Wilted Faith and other Hits

After a meal at In N Out, we went to church. The two things we do every Christmas Eve since I can't remember.

The church we go to is one that I've gone to since I was three years old, one that I've endured through societal hardships and piety and prevalence. Through High School years that were up and down and very black and white.

But I hadn't gone in a few months because of work and a lacking faith in the religious establishment. And sometimes I was just plain tired.

So this outreach-fest of Christmas Eve service was to be the first service I'd attended in a few months, and I was hoping that the apologetics and the "Jesus died for your sins, but was born today." message would be what I needed to reignite my faith.

What I got was the opposite.

What I ascertained was a wanton desire to get up and walk the fuck out.

Arriving early, we sat and read through the Pastor's written message to the congregation which was filled with seeming theological holes. It all felt a bit off. Too shallow, too easily related to Santa Claus.

And as the message moved through moving clips of the church's mission trips in Central America--things that, actually, were quite inspiring (they were able to get a paraplegic Honduran boy a wheelchair for free from a Mexican wheelchair builder)--and then clips of the Polar Express to explain how we should just believe (in Christ, not Santa) and we could hear the bell ringing. Or the cross burning. Or something like that.

And I realized that my problem with Christianity, my tie into why my faith is struggling, is the same reason why I've never been able to feel out extended metaphors in literature.

When they call us to keep our eyes on God and listen to our Hearts I can't feel or see anything. All these apostrophic callings and creeds seem to be lost in me, lost in my cynicism. I've tried to push it away, tried to erase all this doubt and fear in my heart--tried to keep my eyes on God--but all I've found is more and more layers of doubt and cynicism.

And this is nothing against my church. The Pastor is great, the congregation is unified, everything with it is wonderful.

Just not for me.

Christianity isn't working anymore. I'm walking away for a little while though I'll never be able to completely walk away because I obviously still believe there's a God and I've been taught that once you're a Christian, you're forever a Christian. I still pray when things are real ultra fucked up. And when people need me to. And I fall asleep. I still have my faith.

But my criticisms far outweigh anything I've ever encountered.

And maybe one day a return will come and I will be the zealot I once was.

For now, though? I am stagnant.

God is. I am not.

You're in the Jungle Baby. You're gonna die!

lFuck.

A lot to write about but nothing to write about.

All of it is only half-congealed thoughts--embryos not quite fetuses not quite babies not quite dissenting teens or twenty-somethings. Yes, I know I left out infancy, but fuck you and whatever.

I guess I'll just sinkk--

Words spilling like boiling mold wine out of a pot to stain your floors since you never seem to clean anything up. You should work on that. Work on being independent but not work on being any different of a person. Fine enough as it goes how it goes how do you do that thing with you tongue that coincides with your hands? I think it was when you stabbed me and told me nothings and then sweetly grabbed my hair and drove the shiv into my lower stomach, releasing at once all the urine I contained because I hadn't pissed. I'd rather be with you than relieve myself.

I have no idea what I'm speaking of. I've never been stabbed and no one has metaphorically stabbed me lately. This is ridiculous. My mind is ridiculous. Isn't that ever enough--to be a little crazy? I can't find it but I know it's there. Like my early modern TB case of carpal tunneling down into the bottomless sea o abysmal masochism like that shit we once knew once made once procured and contemplated if only to throw it back into the ocean to make it late late late for a very important date date date .I know your allusions too well because they're all trite and imperfect and overused.

That's why I'm mad at the Apatow produced comedies and all this YouTube bullshit. I realized this wile watching Juno tonight. It's become way too cool to mention esoteric, bad, shit that came out twenty years ago and only dorks dweebs and nerds understand it. Apatow did it when he called someone Dave Caruso in Jade or Serpico from Knocked Up. Come on, it can only go so far before it feels pretentious. I love Knocked up and superbad and the 40 Year Old Virgin. But they've started something horrible. Mentioning horrible things. Suddenly it's cool to toss out names of characters and actors that were in second rate shit twenty years ago. It's fucking sickening that that trend has caught on. I guess Apatow took the GNR album "Use your Illusion" to mean allusion and then ran away with it.

But I guess that's what happens when you create mega-grossing comedies that can compete with other summer blockbusters. You create funny for everyone else. Because if you make money, then you're "money." And you're funny. and all the girls will love you. We both know it's true that bitches love money and hoes love laughter. Or maybe not. We know something's true though. There's always truth. It's obvious to all of mankind We suffer and that's true. There is no such thing as no death. And if there was, there could still only be one Highlander. And that'd be a lonely existence.

With that Highlander reference I just realized that maybe what became popular of Apatow comedies was what simply came natural to him. Referencing esoteric shit has always been fun. Maybe i'm just bitter because I don't understand some or all of the references even though I watch a lot of movies and know of a lot of movies I should see. Maybe it just incites a small flame of rage at myself and that's why I hate it.

that'ss probably what it was.

And when the cops closed the fair, I cut my long baby hair and stole me a dog eared map.

Thinking. Thought. Breaking down the barriers and constantly thinking about breaking things down. Crazy Socialist bitch. I'm among the masses yet alone no more.

I can't seem to bring myself to write about loneliness anymore. I wonder why. Probably because I'm no longer lonely. Things have been brought and I am satisfied. I am the King. She is my Queen. Maybe I'm begun to say too much. Maybe I should let things flow out so easily among the plastic tapping rush of keys. that once was the metal pounding of keys that was once the feather scratching the parchment. I blame Gutenberg for the computer. He started with the bible, then probably moved on to printing erotica. Pornography is the mover of the world. It's why the internet was invented. Why the photograph was invented.

That's maybe a bit cynical. I'd say so. No faith in man. Maybe they just wanted to do something good. But that's something I doubt. Sex sells and technology is no different.

Belief. Believe. Believability. I'm one among the masses. But at least I have the queen and at least I have the white space to keep me company in this my small little tiny fucking universe so grandiose yet so minute because I always consistently have trouble meeting people though that may be hypochondria. Move into the words one at a time until they're blindingly fastly comingly out of the words of plastic sheets qwerty keyboard aren't we all out among the masses where the silence is reckoning and beckoning and crying out for shame amongst our ancestor's names and thoughts and plastic toys and action figurines and paratroopers there was no end to the start I know this to be true and I know you're listening to me maybe I should spell check because I know how much you like perfect grammar but don't ever listen to me because your eyes are always closed because you're afraid of the blindly comingly light.

Rain cometh and I am the bringer A little bit of fog that sinks and sinks and sits and sits and pees. As if we're the water cycle's toilet. The clouds squat low and we get drenched. Then we collect it to use in our bathrooms. Brilliant. Cyclical. I love that idea. Of cycles and the beginning being nothing but another end and so on and so forth won't someone stop the madness and monsters of the second timely coming? I think I know what you mean when you say what you meant. I know that everything is a relative aspect of blinding petrification. Bring the bodies to me and I will have them examined for portals and plastics and benign tumors. I know that's what you want.

And all I want is to caress your skin, run my fingers down you back and across your face and tell you that I love with all my heart and mind and mouth and soul and ears and toes and eyes and nose and cheeks (all four). Yep.

Hold me Now.

Breaking broken bronzed and beleaguered. I am awakening to the cold spot where you used to lay.
Where is the story.

Watch George Romero's "Dead" trilogy. There's a reason it's part of the cinematic canon: it kicks ass. Zombies are scary. But these are an impending doom type of scary.

Everything will fall into place and we'll beaway some day.

I only work at Quiznos for nine more days. I'm excited. There's something about that job I don't like. I think it's the lack of creativity. Whatevs.

Conversations with Whitespace

I love music that has a conversation within it. Between the instruments and out into the ears. From the accents and drive of the drums to the melody and push and emotion of the guitar or the drive and rumble of the bassline there should be a conversation going on that accents the lyrics.

I'll give you an example. In the song "On Your Wings" by Iron and Wine, we have the consistent refrain of "God..." lines and in the background we hear a growing instrumentation, starting simply with a palm-muted guitar line and a slide-guitar. Then voice. Then maracas. Then the muted, ill-sounding tones of the Children's Xylophone and then, finally, the thunder of the storm (i'll get to the explanation) comes with two bass drum hits, two bass drum hits--beat beat beat driving towards the end of the song. And underneath it all, you hear the faint, slow, creak of an old chair as someone shuffles into it.

It all adds up to something that talks within itself--the xylophone telling the maracas that there's gold hidden deep in the ground. The guitar calling them out from the underground just as the narrator is calling out fragments of prayers he's uttered after he's creaked and shuffled into the old chair.

The thunder and the lines not starting with "God..." are His responses, His omnipresence. I can imagine a man sitting in his chair, uttering prayers about the futility of life and how's there's gold hidden in the ground but nothing seems to bring up and how we're all withering in the shade because of it. Things are withering, the crops aren't growing. Then the storm comes with the booming bass of the thunder. The flood gates open and there's a new guitar melody, a full drum beat and the listless palm-mutes are drowned into the background until they re-emerge from beneath, singing a different, more hopeful tune because the rain has come.

And, the most telling part of this song is that, after the storm, there are no more lyrics. This narrator has no reason to call upon God anymore. He's gotten what he wants and the ennui has subsided. The main crux of Christianity is that we only call upon God when we need him.

And God gives and gives and gives then takes and takes and takes to remind us that we fucking need Him--we must fucking call upon Him.

Sam Beam's an agnostic but I see so much of God in his songs that it's completely unfathomable for him not to be leaning towards the "God Exists" side of the spectrum.

--

I think that this is why I don't enjoy minimalist music. I think this is why I don't like Joy Division. All of their music feels like a single voice-wall yelling out one track underneath Curtis' voice. There's nothing beneath to compliment the above. The capstone is larger than the cornerstone. It's top heavy. Like having 20 clarinets and 1 tuba.

And this is also, I think, why I'm drawn to duos like the Black Keys and Lightning Bolt and the White Stripes--their conversations are so immediate and so intimate because we've only got one or three voices speaking their tune.

Lightning Bolt, especially. The drums and the bass are constantly warring with each other. And every song tells of how their marriage is ready to completely fall apart at any moment--the drums are tearing their hair out because the bass can't stop masturbating. And the voice is so muted and screamed that it transcends all of that into simple accoutrement to the cacophony. It's beautiful in the most ugly way.

--

This whole conversation is seen most in poetry. It's the marriage of words and white space--of light allowing words. What the poem cannot say, the whitespace woven throughout says instead. Silence can be the most powerful weapon for any artist. Invisible castles. Broken dreams. Boweries of divinity.

Talk to me, artists. Tell me what you mean to say.

I'm listening to every part of you. Feet, hands, toes, mouth, white and black and gray and back.

All cheap and debonnaire

So over the past seven days I've been doing two things: losing sleep and gorging out on movies. Not really, but it seems like it because I can't seem to start one until 11 PM or later.

Movies I've seen, and a scale rating 1-10 after them:

The 40-Year-Old-Virgin (9--the unrated scenes actually add something, unlike many movies where it's just a fucking ploy)

Dazed and Confused (4--fuck you Richard Linklater. Your high school experience was like this? Well, then, you're an asshole.)

Wild at Heart (8--Fuck you David Lynch. You scare me. You're the Freddy Kreuger of directors. I can't sleep after watching ANY of your films.)

Animal House (5--John Belushi. That's the only reason it got a five.)

The Squid and the Whale (8--the most depressing fucking movie you will ever watch. Yes, even more depressing than Requiem for a Dream and American History X. And no one even fucking dies in this movie. Or loses an arm. Nothing like that. But goddam. I just finished it and I am so damned depressed.)

Bottle Rocket (6--Wes Anderson's start. It's only okay and a mere shadow of his better later films. As an aside: fuck you critics who think that the Darjeeling Limited was a self-parodying mess.)

Yea, see? Not too many movies in reflection. Finals fucking suck. My job fucking sucks. I don't wanna fucking leave my girlfriend. But apparently Humboldt will be the best thing for me.

My psych book told me I'm having a major life crisis. Maybe I should do something about it. Oh, right, I brought it upon myself. Okay.

This rain is windier than last time. All the douche-asses on the Weather Channel were talking about how great all the fresh powder was so that they could ride their 4,000 dollar skiis down a fucking slope only to ride back up again and do it all over again. I hope they Sonny Bono.

Fuck the rich. Fuck politics. Fuck fuck fuck. I'm so pissed off right now at Jeff Daniels' character in the Squid and the Whale. He's a pretentious-ass-fucking cunt who says shit that doesn't even mean anything. And his sons take after him. That's when a movie's good: when it's resounding so hard in your mind that you're straight-up-fucking-pissed-the-hell-off.

I have my last final at CSUSB in seven hours. I should've gotten drunk tonight so I could sleep through it.


I hate myself.

It's just got to be

I think I realized why I'm so scared of going away to HSU. And it's a sissy-ass-fucking-queer-bait-fucking reason:

I've never been that far away from my parents. I mean, the farthest I've ever been away from them was either summer camp up at Hume Lake or visiting JP earlier this month in SLO. Fuckin' a. Something to cope with, I guess. My faggoty ass can handle it, I think. Getting away from them will be a good experience.

--

What if we were all away in the meanest sense? I wish to want to know your touch. We can become alone and one. My feet are cold. Take me home. I don't want to be here. Why are we here? this is the ghetto. This food tastes funny. Everything seems to be in slower slowing swallowing my motion. We're driving on glass. Slow down it's raining. When the day is grey and the road is wet, it looks like you're driving in the clouds--except for the bright fucking yellow line of the carpool lane that you can't enter. That dotted yellow double fucking line that reminds you that your companion and your friends and your lovers are elsewhere not with you left needing them. How beautiful and irrational. I want to be where you are cuddling and falling asleep with my head on your back with your arms around me and us under a blanket dreaming about each other caught in still life. I am yours for the taking.

A knife and a hard-on, I'm not expecting him to be asking for donations to the Red Cross.

Blah blah blah it's all been said before. I know you believe in me. I want you too. Take me in your arms. I'm in love with you.

Come away and search the scene fro something more than what's been said or evidenced or witnessed or seen touched felt. I am yours for all taking and all time. Yes. Believability is in question. But so are you. We will be together. I know it to be true. We catwalk and skirt around the issue. But it's meant to be. I've never felt so whole. The scariest things are usually the rightest things. And distance is as scary as height. We know too much before the sound has begun .
irte
Carry away the body. I'm listeing to your footsteps coming down the hallway. You are barefoot you look like a model all downdressed and sweatshirted beautiful. You're beautiful. I know you are. You know you are and it's just a matter of time until we're official and we're perfect--we're already perfect. It'll just be a little bit longer until the ahh and the realization set in and the sea is ours and we will be married.

Marriage. There's a lonely beautiful concept. What must be done. We must meet the killer. We love you and we love each other.

Gates like Titans

Reticence. Afraid of losing it all. Broken blistered and tired. She. The all. Break this bread in remembrance of me. I feel like a liar. Disrespectful. I told her and then ran the table the other way. Reticence. I'm so sorry. Apologies going towards echoes. Trying to be sensical. Be sensical. We're one. And I need to respect my desires. Because they're her desires. It's that simple. Cuddle. Not Kiss. Kill yourself. Amazed and awake and Reticent.

Tired. Broken. Apologetic.

Walk into the jaws of hell

I can't seem to think of much anymore. It was so cold this weekend, I think my mind was flawed into submission.

I'm not much of a drinker at all. Vein and Channel and varicose Kurt Vonnegut. I believe in humanity, but hell certainly is other people when they act as if they know what want even when they really know that it contradicts all within them.

I think I'm ready to be outta here. I think I'm prepared to face the cold and the darkness and the clouds that seem to hang over Arcata on a daily basis. Apparently, it's one of the most remote locations on the West Coast. Yea, you try getting there. Damn.

I start my final photo project tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes. Maybe.

I think it's interesting how much alike fire and ice are. Consider this: they're polar opposites of temperature and yet they can both burn you, turning your limbs black and hard and unusable; they can both keep you temperate--if you are cold, you can heat yourself up by the fire, if you are hot, you can find the ice and love it to death. It's almost as if the hotter something gets, the colder it really gets--and when something gets colder, it's really getting warmer.

Maybe temperature isn't as linear as we'd like it to be. Maybe temperature is cyclical.

Makes me think of politics and how that's less a spectrum and more a circle. You've got the fire of Hitler and the Ice of Stalin--two opposite ends--and yet they're synonymous with the same brand of fascism. Strange, eh?

Maybe 3rd degree burns are really frostbite?

And don't let time slow you down--don't let clocks and calendars run your life. This could be three days ago, but it's today for the simple reason that we think we can control nature and we need to break it up piecemeal so that we can create a control in our lives. But the control never comes. That's why calendars and due dates and everything is bullshit.

Because it's yesterday. And tomorrow.

Today never was.

Daddy's ghost behind you, sleeping dog beside you....

I think you're crazy. About me? Yea, I'm crazy too. I can still taste your smell against tobacco. I love the way you taste and the way you feel and the way I hold you with outstretched arms.

What? That's silly. We both know that's silly.

We've gone deeper than this, but our dirigible must stay afloat and we've only got so much rope. I apologize. we can't go much farther.

I'll even let you hold the remote control. I told you I love the Wedding Singer.

My dogs are better than your dogs. And Alvie could definitely kick some ass in a drained pool Amores Perros style. I ain't getting stabbed and he ain't getting shot though.

Why did you get involved with these people?

We think a lot about nothing. Happiness can only be real if it is shared with another person. Don't go Into the Wild. I promise that you'll regret it. Though i do want to take a road trip cross-countr. I think about it a lot. Driving to NYC then leaving my car on the outer city limits and meandering around there for a few days, trying to find places to sleep--like the subway. That'll get you mugged.

I'll miss you, kiss you, give you my coat when you are cold.

Terror and nightly envisionment of all the greatest things imaginable. God EXISTS.

I realized that the toughest part of writing is the beginning. You can tell when it's supposed to end because the energy runs out, so you start over and add during the editing process....

But I always seem to want to start in the middle, with everything already structured. I hate it.

I'm watching the wedding Singer. I love this fucking movie.

Then the Oak Tree and its Resurrection Fern

We are caught in a still life. This our life. I have no faith in this country or human kind that we'll ever get this planet back to normal. It's already trying to kill us. That's how AIDS came. Evolution fucked up and it's trying to repair itself. It was like, "Damn, we shouldn't have created a being with a free will and then allowed it to speak, discover, and torture."

We're fucked. Let's fuck.

Something with a short edge--mildly conniving--it digs deep. Gets at that greater meaning of everything we once knew before operations had us maimed for good and scarred for life. Close your fly were you born in a barn of animals we are animals caught like sheep in the rose bush should have been sheared days ago because the summer months are so goddam hot like a skillet after you've fried pork belly. If only the rains would come and wash away our sorrow. I want you to come over. I'm addressing this to you. I'm crazy about you but it seems that love doesn't spurn in a drought--it flounders and hopes and hopes and hopes and waits and waits and waits and hopefully finally the precipitation will fall and everything will be okay and the weather will be cool and it'll pat our windows like a coach patting our asses for a job well done. And we'll be together. And we'll be in control. And you'll be wearing your bathrobe with the hole in it where your dogs found something good and I'll be under the covers in my underoos, we'll be watching CourtTv. and we'll argue whether or not we should go to bed or switch over to the Game Show Network or watch the news. And then I'll turn off the TV and there will be the great silence that explains our relationship. And i'll hold you hand across your body as we lay side by side by side by side by side and our dog will be content at our feet, so beautiful and small and budding. We sit in the silence and the rain is obviously telling us that we did a good job for turning the TV off. Its rhythms put you to sleep and I hear your breathing go shallow and follow along with the slaps on the window pane. I could never sleep before I slept with you. And now I can. Now I don't spend hours upon hours awake, thinking, wondering, worrying. I've got everything I need right here next to me with wet hair and beautiful tinges of darkness. We work, we play, we come back around together at the end of the day. I love you sweetheart, and I'm glad that we ended up in the future.

Will is my friend.

Here's a good word: marzipan. It's like marshmellow. Mmmmmarzipan. But I can never find a stanza, a line, a sentence to put it in. Because it's one of those pretty independent words, but it's ugly around other people.

I'm scared about leaving for HSU. I'm leaving, that's settled. But, damn, am I scared. I know I have terrible social skills and that I'm paranoid. These two things don't combine to make a sexy friend. They combine to make a paranoid and reclusive friend who pisses you off a lot because he thinks someone is following him home all the time and won't be nice to your friends because nice is so goddam hard sometimes.

I've convinced that I try too hard to write everything on here. I think too much and everything stutters under the weight of all the things I'm trying to say but can't say and the things I can say stagger, stray, and aren't as impactful because of this shaky weight. Scary, isn't it, that I could be better. I know, because I'm so fucking great now. < /sarcasm >

I want to be a Youth Pastor but I've never worked with Jr. Highers or High Schoolers. And that scares me because maybe I HATE these age groups and am wasting all my time. I hope to connect with a church up in Arcata that doesn't have any people I know so that I can work with the Jr. Highers.

But these are worries. And worries are God's. I have a lot of'em. You guys stay safe.

This is Reckoning.

"No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful." --Kurt Vonnegut.

Read his book, A Man Without a Country. It's short and it's interesting.

--

It's disheartening when all my favorite writers or directors (Lynch, Beckett, Vonnegut, Klosterman, Steinbeck, Hemingway [granted that those latter two pricks lived when it wasn't unhealthy but, rather, helped with indigestion]) are smokers. Whatever. Lick my ashtray. Viva Zapata.

--

I sincerely think that baseball is the greatest sport because of how far removed it is from daily life. In football, you're stuck with the constant realization that 300 lb. defensive ends are going to take your soul with every play. In baseball, you've got finesse and running and return. It's cyclical in that you hit a ball, create an action, in the hope that you return to the exact spot where you started, as a better person and a winner. Or a loser. Sometimes things just don't work out and you're stuck at the plate for a little longer, then in the dugout, then in the hallway where you take a piss in the sink. That's life. Piss in the sink sometime. You'll know.

And in the same way that I think every sane person should seriously watch and enjoy one baseball game in their life, I think that every theologian and ontologist should read Beckett's Waiting for Godot. We as humans are caught, wondering where God is and why we're waiting here for him when we're not even certain that he's coming or even is where we expect him to be. But then it's not about that, it's about something more--just as religion and life aren't completely about Christ as God's son, praise Allah--something completely absurd like being stuck on a grassy knoll. We know nothing, we only have the guidelines. Estragon and Vladimir know nothing, they only have directions.

And they too hope to return to Home.

We pile the tired. And dig up the poor.

I am me.

Sink deeper.

Thanks Jasmine for listening and commenting when I need it. You're a great friend to have. And Alycia, too, for the multitude of times I've come to you as a needy bitch of a friend.

And Kelley, I'm so sorry for everything I've done to you. I'm impatient.

JP, I miss you. Things are different now that you're not around. I'll live.

It's amazing how everything I write on here seems to get me in trouble. I should probably slipp backk intto crypticcs.

Everything is so bloody. There's been a war. Are you listening to me? There's something wrong. But don't deplete my resources, I'm going away as far as I know, I've gone to chase the horizon. I face change and it rears its ugly head into me. I fear change and I need duplicity. I am a wayfarer lost in the tag of incendiary complements and imminent threats. We are domain. We put our selves together to be how we we are depending on who we were, but all that changes when we circle back and realize that e are the same and the same is the we within the you within all my present past and future new thoughts old time again we are linear caught within but always without. Know yourself. Please don't go. I don't understand why there's so much blood. The idea just lives on. Give me wisdom, give me peace as I raise my arms to accept love--the love of a lover. I have God, I have my friends, i have my words, I have my feelings and my emotions and my problems and my controls and my deviant needless concubines. But I need a lover. I need You.
from home, the closer I am to getting home--the earth is flat. I may have to run back from where I am to find you again--the earth is round, we may meet up again one day from the point which I started--but I heard that you're still probably with someone i heard from a friend that our distance will change something I heard that when I return to the original horizon that I saw for 20 odd years, that we will be okay. I heard from a friend who said that you are probably still with a friend who knows that you love him. I know too much and yet I can't find the words to explain all this thick blood that's steeped in past trenches and early morning tirades. I will return. I will hold your letters with me wherever I go. i will sink down and let everything toll away from the sound and i will toil but something will be okay within the nothing. Everything will collapse.
but i am chasing horizons and trying to find you out. And the farther I go away--

Enlightenment as Christians.

Enlightenment is a term that is thrown around with far too much brevity. We are enlightened by food (maybe just me), by friends, by family--seemingly anything that starts with an "f." In reality, enlightenment is a tough and arduous process that many Christians ignore, thinking that it's a completely Eastern idea. That only the Buddhists have to worry about cutting the chain of rebirth, realizing oneness with Him, seeing His face, and then ceasing to exist.

To start, Christian enlightenment differs from beginning to end because we do not believe in rebirth. Life is a one chance, one shot, thing... However, we also believe that we are reborn into Christ, into the body of He who Sacrificed Himself thus making our reincarnation exist in our single life as opposed to it occuring over many lifetimes until we hit it, until our souls have suffered enough, for long enough, that we finally cease to exist.

Before we can be reborn in Christ however, we must see the face of God--there is always something that compels us into enlightenment. As Dr. Ravinda Kumar stated in the article, "We are all Gods in the Making," from the Journal of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies in October 2006, "Seeing God is a very important event. On successful culmination ofmeditation through a "seed mantra," the Deity of the mantra appears before the disciple." A "seed mantra" could be a worship song or a repeated phrase during prayer. That is why, 9 times out of 10, at a summer camp, the call to Christ is usually held on or around an all-worship-night so that everyone sees or feels God and no one feels alienated because they feel something deep within their core.


After we have seen God's face we have a choice: we go deeper and accept what we've seen, accepting that God and you are one, or we reject it. If we reject it, then we are voiding ourselves in the Nothingness.

But if we accept it then once and for all, we have cut the chain of rebirth, and we are dead to sin and Alive in Christ. Our ego is reborn as our Holy Guiding Spirit. We are setting into stone what will be of us.

And all humans face this choice. Everyone has their chance to see the face of God [citation needed--i know this exists, the bible says it somewhere] and thus we all have our point of rebirth. Some will choose away from God while others will choose into God.

And some will be reborn multiple times in their lives, shifting like beached whales until they settle on God or Nothingness.

And if you choose to deny God, your journey towards enlightenment ends there. Your fate is cast. You have no need to seek God's face.

But for Christians, it goes deeper. We can't just see the face of God, choose Him, put a Jesus Fish on the back of our car and call it a life. We must constantly be seeking God's face, constantly seeking repentence and minor-rebirth. In the vein of seeking God's face, it is the reason that most churches have pictures of Jesus or stain-glass windows purveying what God looks like. You see that and you say, "oh! I get it! Sign me up!"

For Christians who are reborn multiple times in our single lives, we must constantly be re-routing and repeating these first two steps, like a worn path, so that we may continue to remain dead to sin and Alive in Christ. Because, in truth, no matter how much one becomes in enlightened, there is still always temptation and there is always something worth getting you down.

So we cycle, we orbit Christ as our Sun as we move around him, and our planetary path and rotations are what keep our lives going. We turn around and around--that's why life sometimes seems so cyclical. It's because we are living out our past lives and our future lives in this one life with one set of people.

We should no longer fear death because we already are dead. This flesh, this body that you see, is nothing but a shell and I am nothing but the Father. My acts are not my acts, but I am the only one to blame. I try and not repeat what has happened before, but that is simply how life works--repeat.

I've felt before that I'm caught in a still life portrait, going nowhere, and never doing anything. I'm just an apple in a bowl caught in its forever-ripened state.

Now I understand why: it's because that's what this life is: it's the consistent waiting and rebirth until we reach the final stage of enlightenment.

Death, that great enigma that needs no more said on it than what's already been said by millions of poets and writers and essayists and sitcoms and movies, is not something we're supposed to be scared of, it's supposed to be something we embrace. It is the final moment where our flesh and our sin finally ceases to be, and we become wholly one with the Father. Is that something to be afraid of? When we die, we cease to be forced to live out this shell of a life in a still-life cycle rounding the Son.

And that's okay by me.

Hold your grandmother's bible to your chest

I think she fell asleep.

There's truth, there's life. I am yours for the taking and all that.

I feel very disillusioned right now towards being poetic or being staunch or being, well, stylistic. It is what it is.

Nothing to be done.

It is for certain.

I might believe in reincarnation if we're to believe that everyone has their chance to see God. It'd give much more weight to the whole idea of teaching us as humans lessons because, to me, it seems like for God to teach us lessons would be like us teaching roaches how to type. There's really no point to it, it's fascinating, but where does it go? Nowhere. We just die.

But if we came back around, had a second chance and effectively doubled our impact... That may make more sense.

Then, of course, is the most obvious problem: biblical evidence.

I love you, good morning.

Stay safe, be sound.

We push off, we're rollin' boulders.

It's a conniption.

An occupation. I'm ready for it to end. I'm ready for the world to cycle.

I'm ready for it to end. I know it won't, because my greater purpose is still germinating. But every night I want to die. That's probably why I sleep so much. I tell my friends that it's my way of resetting, but, really, it's a rebirth for the day. Sleep is death's cousin, and it's the closest I can bring myself to suicide. At the end of a nap or a night of sleep, there isn't a great and golden enigma, there's life again, and the day can continue, let us forget about what has unfolded already. Let's reset. I need you to forget I ever said that. Let's reset. I wish that you would too. I mean, really. I've found you among the wheat compressed with despondency, and I really think that you just need a good night's sleep. Don't be irrational and insomniatic. Just lay there. Pray and Believe. Peace and Serenity.

And reset. I want to take a three year nap back in time to slap myself in the face, but instead, I only move three hours forward, because we cannot change what has already been laid--we can only change what lies ahead. We live in a liquid future, a river that runs the path of a concrete past. Like the LA River. That is our lives. Our future moves solemnly through the concrete and the graffiti of our memory until we spill out into the ocean of His Loving Arms.

And sometimes Johnny Knoxville tries to jump our future and breaks his ankle. What a Jackass.

We were Born to Fuck Each Other, one way or Another

Tell me who I am. Tell me where I am. Tell me how I am--what I am--why why why why why why why the rain falls so hard on the warmest days of the year.


I am the synagogue, I am the Father. We are one. I am God and God is me. We are within and beheld by one another. I will never have another as my goddess. You will never make me learn to lay beneath the mountainside--

you
are
my sk
epti
cism.

Down away, run around and find your tail again. I am Yours. "Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you." (John 14:20)) I and the Father are one. I am God and God is Me--I do not exist. I do not exist. This is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife--HOW DID I GET HERE?! (Thank you, David Byrne).

This body is nothing--just an arm or a finger of the Cross of Sanctity. Be with Me being with the Father.

This is
step 1
towards
enlightenment.

We are on the path,
dear brothers and sisters--we will cut the chain of rebirth.
We will be within eternity and eternity will be within us--

one day.
one day we will Live.

Eloi Eloi

Although I wholly believe that Christ died for our sins, was hoisted up upon the tree in vicarious atonement, I began to wonder: "How is it that a shorter crucixion (a few hours, as opposed to the many days that some took) than most could possibly be a sufficient sacrifice for our sins that are infinite and ongoing?"

To put the length of time that Jesus was on the cross into perspective, the Gospel of Mark notes in chapter 15 that Pilate himself was surprised to find out that He was already dead when Joseph of Aramathea came and asked for the body. And this was Pilate, the guy who knew that Jesus was pretty much dead by the time he was put on the cross.

Crucifixion was meant to be an arduous, excrutiating, and symbolic death. It was supposed to kill the person in the public sector, on a hill (like Calvary), and allow the person to stay there for hours or even days, as opposed to the guillotine or a hanging which are generally instantaneous. But it seems like Christ, our final atonement, almost got off easy on the cross. It definitely could have been that, because He was beaten and whipped so severely beforehand, that the death was quicker than most. But our sins weren't forgiven via the Cat of Ninetails, our sins were up on that cross.

And shouldn't a crucifixion that forgives an infinite number of sins take longer and not shorter, whether or not Jesus was beaten beforehand?

Well, it should have, but God doesn't really work that way. In 2 Peter, Chapter 3, verse 8, when he is talking about the second coming and the end of times, it is mentioned that "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day," so it could have been that, to the Christ within Jesus, it could have felt like six days on the cross.

And so I conjecture that, though Jesus himself was only on the cross for a short period of time, Christ was on the cross for such a period of time that our all our sins are being born into him. Jesus gives up his spirit, according to Matthew 27, when he dies, at around the ninth hour, after crying out "Eloi! Eloi! lama Sabachthani!" Jesus had begun to wonder why God had forsaken him. Perhaps this was the moment that Jesus left the Christ.

If Jesus Christ was fully man and fully God, then he can be in two places at once. Or three. or four. I sincerely think that Christ stayed on that cross for days or even months while our infinite sins were transmuted into his body. Jesus, for a time, feels all of this pain, feels all of our sin and our blackness and our vortex of antagonism, and then croaks while the Christ is still in those nine hours, sucking up our sins. The Christ will stay there until his second coming, when he will, without pain but to us, begin his vengeance.

And it's a vengeance we deserve if this is the case.

This is a song we haven't played in a long time. So we'll see how it goes.

Here it is. Here I am.

As you know, I have been struggling with my faith because, in the words of Sam Beam, it's "strong as hell but not Hickory Rooted." After seeking and seeking and seeking, I was up late last night on AIM when a familiar name came on that I hadn't seen in awhile because she's been Israel and I've been here and the sun sets according to the axis of God's Son. We exchanged nominal nixceties for a few minutes unitl I jumped into all the troubles I've recounted on here. And, with all the people not three hundred thousand million miles and minutes away, I wasn't able to divine what I divined with her words and suggestions. She's a Woman of God. She's what I hope to me, except a Man (yes...of course....). Jess, you are amazing and I am glad that I met you three years ago at Wildwood.

I realized that I mustn't passively read the bible, just sitting there, taking in the words, allowing them to penetrate my soul. I must takehold of them, aggressively reading them, and marking my findings and meditating on them, seeking God's meaning and God's subtext. I must no longer read my bible without my Pen. So I read John 21, where Jesus commissions Peter three times to feed his lambs, and thne his sheep. I found that this is another commission, a deviation from the evangelism of Matthew 28. This one is more for the disciples helping disciples than for the disciples helping the wayward countrymen in exile. So I wrote it down. Amazing.

I must cast off my cynicism and find hope. Imustn't be skeptical of God's word but trusting (though trust is something I find hard to give out--it's not something I give to trick-or-treaters).

And I must be like the father of the demonic boy in Mark 9: I must ask Jesus for his help with my unbelief. This was the biggest thing, because I realized that I've been trotting out to the mound every day without a Catcher. I need God's help so I can see Him because He's the only one who knows how to reveal himself to me. And, to be honest, this always felt silly. Asking a deity that I was unsure about to help me find him. But then I realized this is something we do with other people, too. We say, "Show me that I can trust you again." Oh God, my God, help me with my unbelief. I must cry out to You in every way. I am nothing without you guidance.

I also wanted to rescind my previous accusations about a cyclical life and how all matter is reborn: there's beauty in the fact that our souls aren't made of matter, in that they will no longer exist. Souls can disappear while matter cannot. And all of God's love is Hickory Rooted in our souls that go up at the end of our lives to meet with him.

And when I am forced out into the lonely cold because of my newfound cigarette addiction, when I am alone with the world and the light at the end of the stick, I realized that those moments are my daily Bethel, where I meet God, because I am away from all distractions, and cannot go inside because I have fire that emits smoke that seeps into everything. I am able to, for fifteen minutes or so a night, enjoy God's company, enjoy God's creation, revel in it all. I cannot be distracted because all things distracting are inside the house where I cannot take my cigarette. Weird how it all works out.

Welcome to Sodom, South Georgia, where we wake like a tree full of bees.

So, okay, remember when I posted my Selfish Manifesto? (The red, underlined text, means "Click here to jog your memory.) Well, JP wrote and performed his speech about me, using that as a template, right? Well, he gave me his speech, and every fucking manifestation of it, so I'm going to post that because I really think he hit it on the nose as to who I am.

"The back of the classroom knows him well, the scruff haired, awkwardly outging, turtured soul of a teenager whom [sic] feels without boundaries, searches for answers, and who is known by all, but is Known by few. Evan Pugh.

"The Bipolar child whom [sic] thinks he is a man, says what others think, and also what they never wanted to think of...he is blunt with too much edge, people [k]now him as the crass intellectual who oddly enough has horrible grades. He is Evan Pugh

"Born into a Christian househole, he has been told not to swear, not to fight, not to be who he inevitably changes into around other people. He is eternally positive, believing everything will be solved by God in the end, some might call this a fairy tale, he just finds the hope depressing every time something else gets in his way. He can't help but be Evan Pugh.

"Those who have met him never forget him, off the walls and with too much energy, speaking in almost never ending phrases of quotations and obscure references to films only buffs would watch and music only the confused could find. He talks like Evan Pugh.

I will never forget Evan Pugh because he is the one person who although did not graduate top of his class, or have any friends, is too nice for his own good, often coming off as the boy who tries too hard for the girl, and a dynamic moment breaker, with a mind with a peculiar gift for dictation, and a sense of humor and wit too sharp for many. But as Emerson wrote, "To be Genius is to be Misunderstood." And nobody is more misunderstood during a million mile per hour half angry all passion rant on some mundane item than the angry whining voice of Evan Pugh.

"As far as unforgettable goes, Evan is for me. And although some may forget him, or only know him as Evan Pugh the most outgoing, friendless, good guy who have gone to school with the at some point in time; I remember him for the all the times he developed my half formed ideas and unsure beliefs, while I simplified his half baked ridiculous self made philosophies and beliefs. He is memorable to me, and Like Evan would like me to say

" 'We must be humble, we mustn't demand recognition. I was raised to do good whilst flying under the radar--create the tireless chugging ideology of goodness without recognition because being known destroys everything. Be without megalomania. Know yourself, know your God, may it be enough for enlightenment.

" 'Believe in God. The universe tends to unfold as it should.' "

Here's a part that I really like, that sums up the beginning of our friendship, that he left out of the speech (I think. His speech was more a conglomoration of above and his ten pages of hand written scribble-notes).

"Lasting memories are left by his perfect friendship,
"First as a minor acquaintance, a minor annoyance,
"a minor creep, a major influence,
"A Gift."

Yea, I will admit, it was creepy the way I'd wait around for his Spanish class to end so I could give him a ride home even though I didn't have a fifth period. He swears I wasn't dating my current girlfriend Kaitlyn while I did this, but I swear that I was. Whatever, it all worked out in the end. I knew I had found a super-major-kick-ass friend when we would ride home listening to Radio Free Vietnam, laughing about how it all sounded like gibberish, and he wasn't creeped out about it. I'm gonna send him a message, for him to write his own selfish Manifesto, so I can respond to it and do the same thing.

This reaffirmed that, in the most non-queer way, even if I don't find love, I'll always have JP--in that Stand by Me, narrated-by-Richard-Dreyfus-looking-for-a-dead-body way. He will be the best man at my wedding. I love him (in the most non-queer way, of course.)

Carma Police.

(preface: so okay, a religious essay dealing with theology is weird coming from a guy who doubted his faith a few days ago. Whatever, it's all in the struggle.)

As Christians, we shouldn't completely dismiss karma as a purely Buddhist idea, or as one that is not in correlation to our beliefs. The difference between the general idea of karma--that is, doing good and having it come back around to you in a different form during your life--is that, with Christian Carma, we are asked to do good for others, but we are not expected to receive anything in return. Instead, we are to do good in order to store up our treasures in heaven, where thieves don't steal it and moths don't eat it, because where our treasure is, our heart is as well (Mt. 6:20,21). If our treasures, our karmic payoff, are on Earth, then our heart is with the Earth, and everything which we mercifully do or humbly do not do will pass away with our bodies.

With that in mind, we then begin to have confidence in the flesh, which, as Paul writes to the Phillippians, of which we are to have none.

And this idea of Christian Carma is nothing foreign to the writings of Paul. In the closing words of his letter to the Galatians, he writes, "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life. And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith."

He knows that we reap what we sow, that we as farmers with plant rows and peas and thusly get peas; if we plant sin and hate and malice, we will reap malice, hate, and sin. He knows that, if we have mercy and humility and expect nothing in return, we will grow weary because we as humans have within us the "What's in it for me?" complex, and, when there seems to be nothing in it for us, we grow weary. We want cognitive results, while Christ Jesus gives us metaphysical results--our souls feel better, our treasures are storing up in heaven.

So we as Christians have Carma. We are to do good and expect good in return. The only difference is that our good will be revealed in heaven, when we pass away from this life. Surely we will get good in return and good will be given to us in our every day life (like someone allowing you to enter a lane to get off the freeway in traffic, or letting you bum a cigarette), but that is not what our ultimate expectation should be.

Our final expectation shouldn't come from man. Because it comes from Christ.

jezebel.

I've been smoking more than I've been eating lately.

I want to quit, I think about quitting every night. I consider that it'd be easier to quit now, after only three months of casually smoking and two weeks of going half-a-pack to a pack a day, than trying to quit after a year or more. I consider that it's going to destroy my teeth, give me heart disease, destroy my lungs. Smoking will kill me, in essence.

So why do I smoke? This is an interesting quibble I've been dealing with ever since I started. Is it because I'm stressed out about school, life, the universe, and everything? No, I've been able to cope with that for awhile. Is it because I want to be more socially acceptable? No, I will never be socially acceptable except to a handful of people.

Then why do I smoke? Because I want to. I want to experience slow death. I want to experience all the worries. I want to see the world through the haze of the thin line of smoke rising from a burning end. If I didn't want to smoke, I wouldn't have started. If I didn't want to smoke, I wouldn't be smoking. It's that simple, I think.

I remember, about a year ago, I thought about picking it up, without anybody coaxing me into it, and of my own accord. I wanted something to make me feel better, the medication no longer working. But my mom talked me out of it.

So what then am I supposed to do with a terrible habit I wanted in the first place?

Quit, I guess. That would be the most logical thing to do.

The irony in all of this, though, comes from what I was reading in my psychology text book. A lot of the things they suggest to do instead of smoking-- like changing your patterns to avoid situations that encourage it, and to do something else instead--are eerily similar to the things I've been told by pastors about how to quit masturbating. They tell a congregation of young men to not get into situations that allow for you to masturbate, as if we don't go to bed at night.

But smoking is different in the way that it can be avoided, if I just leave them at home or simply throw them away. Think about my black lungs. Think about my poor teeth.

But, see, here's the rub: I have a problem with myself drinking or smoking pot or doing drugs because I see a moralistic problem with it, whereas with smoking, I see no moral problem. I see no grand retribution for it. It's not a sin. I'm not gonna go to hell because I smoke a pack a day.

And far too much of my perception of smoking is focused away from the obvious biological effects, and towards the non-effects it has on my soul. Smoking doesn't give you soul disease or soul cancer. It doesn't hinder you from self-awareness or seeking Christ. It just kills you.

But maybe it does disease my soul... maybe because of smoking, I won't be that girl, because she'll be appalled by my habit. If that's the case, though, then religion itself by narrowing the field of dating prospects down to one religion and one belief. Hmph.

It all seems to be one big clusterfuck. I should quit, there have been points whilst writing that this that I have resolved to quit, but, now I am just unsure. I pray that I make the right decision, whether to opt-out or commit. We'll see.

Some things i've realized this past week without my parents:

• Doubts that God exists are really proof that God exists. If we didn't have our doubts, we wouldn't have our wisdom. If everything was great all the damn time, we'd forget about it. Even though, in philosophy class, we shot down the idea that bad things happen so we know what good is, but I still believe in this. The doubts point out our faith. You can't have faith without doubts. Believe it.
  
• I'm not meant to ever, ever, ever live alone. I need people around me. At least one.
  
• Dogs aren't meant to be owned by insomniacs. They don't sleep until their owner sleeps. And I don't sleep. Hence, I probably shouldn't have dogs.
  

Corollary to last night's insanity.

It was a long night. I have my doubts. That's most of it.

Please Don't Go.

I'm sorry Jasmine. i really am. I've been lying to you. Nothing's been okay. But for some reason I can't tell you shit sometimes. I just can't.

I wrote these to Kelley, and I'm writing them to you:

I'm stressing about housing at Humboldt. Apparently it's really impacted and I get second priority under the people already there (this makes sense, but it sucks cock that they don't have to worry and here I am worrying my face off and smoking myself stupid waiting for the package to arrive with my registration info and my housing info and my God). maybe I shouldn't go. I've actually begun enjoying Cal State San Bernardino lately. Seeing you and being late to work. Smoking and talking with Bradley (camaraderie in the cancer sticks). But maybe I'm not stressin about meeting people for once being I know I won't see'em ever again. I smoked almost a whole pack today. I'm beginning to feel depressed again. I'm really hungry. I want to hang myself with an extension cord from the rafters above my patio. I can't do it. I need to know I have purpose. I don't have one. Nothing to live for. All the good ones are taken. I don't know how much of this you're gonna get. I can't sleep, someone wake me up. I hope I'm not already dead.

I don't know how much longer I can believe in God. He's been gone or I've been gone fro so long. According to my pastor, I should have a consistent place where I find God, but that's always been in the loving arms of another. And it's been so long. It's been so long. It's been so long. Please don't worry about me, I should be fine by morning (maybe sunrise, since it's already 430AM). I don't know if I'm gonna sleep tonight. Call it a watching. Call it a lost faith. I can't see myself believing that christdied for my sins. Every time I say it I feel dirty. Where has he gone where has he gone where has he gone. I'm going to have a smoke (I only got through half of it. Even the one shining light of nicotine that has given me strength for the past two weeks can't seem to push me away from the echelon I seem to be fading into.)

I don't want to die. Alone. I don't want to be alone. I can't seem to find God in anything I ever fucking do. He's no longer there when I pray, and the wisdom of the bible doesn't make any sense when it's all so linear and one-life-to-live while I've come to see everything as a cyclical still-life, where we churn on forever, seeing the same things recur and ebb and recur and ebb before we die to be reborn. The crux of the matter is what we don't remember from our first years. What seems to be the crux of the matter is what everyone thinks will happen when we die. I hate to say it, as a "Christian," but I just don't fucking know anymore. I have lost ten ounces of faith. And that's why, Kelley, I seem to be okay with liking you: I've lost what used to drag us apart. I've lost God. The tether seems to have been cut loose after I've been out among the waters for so long, trying to grab the rope and pull myself back. I can't find back. I can't find forward. I'm so goddam alone. The Weather Channel is on mute, I'm glad it's no longer hurricane season. I was at band camp when Katrina hit New Orleans. And now everyone forgets the devastation. Will everyone forget my devastation?

Where is God? Where is divinity? What is it, who is He but a figment of my imagination? Where am I to go but into the soil and churned back one day to be among the leaves. No matter dissolves. But maybe that ethereal idea of a soul does. God where are you I am here. God where are you. Did I come to the wrong address? I've been waiting out in the cold without a coat for a year now. Where are you where have you gone?


I feel more and more that my religion is more like The Cask of Amontillado than a faith. I am constantly drawing myself into the wine chambers with the thoughts of great Amontillado during carnival season, denouncing that my peer has any right to be judging such a great drink while all the while I am walking myself into the chasm where I will be buried alive with the bones of ancestors.

But this is Beckett. It starts over again, and we never really die. We just suffer and suffer and suffer and loathe and sulk and plea and deny and wonder where is GODot?!

Or this is Kafka. And we sink. And things get eternally worse. Things will get eternally worse.

Maybe I am already buried alive?
Maybe things are at their worst?
I am a liar, a scam, and a phony. I am alone in the most beligerant world. I want to one day be dust in a new star. What were visions of heaven but hallucinations? What was Revelation but a hallucination by an old man in exile? What was Christ but Criss Angel? I feel none of Christ's blood in me. The father and I are not one. Where is HE. I am here, and I was groping in the blinding darkness, but you've given me NOTHING. I have what I've always had. And now I'm growing tired of you giving me jack-fucking-shit but taking everything away from me.

Fuck you, I guess you can pray for me.

Fuck me, I guess I can--

Please Don't go. I'm sorry I didn't write. When I was supposed to. write. mi
xed message
s
broken
syllab
les
I'
m
growing
ti
re
d
Lay eyes on the Fa
ther

Ple
ase
don
tgo.

Baby with a Cross to bear.

I told Kelley I was gonna quit. I want to. It doesn't circulate my blood right.

But at 145 this morning, not 4 hours after telling her I was done for good, I was sitting there with a Marlboro 27 burning into Che's face (a bad ass ash tray my sister got in Spain. I'm now using it to its orginal intent...). I hate it. But I have no accountability. No oneI see every day to smell me and say "You fucking dolt."

With each puff, I'm killing myself. With each puff, I'm degrading myself, changing my neurochemistry, making it harder for myself to quit when I inevitably have to in a few years so I can a good roll model.

I had the epiphany today, I'm going to be a youth pastor. And youth pastor don't kill themselves with Cancer Sticks. Shit shit shit. Youth pastors also don't curse.

Lauren tells me that tobacco is a terrible industry, that prides itself on killing people. But, if I'm to believe as Jasmine believes, that animals are equal with humans, then the tobacco industry is no worse than the Meat industry. And I've conceded to them my whole life. The vegetable industry is probably just as bad. And so is McDonald's. Eat that shit every day and it will kill you.

So you pick your battles. I'm a fucking idiot. This year has been a wash.

I started drinking January 1st, had my first drink on new year's eve. I had my first cigarette while drunk about four or five months ago. You see how this is all steamrolling?

But I've been stressed out over a girl. And the last time I was this in love and this scared of dying alone and this scared of never being with her, I stopped eating, dropped 50 pounds or so, and didn't get over it for two years. Which would I prefer? I ain't blamin' either of these girls for neither of my stupid-fucking-decisions.

(Both of you, and I think you both know who you are, know that I do not ever ever ever blame you for anything I ever did. They're my actions. I'm the Cunt.)

So who am I blaming if not them? Myself. I blame myself for taking a two-week high-school relationship too hard, I blame myself for taking on loving a girl who I had no hope with from the start. I blame myself.

And that makes me want to smoke even more. It makes me want to smoke two packs a day and never ever eat again. I hate myself and my weakness. I hate the fact that I am a weak-willed cunt who never has seen the light of day. I blame myself for hating myself. I hate how cyclical life is, manifesting itself again and again, I'm afraid I will be reborn into this life again, I am afraid that I won't remember any of my stupid fucking decisions in this life.

I want God back. I want him to come back. I've done all I can and he's nowhere near me anymore. I need God Back. DO YOU HEAR ME GOD!? This isn't the end. It gets worse.

I need to go to bed. I need God to find me. I'll keep plowing, but he will turn the soil. This is a drought, but I have faith that the RAIN will come. And everything will be okay.

It only makes me cranky.

I shouldn't be dating right now, I'm leaving... but there always seem to be something that hinders my search to deny my seeking...

And it's generally a someone...

which is weird, on the whole, becaues I am very picky when it comes to women, I've decided, even though I'm not when it comes to how beautiful and wonderful they are as beings. I'm picky because of my two most important things: Sex and religion. I realized, with the help of Alycia, that I need a girl who's ontologically and theologically parallel to what I believe, so that instead of butting heads on the issues of divinity and sanctificaion every night before burning down into lustful, passionate hate-sex on our honeymoon, we can actually love each other. I believe that a relationship should exist within the scope and wingspan of God Almighty. If I were to be dating a non-christian girl, I realized (and should've known all along) that we would be away from Him. And I've been away from Him for far too long.

But Christians are so easy to come by, they're a quarter of the population of the Earth, apparently. And that's where the second standard comes into play, because if a girl is a Christian virgin, then that means she actually cherishes her beliefs and values her, well, values. Sex is the highest passion between two souls (Faith is the highest passion of a single soul), and I believe that it is a passion that can only be met between a man and a wife. I've been asked if it seems scary to do that, to have Sex with one woman for your entire life. And my response is, generally, "Yea, well, it's still Sex." And I'm willing to bet that the 1000th time with my future and always wife will be better than my 1000th woman (I'm looking at you, Gene Simmons, for confirmation) and the whole idea that that rests upon is love. The idea that love in the wingspan of God will be the solid bedrock of all nights of great Sex, disappointing Sex, average Sex, and baby-makin' Sex, instead of having the bedrock being lust-fulfillment and pleasure.

The problem I find with premarital Sex likes in the idea that once the penis goes in, it never really comes out. Once two bodies are made one, they're never really detached from that other person. Our souls are a little like fly paper in that, once that great region of love is reached with a person, we are stuck with them, onto them, within them. And, so, to escape that, you lose a leg. And so the next person you have sex with gets a one-legged fly. Continue this process, and you are eventually a decrepit soul with nothing but your genitals left. And no girl, really, just wants a penis. And guys think they just want a vagina. But we all really want emotions and passion and legs and arms and touch and taste and smell and full-bodied connection (I hope). Not just connection with the vulva or the testes or the clitoris.

And that's what I want to give to my wife on my wedding night. I will give to her, lay down on her fly paper my arms and legs and feet and hands and head and tongue and heart and eyes and nose and mouth and teeth and lungs and kidneys. I will lay those at her feet and say, "I give you all of this. You caught me. I am wholly, and fully, yours."

And I really doubt that a non-virgin girl would understand that concept. And, even if she did,
I still wouldn't have all of her. She'd be missing a leg, while I would be whole, and there would be a gap between us. And I would feel intimidated. And we couldn't be together because I'd always wonder if I'm taking her places her other partner(s) have or taking her nowhere in comparison. And then that would probably cause perennial Whiskey Dick.

But, apparently, this is all pussy-talk and if I were a real 19-year-old college student, I would have at least gotten head by now. At least.

Don't be afraid of persecution, don't be afraid of despondency because you haven't found another who feels the same way. We'll all find that someone who will give themselves fully to us on our flypaper wedding bed. And it'll be "whoa baby...like Charles Bronson in the Great Escape."

Selfish Manifesto

JP asked me to write him something explaining myself, this is what I came up with.

--

I was born and bred in the amniotic fluid of cynicism, liberalism and passivism. Taught to have an open mind and not to take anything at face value. Have no trust until your heart is completely within the idea and without doubt. Complete the theosophy only if it is completeable.

Christ is the center of everything I think of and every conjecture I pull out of my ass. Christ as the God of Man of God because I am a Man of God of Man. I and the Father are one. I really believe I am enlightened to point of non-existance. To the point that nihilistic malcontention actually makes sense. My parents bred all of these things in me.

I am crazy. I am bipolar. I credit this to being why I am fearless in thought, because you can't be afraid of bullet trains as a blind man. We are blind.

At the same time, I simply am. Perfectly forever, I am. I am I am I am iam. I think that what I was raised to do was love what I like and hate what I must but always have an open mind to different ideologies, theologies, and idiosyncrasies. Pull from everything for all things are beautiful since all things are from God. All the saddest things contain all the most beautiful things as well as all the most beautiful things contain the saddest things. Life is cyclical. I AM.

I try and guide my fucked-up self by this verse: "Therefore, go: get your countrymen in Exile and say to them, 'Thus Says the LORD,' whether they listen or fail to listen." Ezekiel 3:11. It's the OT equivalent of Christ's commission of Matthew 28. Making disciples. But you always must realize that there will be those who will never listen. And you must shake the dust from your feet. But you must push forth to get the exiles and turn them around from head to foot from heart to soul. Believe in God. Trust in God. Know in God. Be with God.

And music, be it secular or Christian, blasphemous or sodomous, is the sinew and the string that hold the ventricles of the heart together, that mend the souls irreparable parts, that tie the lobes together. Music creates the waves to make us feel human. Without music, there is no soul. Without rhythm (aleatoric or symphonic), there is no life, there is merely silence and stagnance. But... silence is its own music. We can't escape the beauty of our most sordid thoughts. Believe in God.

Have faith in Man but never trust it lest the aforementioned prerequisites are in place, of course. Souls are all connected, we are all connected, our sins are everyone's. Christ died for everyone's unifying sin. We are all serial killers and rapists and pedophiles and perverts and racists. We are all lovers and fighters and supporters. We are one. We are each other. Christ died for all of it so we could within the breadth and cover of his silver wings that protect us from Satan's ineffable savvy beckoning. We will all sin. We must all forgive.

We must be humble, we mustn't demand recognition. I was raised to do good whilst flying under the radar--create the tireless chugging ideology of goodness without recognition because being known destroys everything. Be without megalomania. Know yourself, know your God, may it be enough for enlightenment.

Believe in God. The universe tends to unfold as it should.

It's a birthday party!

I just completed the greatest weekend so far in my short and ill-remembered life. JP, Jasmine, Bradley and I hung out on Friday night, going to a hookah bar for no reason save to have somewhere to sit and talk for a few hours. Sitting there, sometimes smoking, and talking about Devendra Banhart and movies and music and how much the three boys hate Joy Division and JP's blossoming college experience, I was entranced with complete peace. I was completely at peace. This is a feeling that is rare within me because, as JP describes it, I am convinced that everything will turn out okay but, since it's not okay right now, I'm generally very negative involvling the temporal. So for me to be without negativity was something I wasn't expecting for awhile.

But it happened again the next night. We all went to Jasmine's house and then to a park where we sat around and talked about nothing for three hours. I just--it was the best weekend ever. It was reassuring and it was fun and it was interesting and it was loud and it was funny. I had a great weekend and I hope you all feel the same.

Nothing you can say can't be done.

My sister is in England, I am at home. And I am jealous. Of course I am. The only time I've ever been out of the ountry was when we trekked from Seattle up to Vancouver once when I was a freshman in High School. At the same time, I don't know if world travel affects me very much. I don't know if I really want to travel the world, if I really want to see it. I do but I don't for some reason. Maybe it's because I have a slight fear of flight.

I'm writing this without my glasses on, the screen is about three feet away, and I can't see a word of what I'm typing. I'm glad I learned how to instinct-type because otherwise, I wouldn't be able to write in this situation. It kind of sucks hwo bad my eyes are. Especially when I take my glsses off. It's so hard to find them again when everything blends together. I can't discern between colors at times, I can't see smaller objects within larger ones, so if my glasses were on a black shirt, I'd have a hard time seeing them. Everything kind of bleeds together. It's not the best.

I want to become something more. I want to be transformed. I was watching John Safran vs. God today and he, as a Jewish man, tried to join the KKK. That wasn't the interesting part, for me, though it was rather interesting how militant the group is. The interesting part to me was that, when they showed their altar, it had a bible open to Romans 12, a sword and an American Flag draped over it. Romans 12 is the chapter I memorized one summer during a summer camp. Funny how normal Christians and KKK Christians are under the same rules for living. Somehow, for some reason, I don't think they're following those rules very well. I mean, c'mon, they're a paramilitary racist group. And I'm just a dude, trying to offer my body as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.

find yourself.

--

So I just recently watched the movie I Heart Huckbees, a movie about existential detectives and Jude Law being an all around dick. I must say, it wasn't very good. It was billed as a comedy, and it had its moments, but it really wasn't very funny. At points, it seemed like it was trying to hard to be quirky what with all the choppy editing and funky pieces of screen floating around. Overall, though, it was just faux philosophical and didn't answer any questions the movie proposed. I don't know, maybe I'm jaded towards the whole idea of philosophy ever since the major didn't work out.

Under the gun gun gun

I think it's getting better, but it has a cycle. I've been able to fall asleep at 11 or 12 the past few nights. The problem is that I tend to wake up again at about 215-245, struggling with two things: a deep hunger and a full bladder. I know that if I don't move, I could probably fall back asleep. However, I also know that I just may wet the bed. Totally not cool since I'm 19 (for the record, I haven't wet the bed since the fifth grade when I went through a rash of it that I thought were wet dreams.) and that's something for kids.

And I've never been able to sleep on an empty stomach. So I get up and I pee off my patio in the backyard since it's closer than the bathroom, and then I eat something. And then, oh shit, it's my morning ritual at 230 in the morning. I'm wide awake. I don't know what to do. I turn on the TV and try and sink way deep into the couch, letting whatever's on sooth me to sleep. But I just ate something. And it's digesting. So I can't sleep for at least twenty minutes. And after 20 minutes, I'm suddenly engaged with what's on the TV. Dammit.

I turn the TV off and go up to bed, by this time, 330, my dad's awake and is getting ready for work. We say a few words, so I really get into bed at around 345. I read a little bit from whatever book I'm trying to read but will probably never finish, then turn off the light and stare at the ceiling until about 5, at which point I'm fed up with the whole bloated concept of mystic war puppets (something I'm apt to think about), or worrying about my friends or worrying about meeting people.

I'll get over it. I'm gonna go back to staring at the ceiling.

--

Wild and virulent like the children of two manic children. The tome of a thousand aged caveats, all ignored, and now given merit vis-a-vis their proven rightness. Oh tired divinity, giveth me thy cross. Let me walk. Let me churn. It's always midnight in the Ozarks. If only time could stop for me. For only a moment. So I could gather myself, know your name, and press on towards you as my goal against whim and will and way.

Perhaps. But maybe not. I can't offer any certainty save that which has tightened my chest. I will pray for you often and think of you always.

Brand New Waves of Sordid Oncology

It's 330. I just cleaned up dog shit in my dining room. This is probably the best time to do it, because you're only downstairs for a bowl of cereal when, bam!, you're shocked into having a ZipLoc baggy inside out on your hand while you hold stinky, warm, clay-paste. Then, next thing you know, you're grabbing your dog by the collar and stickin' her face in it. They know they've done something wrong and you have to shove them an inch from their sin. Next thing you know, your hands are clean, your happily stuffed full of mini wheats, and your dog loves you like you're a God again.

It's amazing how similar this situation is to how God is with our sin. Our conscience, AKA the holy spirit, shoves our nose in our dirty deeds (not done dirt cheap, ACDC), and tells us to not do it again, sternly, even though my conscience and I both know that it's a pit we fall into when we have no other options. And then we're both back to happily loving each. A dog can't hold its crap for 43 hours straight, we can't go 24 hours without doing something crappy. A dog's gotta deuce, we've gotta sin. We're inherently evil creatures.

And I think that's how God atones our sins: with an inside-out ZipLoc baggy that he tosses into the toilet, never to be seen again. And the cycle starts over. Luckily, there's no human pound where gods take their followers when they've been consistently bad and they just can't keep them in their temple. That would suck.

[A refrain from quoting Edie and the New Bohemians]

At some points, threre will always be doubt. At others, there will always be malice. I am awake, my feet are cold.

there seems to be some sort of erhereal disconnect between me and my inspiration. See, I know life is more well than unwell because i feel no underlying sense of worry or spite or unrequited love sick blues to drive these musings. All I've got is this:

I'm so insanely content with life right now I almost want to laugh in its face!

Except for the fact that the Dodgers aren't going to make the playoffs, but who didn't see that one coming?

Rain like Crickets, make the noise.

Complacency.

I feel stricken by the ghosts of seven different past lives, streaking across the sky until tomorrow's dawn. Having had written correspondence with Jesus Christ to boost my faith, I know this is true. I know you are true. I know that I need to read more than the occassional sports article and short story if I want to become a serious fiction writer. Maybe I'm not meant for fiction, I've hypothesized that before. I know: I was meant for the stage. That's the title of a Decemberists' song I don't ever remember hearing.

Contrition. Contention.

Deep down, glottal feelings in my throat. Real ugly nasty. Things will be okay. One can only hope for the best between two or more souls. We are one within the shells of many. That's what unity is.

We move out, we move upward. I am gone away from here, forewarned and unrequited. Take care of my sisters old boys.

My ears aren't ringing. You aren't thinking about me.

My last quarter at CSUSB has started. I feel no sense of sadness, no sense of "maybe I shouldn't be leaving," not a bit of a doubt. I just feel ready for this quarter to be over so I can go up to NorCal and freeze my ass off on the beautiful Redwood Coast.

Give me sanctity, give me peace.

Those are my feet. Like Quentin Tarantino, but less into them, I like feet for some reason. I think for me, the attraction is within how ugly they are and how much people hate them even though they're in our top 10 necessary body parts (top four limbs, for sure.).

Anyway, I just wanted to play with uploading a picture. However, this post does differ from others in two ways: 1) I'm not laying in my bed, doing this from my laptop, falling asleep and letting the folly of thought overtake me; and 2) look at what time I posted this. Now, look at the times for the other posts. See something? This is the earliest one of the last ten or so. I start school tomorrow, I gotta get my whore ass ready to go to bed before 5AM. Don't call it insomnia, don't call it a worry, it's just me being me.

I burned my thumb on the iron the other day. It's a rough spot that's healing. If I had a picture of that, I'd post it too.

The Dodgers' playoff hopes are officially moot. Grady Little even said so himself, and that's just not allowed. You don't write off your own team until you've officially been knocked out. That's just not logical. That's just not nice to your players making a combined 100 million dollars. Give them some hope for their money.

I actually had a moment tonight where I had to tell myself that baseball is just a game. It was when Broxton, for the second night in a row, gave up a homerun to Matt Holliday, who, actually, is a great young player and I'm afraid of the Rockies in the years to come.

I switched my bio class with a photography class. Gonna take it easy this last quarter before I get my ass kicked in the cold. Go Lumberjacks!

I never loved nobody fully.

As I sit here, listening to my dog bark downstairs, waking up my sister, I can't help but reflect upon this great big collapse that I'm busy recovering from that happened throughout the last three years.

I think it started the moment Alycia broke up with me. I took it as if she had left me at the altar even though we had only been dating for two weeks. She left me in disarray for no apparent reason other than I was way too creepily into her and I couldn't understand that it was just plain weird for that to be.

That year, 2004, was a downward spiral. I was transmuting all of my feelings onto another girl, Katelyn Duffy, who I don't think I ever really liked. But, she was blonde and she was christian and I was crazy--she was my surrogate. And I could never understand why she didn't want to date me. Until the other day when the "Holy Shit, I never realized this even though it's so goddam obvious that I should have realized this" moment happened: what kind of girl would want to date a guy who's madly in love with another girl, of which she knows the ENTIRE situation and how crazy I am about her and about everything else. I am stupid. Or at least was. Hindsight is 20\20, right?

Anyway, by the end of 2004, I was diagnosed bi-polar.

(( and I know that all of this is shit you don't care to hear about, but whatever. I was on meds, finally, and was ready for my senior year. ))

My senior year was basically a plateau for this whole collapse. I had a girlfriend, so shit couldn't be too bad for me. But it was, all the same, because of my feelings for this girl in marching band. Because of Kailee, I couldn't ever fully commit to Kaitlyn. She's why I broke up with a girl who was mad about me on the day of prom (yea, I know, dick move on my part). I thought that I could regain some sort of relationship like Kailee and I had had near the end of 2004, right before I was diagnosed and medicated. The funny thing, here, too, is that, since I could never actually talk to Kailee (don't ask why, I had some sort of ultra-broke-down-sad-ass notion that she was way up in the echelon of sacred-goddesses, and thus could not be spoken to about anything. I think I just wanted to revere her), I always ended up transmuting those feelings onto her best friend, Christina, who I don't know if I ever really liked, but at least she was more human in my mind and thus easier to talk to. So the only girl I had actually expressed my feelings rightly to, and had success with it, was Kaitlyn.

And, by September 2006, I was using Kaitlyn for my own lust and private adoration. Trying to get my fill. I think that, when I realized this and broke up with her for the final time, was the edge and bottom of the collapse. Of my collapse.

And for about a year I floundered at the bottom, not doing much, not surrendering much, just kind of... at the bottom of this big cavernous valley which I had unwillingly, but divinely and unavoidably, climbed down into. And now I'm on the opposite side of this big great valley, having meandered across the bottom of it, climbing out the other end toward normality. I'm ready for it, I've seen the greatest of the lowest, and I'm working on getting my God and my sanity back.

The day I got my letter of acceptance from Humboldt was the first day I started up the opposite side of the valley, when things started looking up for me, y'know? I'm so tired of everyone knowing me. I've had my years of thick-headed, shit-for-brains, dense-ass, stupidity, and now I'm ready for my less-naive self to takehold of my feelings for one girl and actually use them on that same girl, and not on some other surrogate that's never quite the same because no two people are the same (we're like snowflakes, really. We all seem the same at the beginning, until you survey us under a microscope and we're really not all the same because I have a crevice and a turn where you have a dash and a point. Then you look a little deeper, and see atoms, and realize that we're really all the same, no matter where God folded me and cut me with scissors and paper [a vaguely worded allusion the those snowflakes we'd made as kids around Christmas time to decorate the classroom with]). We are all beautiful, we are all serial killers. Moby thinks we are all made of stars.

So, I'm climbing out, I guess. I know now that the stories I wrote in 2004 are shitty. I know now that I put Katelyn and David and everyone else who was ever close to me in 2004-early 2005 through way too much shit to even be apologized for, though I would in a heartbeat if I felt it were something that could actually be forgiven. It can't be forgiven. I can't be forgiven for what I've done to you. I can't be forgiven by you. It's too big for mortals to actually let go of all that crap. It's only for me and Jesus to sort out. And we've got a shit-ton to sort out, it seems. But we also have a lot of time to sort it out as He and I have this big long hike in front of us. I'm glad he can make rocks give us water because damn am I thirsty. But, yea, he's like the accountant that has to sort through a closet-full of unorganized paperwork to figure out why I got a $100,000 tax return even though I haven't paid my taxes in 6 years and 7 moons. Once again, another convoluted analogy.

Anyway, God is love and I am at Peace.

Eyes were made to cry during her birthing a child.

I feel sick. My stomach feels "wrapped in bailing wire." I'm sick of my soul being sodomized by cynicism and irony. I want my G-D back. I believe in him yet he feels so far away... Like a deity that left and can't be grasped onto.

I'm sick of loneliness. With G-d and JP so far away, I feel like parts of my soul have up and gone away for the winter months amongst the southern flightless birds. It's not queer to miss my best friends. I still have Jasmine, and I love you to death, but I'm so scared of G-d or JP never coming back the same. Being different. Changing the good parts, the warm parts, the sacred parts. I know all of G-d is sacred.

Must I, really, be brave in these the waning months of autumnal change and discomfort?

Jesus is my G-d is my Holy Ghost that haunts the weeds behind my house to scare me awake amongst the night and to keep me safe.

I feel the anguished Autumnal blues coming on--and the season hasn't even started yet.

A Juggernaut heart. And a Japanese car.

This is something that I struggle with concerning Christianity: everything on Earth, all matter, never breaks down. It simply reappears in a new form, molds and becomes something else. Gets new life breathed into it. I was talking to someone about this once and they mentioned that any one of a trillion people could have a part of Abraham Lincoln in them. All matter is eternal. Is our eternal life to be recycled among the Earth going to from sand to sea to rock to ridge? If that is the case, then isn't this simply an Eastern thought of cyclical still-life reviving itself? How does that fit into the "one life to live?" Is it that our metaphysical, our souls, are singular and made of something other than matter? Or do our souls simply not exist? Is the soul simply a manifestation to give us hope that there's something not so evil inside of us? I don't know, that's why I'm asking you. If parts of me, one day, will be soaking in the dirt, becoming new parts of newer things--if my atoms and my electrons are constantly shifting--then how can I affirm that this is my one life, how can I affirm that I go to heaven and not simply begin sifting back through the dirt until I manifest again?

I've brought this up before, the lessons that God could teach a soul through reincarnation. For example, if a soul (not a person: a person is the soul's shell. Think of us as horseshoe crabs, I guess. We shed our shells and find a bigger one.) has problems with patience, wouldn't it be a great big beautiful exercise in patience if God made the soul come back as a Redwood tree, one that lives for a thousand years and is stagnant, unmoving, and simply reaching higher and higher? Or what if he wanted to teach vain souls a lesson by making them come back as pigs?

Are our souls eternal? If they are not, then how is there a heaven? If they are, then how is there a heaven beyond the eternal that is already on this Earth? Even when the Earth disintegrates, or gets consumed by the sun, or gets blown to bits by our own hands, the matter will still exist, and we will float all over space.

Oh my God, how can one life of a billion heartbeats be all there is?! I just don't understand!

I went to bed. Read Matthew 11. Jumped ahead to 14. Started reading 6 parables starting with "The Kingdom of Heaven is like..." I caught a second wind. I made a new logo for this site, deciding that two logos both utilizing a sketch or painting by Salvador Dali were indicative of a bygone fetish. Reload enough and you'll see the new one. It was going to have a superimposed image of Charles Bukowski's ugly ass face. But I'm so goddam rusty at photoshopping that I couldn't get it right. I got frustrated. I made this one. I like it. It's got John Fahey driving a car towards hell. And the Daniel Johnston frog on his roof. And a lyric from a song that you should know. If you don't, ask me. Or type it into google. School has yet to start. I miss my friend Kelley. I haven't seen her in two weeks. I don't really miss JP yet. I should consider starting. I won't see him for at least a month or more. For the first time in two years. I applied for housing, I think I want to live in the Academic Area. In Cypress. They have some badass dorm setups, it seems. I'm gonna live in a suite, sharing a common area with 7-10 people, and a room with 1 person. That should be bitchin'. I want to be an underscore.

Fine purveyors of:

___________
(noun)

Transcendental, Mudslung, Heroless Blues.

Notes:

Listening to John Fahey makes you want to add the word blues to the end of every thing you write blues.

I got accepted as a transfer student to Humboldt for the Spring 2008 Semester. Instruction begins January 22nd. I'm excited.

Meat:

I watched the first Michel Gondry\Charlie Kaufman vehicle last night (The second being the epiphanical Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) entitled Human Nature. In typical Kaufman style, it's a fucked up script about a woman with a hormone problem that causes her to have hair all over her body like a man which causes her to shun society and live among the wilderness naked for many years. There, she becomes a nature writer and ascertains enough money to get her hair electrically removed by Tina from Do the Right Thing (Thank God for the left nipple...). Through her, she meets a man who's legally blind with a small penis who she falls in love with despite his severe OCD. They both just want love. Meanwhile, they go for a nature hike and discover a man who was raised by an ape who the man, played by Tim Robbins, insists on turning into an ultra-civilized being (he's always trying to train mice to have table manners, a funny aside to the story). During these trials, Robbins' character falls for his French Secretary, and the ape-man, named Puff, sees their first sexual encounter. Immediately he's fucked up. This is subsequently followed by a falling out between the hairy woman (played by Patricia Arquette) and Robbins' character and Puff. Success and wilderness abound.

Apparently, this movie was supposed to raise philosophical questions about nurture versus nature, but, to me, it was just a typical love quadrangle story that just happened to involved some ultra-quirky characters (much like all of Kaufman's works) and it seems to fall short. His writing and scripting is definitely exonerated when you put Gondry's magical touch on it all. That man has an eye and a knack for making things look downright-fucking-pretty in the most cartoonish, arealistic-but-really-hyper-realistic sense. I can't recommend the movie though, because it dragged on for far too long, and definitely sagged under its supposed weight.

I have seen three (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Human Nature) of Charlie Kaufman's five (Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) movies, and I have to say that he is an auteur for the weird shit. I don't think anyone can consistently devise strange-ass characters as well as he can and then consistently get directors that can fully realize the quirks he wants conveyed. Gondry definitely has Kaufman's number since Gondry, as evidenced in his writing-debut The Science of Sleep, is also into creating weird-as-shit characters.

"Stephane, what do you want me to do?"

"I don't know, maybe play with my hair for a little bit."

Potatoes:

I hate potatoes.