Stars & Thunkings

The stars have no patience for city lights and smoggy skylines, crowded streets and a world of street lamps. A few bully their way through the hazy shine of smoky brightness, the smudge of fluorescence blocking out the sky, and these stalwart few weakly murmur the words of stars. But far away from all the noise the celestial orbs twinkle with mischievous guile, for they've tricked the verse and we so susceptible.

I'm wordless tonight, and time thickens, it thunkins, it thunkmms until thinking and mumbles and time coagulate into a jumbled mess, a scab of life that I can't stop picking at, itching until it bleeds out again, slows, and clots in persistent recursion. I'm a spinning record past the tracks, a looping program, a train, a drudge employee, a migratory bird, following the same preprogrammed ruts ad aeturnum.

I've been starting into writing stories again, which is probably one of the reasons I'm writing less and also writing less poetry here. I don't really enjoy posting pieces of things here unless they are parts I particularly like, or are things I want to work remember for a later point - or if they are stories that I created stream of consciousness while blogging. But I'm excited, because it has been a while since I've written stories, and getting back into the swing of things feels really magical, as though each of the pieces of writing I've been working on are fitting together, and the puzzle-pieces of writing are beginning to make more and more sense the way I see it.

Gibberibberibberish

I’ve come too late to so long a road. The clock a tocking time-bomb in my head, an incessant chipmunk in a box, how he mocks the time and sucks it dry with every tic - lifeblood leached bone dry. The succubus smirking in the corner traces lascivious lines along the sphinx’s chin, and shirks my eyes – the more masks I hide behind, oh, how the nakedness grows. And that, the cuckoo stuck out on time’s tongue coos, is her cue.

On the left, an ash, on the right, a false cedar, and like that bird I don’t belong. I do not long for that I cannot comprehend. How might I crave that which lay beyond my ken? Yet, you long for it passionately, for me, despite my naiveté. There is a worth, a hidden currency, you must advertise until I buy everything you believe, an entire world. Until it’s no longer I you wish to see, to complete, but an inner unease. You are no confidant, no comrade in arms, but a politician, a solicitor, a hawker, an evangelist of personal priority. Can you understand I’m fine without your stamp of happiness superimposed over me?

I traded the knowing of eden for that of vulnerability. A minotaur reads an artist’s empty book, tabula rose, full of blank red pages ; Cyclops and Odin discover parallax, while Mary is a little lamb with Circe ; Loki starts a charity, and Ophelia and Virginia Woolf discuss Poseidon’s poetry ; Pluto and Descartes prattle on most amiably, while Plato makes finger-shapes into monster shadows on the walls. And I sip at my steaming tea, contemplating all this sophistry, and ask if everything always crashes like a dam, bursting out so violently, or whether revolution can happen quietly, while the Christ-child sleeps.

 Am I one of them? Oh, most definitely - my heart is a revolutionary, and my soul a sleeping dragon, and my mind is a child, holding tight onto a balloon string and rubbing the bellies of clouds, tipping a hat at the mountains, and scoffing at the smallness of everything.

It would have been sufficient

Passover is my favorite holy day of the year, by a substantial margin: the story of the Exodus, the providence of God, the analogy to Christ’s own sacrifice – contemplating a whole series of miracles like a divine Great Escape. During one portion of the Haggadah, the leader goes through a series of “If God had only … but not” statements, to which everyone replies “Dayenu” or “it would have been sufficient”.

I wish I had this graceful a response to God’s involvement in my life. More often than not, my response is “are you serious? Why this any not that?” But if there is one great takeaway from Judaism I’ve gleaned in the past years, it is that God is God. If God had only rescued the Israelites from Egypt, but not judged them – it would have been sufficient. It would have been enough.

If God had only brought me to this point, but not blessed me in numerous ways – it would have been sufficient. If God had only blessed me with friends, family, but not a great job – it would have been sufficient.

And what have I been passed over from this year? Every year, this is something I’ve considered. Some years, it was a difficult school, or frustration at my inability to communicate or socialize properly, or a lack of faith, or simply a sense of lacking direction. And these things don’t necessarily disappear, eradicated in a moment in the ritual of wine, bitterness, festivity, medication, sanctification, and companionship. But it’s as if the bitterness has been lifted from me, transformed. My cup was not as full, for each of the pains endured, but the angel of death will pass over me – the sacrifice has been made.

threshold beneath the orchard leaves,

columns of trees and barrow mounds,

white blossoms, a secret garden

of lost and found where shadows hide

and sunlight's golden threads tie errant hearts

down in this labyrinthine trap of branches -

can you smell the sandalwood, 

the cedar, the hazelnuts before the fletching

and sharpened arrowhead make a nest

in your chest and it hurts like love

or death or splinters would

Pesach

Because, of course, the combination of horseradish, wine, and dense meats that have cycled into my gut are, in some fashion, alien, I'm struggling to sleep - here I am writing. When at all possible, I avoid wine, because it tastes bitter, and I despise bitterness (beer, wine, chocolate, coffee, etc). So this holiday hits me worse than most, due to its ceaseless influx of wine into my baby belly, and the violent partaking of bitter herb which ravages my sinuses and mauls my stomach.
Anything that tastes this bad should be outlawed, right? But so should slavery, so it is the weakest of analogies, and grants some tiny, infinitesimal perspective on the horror that is slavery, and the memory of redemption, and its cost.
But I'm glad of friends, feasts, and remembrance, even of events that transpired long before my birth, long before my parent's parent's births.  There is something fascinating about legacy, and the Jewish legacy in particular, and I feel like I'm reclining with Yeshua at the table, right there beside Thomas, breaking unrisen bread while my stomach is churns with a precognizant warning of the terrors of the impending night. And I'm sitting here in my comfortable world saying, oh Lord oh Lord, please take this cup from me, and I'm not even about to be crucified. I'm actually praying about each literal cup.
And now I'm tipsy tipsy from tippling too much and being in the weight class of puppies, and sleep is evasive. I would watch the moon, but I fear being locked out; I would count sheep, but my stomach wants no mention of sheep at this juncture, thank-you-very-much, though it was delicious.
And so I just lie here, staring at the ceiling lit by the passing cars in the street beneath, wondering whether my stomach is the mortar and my diaphragm the pestle, or what sort of animal is bleating in my gut, complaining about not being passed over. But sleep is not coming.

Thank you friends, for coming. And happy passover to everyone. Remember.

Expectations

Is life supposed to be a series of consecutively diminishing expectations? 

Yet those who wait for the LORD Will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary.

Isaiah 40:31

At first, you are flying, and believe the world is endless; then running, across the valleys and mountains and beneath the tall trees; and eventually, your legs are weak, but you walk beside the still waters in pastures green. Yet, it seems like I'm dreaming of flying when my wings have failed me, and I imagine running as I'm crawling on my stomach through the mud, and eventually I'm forced into dwindling returns with each outlook.

Is that okay?

It frustrates and disheartens me whenever I begin thinking: "maybe I should surrender and settle for..." or "perhaps I don't have what it takes after all." These are self-deprecative and destructive, even though of late they seem more and more honest. If I've set my expectations too high, why can I not simply raise the bar of motivation to match? Or will my being into greater capacity, with practice and diligence? And I trytrytry but it's a neat string-sequence of failures, like hoping for 100%, expecting 95%, and getting a 40%. The chasm is embarrassingly broad - was I such a fool? Did I have no chance from the get-go? 

And everywhere this follows me, like a bully I’ve installed inside my own head: you’ll not succeed, so give up; you’re not worth that much, so lessen your beliefs; stop pretending there’s hope, and just surrender into redundancy.

That’s the tragedy I fight every day, the Death of a Salesman tragedy. It’s the darkest tragedy I’ve ever read, to me, because it’s so prevalent, and I’m stricken. I’ll never suffer the Oedipus Rex tragedy, or the Romeo and Juliet tragedy, or Antigone or any of the famous, classic tragedies. No, mine is Biff’s, and Willy’s tragedy:

Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can’t I say that, Willy?

(He tries to make Willy face him, but Willy pulls away and moves to the left.)

WILLY (with hatred, threateningly): The door of your life is wide open!

BIFF: Pop! I’m a dime a dozen, and so are you!

I’m a dime a dozen. When I submit entries into a competition, and don’t win: I’m a dime a dozen; when I compete in a race, and finish not first, or play a game and fail to achieve the best of me – I’m just a dime a dozen. Every day, I play a dangerous romance with cultural norms, as I devil-dance around acceptance, accomplishment, and what our world classifies as success, and then balance on the dichotomy of difference, Godliness, faithfulness, love, hope, and personal achievement while maintaining a semblance of personality and individuality that leaves me unique instead of a stamp of humanity spewed out of a mold of media.

Our culture churns out empty personalities and cultural failures on an assembly line of couches as fast as any fast-food chain produces faux-food and fattens our grossly gluttonous society. Whatever it is, we want it fast, now, and without any effort.

So why is it that when I put an effort in, it still seems like I cannot raise my head about the waves?

I’m not waving, but drowning. I fail to understand how and why the mass appeal is so fascinated with progressively inferior productivity, as long as it satisfies some banal craving we’ve been told we have. Is it just me to desperately need something exceptional, and to refuse to threaten my standards with lesser things because that would mean I’ve fallen into the same desperate hell the rest of society has chosen? Am I being foolish again? Tell me if it’s so.

I’m not a loaded cannon or a charged revolutionary – I’m no rumbling volcano or pin-less grenade. But that doesn’t mean I’m without dreams. Just because I bury, drown, box, hide, and secrete away my hopes doesn’t lessen them, or disintegrate the hurt that rises like a fire in the belly with each failure. Sagely fellows always say how valuable failure is, but that’s only true in light of some eventual success.

I simply cannot fail ad aeturnum and hope to maintain a healthy resolve. But I must. I contemplate my life chances and wonder if it is all luck of the draw. It’s not talent that defines greatness anymore, but fortune with a pinch of caliber.

Don’t ask me to surrender my passion, my hope, my dreams in exchange for yours. I won’t have it. I always wanted this road, and sometimes the swiftest way for dreams to lose their allure thus.

Thus did my siblings and I learn one of the hard lessons of life: the best way to strip the allure and dreaminess from a lifelong dream is, very often, simply to have it come true.

David James Duncan – The Brother’s K

And with every passing day I’m striking out. I don’t remember how long I had intended to do so, but it seems so short and so long now. Hopefully, with scars, scrapes, scabs, and bleeding, gaping wounds, I’ll eventually crawl my way into a world where I’m worth a quarter, or at least a score of pennies. I’ve a long path to go for a million, but I’ve no other path I’d rather follow than that of dreams, love, and hope.

 And it's weeks where every morning I think: this is the best day of my life, and every night I pray for a rest before another such day. I'm a boy who's flown too high, with melting wings. But at least for the time I'm free. And for the hundred-thousandth night in a row, I fall asleep as a dime a dozen.

Land Octopus

I found a nice knoll this afternoon, worth a stroll and a quiet picnic, and some grass on which to journal. I didn't, the sky's allure was simply intoxicating. Drunk as the bees buzzing in the clusters of dandelions, I just smiled. I dreamed the stars in the sky were falling, and I grew frustrated at every wish I missed, until I realized the stars were streaking down the sky and crashing into my garden, burning entire rows of carefully cultivated crops.
I watched as the barrage from the heavens first decimated, then obliterated every last pea, squash, pepper, tomato, or herb I'd watered, fertilized, and meticulously weeded for weeks, months. Everything was a charred wreck, a blackened, smoldering mess that bubbled like a marshmallow fallen off the stick.
Full of anger, I rushed into the center of the garden, kicking the coals and snatching them up in my fists. It burned, but I was determined to show my ferocity, my fire, was the hotter.
Let go of the coals
Open your fists, and let go of the coals
Open your fists, anger will not solve this, and let go of the coals
Slowly, painfully, I released the coals and, kicking aside the ash that was my garden, I buried each one, the burning remnants of stars. There were no longer any stars in the sky - it was an empty heavens, a blank, black canvas.
When I woke the next morning, the coals had sprouted into flowers of all colors and heights, towering as tall as sunflowers, or huddled close like daisies, and they bloomed in turquoise, citrine, opal, sapphire, peridot, ruby, pearl, emerald, diamond, aquamarine, and garnet. Each color was arranged in rows and formed an intricate squarish-spiral inwards, towards a central flower with a brilliant amethyst purple for each petal and a golden heart. It was tall, as tall as I, and I felt it was staring into me as I stared at it.


I'm an octopus on land, and I can't feel my toes. I want to run and play, but my legs have me anchored here, and I don't have any bones. Dip your pen into my soul and ink will run, thick as blood, and stain your fingers black. So graceful in water, so fragile on land. I'll be braying like a moose in a tree until you free me stuck though I be by my own sucking immobility.

Oh how the fat lady sings

Deaf, dumb, blind, amnosia, anhedonia - while bawling my eyes out on the last hundred pages of my most recent book-reading slog-fest (I kept pulling a Matthew and reading other books), I couldn't help but appreciate the magical prowess of this author in captivating, capturing my senses and rooting them so deeply in the lives of the characters that I was one of the family, fictionalized though they are.

I'm sitting here, reading by lamplight, praying that the heroes punch the enemies in the face, and then repenting of my cruelty when one of the characters whispers to his brother: "open your fists and let go of the coals."

I'm weeping now.

Then, as one character is duped, all are desperately seeking love, and each follows an unusual path back into redemptive family, I find myself wanting to start all over again, to traverse the same hurts, pains, angers, fights, and eruptions, because I know my heart will break only the more when I find the redemption, hope, and enduring family that rises from the ashes of despair.

L and A: this is your fault.

I feel like my emotional insides have been pressure-washed out clear through me, and I'm not sure whether I'm clean, or raw, or even functional at this juncture, only that I was a vessel through which something brilliant was poured, and right now I feel not clean, but cleaned out - perhaps even struck out. There is, to be certain, a distinct out-ness which permeates my being, which I pray will be partially remedied and stupid-relieved by sleep. Oh, how the fat lady sings, and it is the swan song of my evening, beautiful and sorrowful and bright.