Rage, seething rage.

All I Want is You

Right now I am tired. I don't know if it is being sick, new jobs, stress, my life coming to an unexpected climax...maybe all of it but I am tired to my soul. It feels like I am almost sub human, that a part of myself has been lost in just trying to live life.

I'm fighting to keep my eyes focused and my mind working but it is hard right now. It is hard because I feel sick and this great distance exists between us. It is an incredibly difficult pain to have two hearts long for each other but to be separated by an impassible gulf, to know you but to still be looking for you at the end of the day...the fact we talk but at the end of the day things feel so cold.

I used to want a lot of things, a lot of shallow and stupid things that would have never made me happy in the first place. I can loose my band for good, loose my ability to write, forget who I am and as long as I have you I feel safe. If the last redeemable part of me died and you still stood by me I could go on forever.

I need nothing more.

It is really confusing because when I think a lot of it is done in emotions...aspects of comfort and discomfort, liking and disliking...so on and so on. I have such high mountains and low valleys, my emotions and thoughts traverse the entire world of emotion in seconds...it makes things harder to understand and comprehend.

I wish all of this could just be washed away. I am never going to be happy with what I have because I need more. I need more then any of these know, there is absolutely nothing that can make me happier beyond a fleeting second. They try hard and I appreciate the love when it is sincere but it is a fleeting wind that will go as soon as the sun dies.

That is why i need you. No one understands me, no one can understand me like you do. The words we speak, the feelings we feel, the infinite reach of your hand is more real to me then the cold green slips of paper this world loves to dance around. I see a need for your loving embrace while I do not think loosing the green paper would be such a tragedy anyways.

Can we have some degree of resolution? I think it may help me sleep at night. I know you promise to one day never leave it is the distance right now that is seriously killing me.

Interacting with people on a personal and deep level tends to frighten me the days I stop and think about it. So many thoughts and desires play through my mind and it makes me nauseous simply because I cannot keep track of so many items. You would possibly think that just making a decision to act would be easier then being caught in the lights of the self deprecating doubt but then again wouldn't it just be as easy to shoot up heroin to find relief too?

I know there right decisions to be made it is just hard to see the long range effect of some of the decisions. We can dance around this all day but at the end of the day I have no real clue of who you are or why you love me, why you even want to love me...but it in a way is okay. I am trying to learn to accept things but could you please come back, please?

Not for the first time I have to ask why...ask how long...say that I do not understand.

For what little it is sincerely worth, I love you.

This past Sunday's message

http://www.brookhills.org/media/files_videocast/080127.mov

All I'm going to say, ALL that I am going to say to you right now, about that one particular subject is this:

COME ON MAN! Did you not read that? Did you not hear those words? What am I supposed to do with that? Do with this?

I am more then slightly certain I am constructing a mountain from a mole hill but geez, you have to admit IT IS COMPELLING. Right?

A Word

Next Jesus was taken into the wild by the Spirit for the Test. The Devil was ready to give it. Jesus prepared for the Test by fasting forty days and forty nights. That left him, of course, in a state of extreme hunger, which the Devil took advantage of in the first test: "Since you are God's Son, speak the word that will turn these stones into loaves of bread."

Jesus answered by quoting Deuteronomy: "It takes more than bread to stay alive. It takes a steady stream of words from God's mouth."

For the second test the Devil took him to the Holy City. He sat him on top of the Temple and said,"Since you are God's Son, jump." The Devil goaded him by quoting Psalm 91: "He has placed you in the care of angels. They will catch you so that you won't so much as stub your toe on a stone."

Jesus countered with another citation from Deuteronomy: "Don't you dare test the Lord your God."

For the third test, the Devil took him on the peak of a huge mountain. He gestured expansively, pointing out all the earth's kingdoms, how glorious they all were. Then he said, "They're yours--lock, stock, and barrel. Just go down on your knees and worship me, and they're yours."

Jesus' refusal was curt: "Beat it, Satan!" He backed his rebuke with a third quotation from Deuteronomy: "Worship the Lord your God, and only him. Serve him with absolute single-heartedness." The Test was over. The Devil left. And in his place, angels! Angels came and took care of Jesus' needs.

Matthew 4:1-11

Decisions

Either it is real and needs to be acknowledged and followed with a fervent passion or it is false and deserves a death worse then any on this physical plane.

What matters is bigger then me, bigger then any group or organization, things are not what they seem and appear to be growing.

Monday Morning

For better or for worse I am a believer in Christ. I do not mean that in a sense that I may or may not regret deciding to 'throw' my life away, I mean that in the sense that for better or for worse I am sticking with this commitment. Like any other marriage that goes through the high and low points my love has been battered, disappointed and hurt by my own misunderstandings and misconceptions...but I have always somehow found open arms of love at the end of the day.

You know what I am thinking right now...it is sort of awkward, you know?

C.S. Lewis Quote:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

Into the Heart

You know me, you know this broken and infected heart.

Words do not give justice to this mess that I live in, you know my broken ways better then I do.

I guess I am just asking to please do not give up on me. Every day is a battle and every day it gets harder to hang on to this fleeting life when the vast reach of eternity seems but a breath away.

How trite is it to ask that you be by my side, to hold me in the good and bad, to be my back and front guard and to open my eyes and heart that I seek so desperately to close?

Take this piece of stone and break it, let life flow from within once again.

Mofo

I know you are listening, so I won't bother wasting time by going into an unnecessary existential crisis about whether or not you are real and if I am a block of cheese.

Instead, I just need to let you know that it is hard being here. Seeing so many things, feeling so many emotions and experiencing so many thoughts all at once...memories, pains and so many twisted burdens of life.

Combined it makes me want to scream.

Most days I am not sure what I think, what I feel, what I believe and what it is I am fighting for. So often there is this gaping pit in my soul that is begging to be filled by impractical and impossible means, devices that do not exist and died a long time ago.

In ways it feels like the song 'Mofo' by U2. I see all of this contradictions in the person I am and in who I am perceived as, who I have been perceived as and how I will be perceived. I want do desperately to have the family I never have, to be loved for who I am, to fill the void in my soul, to deal with a God that I love and despise at the same time, to embrace a life of art and liberation from the shell of false religion, to break my life open and pour it out as something useful, to be held and told it will be okay, to be myself, to tell that family how much I hate him, to stop being pissed off by the fact I'm never going to be able to tell my bastard of a father how much I hate him and that him never being there before he died has contributed to me being slightly upset, to let go of the pain in my soul, to know that the Father loves me and it will be okay, I want to be able to let go of every last one of my emotions and let the pain fall like so many drops of rain in a torrential hurricane downpour.

Yes, I am angry. I am enraged at my personal state of being as well as how fucked up this world is. I am nauseated at the fact both of my jobs seems to do nothing but contribute to this consumer mindset of buying your way to paradise. It is the blind leading the blind off a cliff with a rocket train.





"Lookin' for to save my, save my soul
Lookin' in the places where no flowers grow
Lookin' for to fill that God shaped hole
Mother, mother sucking rock and roll
Mother

Holy dunc, spacejunk comin' in for the splash
Been around back, been around front
White dopes on punk staring into the flash
Been around back, been around front
Lookin' for baby Jesus under the trash
Been around back, been around front
Mother, mother sucking rock and roll
Mother
Mother hopping sugar popping dropping rock and roll
Happy
Mother

Mother, mother, mother
Mother, mother, mother

Mother, am I still your son
You know I've waited for so long to hear you say so
Mother, you left and made me someone
Now I'm still a child but no one tells me no

Lookin' for a sound that's gonna drown out the world
Been around back, been around front
Lookin' for the father of my two little girls
Been around back, been around front
Got the swing, got the sway, got my straw in lemonade
Been around back, been around front
Still looking for the face I had before the world was made
Been around back, been around front
Mother, mother sucking rock and roll
Mother
Bubble poppin', sugar droppin' rock and roll
Mother
Mother sucking, fucking rock and roll
Mother

Mother, mother, mother
Mother, mother, mother

Soothe me mother
Prove me father
Move me brother
Woo me sister
Soothe me mother
Move me father
Show me mother"

-U2, "Mofo"

Hmmm

Meh.

Bleh.

Blargh.

The Other Job

Substitute teaching is a version of Hell in and of itself.

Work Again

It is going mostly well but all the same I know this is not the career for me. I enjoy most of the people and get to basically take charge and do what I want to (within reason, something tells me if I ran about lobbing Molotov cocktails I might loose my job) but bottom line this isn't going to bring long term satisfaction. Money is going nowhere and regardless of the economy happiness will continue to be elusive.



"There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go! This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Daddy?"

God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us--an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him!"


I want a real life, a real life caught up in love, the adventure of living life...I want to ardently embrace the responsibility of life and live it like there is nothing else. I do not care about the simple waste of time because I want something real, something that matters in life.

I have found it but I am still looking for it, I have found true love that brings me to tears and I have found a purpose that reaches beyond this life and into the depths of eternity. It found me and we are one in ways I never knew. But the search, the adventure, the fight continues on.



"The revolution returns
The reformation lives on
The great awakening is now
Sleepers open your eyes
A war is on, our rally cry is no compromise
No compromise, yeah, no compromise
A war is on, our battle cry is no compromise
So throw your fist up and pray the revolution rise
A war is on, our rally cry is no compromise

Our hearts have grown so cold
And we’ve such numb souls
But shirts and bumper stickers
Man we got ’em by the truckload
Is true religion what you have around your wrist
What does the scripture say of this?

They honor me with words
But their hearts are far away
I call ’em like I see ’em
And that’s what I see today
So I call on John Edwards
Who preached us all awake
We try to be emotional but here is our mistake
As a church we lack repentance and we lack true affection
Not only in our minds but our hearts need correction
And man that’s true religion, resignation and contrition
To love each other so much that we’d die before division"

-The O.S. Supertones "Return of the Revolution"

Some Verse for Thought

Rom 8:1 With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud.
Rom 8:2 A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.
Rom 8:3 God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that. The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it.
Rom 8:4 And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.
Rom 8:5 Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them--living and breathing God!
Rom 8:6 Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life.
Rom 8:7 Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing.
Rom 8:8 And God isn't pleased at being ignored.
Rom 8:9 But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about.
Rom 8:10 But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells--even though you still experience all the limitations of sin--you yourself experience life on God's terms.
Rom 8:11 It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!
Rom 8:12 So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent.
Rom 8:13 There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life.
Rom 8:14 God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
Rom 8:15 This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?"
Rom 8:16 God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children.
Rom 8:17 And we know we are going to get what's coming to us--an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him!

On a random non-complaining note:

I'm officially 21 years and six months old. Does that count for anything?

Example of My Typical Post:

Blah, blah, blah life sucks for some philosophical and or moral reason.

Blah, blah, blah I am suffering from some physical ailment.

Blah, blah, blah I am officially causing myself pain from being so boring.

Thought of the Day:

I am exhausted from a very long weekend coupled with starting a new job, why can I not sleep?

Furthermore, why am I constantly haunted with visions of you? Can you never let me find rest? It is almost like you do your very best to lead me so very gently...leading me on to something that will never resolve, that will just leave me feeling confused and used.

I am tired of emotions, chemicals, desires, sexuality and the like. I am ready to give up.

I don't play for keeps, I play to find a way to escape from this damning madness.

New U2 Movie!

http://www.u23dmovie.com/

...so yeah, I am excited...to say the absolute very least.

Frustration

I am a stranger in a land that I do not understand.

I have wandered for these few years and have seen much, experienced so many things and have felt so little that I am at a loss for words.

I know you but I still do not think that I know you, for better or for worse. I see so little when all I have ever wanted was to feel you close and know you are near, to know that you are more real than I.

Is it to much to ask?

My question...

...is if these guys are actually serious?

http://www.godisimaginary.com

I have yet to have read all of the 'proofs' but clearly a freshman level Philosophy major would have a field day ripping this stuff apart.

However it would be nice to actually see a clinching 'proof' one of these days.

So Very Sick

Pain, lots of freaking stomach pain. Need rest, need relief. God please help me.

personality test

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

results:

http://www.personalitypage.com/

Donald Miller speaking on Hope

http://api.monkcms.com/Clients/download.php?sid=7&url=http://www.imagodeicommunity.com/ekkmedia/our-hope-in-the-eternal-glory-of-god.mp3&mediaBID=68648



I am not one who normally listens to sermons outside of church but this short bit illustrates why Donald Miller is one of my favorite writers and a strong influence on my ideas and thoughts of Christianity.

Thought of the day:

You know you have family issues when you look in the mirror and feel like you are in a Wes Anderson movie, much less look the part.

Pointless Post

I could speak it softly, yell it from the rooftops, scream it from my lungs...yet bottom line you never will hear it...it never will matter to you and regardless of what I think, feel, desire, want or crave...it is meaningless and pointless.

I believe in God but I also believe in chemicals and electrical pulses. Those last two things mean so much of life is preordained insanity and it hurts deeply. The insanity itself doesn't hurt, it just hurts knowing that the feelings I experience cannot be properly shared by one whom I would like to share it with.

Ergo, this is all rendered meaningless. Writing about something that is pointless and has no existence beyond my mind and whatever words I choose to waste on here.

Bravo Matthew, bravo.

It's Nice Being Able to Write What I Want

Few people read this, so I don't make profit off of the ads but I am able to express myself fully about my thoughts concerning this huge wrecked up ball of confusion and pain that life is.

I hate sexuality, I hate migraines and I most certainly hate people that insist on acting immature...yes I am at the top of that list.

Bah, I'll just go to sleep already.

Stupid Mornings

I really dislike pills. The medicine helps me to sleep but at what feels like the cost of my ability to function properly. I'm not even sure why I want to function properly when it seems the best course of action is to lay down in the floor until something happens.

On the plus side I think I'm cleaning my room (assuming this isn't just an incredibly dull dream reminiscent of the monotony of daily life) and that is something I can accomplish. I may be a complete failure in almost every other sense of the world but by golly I will be a clean failure if nothing else!

What makes the morning stupid? Memories of yesterday for sure. Memories of a lot of things actually, yeah...I could use a complete memory wipe at this point, that woudl make things better.

Things needing to be practical really really makes things a bit more difficult, akin to being shot in the foot while simultaneously being set on fire while realizing my socks are completely wet and are somehow fire retardant. Being burned, shot all while enduring wet socks, things can't get worse then that, right? Right?!?

There are plus sides, just like there are many chances for life in general but at the end of the day it is hard for me to try any of it. Personal motivation keeps fluctuating between negative levels and he slight problem of not existing at all. You do the math, I suck at it.

Anyway, I guess I will clean more before I have an existential crisis concerning the rights of dust to live in its own free world.

Day by Day

It feels like time is becoming muddled into this single unbreakable blob that I cannot begin to understand. It is hard for me to break lines apart and see truth for what it is, or really see anything for what it is.

These writings act as some kind of anchor and a reminder that I am not living some profane version of the movie Groundhog Day.

There is a real aspect to life, there is a reality, there is this confusion, there is anger, there is pain, there is sadness, there are happy thoughts too. Amalgamation upon confused mixtures of bitter words of varying shades of intellect.

It does not compute, it does not make sense, it is a struggle to press on, I do not want a game, I did not ask for this, no one ever gave me the option and here I am as I am and nothing more or less then what I was confused as being.

I am not a fan of my own thoughts most of the time. It feels like there are two people, one person who is speaking and giving all of these thoughts and there is the real me who is just here to act as a meat shield for all of the response.

Not an incredibly cherry world view I'll admit, but if something feels and seems like it might be true and the honest truth it may be true.

How much of negative is a choice? Is it purely perception or is there a real element of fatalism involved?

Thinking you are hearing voices is not fun. Obvious, yet a very true statement all the same.

I feel like I'm going to be seriously ill.

I wish I could understand something which I do not understand. That is really all that I ask.

No Words Free

There are no words free that i may use to describe everythign you are, all that you are and all that you will be.

Words fall short and actions fail to render true meaning to one like you.

Your name unspeakable, your my eyes can never meet your gaze, to be in your mere shadow causes me to stumble.

In few words you are beyond perfection, you are one beyond my imagination.

Useless Repeating Words

Something I will never understand is why people insist on saying the same thing again and again without giving an actual reason for why they insist on telling me the exact same thing again and again.

To add further insult, certain looks are used in conjunction with the same words and it becomes, to me at least, a rather insulting reminder as to why I despise the company of certain people.

Are some people so hopelessly broken that all they can do is recite the same lines again and again? Is it supposed to a form of torture? A test to see how long I can go before I just shoot myself so I will not have to deal with hearing the same words again and again?

The term family is nothing but a joke to me. I betray my sense of arrogance when I say that it feels like I am more mature then those I am around. It may be the fact I am who I am but if someone is doing what I feel to be irrational I would like to talk to them and see why they are doing this. Repeating the same phrases again and again is not really a viable solution, of course this is coming from my vastly inferior mind and what is ultimately nothing more then a merely humble opinion.

At the end of the day big words, irritating repetition, nor loud angry words get you respect or your idea conveyed. It acts as a reminder as to why I have a severe dislike for a shockingly high number of people. Respect is not automatically given, it has to be earned, especially when one insists on being such a pompous ass for the majority of my life.

Thought of the Day

As much as I enjoy writing such eloquent pieces of self-focused rubbish, there comes a point where one becomes so disgusted and so sick of self.

Who I am.
What I am.
Why I am.

A threefold damnable truth intermingled with its own self deniable lies.

I feel like I am going to break if thigns continue on the way they are.

Self absorbed.
Self ordained.
Self proclaimed.

It feels like my once sacred outlet of writing has become infected by this disease, this filth that is created. The nobility, the worth, the purpose, the being all becomes intermingled and intermixed with concepts that contradict their own being.

I am sick of traditional wisdom. I do not care about what you deem to be the absolute and undying truth, your speeches about the good things in life...keep your money and go die with it, along with your health cares and bastardized versions of Christ and the church. Since you want your damn religion so much, by all means take the trash and go die along with it.

Cell Phones...

...should die. Plain and simple.

Muck of the World

There is so much, so little real, so few things worth the bother.

Thankfully however, the things worth the bother are actually worth something. Doesn't change my apathy towards the more frivolous and stupid things in this life but it does mean I want to live.

Nightmares of Marriage

Last night I had an odd experience because for the first time I had a continuous nightmare and it was the subject of marriage of all things. I wake up anywhere from 3-5 times a night and like normal I woke up, however every time I went back to sleep it was the same horrible nightmare continuing on.

In the nightmare I was engaged to some annoying tart I had known only for a few weeks and my heavens...I do not understand how I could date someone that annoying or even considered marrying them. It wasn't that she was needy (who isn't?) but we are talking MTV reality television reject needy.

I have a somewhat high view of love and marriage and I would rather be doused in gasoline and set on fire then marry someone outside of equal love and commitment. My big problem with people like that is their love is performance based (like certain family members I have dealt with). As long as you do exactly what they want and expect of you then everything is fine. However, Hell itself comes for a visit should you get any single thing wrong, much less commit the sin of thinking for yourself. Yeah...no way I am going to tolerate that because what I have dealt with has nearly driven me insane as is.



So...fictional nightmare finance whose name I never knew, go find someone else to pester because I do not need a floozy like you bothering my dreams anymore!

Migrane

Sleep is hard because of the pain. The non stop pounding of pressure combined with the stress of life and incomprehensible chemicals raging through my body have all equaled out to this pain that will not cease and feels as if my mind will simply explode.

No Rest for the Weary

I honestly am so sick of these feelings. I HATE having desires that have no hope of being satisfied or having a peaceful resolution. How arrogant is it that I want to take a more then slight angry stance against my creator because I never asked for this? I know I 'should' be humble like the rest of associates and suck up to Jesus but I am either to tired, to irreverent or spread so thin that I do not care about paying false lip service anymore.

The idea, the thought, the feeling, the desire, the discussion, the existence, the reality...I think you get the point...of sex, sexuality and everything related to that is currently in the process of driving me past my current state of Madness and into the realm of Vehemently Angry With a Strong Disposition to Express myself.

I know it is near pointless to say this but life does not feel fair because we are not allowed to choose to live and further still we are not allowed to exempt on the maddening confusion of sexuality.

I do not care right now that sexuality in and of itself is a good thing, I however do care greatly that the desires and feeling attached to it are in the process of making me miserable and angry. How did this even seem like a good idea before the fall happened?

Our natures are quick to err and so often life does not make much sense, so often we hurt each other and do not care. Human beings are physical/sexuality mixed with spirit/mind, that is why things are so odd. This unique blend of amphibian likeness is what differentiates us from everything.

Realizing and feeling I am right does nothing to alleviate the frustrations I feel, the desires that never leave me alone and the overwhelming urge to jump up and down while screaming at the heavens.

Acthung Baby!

It has been nice not having written real posts about Christmas or New Years, for the sake of the world I decided it was best to leave the self loathing and deep reflection for others more qualified for the job.

That being said, I will now indulge into a musical rant that may or may not end up digressing into a rant on third world poverty, existentialism or the fact I am rather hungry:

So I woke up a half hour ago and turned my laptop on and by chance winamp was playing through the album Acthung Baby by U2. For those who sift through my music collection it is not a shock to realize I happen to enjoy the band but there is just something that is absolutely amazing about this album.

There are so many factors as to why I enjoy U2 so much...emotion, honesty, irony, complexity, atmospheric sound, relate ability among other things. But this one particular album goes well beyond that.


From first glance (or listen rather) it seems like U2 had completely lost their mind between the years 1989 and 1991, long gone are the metaphorical references to the western United States, over references to Christianity and the in your face approach to political activities. Instead there is a dangerous album that seems overly simplified.

There is an emphasis on personal relationship in the lyrics and the music almost makes it feel like you have arrived at a party. It's not until you have heard the record for the dozenth or so time do things really sink in and one can get a sense as to how dark this album is.

Dark irony as it were, a dozen songs that taken as a whole begin the first part of a story of leaving behind the stories you were told as a kid and trying to find out what is true by experience. Which in and of itself is not the best way of discovering life but it is the path most choose because it is so hard to simply sit back in life when you can go yourself.

The thoughts I rationalize myself would most likely scare the vast majority of people away from me so I don't intend to sound judgmental in the least, so often i want to just leave everything behind and really go into the world. I know I don't exactly have to live wild and stupid to get the point that there are problems in this world and that eventually you have to stop seeing yourself as the center of the universe.

Bah.

I wanted to write about the album but there are so many strings and so many directions of thought associated with that album that it is almost impossible for me to keep a single thought in place long enough to write it down. Maybe I'll just have to come back and write about individual songs before I can write about the album as a whole.

My point is this:

Most people I meet either love or hate U2, I do not judge you for either of these actions but I would advocate finding this album and taking a long listen. I very well could have horrid musical tastes but that hasn't stopped me yet.

Lack of Understanding

Conversations with people that feel different on issues from me confuse me. As arrogant as I am I do know that what little I do know is quite small...however seeing the massive pain in peoples lives I cannot help but wonder if perhaps I did manage to awkwardly stumble into the best decision on my life.

Sexuality is completely overrated. Culture has no idea what it is talking about because anything that has to mask it's pain with addiction is so broken that it has forfeited it's privilege to speak on anything.

I do not wish to sound arrogant but I will never understand why MTV has much of a sway as it does, I've talked to people for whom it was the promise land...and that really makes me sad. Besides the fact I cannot recall the last time I saw a music video I just almost feel their attempts at being culturally relevant are both laughable and missing the mark completely. Then again this is television we're talking about, it is nothing more then a ratings game competing for more money, they don't give a damn if the advice they give out is good or bad, as long as they get a better percentage then they can be happy for what they have.



It kills me to see people I love as equally or more so miserable then I am. I have many reasons for my problems and I'm not saying people should never feel bad, it is just seeing someone I love suffer and slowly die because of bad decisions really rips me up.

It's not like I possess anything special, it just seems quite evident that playing with fire is going to leave you burned. Gambling your life away for something you don't even really want. It is a frustrating experience to think about how many of us know what we genuinely want or genuinely desire, who we are is not who we are meant to be or who we should be, we are far to easily pleased.

I really like how C.S. lewis put it when he mentioned that we do not have strong desires, in fact our desires are far to weak. Because of pleasure we set ourselves back and damn ourselves to misery because we will not allow ourselves to see who we really are for fear of wanting to change.

Few human beings ever hit the mark of genuinely evil but we enjoy throwing around words like evil, sin, Hell and the like because if we can mock it then we do not have to take it seriously. I enjoy making fun of Satan as much as the next guy but at what point does fiction end and truth begins? It is easy to throw around semantically pretense and just miss the issues of life altogether.

Call me one sided but I am either right or wrong. As much as I enjoy self loathing I believe it is as just as wrong as any other sin. Being wrapped up in yourself so much that you ignore life and those around you is a sin. Left to our own devises we turn something like depression into a sick pleasure that we have trouble parting from. Do I even need to point out the same with how utterly screwed up the notion of sex is?

Oh you...

If you just knew how powerful your words were. One small word would have me transversing the highest heavens and the deepest caverns to find you. I've walked through so many valleys and for some reason you have been there at the top of most of them, just giving a small smile and a word of encouragement.

Keep this up and you may just have won me over before you knew it...

Cold Days Ahead

The future is as it always is, uncertain and dark with more then a simple touch of cold. It is hard to breath when there is no air, it is hard to thrive with life when you feel strong pressure to simply die.

It's not like I haven't considered this option before it is just most of the time it has seemed to be an utterly ridiculous notion with no basis, no real effect. Never before has it seemed like such a beautifully viable option, a simple solution to a life time of failures stacked upon each other. Cold and lifeless as this structure that is jokingly called a home, no sane human being could enjoy living here, no sane human being could desire this life here.

I have trouble with breathing, I would just like to lay down and embrace the raw darkness, no more hurt and no more pain.

Some Free Thoughts

I would like to sleep now, forever and a day. Sleep is something I normally despise because I do not like the blankness, the vulnerability, the waste of time, the emptiness that tends to surge upon my entrance into the new day.

Odd how I can take a simple pleasure billions of other people can enjoy and not only do I strip it of its joy but my mind twists and provides dark commentary as to why I do not like it.

Anyone can write about the evils of American foreign policy, anyone can point the finger at the corrupt Oil companies, it is quite easy to be bigoted towards something the rest of the world hates...so I do think it is rather admirable and might even say true punk for me to say down with the sleep and down with the aspects of our personal lives that are nothing more then little cancers we are nursing until they are given ample time to grow up and stab us bleeding into the heart.

There are admirable things in life, there are good things, there is happiness, there are smiles, there is a reason to celebrate, there are good reasons to live, good reasons to strive for life, there are purposes and so many other things but right now I do not care, I simply am to selfish and to caught up in my own personal drama to care.

When I write it is almost as if I can start to feel this connection to the whole of creation, there is the flow of words, this extension of myself, I feel some confusion, a little doubt...the words and worlds around me are nothing more then their own personal constructs made for the self glorification of one ego maniac after the next.

Thoughts upon thoughts upon desire upon the lack of control felt by us all. Some scream loud and others try to scream the loudest, just so they can appear to have fictional answers about why they deserve our adoration and worship. Self glorifying and narcissistic bastards, the lot of them.

New Year and New Day with Common Problems

The normal status quo is about the same. The question that must be asked is what shall I do with it and about it?

Making your own decisions for the first time is odd.

I'll need money for sure, health insurance won't hurt, food is good, water is better, creativity is a must and there must be so much of other things that I am not even sure what these 'things' might be exactly.

Old things really don't make me happy anymore, small stories and limited boxes are all they seem to be anymore. Empty constructs dependent on binary like every other computing machine. The inklings of humanity are indeed broad but are quite shallow in their soil.


Realizing the large world with near infinite possibility for the first time is quite terrifying. People settle for sub par things because the world scares the hell out of them and they have no clue how to respond to something so impossibly large. No wonder people are so miserable, we don't even reach a small percentage of the potential and happiness we could have.



I wish it could just be us two, no more of the headaches, no more separation by distance, no more of the entanglements of this broken world holding us back. No more broken visages and no more pretending to love you. I am so sick of this fake love I dance around, this pretending to love you while so much suffering goes on.

If you are more then just my imagination running wild I need to be able to see the path in front of me, even if it is just one step at a time. Any help would most certainly be appreciated and welcomed, every last shred of it will be taken to heart and exuberantly embraced.

Or so I say, at least until the next time I hurt, the next time cry, the next time things fall apart; then I will tear into you again screaming obscenity and cursing the fact I was ever made. It is absolutely amazing how easy it is to blame you for my failures when the only thing you have been responsible has been my success. You have loved and carried me beyond any possible understanding on my part. I want to breath but it is so hard, I want to walk forward but I can't even stand the weight of my own failures.

All I ever had was you, all I have ever wanted is you. Everything else I thought I wanted was just a desire to weak to realize what love is. My body is being ravaged by sin, by time and by failure. I'll have finished dying soon enough and then maybe we can see each other, maybe there will be a world without end that we can share. What is possible is only limited by the infinite love that you hold for me.

Another Night

It is funny how often I lay awake at night, my hands shaking from the anxiety of never sleeping, my eyes stinging from having run out of tears days ago, barely hearing the lies I tell everyone around me so I can hide from the world, the real funny thing is how often I just think of you. How I become enraptured by the smallest bit of attention you throw my way, my heart clings desperately to the smallest thing you say, the desire of wanting to know I can trust your intentions.

I'm sure that I have to lie to myself to be able to keep going, if I didn't lie you know the truth would destroy us, destroy me. You know I never mean to hurt you by it either, right? Good intentions are all you ever need to be a hero anyways.

I just would like to take a trip inside your mind, to be able to see how you think, how you feel, to know why it feels like I am the last human you would ever want to look at, to know if I really could be loved by someone like you, to know that my mind is playing tricks on me again.

All the same emotion, drama and feelings are all a confusing lot that I never know what to do with.

You are able to be a mystery while I beg to be understood, you hold your emotions under lock and key while I proudly wear them on my sleeves, you speak with the smallest of knowing whispers while I scream and shout my ignorance . Two polar opposites of effect and still I cannot help but think, dwell, pray and seek to be understood.

Side note:

Have I by chance happened to have mention how over rated life is?

Goodbye

I'm sure you are there, somewhere. Thought I would at least say hey. Sorry we may not have talked in a while, I'm sure you know how these things are...life enjoys running circles around us throwing out confusion as if we were at some tacky Mardi Gra parade.

Why waste time and simultaneously ruin the moment?

I suppose it would be best to simply say hello and then part to our very separate ways.

New Years Eve

I really don't have anything worth saying that hasn't already been said before, therefore I'll just borrow the words of a song that puts things rather nicely.


************

It's New Years Eve and I'm full of empty promises,
I half pretend to keep this time, just like last year.
The band is loud and I'm wandering the shadows,
wishing I was never here.
I persevere.
A crowded room, these whitewashed tombs,
they raise their glasses high, they kiss the past goodbye.

This New Years Eve, I'm waiting for tomorrow.
My heart is on my sleeve,
and yes I still believe, this New Years Eve,
will turn out better than before,
I'm holding on, still holding out,
until they close the door... on me.

It's New Years Eve and I feel my insecurities,
are haunting me like ghosts, this sinking quicksand.
And then with thunderous praise and lofty adoration,
a second passes by, yet nothing changes.
I hate my skin, this grave I'm standing in.
Another change of years, and I wish I wasn't here.

A year goes by and I'm staring at my watch again,
and I dig deep this time,
for something greater than I've ever been,
life to ancient wineskins.
And I was blind but now I see.

This New Years Eve, something must change me inside,
I'm crooked and misguided, and tired of being tired.
This New Years Eve, I'm waiting for tomorrow.
My heart is on my sleeve, and yes I still believe, in You.


-Five Iron Frenzy, "New Years Eve"