authentic act any of us ever experience. You could lie to yourself your whole life but there's no lying in that moment. You must accept. And we all will. Someday he would too, and he simply couldn't wrap his mind around it.

He thought about Christ up there on his cross. Surely he too must have experienced that moment before he died. According to the scriptures he muttered something along the lines of either, "Why have you forsaken me?" or "It is finished," he couldn't really remember but he thought it seemed to be quite a different spin on the story depending on which one you went with. They both had their own sort of melancholic feeling to them.

He wondered about the apostles and what they must've went through after all the shit went down. He'd read about legends of both Paul and Peter being married at some point, maybe before they went out preaching and all, each of them maybe leaving their wives for the cause. He wondered if they ever regretted it. If maybe even they wondered what the hell they were doing, maybe even questioning themselves as to whether or not Christ actually was who he said he was, or even if he existed, "Maybe we were dreaming the whole time" Peter might of said to Paul, "and anyway you didn't even really see him when he was alive." Paul might've yelled back, "If I didn't see him then why the fuck am I giving up my whole life, eh? You think I want to be tortured and arrested and end up killed just cause of some dream or something?" They'd probably argue on and on, both knowing somewhere deep inside in their deepest moments of honesty that they actually DID believe it all even if it didn't really seem to be working and there was no proof that they were right at all. Maybe they believed it and they didn't, they just had to keep telling themselves they did, just to get through the day, just to avoid ending it all.

Who they hell knows, he thought, maybe none of 'em really ever existed. Somewhere inside he at least knew he wanted it all to be true, wanted them to be right, and wanted it to somehow mean something for himself. He looked up at the crucified Christ and wondered what he'd of been thinking, either back then or now or whenever. Wondered maybe what he was thinking, not as if he was still really alive right now or anything. He couldn't explain it, even to himself.

He suddenly remembered an old friend he'd had from back when who seemed so true, true to himself, true to God and really believed in God and believed all the stories and everything, all the tradition or at least most of it, a lot of it he himself didn't believe. He thought of his friend and his friend's kindness, how he seemed to really care and how he seemed to really respect things and respect people, even the people who didn't deserve it, all the assholes he'd always hated and been jealous of and bitter about, somehow his friend had managed to see them all as God's creation, something he couldn't bring himself to say. And his friend he payed attention to all the rituals, Lent and all that, and he thought it was important.

No matter how much he tried he couldn't bring himself to really care about any of it but when he saw his friend, this true believer, it somehow brought about some deep feeling of humility. This was who he wished he could be some day. Someday when he got over himself, when he really became his former child-like self, THIS is who he'd become again. Someday. Someday soon, he hoped. Someday soon.

Will You Still Love Me In December?

2010-04-22T21:27:00.004-04:00

Here is a video of the song that inspired the last thing I wrote. I saw David Bazan play this live in a living room this past winter. I got teary-eyed then and now. It's a cover of a song by Julie Doiron called "Will You Still Love Me In December?" The poem previously mentioned is meant to be read while listening to this song, maybe.

A Poem (In Prose)

2010-04-21T01:27:00.010-04:00

Said one man to one woman, and one woman to one man (or were they children?):

It wasn't until now, perhaps, and I mean now in this moment right now, that I really understood what you meant when you said your "yes" and your "no." Has that "yes" really meant all these peoples' pain? Did you think about that before you let it spill out of your lovely mouth and travel to my ears (which, by the way, I was really plugging up with my fingers though of course it was invisible to you at the time). How is it that no amount of sleep, words being put down on the page, drives, cigarettes, after all these drinks, transcendent moments of laughter, momentary substitionary illusionary relationships (so-called), after all this time (time, goddammit, time)---how is it that all the confusion of a moment, this absurd quantification of spirit, how is it that it all exists---that is---how can a year's worth of emptiness be no different then that hanging moment of loss as your mouth uttered those words? And why does Time bother smoothing over the edges only to pierce the skin when least expected? Some moments are so profound that even the most skilled artist in the craft of forgetting cannot adequately erase the pain through re-collection, re-imagination. Just when I think it's gone---just when I think you're gone I lose all sense of real time and am swept back into contemporaneousness, forced to remember that day, that hour, and most painful of all that moment.

Of all your gifts this was certainly your most profound. Perhaps I really did become me (or start becoming, anyway) afterward, but that's not what you were thinking about (probably). Embarrassment abounds! These words are proof enough, the very fact that I've given language to these feelings proves my awesome childishness.

In the end it must be said that I continue to love only a phantom. But isn't that so? There isn't anyone on the other end of these feelings that is anything other than some re-construction of the past, sure to be blown down by a strong gust of reality. Yet I can't help but build up something out of nothing if only so as to imagine there is something for me to hold onto. Is it worth it? I'm afraid if I can't believe in my own imagination then there will be nothing left for me to believe in, nothing but the cold reality of loss, true loss. The real tragedy is that even if you were to come back you wouldn't meet the expectations of what you have become in my re-collection. I am forever forced, as some kind of Sisyphus, to go on living in my imagination. If I choose my imagination over reality, the soaring heights of my dreams with their vibrant images of love red with passion and the child-like belief in something good over what appears to be the meaninglessness of, well, this---does that make me insane? A coward? An idiot? Is it more insane to believe that my dreams are reality? Or at least more real than the meaninglessness?

You said I was free to go, free to move on and be myself, to be my own person. You said forgetting would help. But what if freedom didn't mean anything to me when I was alone? What if I knew all of this was on the other side of you?

(And who are you? And who am I? Are you God? Are you her? Is the I in this poem me or her? Or one of the hers afterward? Or is the whole thing just a crockashit? Can a poem ask a question of itself? Is the writer of the poem necessarily the one who writes the poem? I can't figure out if I'm I or you and if you is her or God, or maybe I is her but not her, and maybe her, or I suppose even her, and then the you is actually me or maybe she's talking to God and it makes me nervous?)

And yet there are moments, moments---there has been on multiple occasions a moment where I am suddenly arrested by a gripping fear that you might come back and I might actually believe it. Oh the embarrassment...

Mitya

2010-04-17T01:21:00.005-04:00

For some reason I feel a sort of connection with Dmitry in the Karmazov Brothers. I don't think he's necessarily the most interesting character, nor is he the hero from what I can tell so far (i'm not finished yet...still), but, nonetheless I like him. Here are some of my favorite moments with him (they probably won't mean a whole lot out of context but oh well).

"But that's the whole trouble--how am I to join the earth for ever? I can't kiss the earth or cut open her bosom--should I become a ploughman or a shepherd? I walk without kowing where I'm going--toward the stench of ignominy or towards radiance and joy. That's the trouble, everything on earth is such a riddle. And whenever I have sunk to the most abject, the most appalling degradation (and this has always happened to me), I've always read the poem about Ceres and man's degradation. And has it made me any better? Never! Because I am a Karamazov. Because if I fall into the abyss, I go head first and even take pleasure in the extent of my own degradation, even find beauty in it. And from the depths of degradation, I begin to sing a hymn. I may be damned, I may be base and despicable, but I kiss the hem of the robe that envelops my God; I may be serving the devil at the same moment, but I'm still your son, O Lord, and I love you and feel that joy without which the world could not exist." (135)

"Beauty's an awesome, terrible thing! It's awesome because it's indefinable; as indefinable and mysterious as as everything in God's creation. It's where opposites converge, where contradictions rule! I'm not an educated man, Alyosha, but I've thought about it a lot. There are so many mysteries! Man is beset by too many mysteries on this earth. Fathom them as best you can, and survive unscathed. Beauty! Sometimes it's just too much to bear, to see a man of noble heart and high intellect begin with the ideal of the Madonna and finish with that of Sodom. And what's even worse, his heart can be aglow with the perfection of the madonna as it was in the innocence of his youth--and still he won't renounce Sodom. Yes, man's prodigious, much too prodigious, I'd cut him down to size. The devil only knows what to make of all this, that's my opinion! What the intellect finds shameful strikes the heart as sheer beauty! Is there beauty in Sodom? Take it from me, that's just where it lurks for the vast majority of people--you didn't know that, did you? The awesome mystery of beauty! God and the devil are locked in battle over this, and the battlefield is the heart of man." (136-137)

"What made her particularly attractive at that moment was that she was pure and I was a scoundrel, she was magnificent in her generosity and in her sacrifice for her father, and I was just a louse." (143)

"Oh yes, we shall be in chains and there will be no freedom, but the time will come when, from the depths of our despair, we shall rise up once again in joy, without which man cannot survive and God cannot exist, for joy comes from God, and is His greatest gift...Lord, let man be sublimated by prayer! How shall I survive there, underground, without God?...If they drive God off the face of the earth, we shall welcome him down below! It's impossible for a convict to be without God, even more impossible than for someone who is not a convict! And then the time will come to pass when we, the underground people, will join in a solemn hymn to God, who is the source of joy!

"...Do you know, I might not answer any questions at the trial...And I think there is so much strength in me now that I shall overcome everything, all the suffering, just in order to be able to say to myself: I am! Be it death by a thousand cuts--I am! Be it torture beyond endurance--I am! I may sit in a dungeon, but I exist; I see the sun, but if I didn't see the sun, I'd still know it was there. And to know that the sun's there, that's the very stuff of life. Alyosha, you cherub, all these philosophies will be the death of me, to hell with them!" (749)

isaac

Rules For Commenting

2010-04-09T02:15:00.005-04:00

I appreciate comments, however, I simply ask that if you're going to leave a comment, especially a personal one (e.g. recommending I get counseling) that you leave your name. I find it very disrespectful to give advice, criticism, or even just general comments without saying who you are. Essentially, if I don't know who's saying what, then it's meaningless to me. I do not mean to be rude or to make anyone feel bad for leaving anonymous comments, but I will say that at best I ignore them and more often than not I will delete them.

Here is an example of an anonymous comment (that just so happens to be about anonymous comments) that will be deleted:

"This is the internet. Stop whining.

If it's an anonymous comment and it's apparent that it's from a person that knows you, then the person is anonymous because they want to be honest with you but may be afraid/uncomfortable with your reaction and insecurities, or their own.

The best advice is left anonymous.

Deal with it."

Clearly this person believes that a "blog comment" is the most appropriate avenue for personal attack, criticism, or advice. If a person who knows me really wants to be honest with me, then I would hope they would talk to me in person, call me, or at the very least send me an e-mail. (Send them to ihorwedel@anderson.edu.)

Also, the notion that "The best advice is left anonymous" is near the top of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard.

Have a nice day.

isaac