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.