I woke up early, wrote later into twilight than desired, played soccer with a boisterous bunch, visited some coffee shops for tea, writing, and reading, went to church, talked on the phone to distant friends, talked on skype to other distant friends, watched a show with roommates, picked roommate and his girlfriend up at the airport - all this, and I felt like nothing happened. I'm ready for a weekend adventure: backpacking, hiking in the woods, weddings, climbing a mountain, kayaking down a river with friends, canoeing on a lake, more soccer. Sometimes it feels like, what with the weddings and general busyness, everyone's lives are leaving me behind, so they've no time for stories anymore. I always want time for stories.
Today's sermon was on the topic of fear, something which everyone, at some juncture, interacts with: anxiety, stress, panic attacks and so on. With the amount of times God says: "do not be afraid" or "be anxious for nothing", one might expect Christians would possess greater skill against these debilitating psychological foes. Often, we do not. I don't consider myself an anxious person. Work is friendly, my friends are kind, even intense social situations often don't stress me out so much as making me step back, and evaluate from a different vantage.
There are some things that I do fear, one of which I even ran away from this very weekend. I'm still working those out. I remember as a kid dealing with fear as though I was a protagonist in a fairy tale. Nothing could really hurt me (this is not a Game of Thrones tale), as I knew the hero of the story would prevail in the end. You'd think I'd be a fearless child with that, but I was quite shy of people. I felt like it wasn't the hero's lot to die, but he could be tortured by uncomfortable scenarios. I suppose it is safe to say that once in a trial, I felt less fear than before. That's often the truth of things though, isn't it? Sometimes, the unknowing is the most intimidating portion. It's amazing how mystery can be both unnerving and fantastic. In the case of the northern lights, which I saw just a while past, I find myself more fascinated by the mystery of the event than the knowing. But other things, darkness, public speaking, spiders under the bed - the unnerving unknowing can be more frightening than the thing itself.
Just another throwaway post, huh? I'm well beyond the tl;dr portion of this mental surgery. I'm in that stupor before sleep, that unsleeping dreamy territory well before true unconsciousness. I should stop, while I'm behind.
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Mid-height and not a penny more,
with a penny-colored nest of hair, and penny eyes, and he wasn't worth scarce a
penny in a fight. Yet it was this man
who threatened the world with apocalypse. This man, with eyeglasses precariously
perched on nose, fingertips pattering as raindrops across a keyboard, was about
to destroy the world in a flood, a flood of media silence. Discarded pizza boxes and crumpled soda cans
carpeted, and stained, the floor. Jak’s
only focus was the computer screens, the array of eight screens, on which
highlighted code scrolled in tropical-candy colors on a black background as Jak
prepared his worm, the greatest worm of all time. He called the program Jörmungandr,
and tonight it was ready.
It was
genius, he suspected, a titanic achievement.
It systematically destroyed media outlets from the highest level down,
leaving all vital functionality until the end such that each increasing level
of chaos was captured perfectly as phones, television, radio, and eventually
the internet itself disappeared in a whisper, and the world erupted in a bang. His finger hovered over the button from
whence Armageddon would commence. It was the ultimate prank, he thought with a
wicked grin, his ultimate prank. The
world would remember him for this, oh certainly, if they ever found out who did
it.
He
pressed the button.
An
ancient wood hides from searching eyes, under the sea. Eldritch and petrified, it still silent sits,
shamelessly pacified. Before Atlantis was even dreamed, a glade formed inside
spherical reef, a punishment, eternal grief. The water hung at neck level,
always neck level, clear as a mirror.
Grapes and ambrosia hovered scarcely out of reach, his fingertips
brushing the leaves on his highest leaps.
The glade was edenic, full of
crystal waters and abundant fruits, though he despised its… tantalizing,
elusive deceit.
The
almost god still reached when the branches swooped close, still dipped his head
for a drink, and the fruit and waters receded. Famished, agonizingly parched,
the ab-god waited, not patient, not passively.
The bowels of the earth, hell and hades, were not his alone. Another’s anguish resonated from the deeps,
troubling the earth in violent sweeps.
But
today, while the fire in his gut seethed in unremitting pain, a great power
hurricaned through the glade, blasting the ab-god from his feet. A great light, an aura of flashing pain
struck him in his temples, and he saw:
A
cavern, pitch and drab, pockmarked with caustic holes. Around a great stalactite was wrapped an
eternal serpent, mouth hissing wide and dripping with sizzling venom. Beneath, on a circular platform lay a god on
an altar, bound in entrails beneath the serpent. From above, the serpent’s
venom dripped towards his face, only impeded by a tiny, ceramic bowl, held by a
silent, patient woman. The god cursed
the woman, and still she faithfully protected his face, until the bowl was
filled and she carried it to the edge and spilled it into the vast, cavern
depths.
And
suddenly, the cave rippled with power, and the god’s eyes widened with
surprise. In a sudden feat of strength,
the entrails were snapped apart, and the god was in the cavern no more.
When
the ab-god awoke in his glade, he was not alone. Another stood in the water
beside him, bowl in hand. The god
proffered him the bowl with a broad, mischievous smile. The bowl was filled
with water, and for a bowl of water, the ab-god would have sold his very soul.
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