Wednesday, April 8, 2009

I am ashamed of myself because somehow I forgot how amazing Stryper is.

Random Comedic Sketches on Warfare







Numerous Tangets...

I keep having these really vivid dreams...I just woke up again...it was me being back at school...it's hard to phrase everything because it is really so silly...and I don't like looking utterly ridiculous...even on here...I can only be myself to so much of a degree before I start feeling so...exo-outside of this skin and body...and the dream was vivid enough and incorporated a few dozen people I knew from back Mobile and high school.

I'm not sure dreams mean anything other then the fact they are random neurological impulses firing through the brain...and trying to make sense of a human is impossible...as impossible as track the quantum mechanics that govern the sub atomic particles and their little dances through the infinite void of which matter consists of.

Well make sense of them in the sense that I'm tired of being in this isolation, this exile of such.

The more time a person spends outside of REAL community the more dehumanized they become...the less they are capable of their true purpose and of becoming who they are. Whether we like it or not we need other people to realize who we are...oddity that it is.

Distant Yet Close, Far Away But Near

Being lost in this labyrinth of my mind for so long...I've ignored so many well meaning friends, people who have done more then their fair share of trying to help me...all the while I have wondered lost and bitter in my own world. This medicated haze broken only by a few rays of sunlight that burn so much.

It is almost like trying to learn to be human again.

I've forgotten what compassion looks like, that love is not just a ludicrous human emotion conjured by futile attempts to give meaning to an otherwise meaningless life and that hope, dear God hope is not just real but it is this fire that burns in my heart...and that You, only You can make my heart beat twice as fast whenever you draw near.

I can't pretend to have a special clarity or that somehow I have found something no one else has...just that I run myself into the ground every day and lay here in shambles and even thought I curse the day as being night...there is more hope and life than I can scarcely hope to believe in.

When will this end?

Friday maybe. It could easily go either way, I may die today or Friday or in another hospital in twenty years. God knows I don't know at all and do not need to know.

I've stumbled through life and have been dragged along for most of it and here I am at another threshold. It feels like the day I woke up in Mobile and I had graduation in a few hours. John was kind enough to stay with me, drive me around so I could find some dress shoes that were overpriced and then drop off at the civic center for graduation.

Some friends are just so good you don't deserve them, especially when you tend to act as a pompus know it all that is laughing at the joke that the rest of the world hasn't gotten yet.

And yet, there is still love. It's amazing how clarity makes everything more beautiful and painful at the same time...sort of like finally getting to breath again after holding your breath for what feels like an eternity, like waking from a nightmare to find yourself in bed or to finally be able to walk again after being so drugged up you can't get yourself off the bathroom floor and you have to crawl to your bed and hope you don't throw up again...this release of bondage, this breaking of the chains tying you down, having your spirit freed so you can fly and run to freedom.

It's all this and more...it's impossible to put into words because every metaphor is full of inadequacy.

Screams in the night being replace by sobs being replaced by gasps for air and finally laying there realizing everything you've wasted life on was worthless but oh the beauty, the clarity of knowing that it doesn't matter because love can rescue you at your last moments of life and that the blood already spent is enough to cover over the world's monuments to sin.

It's something not here yet but it is coming, something seemingly impossible but nearly tangible, feelings beyond consideration but grounded in this moment and place and time.

It is here, it is there, it is coming but has always been here even though we just haven't seen him.

It's every moment of my life played back at fast speed, rewinding to show every step I have taken and the thousands I have came into contact with and those whose faces I know but whose names I can't remember. Seeing the pain and loss of innocence painted on walls as murals and warnings for the horror show of life...but still the undercurrent of hope that rips the air from your lungs because the joy is so beautiful, so complete and so without end.

How wonderful, how beautiful, new forever and world without end.

Life and Grieving

I do not function well around people that are mentally retarded. Partly it is because my older sister has a small disability that developed because of oxygen deprivation when she was younger and ever since then she has had trouble learning...she wanted to go to college but wasn't able to...so instead so works at the same place my mom does (Blue Cross and Blue Shield) in the mail department.

I say that to bring up a part of my high school experience. When I started doing weekly Wednesday morning meetings at school there was always one guy who would always show up, regardless of whether or not anyone else did (including my close circle of friends) a guy named Thomas, who had a severe mental disability. When he was a young child he had drank some sort of cleaner and it almost killed him and so he had trouble talking at times but he had this ridiculously strong faith that he always shared with those around him and more often then not made me realize how shallow mine is.

It hurt to see him, to talk to him and hear him speak because it showed my own inability...my pride, my addiction to attention...how I needed people to pay attention to 'my' message...and it's not like Thomas realized what he was doing...to him it was just as natural as knowing when to leave class because of a bell ringing.

Anyway...like I said, he would always be there on Wednesday mornings, regardless. We were in the same grade as well. I don't know how he could understand the love of Christ except to say that he saw Jesus face to face in a way I barely understand and don't think I'll ever understand. No matter how hard I've tried to stop this I can't help but try to measure my success by quantity and how many people were at any given meeting or heard me speak...just this part of me that isn't bad necessarily but a part of me that misses the entire point at the same time.

The last time I saw Thomas was in the spring of 2007, the night before my grandmother's funeral, at the wake. He was brought there with the grandmother of a cousin of mine who use to be my best friend. I have never dealt with the loss of my grandmother and still keep trying to repress it and hold things back...the grief terrifies me...but of all the things I remember about that horrifying week was Thomas and my cousins grandmother coming up to me. The little old lady hugged me and like most southern ladies had this air of understanding about her...and I can't remember what she said but I do remember what happened next. Thomas, who is almost as tall as I am, walked up to me and hugged me and said that he was sorry...but everything would be okay because my grandmother was with Jesus right then.

I have no idea how I held myself together and didn't break down sobbing right there...but I did. I honestly hate when people talk about death and Jesus. I don't want to hear about how she or my dad is 'with Jesus'. I've never been good at dealing with loss of any kind...of having parts of me just ripped away...its a feeling that I think may be universal but tangible and paramount only to those at any moment of time...in other words we all may know what this feeling is like but it is a burden a person has to suffer through alone and something they can't be helped through. They have to choose to walk forward or allow the grief to smother them.

There is only so much we can know and that we can learn about life...but here we are. Belief and faith are not as much as something a person can choose...but He finds you...and will not let you stay where you are...and once you are His, He won't let go...no matter how hard you fight to hang onto these scraps of a life that no longer have any meaning.

Luckily blessings aren't just for the ones who kneel.

Luckily.


Tuesday, April 7, 2009

"Far, Far Away" - Five Iron Frenzy

Staring at the shoreline
wishing for some hope
the weight of empty fishing nets
is more than twisted rope
And underneath stern faces
they wait with baited breath
with broken hearts from hoping
while casting out their nets
See the figure on the shore
He speaks His words like plain men sing
His hands they still have holes in them
glory to the King

Can you hear the bells are ringing
far, far, away?
Can you hear the voices singing
far, far, away?
I know that one day soon a song shall rise
you’ll hear it with the sleep still in your eyes

And Peter was a liar
a traitor just like me
and Judas was a hypocrite
and Paul a Pharisee
When truth can be so distant
and hope evades our reach
Peter swam across the water
and found it on the beach

Can you hear the bells are ringing
far, far, away?
Can you hear the voices singing
far, far, away?
I know that one day soon a song shall rise
you’ll hear it with the sleep still in your eyes

I hear they’ll hang you upside down
stretched across two boards
for hearing distant voices
and crossing to the Lord.

Excerpt from 'The Screwtape Letters' by C.S. Lewis

"Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman. The Enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavor. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by Stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. it occurs when lovers have got married and begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing. The Enemy takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His 'free' lovers and servants - 'sons' is the word He uses, with His inveterate love of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with the two-legged animals.

Desiring their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to 'do it on their own'. And there lies our opportunity. But also, remember, there lies our danger. If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt."

-Screwtape

Monday, April 6, 2009

And...now?

Jesus...what is any of this really worth to you?

Your perspective is eternity and time is a relative concept you laugh at.

What is this?

What is this madness called life?

Yeah...I'm asking why.

I'm sick of this, I'm just tired of the way things are and how they could be.

What is the point of hope, peace and love when they won't work in this world you made?

What of this?
What...what of this?

"Peace on Earth" - U2

Heaven on Earth, we need it now
I'm sick of all of this hanging around
Sick of sorrow, sick of the pain
I'm sick of hearing again and again
That there's gonna be peace on Earth

Where I grew up there weren't many trees
Where there was we'd tear them down
And use them on our enemies
They say that what you mock
Will surely overtake you
And you become a monster
So the monster will not break you

And it's already gone too far
Who said that if you go in hard
You won't get hurt

Jesus can you take the time
To throw a drowning man a line
Peace on Earth
Tell the ones who hear no sound
Whose sons are living in the ground
Peace on Earth
No whos or whys
No one cries like a mother cries
For peace on Earth
She never got to say goodbye
To see the color in his eyes
Now he's in the dirt
Peace on Earth

They're reading names out over the radio
All the folks the rest of us won't get to know
Sean and Julia, Gareth, Ann and Breda
Their lives are bigger than any big idea

Jesus can you take the time
To throw a drowning man a line
Peace on Earth
To tell the ones who hear no sound
Whose sons are living in the ground
Peace on Earth
Jesus sing a song you wrote
The words are sticking in my throat
Peace on Earth
Hear it every Christmas time
But hope and history won't rhyme
So what's it worth
This peace on Earth

Peace on Earth

Sunday, April 5, 2009

"Ribcage" and "The Tide Begins to Rise" - Demon Hunter



Sole Need

Blessed spirit revive again
bring forth hope
rain down love
and revive again.
Bring forth the rain
upon this barren land
devoid of life.
Bring forth the hope
and the water we need.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

I wish the 'right' thing was easier...whatever it is.

I hate decisions involving other people...it always means something bad must happen...something wrong or upsetting.

"October" and "New Year's Day" Live at Red Rocks - U2

"So Great A Salvation" - The OC Supertones

Woke up this morning
And I just had to thank God for my life
Just read through James' book
Start to pray and ask God for a wife
It's a time of devotion
As I sit and speak to my God unseen
Why should He listen?
Well I love Him and He's in love with me

Why me God? Why should You choose me?

On your team God, can You use even me?

I think a few years back
On a road that headed to nowhere
Now that You found me
I can see that You were always there
So great a salvation
But to You my Jesus what am I worth?
It's quiet times like this
I feel I get a glimpse of Heaven right here on earth

Why me God? Why should You choose me?

On your team God, can You use even me?

Oh, hold me in your arms of love
Sometimes I swear I feel your heartbeat
I could never ever thank You enough
But here's my life for whatever it's worth
If I had to have picked an imaginary friend it never would have been Jesus.

Thanks for choosing me...none of it makes that much sense...but when has love ever made sense? Especially coming from an eternal perspective.

Friday, April 3, 2009

One Horror Show of a Night

Panic Attack.
Walls too close.
Light too far.
Hard to breath.
Think.
Concentrate.
Feeling false and so fake.
Pain.
God, so much pain.
Cannot think.
Cannot see.
So hard.
So very hard.
Numbness.
Thoughtlessness.
Incomprehensibly numb.
Nothing coherent.
Lies, so many lies.
Faithless lies betraying me.
Exposure, naked exposure.
Every last lie and fable I've told.
Everything pointing to me.
So much pain.
Mind racing.
Heart pounding.
Sweat beading.
Pain crashing.
Coherently constricting around my heart.
Sensibilities making less sense.
Disposablity complete.
Incomprehensible pain I never understand.
Why?
What?
When?
Where?
Did it happen?
Now.
No more.
Please.
Please.
...please.

No more words to scream
just echoing inescapable silence.
I'm afraid of this darkness.
It comes back and never leaves.
This growing darkness laying claim to my heart
calling out to me from forever.
I hate this place
God I loathe it almost as much as me.
Broken shards of a mirror
just reflecting blood and smirks.
God, please?
God, please?
No more.
No more here.
Jesus Christ, light of the world
illuminate this impossibly dark night.
Break this frightened heart of stone
and pour in your life,
your blood spilled for me.
Oh Jesus,
please just for me.
Hold me tight in this never ending night.
Hold me close.
Never leave me as I have left You.
Oh please.
Please.
Savior, save me.
Je ne sais quoi.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Me

I'm not sure if I've been to this place before or not.

The music is familiar...I just am having trouble feeling anything. My hands are quite numb...my mind doesn't want to work...I feel...fear of some sort.

The end is soon...but soon is subjective. Time is relative so all of this is happening at once...streams of thought simultaneously viewed as the same from God's perspective.

That is how He feels such intense love towards us and hate towards sin...it's seeing the conclusions before they are evident to us...seeing the heavenly or hellish creatures we become and make evident with our lives in this world. It is not causality or fatalism...it is love that He allows us to live and then do the impossible with His help...we affect ourselves and this world more then we know...it is love that is salvation and freedom from self...sacrifice makes one kill this beast or narcissism and we find salvation in the mundane...this deep and passionate love that hates the cliche and the hypocrisy that most movements are on any given day.

I sometimes wonder if I'm going to be able to let go of the medication if I'm ever healed...if I can let go of feeling numb so I can feel something more...things are hazy and more painful...there is no euphoria...but it is the self hate I've wanted for a long time...and that is a narcissistic addiction I need salvation from.

Goodbye Can't Come Late Enough

Apathy kills
like the music bleeding from your head,
being a thrill
forgetting what it means to live.

Contrived thoughts
blended and poured out.
Nothing sought
with sanity out for the day.

Rhythmic pulses
running through sound and life
being their cheap version.
It's all so cheap indeed.

More morbid dark thoughts as I consider life
and really this past
and everything revolving
including this sun and stars
and the path that first brought me to you.

It's hard for me to keep focused when my only focus is on me.
Belated, belittling, broken and trite me.

I make it all about me anyway
why not this?

Choices and decisions.
Inferiority and life.
Dancing in the wind.
Nothing really
with everything so broken and displaced.
I want to run
and just hide
from the gaze of the mirror that I cannot see.

It all makes sense from a broken and disjointed point of view.
The need to end this,
end this now
anyhow
anyway
just ending the pain that overloads
and makes no sense.
Just some salvation from this.
Anyway and anyhow
some sort of life line away from this,
this empty smile of death.
I hate what I see
and wish I just couldn't see anymore.

Everything is dying and we want something more
something less than real
something plastic and disposable.
It's a pity that life can't be carried in such a way
carried in a bag and set up for your convenience.
Just so I could be a bit more normal for your sake.
Doesn't matter as long as I'm a carbon copy
of just whatever the hell it is you wanted.
Not this broken and mottled package
but this perfect little piece of glass
and porcelain shit that would make you happy.
Just you.
Really, that is about it.
Because you would think
that this is all about you anyway.
Just like the rest.
Inevitably speaking, it had to get worse and will continue to get worse until it improves or some other event happens.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Memories That Fall

I think my favorite season is Fall and Winter. The colder weather helps me to be able to breath and think.

But thinking is part of my problem.

I hate memories so often. They never leave and never return when I want them to. I have tried looking at the bright side...but the memories of past days are too bitter sweet. I would have rather to have never had the experience then to simply loose it at a later time.

It's selfish I know.

Life is more intricately complex by the moment and no one understands what the smallest shift in the world might cause...but honestly...I could live without most of it.

It is not making much sense to me right now...things are too convoluted in my mind...but God knows I wish I could just collect all of these scraps into a pile and let them burn. Let the memories of the past just turn into smoke and ash so I could be free of all of these lingering thoughts and questions.

I hate this place.

There is only shifting shades of twilight offering more questions instead of answers and it will always be this way. The price of knowledge is death by apathy...dispassionate hate for everything I have ever seen or felt. A disgust created by my interaction with everything and everyone. I hold myself with the prideful indulgence that somehow I am different and not as revolting as the vox populi...silly, isn't it?

And a bit sad really. Seeing an adult act like a child in just trying to wish everything away and letting hate and fear smolder and burn a deeper hole into my soul.

I just...I am drained of emotion right now. Of caring, of wanting to care. I do not even want to feel this anger and hate towards God and people. I want to stop hurting but the act of even carrying that out in any regards is impossible because of further moral conflicting and conundrums.

I hate seeing reports, seeing updates, feeling emotion and dejected elation at another missed calling and reminders of how terrible of a friend, family member, general member of society that I am.

I want to tell everyone and everything that the collective is intruding into my personal space and that you can keep your love for someone who isn't too enraged and intoxicated from the pain to give a damn.

I'm trying not to be completely lost in this narcissistic rage...but it is hard. I'm bitter and cynical and want to scream and stuff. I want to push books off the desk and throw a tantrum. I want to randomly light my journals on fire and let them burn like my insides are...I want to grab people by the shoulder and by the head and make them look into my eyes and see just why I am so upset. Why I am in such a rut, why I do not care about the future or what lucky unicorn rainbow laced happiness might hit me in the head.

I don't care.

I don't want any sort of connection right now...it is weakness that is causing me more pain because I feel like I am failing at every possible and conceivable junction of life.

If I ever come across any sort of life plan I wrote I'm going to use it to start the pyre of my collective written work. I don't care...it is all poorly contrived garbage anyway. It is expression of a blind fool who made the mistake of opening his tongue and now would have to have it cut cut off for him to ever shut up with these incessant and poorly written monologues.

You want truth? You speak of it like you have something to say. You open your mouth with a sneer and don't even see the irony of the fact your body is already shutting down, breaking down and you will be dead before you can finish your next word.

The universe is an ever expanding mass of disordered explosions that is winding down and cannot end soon enough before humanity finds even more brilliant ways of delivering death and damning people to more useless and boring pain.

I am even hating music. I can't stand to pick up and try to play anything because a bass guitar is not an efficient solo instrument. And most of the music is full of the cliche and full of meaningless efforts to do equally meaningless things.

Life has purpose, don't get me wrong. The problem is that that purpose revolves around sacrifice, deliberately putting oneself in pain and caring. Bothering to love...things that cause me even more pain.

Talking to people is excruciating sometimes...it is a pain, a deep cut drawing blood and I don't know how to stop the flow. I don't want to remember everything...the good or the bad. Both equally need to be purged so I can learn how to breath again.

I don't want to think of you right now...you need to go back into the past with the other shades that haunt my nightmares. I never knew you...or any of you...everything you speak is about death and blood...reminders of the Hell made out of this world. I never wanted it, couldn't ask for it...I just need to be away from you. Leave me please, leave this mind and maybe time might erase the last traces of your picture and voice from my mind and I'll never hurt from you again.

I don't like carrying about these ghosts of the past...these haunting and half formed memories that I am never sure about the truth or lies of any of them. I just need to find a cave to lay in and rest so maybe I can heal before the next assault on my mind and body begin.

It's like the sky line gets ripped open and rain pours down. Filling in these holes and making the lake grow. Pushing the gaps wider and making it hurt more. I wish it were possible to cut out every sound clip, every visual reminder, every thought and moment of time that was used up and wasted and worth absolutely nothing now...it is just a 'lost treasure' that has become an incredibly bitter reminder.

The taste cuts my tongue and makes me resent being born and even being here.

I cannot limp away from this place quick enough. Even if I have to drag my bleeding and broken self across this wasteland I am going to escape...someday and sometime...you may never know it or care...just wherever you are...you went beyond the sea to a place I couldn't follow if I tried...and here I am...I don't know...I don't know...I just do not know where this all began or where it will all end.

This disconcerting waste of life is just a further irritation...I want to run away from it all because there is nothing for me here...here. Nothing, nothing at all. It's devoid of anything I would consider life, love, meaning, purpose...God I hate all the random moments and images that course through my head...they will not turn off and it just makes me...causes me...drives me to ache for all the lost, all the pain, all the forgotten.

It's all something...something...something.
Burning pain just absolutely sucks.
There are two kinds of hypocrites; everyone and those living in their own little world.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Just found about four volumes of journals and notes from school...most remmeber to put them in the fire for burning...

"Where the Streets Have No Name" - U2