Sometimes, when I am asked what am I doing...what am I going to do...I feel embarrassed, like an idiot for being in school this long, having degrees but wanting more education.

I am not sure why but I need to teach and if I can do it at the university level and I do not loose my mind that will be utterly fantastic.

As far as church work...I want so badly to feel like I belong to a church...but until then I am not sure...I just do not want to randomly work at a church with how easily I burn out and loose sight with such silly things going on...

I am loved.
I am wanted.
I am slowly changing...I want to become better.
To embrace the light and smile.
Can you teach me how to sing, how to move and what it means to be alive?
It's like starting again...and I just want to see, want to feel...want to breath.
All like I have never before.

Why is it I only see them is when someone dies?
I'm starting to feel more than slightly cursed.

So many thoughts.
So much potential drama.
All of this idioticy of trying to figure out the next semester at UM must have shot my confidence about being on stage in the face.

The prospect of auditioning or even trying out is utterly terrifying right now.

I suppose I feel the same way every time I try to write...but I guess it wouldn't be life without a mountain of existential dread staring me in the face.

Meh.

-_-

I can do this.
I can learn lines.
I can make phone calls until the jerks call me back.
I can be happy wherever I am, doing whatever I have to do...just so I can do what I am called to...because I am loved.

I am not a horrible, horrible unthinkable and unlovable sinner.

I am me.
Silly, tired, worn down, sick but still laughing me.
There is hope.
Even when I am rejected, told I am an idiot, made fun, belittled and made to feel I am nothing...there is still hope.

Just passing through here on my way to my real home.

Quote of the Day:

"The most common form of despair is not being who you are."
-Søren Kierkegaard

Because of my recent desire to try and make some tangible difference in the world beyond just praying, this article caught my eye:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12022303

Ah neurosis my old friend.
I believe Woody Allen wrote a lot about you...

Taking myself too seriously...such a funny notion.
Why am I so worried?
Why was I?

Hrmm...
Things are better than I could dream or hope.
Nothing wrong with emotion...just remembering to find peace...to find a place of rest and looking back...taking time for perspective.

Not just these silly little ideas floating in my head.
Love and truth still walk hand in hand...

Outside of saying help...and hoping that somehow things work out right...

What else is there to say?

Blinking Christmas Lights

It's almost six AM,
the day after Christmas
and I miss what once was.
I used to have such expectation
a growing excitement
and wonder about a day
full of getting,
close hugs
and walking across a field
that is now full of brown vines and death.

I lay here in this bed,
my eyes catch the glimmer of light
of a passing time
maybe of a life
that never was
or never could be.

I used to be so young,
so small,
naive and hopeful about this world.

I saw through the lenses of a story
of good fighting evil,
of raising a sword
and casting spell
to beat back the relentless night
and all of her hordes.

Before my heart closed
and began its decay
into this twisted,
dark and fetid thing
there was this capacity for love
and wanting to share the adventure.
I was naive and stupid
not caring about others thoughts
but soon,
soon I learned to be afraid.
That people were cruel,
dark, blind and willfully stupid
and the monsters were not under the bed
but just down the hall.

I look at my world,
this small strip of land
and I know I am loved,
so blessed
and wanted around.

But still,
I struggle to see reality
and see the point of life
that is beyond these artificial lights
and this God awful poetry.

I pray,
I have begged God
to close my heart
and harden it against this world.
So I would never feel affection,
feel attraction
or want to be loved
or stupidly consider opening myself
to just being used,
ripped apart
and have my insides gayfully displayed
just so a girl might giggle
and add another check mark.

But this stupid heart refuses to cooperate
and instead,
look at me,
born loser and bastard extraordinaire
who paints with shades of pain
such pitiful portraits
and yet the feelings remain.

I do not want them,
I am too weak
and cannot carry this.

Sure,
You know best
but
why must it hurt so much?

I blink my eyes,
the pain remains
and I fall further
and farther
down this rabbit hole,
falling head over heels
into this darkness.
I feel the claws ripping my skin
and I just wish it could be something else,
nothing but truth
but hope that even with my self hate
I might grow to hope
and maybe
just maybe
this battle was not a waste.

Why must I feel?
Care when I'm not wanted?
Give when it's nothing worthwhile
and nothing worth remembering?

Why do I feel this?
Why do they flutter in my chest
touching my heart
and pulling my soul?
I am much too tired
and too weak,
unable to make this trip.

Call it off,
just let it die inside of me
instead of a prolonged death to self
which will be decades in the making.

Hope
that none of these prayers are heard
and if they are,
it is seen as the ramblings of a sick man
and maybe a healing,
some process
might just dare to begin.

Things are so pleasant...and good here...it's actually a bit disconcerting.

o_O

So This is Christmas

Somehow I managed to go almost the entire month of December without hearing the phrase "War on Christmas" and that makes me happy. Happily hopeful that instead of wasting precious words and time on grand conspiracies about how the liberals are coming to eat our children...that maybe some Christians have found real battles worth fighting.

Not wars of words of ideologies, partisan politics or agendas...but the fight to give water to those who thirst. Living water to quench their physical and spiritual thirsts.

I am a hopeful cynic and realize how much of a contradiction that is.
It can be hard for me to get into a church Christmas spirit not just because of how anachronistic the holiday is...but with how shallow the holiday and how shallow we all can be.

Despite my feelings of guilt whenever I am given something, I don't think it's wrong to give or receive presents...but at the same time I have trouble reconciling all of these millions of dollars being spent on what amounts to a large pile of things that will break, rust and become useless.

All of that money being spent when there are so many people suffering.

I'm not trying to step on the toes of those wanting to be festive or celebrating...but sometimes it's just not enough for me to offer prayers for people starving to death, for junkies dying in the gutters of major cities, for people who have their dignity and human rights stripped of them because of being born in the wrong place and time.

I don't write these words just to try making people feel guilty...but I have these thoughts and feel the need to write them, to maybe connect with other like minded people...that maybe there is something bigger than us that makes life worth living and fighting for. I can't be ashamed of my convictions, how silly it is for me to stand around professing my weakness and how a God that seems to be invisible is the reason I am here at all.

Christmas, this celebration of the ludicrous notion of God coming to earth in the form of man, should not just be a time of rejoicing but a time of sobriety to realize how blessed we are and how that blessing can be taken and given to those with nothing.

I've mostly gotten rid of the hubris that demanded I try to single handedly change the world but instead I can settle for changing the world of a person or several people.

When I stop to think about how insane my faith must sound to those who have never felt the moving of the Holy Spirit, of feeling the weight of sin and guilt removed and being able to start again...I don't even know if it is possible to ever explain it...except by showing it in how I love.

The Gospel feels so impossible, so incredibly out of place and to my knowledge there really is no other faith than Christianity that speaks of God not just loving but chasing after his wayward children. It seems the Lord takes delight in finding "impossible" cases, the social outcasts, the shy, the despised and hated...and using them to be his hands, his feet and a voice of light in this world.

The date, the exact time and location of where Jesus was born doesn't matter, what matters the most is that He is. Somehow, someway, this impossible faith worked its way into my heart and I can safely say that any good, anything worthwhile coming out of me is because of being loved and being made lovable.

That is Christmas, that is faith, that is heaven...impossible, never ending love from a God I do not and will never understand...and I am okay with that.
If I could define or explain God then he would not be God, just another idol or fake Jesus that was invented to make my life easier.

I don't want a God who is a tyrant or a God who refuses to care about sins. I cannot pretend to follow a commercialized Jesus who is nothing more than a wise sage or prophet. It has to be the impossible idea of God coming in the form of man, this absurd and impossible beauty is what I have to follow, have to chase after.
A God that chases me when I have given up and try to run away.
A God who has carried me through all of these chasms, these pains...everything I fear and somehow, someway I am still here.

It's a hope that this meaning of Christmas becomes as real to you as it has to me.
Not just words, not just songs and not even warm and fuzzy feelings.
But the truth that you are never alone, never unloved and that you are beautiful in the way you were made.






"Crawling out from the wreckage of all that I've been taught
I'm leaving it behind
They fling their venom out at me when I resign
Outside the gates I drag myself into a world bigger than I had believed
And inside they flay their sheep lest they follow me and leave

But after everything I've done and everything I do
I can still remember you

Lines in my hands, light through the walls
I'm writing you letters with my prayers
After all that I've stood up falls
And I afford you none of my cares
If I ask you "what is truth" will you be silent still?
My questions and doubts made a chasm
That I fear you can not fill

Perhaps the lens I've eyed you through
Keeps me from knowing what is truth
I can't find what I'm looking for
And I still remember you

When I relent the shackles of all that I've been fed
I pull back the floor and find something beautiful instead

After everything That I've been through
I don't recognize myself anymore
Sometimes I think I might remember
But then I close the door

I walk away from everything and find myself made free
In all the tangles of who I am the truth is that you love me
Just as I was, just as I am, just as I will be
In all the tangles of who I am, the truth is that you love me"
-Showbread, "The Heart is Deceitful Above all Things"

Bah.
Deadspace.
As in this blog.
Not the horrible game.

The Year of Doing Big, Fun and Scary Things

For those who might have missed out on the rather tame party I threw for myself in celebration of my fourth National Novel Writing Month win...I won National Novel Writing Month for the fourth time.

Wow.
That was excruciatingly repetitive.

The lovely nut jobs who run Nanowrimo host an event in December called "The Year of Doing Big, Fun, Scary Things", which is a bit like making New Years Resolutions.

The logic is that since you (as in I, the writer) have accomplished the awesome if just a tad stupid goal of writing a first draft in a month, why stop there?

For various reasons I have neglected to do this in my four years of Nanowrimoing for one reason or another...but I think this is going to be the year where I am going to draw some lines in the sand.

Well, not so much as lines as vague guidelines I can post on my wall and feel guilty about for ignoring....because guilt is important in accomplishing anything. If it were not for guilt (or maybe just humanity's tendency for masochism) we as a global community would not have to suffer with taxes, parliamentary procedures and rap music.

That said, here are some ideas of what I want to accomplish in year of 2011:

1.Figure out exactly when I am going to be graduating with my Masters. I have been working off and on since around 2007 (I think...or was it 2008?) and although I did pick up Theater as a minor I should try to figure out what year and semester I'll be graduating in and get set up for the classes as far in advance as possible.

2.Attempt to find a church but in the mean time at least go somewhere so I will be a bit less isolated and possibly find others I am on the same spiritual/religious wavelength as.

3.I have yet to put any serious thought into revising any of my novels. I will daydream about being published, conducting interviews where I show off a winning smile, my witty retorts and my utter lack of fashion...however unless I actually bother to revise a novel there really won't be much of a reason to celebrate something that doesn't happen.

4.I want to produce two short pieces a month. Of these two I want to write one article and one short story. I have endless pages of story but I really want to try making myself do a shorter term project so I have less chance of burning out.

5.Despite any health conditions I am determined to become better at swing dancing.

6.Take the time to go for a stroll when it is raining.

7.Learn how to open myself up for moments during the day when it feels things are falling apart and make myself remember that Father is in control and if my work is going nowhere that could mean I am needed elsewhere.

8.Find real and tangible ways to show love to everyone I am around. Family, friends, roommates...not just the cheesy and fake smiles...but taking genuine interest in those around me.

9.Go to the beach at night and stay until sunrise. Watch the beauty and remember it until the day I die.

10.Work on learning how to let go out bad experiences and the pain of the past so I can be free to smile and not just paste on the emotions I expect people are expecting me to wear.

11.Since I'll be turning 25 in July I need to figure out what exactly I am supposed to be doing. I have yet to hear an explanation as to what this whole "mid-twenties" thing was supposed to be about...that alone seems like it would be an adventure.



Sort of like novel writing, the only person who I am responsible to this list is myself and as much interest as you, faithful reader will exhibit. If you think of it feel free to ask me how progress is going...or as the case may be, distract me into looking the other way and give me a loving shove off into the depths of living life.

It should be an interesting year to say the least.

Today has been a good day to practice my mad laughter.

Oievay.

Seeing the smile is absolutely priceless.

Slight Redundancy May Apply

I don't know if that is naive innocence or just the disturbed attempts of someone so screwed up in the head trying to mess with me.

Either way it is starting to annoy me to no end.

However, however...I smile.
I choose to smile in the face of insanity, in the face of this world decaying and falling apart.

I have ever reason to despair.
To lay down.
To cry.
To just give up and die.

Yet I choose to smile.
In this darkness I smile.
I refuse to lay down.
I refuse to fade, loose my shape and become a Shade.

Who is this?
What is that noise?
Whose voice is this?

I almost feel obligated to lie,
speak sweet nothings
whisper them
across this vast electronic ocean
but I have lost my place,
lost my voice.

I do not know why I write
or who even reads.

I always had a target,
that One
but I am finding,
refining
and trying to see why
and how
with all of this
shred of life I live.

Does it make sense?
Do the thoughts flow
and does the hope escape
like breath
on a cold night
forming vivid mist
as it dissipates?

I can give so many stories,
so many ways
and so many times I smiled
during this semester.

So many smiles,
so much pain
and a limp across time and space.

I can whisper names
of those
occupying the past
my present
and maybe a future
that may or may never be.

All subjective,
such pain
whispering
and just longing
to break out
and run free,
to never look back
but feel the sun
and fresh breezes
once and for all again.

Everything has it's appointed time and place, just I wish I could better understand the how's and why's because of how tired I am. Too tired for games, too tired to keep up with all these kids running around these days.

I want a cup of tea and a soft pillow.
I want a good book and a heating pad for my back.
A walking stick to lean upon and a gentle breeze on my face.
Somehow I dramatically aged, so fast.
But I am still just me.
The kid looking into eternity with hope.
Refusing to back down.
Now is the moment.

Even if I live an eternity with nothing but hearing no and failures.
I will smile.
I will smile and still continue.

Not out of spite.
Not out of a desire of pain.
But a hope that I can find the ones I can trust.
Build that hope and support.
It's worth the fight and pain.
So few things are.
But that certainly is.

So...so...

Bah.


*passes out*

A Few Inspirational Songs for Tonight

So silly...so silly to trust.
Yet I do.

Lines in the Dirt

Small lines,
falling branches
and tiny sticks;
carving earth
as an etching,
just these lines in the dirt
following the path.

Here today
soon erased by time
but the feature
running along
trapped in frame
and mind,
just a small adventure
of yours and mine.


***
*****
***


Sticks and lines
obscured by time,
running still
and falling
across the shadow of today.

It feels...as though my soul is that of a cowards.

Nausea, chills, a fever, guilt and worry.

Just another day in the life, neh?

"I'm becoming less defined as days go by
Fading away
And well you might say
I'm losing focus
Kinda drifting into the abstract in terms of how I see myself

Sometimes I think I can see right through myself"

In and Out

Such, such, such
vast
and varied
empty, rising skyscrapers
inside my mind,
just
these somber burning vigils,
of a time gone by
and whispers on the wind
carried to the depths
of whatever lays
at the bottom of my soul.

I feel torn apart on the inside,
pulled and drawn
in every direction,
every manner
and every means
all at once,
faster and faster.

Spiraling baby,
just out of control
another day
another job
what more can I say?

Falling under the title
of just a bit of self destruct,
I suppose it's normal
but then again
what is?

Hmm...some sort of story idea...a book actually called "Chapter One" in which the story never actually progresses beyond the first chapter...the entire book is the struggle to get beyond the first chapter itself...and yet there is consistent failure to do so.

I know there is no way that is actually an original idea...I just need to figure out who already did that so I can shake my fist angrily at them.

All things considered...I suppose life really isn't so bad.
Quite wonderful actually.
Even with a headache at 3AM.

Wooo.

Bah.
I hate being an indecisive jerk.

The sad thing is I cannot even begin to trust my intentions.

I look in the mirror and see the person no one else does...I'm damned to live with the dark side of me which can never be exposed...small shards and fragments appear...but the real me...

It just cannot be known.

Bah, I feel like I am just waking in circles...and to a large degree I am...because I am not sure how to even begin to make sense of so much of this life.

Emotions, feelings, memories...so much, so little, so late to be shared and shown...

At least if I bite my tongue and reveal nothing...at least some pain can be prevented...and that is what it seems my job has become...prevention.

Ironic, isn't it?

All doubts and existential quandaries aside...home is home...
Some measure of normality for once is a God send.
More ways than one really...

Sometimes I feel like such a stranger...

So tired and so freaking nauseated...hopefully it'll pass soon.

Goodnight, goodnight and goodnight...

Meh.

I guess I did feel a little left out...but what is the point of such silly emotions?

Instead...sleep, tomorrow I must drive and think.

So many paths, so many roads...where do they all lead?

What's in a Novel?

I seriously cannot believe November is already over.

Considering all of the school work, health issues, school obligations, having three people join (and another four people express interest) in the classic Deadlands game I've been running and writing the first draft of my fourth novel...all of it just flew by ever so quickly.

More than once I have had people question my sanity over not just the task of writing a fifty thousand word first draft in just a month but writing a novel at all, much less the fact this was my fourth time to take part in Nanowrimo.

I have four rough novels on my hard drive, something that adds up to being somewhere between 220,000 and 250,000 words of fiction.

That I, Matt Pike, wrote.

I feel some context, some explanation for all this madness is in order:


I. My first venture into the NANOWRIMO madness was back in 2007 and I wrote an incredibly awkward fantasy novel set in modern America about a group of hapless fools who had the misfortune of being chosen to save the world. I plagiarized the personalities of several close friends at the time, the narration style of Douglas Adams and the plot of most every console RPG to be released in the past decade.

The basic story followed a group of teenagers/early twenty somethings who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and had a Guardian (think angelic warrior type wielding a katana) who was commissioned to find the chosen ones and lead them on a quest to prevent an ancient evil from being unleashed onto the world.

Being unfortunate to have me as the writer means their quest was for nougat because they all were screwed over in the end by the leader of the organization who was supposed to be stopping this madness. Their quest lead them to bringing a relic to a holy site that ripped a hole open in the fabric and time and space, causing a spiritual barrier to be removed and in a literal sense all of Hell broke loose upon the world and the heroes were caught in the vortex.

Considering my incredibly lack of skills of narration and writing it is at least a somewhat redeemable work.



II. My second novel during the 2008 novel season was written as a direct sequel to the first book (neither of which have names yet) and continued the groups misadventures as they had been trapped on an alien world and were trying to return hope to stop everything they loved from being wiped out.

I was going through a rather dark phase so the black humor aspect was played up quite a bit and although I broke the 50k mark there really was no real ending and I was at a lost to what I should write.



III. Then came my third novel which became a stereotypical high fantasy novel with a stereotypical unpronounceable name, "The Twilight of Sin'ai" and I took a lot of influence from both "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Dark Tower Series".

In my mind "Sin'ai" takes places in the same universe as the first two novels but was a prequel of sorts showing a grand spiritual battle taking among the stars and that the Earth was insulated from the horrors of it all.

A race of fallen beings called The Dark (original, I know) are these beings who have been stripped of all emotion and rational thought, they are like a virus that simply consumes and steals the bodies of people and creatures and take their form but are merely a twisted and perverse caricature of what once was.

The main group of heroes are fighting a loosing war to protect their realm and have to chase a mysterious man in dark and crimson colored robes who has stolen an artifact which if used can open a portal and allow the Dark free reign to consume this doomed world.

It is quite possible that I was going through a really dark time of my life because without intending to there is a lot of fatalism and nihilistic themes, more so than this years novel which was the intended focus.



IV.This brings us to this year, 2010 and my novel which was lovingly dubbed "The Downward Spiral". A lot of my essays on spirituality draw their names from song titles so it made sense to me that this book would be named after one of the albums I listened to most during the writing process.

The original goal for this novel was to construct a storyline and plot which could be both a stand alone story as well as provide the content for a campaign for the "Call of Cthulhu Campaign". I drew from several sources, most notably H.P. Lovecraft, Steven King, Franz Kafka and Flannery O'Connor.

I wanted to take some unfortunate every day people and throw them into these horrible and impossible situations where the best they could hope is to last just a few minutes longer as the barrier of what is possible/impossible gets ripped down and they feel their sanity being ripped from their being. A lot of the essences was that they were shown the edge of the world and looked over to see this overwhelmingly impossible void that they looked into and saw something coming for them out of the darkness.

I consciously made the choice to pick a genre I have avoided, that of supernatural horror. I also tried to let the content flow as organically as it could and so there is a good amount of dark content so that I would label the books as being PG-13 if not R rated. I did not set out to try and offend people by having characters that swore, had sexual thoughts or were in danger of dying but in order to be true to the story I had to tell what I was saying.

To a degree I still do not know what the ending of this book is, I had a few scenes in my head and did the best I could to connect all of them into some sort of coherent order and considering how little experience I have in this genre...I think it came out well.

There were several points where I considered just scrapping the project and try to stick to something familiar but then I came across this utterly amazing quote:


"The writer who emphasizes spiritual values is very likely to take the darkest view of all of what he sees in this country today. For him, the fact that we are the most powerful and wealthiest nation in the world doesn't mean a thing in any positive sense. The sharper the light of faith, the more glaring are apt to be the distortions the writer sees in the life around him... My own feeling is that writers who see by the light of their Christian faith will have, in these times, the sharpest eyes for the grotesque, for the perverse, and for the unacceptable... The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural."
-Flannery O'Connor


This quote sort of smacked me in the face with not just inspiration but this obligation, this need to avoid the intellectual and creative ghetto that exists within the American Christian bubble.

I do not read much Christian fiction because I find both genres to be hopelessly dull, contrived, predictable and full of more Deus ex Machina's than you could hit with a dead Greek playwright.

There are good intentions in trying to shelter people from themes and ideas that might be too much for them, however it should be pointed out that if the entire Bible was adapted it would be rated X because in Genesis alone you have sexy, murder, incest, extortion, lying, drunk people stumbling around, God killing the majority of the population and nuking a couple of cities.

To say that one can read about these things in the Bible and that they are topics in faction that are taboo is a double standard that helps no one.

I have no illusion of ever having any of my books in Lifeway or the other chain Christian bookstores because I have little interest or desire to write feel good, mushy, lovey-dovey let's all hold hands and sing songs while pretending that only "sinners" and "bad" people experience bad things in life.

I suppose me saying that is a wee bit pretentious but I am okay with that.

At the end of the day the best any of us can do is pray, hope and trust that we can follow the convictions and desires God has placed in our hearts.



To me those convictions are:

1.No comprising or censoring of the works I write.
2.That I need to be as painfully honest and open about my struggles because too many Christians hide their scars and pretend everything is perfect when this world is broken. Any fool can see that and I refuse to put my head in the sand just to make people feel good about their complacency.
3.I was given this ability to write and until the day I die I am going to keep writing, keep revising and tell the stories I most want to hear because there are those who need to hear them just as badly as I do.
4.Temet nosce, the unexamined life is not worth living and to write I have to live, fail, learn and grow.
5.Bake more brownies and give out more hugs.

"Your eyes
Are always there
Your eyes
Are what I came for

Your eyes
Drive away my fear
Your eyes
I could just stand there and adore

Stop just right there
Everything has to stop to steal time
For whom I want to be near
Yes I do care and I love the love we share

And I know You're alive
I'll give my heart to survive
This world has nothing to offer a human soul
Reaching for the sky
So Father of light
Keep this human spirit alive"

I feel a bit like curling up into a ball because of the pain.

Ick.
Ack.
Bleh.

In a way it would be nice to go out and do something...but I just feel too tired, too dizzy and really just too sick to put forth the effort it would take to accomplish that.

Oh well.
In other news:

Wheee...

A bit silly how such small things can act as a relief.

Yes.

Silly indeed.

I find it infinitely amazing how in attempting to do the right thing I sabotage myself and end up preventing things I would have rather liked.

Lousy morals and such.

*sigh*

Furthermore, I would at least like to think I have a high tolerance and would help anyone...but I am just getting to the point where I am too tired to deal with certain people.

It is amazing how certain people lack tact.
Or compassion for that matter.

Is it really so hard for people to have manners?
Will it be the skin off your bloody teeth if you close your mouth while eating?
Blargh.

If I didn't know better I would think that certain people are going out of their way to try and to my ever growing pile of pure confusion.

I have to wonder how much is too much.
What will cause me to loose and become lost in all this contradictory nonsense.

Hope lives.
Burns and struggles.
Gasps for breath.
But lives.