Friday, January 4, 2008

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?