I don't know what I'm doing. I don't understand what's going on.
For so long now, I had been able to escape the perils of my own depression, but now, no matter how begrudgingly I resist, I can feel myself slipping slowing back into the sadness that I so shamefully admitted to last night.
I've been so happy. Mostly due to one person in my life, but now, not even that is turning me about. I feel like I did this fall when I was slipping in and out of apathy and funeral of the heart. I hate this. I hate it so much. The color is draining from my face for no apparent reason and I weigh my will again and again, and all I can fathom for my melancholy is vanity.
I am that selfish. I'm that fucking selfish.
How can I march in this parade of self-pity? What right do I have to take the world on my shoulders? I have none. I am no different than anyone else, and it is a vanity to think otherwise. Yet now, all I can think about is how hapless I'm becoming. Oh, and how wickedly fast these sentiments do their work too! They are like a poison in my system, and no matter how hard I try to fight them, when dusk arrives every evening, I'm bathed in this terror of whatever the hell is wrong with me.
Lord, what would you have me do?
I have turned my face over these past 4 months and yet I still cannot escape the realities of my own failings. All I ask is to be forgiven, and as I much as I know that you've forgiven me, I cannot escape this guilt. My soul has twisted around it and if it is a sin to say so then forgive me of that as well, but I cannot prostrate myself any lower.
I just want to escape this. I want to get over myself.
but I'm so fucking vain and so fucking sick of myself.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Monday, March 12, 2007
Prayer for the Weary
Dear God,
I have come to the conclusion that I'm a fucking cliche...
Even my imperfect bouts of melancholy, which I fancy poetic, are cliche. I do it for vanity, and it is my vanity that makes me sick. I'm such a terrible person. I cannot blind myself from it any longer and maybe writing it down here is the first step. Confession. I both love and hate confession. It's like picking my own scab and enjoying it bleed. But confession, like humility, is good for the soul.
I'm a fake.
I'm a liar (and I despise liars more than all the sin in this word).
I'm cheap at most.
I am irrevocably defeated. I am stabbed by the sharpest scalpel of self-evaluation and no inkling, but be it divine, can convince me of my worth.
But time goes on, and so must I. Tomorrow is another day, and our lives can change with each breath. So all I can do is hope for some change, and use it to make myself better.
I'll get better because simply put, I have to.
Amen
I have come to the conclusion that I'm a fucking cliche...
Even my imperfect bouts of melancholy, which I fancy poetic, are cliche. I do it for vanity, and it is my vanity that makes me sick. I'm such a terrible person. I cannot blind myself from it any longer and maybe writing it down here is the first step. Confession. I both love and hate confession. It's like picking my own scab and enjoying it bleed. But confession, like humility, is good for the soul.
I'm a fake.
I'm a liar (and I despise liars more than all the sin in this word).
I'm cheap at most.
I am irrevocably defeated. I am stabbed by the sharpest scalpel of self-evaluation and no inkling, but be it divine, can convince me of my worth.
But time goes on, and so must I. Tomorrow is another day, and our lives can change with each breath. So all I can do is hope for some change, and use it to make myself better.
I'll get better because simply put, I have to.
Amen
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Rain Rain More More More On Rain Rain Rain
I know, I know. I have an obsession with memory and rain, but you'll just have to get over it. Superalo!
I have many, many good memories from the rain and it’s difficult to decide which one I should delve into first. Each memory is poking out of my neurons, begging me to describe it first, growing like weeds in the deep furrows of my brain. Maybe that’s all memory is really, weeds sprouting sporadically and randomly from the brain. Or is it the heart? It certainly is much more pleasing to think that memories stem from the heart and not the brain. I realize that that is a biological impossibility and the heart is not the center of intelligence. I just think that there’s something so vulgar and common about the brain, something too scientific, and as a rule I am suspicious and uncomfortable of anything that is scientific.
But my memories of the rain come flooding to my mind and it is hard to just pin-point one. It’s very difficult to weed out one memory and describe it here without being drawn down the path of another memory and divulging into that one as well. But I will try.
I remember about two years ago dancing wildly like an animal. I remember the mud smeared unceremoniously across my naked chest. And of course the rain, I remember the cold heavy rain, and the thunder of an unnaturally warm late November evening. I can see my friend, Jenny, and me spinning in savage, wide circles as we squeal and laugh like Maenads in the alleyway between the Chemistry lab and the theater. Jenny is soaked to the bone in her Beatles t-shirt and One-Fish-Two-Fish pajama pants. Jessica is there too, with paint all over her hands and a wide, almost drunken smile in her eyes. Sarah George is also there, her welcoming, doe eyes closed as she twisted and spun in her own world, her long wavy hair spinning like a veil around her, and looking (as usual) breath-takingly beautiful.
There’s something so ancient about Sarah. It’s like she knows some hidden mystery, but is forbidden to tell the rest of us what it is, and she is therefore condemned to merely hint at it through her piercing glances and song-like voice. I cannot describe how beautiful and unearthly Sarah looks when she dances. I can see the water beading on her skin, crystallizing its paleness. Her long, thin white arms cry out and spin as if she and she alone, were the only one who could correctly communicate with nature. Like she were the interpreter to it’s understanding, and the rest of just merely grapple for that archaic, wordless language which so speaks so fluently.
Sarah is the only girl I’ve ever met that I thought that I could truly love, as a man is supposed to love a woman. As is intended both biologically and spiritually, but like always I failed miserably in my confused and lying pursuit of her. I know I hurt her in my lying, because that’s what it was, a lie. It was a pretense that would not blind her, or God, or myself to who I really was and what my heart really needed which has only now been revealed to me.
but back the memory…
Then there is me, barefoot and bare-chested covered from head to foot in mud because I, unlike the girls, cannot resist swimming in the giant, four inch deep puddles that have formed in the ancient gravel of the alley. I’ve become animalistic and Druid-like in my excitement. I want to become the earth. I want to return to the womb from which we all came and I want to become as clean as God’s fingers. In short, I want to lose my mind, and I do so.
Ah the release! The act of losing your mind is something that is so sweet and so unexpected that it’s like caressing the cheek of the Almighty when it finally happens. It’s the purest and most holy of ecstasies. It’s the first kiss of life before age and reason stamp out and purge the foolish idealism of youth. Something that even at my minuscule eighteen, I can begin to feel creeping in on my cherished innocence.
It’s that moment that I want to hold on to forever. It’s immortality.
I have many, many good memories from the rain and it’s difficult to decide which one I should delve into first. Each memory is poking out of my neurons, begging me to describe it first, growing like weeds in the deep furrows of my brain. Maybe that’s all memory is really, weeds sprouting sporadically and randomly from the brain. Or is it the heart? It certainly is much more pleasing to think that memories stem from the heart and not the brain. I realize that that is a biological impossibility and the heart is not the center of intelligence. I just think that there’s something so vulgar and common about the brain, something too scientific, and as a rule I am suspicious and uncomfortable of anything that is scientific.
But my memories of the rain come flooding to my mind and it is hard to just pin-point one. It’s very difficult to weed out one memory and describe it here without being drawn down the path of another memory and divulging into that one as well. But I will try.
I remember about two years ago dancing wildly like an animal. I remember the mud smeared unceremoniously across my naked chest. And of course the rain, I remember the cold heavy rain, and the thunder of an unnaturally warm late November evening. I can see my friend, Jenny, and me spinning in savage, wide circles as we squeal and laugh like Maenads in the alleyway between the Chemistry lab and the theater. Jenny is soaked to the bone in her Beatles t-shirt and One-Fish-Two-Fish pajama pants. Jessica is there too, with paint all over her hands and a wide, almost drunken smile in her eyes. Sarah George is also there, her welcoming, doe eyes closed as she twisted and spun in her own world, her long wavy hair spinning like a veil around her, and looking (as usual) breath-takingly beautiful.
There’s something so ancient about Sarah. It’s like she knows some hidden mystery, but is forbidden to tell the rest of us what it is, and she is therefore condemned to merely hint at it through her piercing glances and song-like voice. I cannot describe how beautiful and unearthly Sarah looks when she dances. I can see the water beading on her skin, crystallizing its paleness. Her long, thin white arms cry out and spin as if she and she alone, were the only one who could correctly communicate with nature. Like she were the interpreter to it’s understanding, and the rest of just merely grapple for that archaic, wordless language which so speaks so fluently.
Sarah is the only girl I’ve ever met that I thought that I could truly love, as a man is supposed to love a woman. As is intended both biologically and spiritually, but like always I failed miserably in my confused and lying pursuit of her. I know I hurt her in my lying, because that’s what it was, a lie. It was a pretense that would not blind her, or God, or myself to who I really was and what my heart really needed which has only now been revealed to me.
but back the memory…
Then there is me, barefoot and bare-chested covered from head to foot in mud because I, unlike the girls, cannot resist swimming in the giant, four inch deep puddles that have formed in the ancient gravel of the alley. I’ve become animalistic and Druid-like in my excitement. I want to become the earth. I want to return to the womb from which we all came and I want to become as clean as God’s fingers. In short, I want to lose my mind, and I do so.
Ah the release! The act of losing your mind is something that is so sweet and so unexpected that it’s like caressing the cheek of the Almighty when it finally happens. It’s the purest and most holy of ecstasies. It’s the first kiss of life before age and reason stamp out and purge the foolish idealism of youth. Something that even at my minuscule eighteen, I can begin to feel creeping in on my cherished innocence.
It’s that moment that I want to hold on to forever. It’s immortality.
Friday, March 2, 2007
Flowers in my hands. . .
I remember a funeral. My great-grandfather’s when I was ten, maybe eleven years old. I close my eyes and all I can see in my mind is the vibrant, almost violent burst of flowers. They bloom in the small church’s sanctuary which groans in agony as its simple white walls are filled mercilessly with those paying their respects. They come to pay their dues. They are obligated to weep so that in time someone will come and weep for them, turning the soil over, returning dust to dust and dirt to dirt.
I don’t mean to invoke cynicism or sarcasm. It’s just that’s purely how it is. The mind is driven by utterly human impulses, one of them the simple fear of death. This fear becomes a great web of heart-breaking gravity that catches us all and forces us to come stare at the dead. It forces us to break our backs and submit ourselves, unwillingly, to the bleak, stoic certain unknown that is blocked by a veil of superstition and faith. Only with our own passing will that veil be dropped, revealing the hidden secrets of the universe.
And so they come unwillingly. No one wants to confront death.
Even there as a child, I could tell the difference between those truthfully mourning and those only pretending to mourn because it was expected. They may have wanted to shout and laugh, be outside in the sunlight but their inexplicable reverence kept them silent. Their fear of death snipped their tongues from saying what they truly felt. They sat poised, hanging on every word of the eulogy, trying to do something to compensate for their apathy. As a child I was one of them, and only now as an adult can I say what I truly felt that day.
But back to the memory…
The sweet odor of late August heat and the unmistakable scent of lilies boiling in the afternoon sun is all I can smell. I think it is poetic, if not expected, that there is life bursting everywhere in a celebration of death. The flowers are nauseating, but for the life of me I cannot tear away their beauty. I cannot stop thinking that in a matter of time, they like all of us, will wilt and die.
Only a child could think of something so absolute.
My great-grandfather had died from complications of a stroke. It wasn’t a quick, seamless death, but one that was long and degrading; spanning what I think was 6 months. The type of death that was much more painful for those watching than the actual dying. The horrible, terrible sickening death of watching your husband, your father, your grandfather, your great-grandfather become someone else, someone foreign until finally he gives way to the final euphoric release of mortality.
Heavy, heavy shit, that no eleven year old wants to think about.
I don’t mean to invoke cynicism or sarcasm. It’s just that’s purely how it is. The mind is driven by utterly human impulses, one of them the simple fear of death. This fear becomes a great web of heart-breaking gravity that catches us all and forces us to come stare at the dead. It forces us to break our backs and submit ourselves, unwillingly, to the bleak, stoic certain unknown that is blocked by a veil of superstition and faith. Only with our own passing will that veil be dropped, revealing the hidden secrets of the universe.
And so they come unwillingly. No one wants to confront death.
Even there as a child, I could tell the difference between those truthfully mourning and those only pretending to mourn because it was expected. They may have wanted to shout and laugh, be outside in the sunlight but their inexplicable reverence kept them silent. Their fear of death snipped their tongues from saying what they truly felt. They sat poised, hanging on every word of the eulogy, trying to do something to compensate for their apathy. As a child I was one of them, and only now as an adult can I say what I truly felt that day.
But back to the memory…
The sweet odor of late August heat and the unmistakable scent of lilies boiling in the afternoon sun is all I can smell. I think it is poetic, if not expected, that there is life bursting everywhere in a celebration of death. The flowers are nauseating, but for the life of me I cannot tear away their beauty. I cannot stop thinking that in a matter of time, they like all of us, will wilt and die.
Only a child could think of something so absolute.
My great-grandfather had died from complications of a stroke. It wasn’t a quick, seamless death, but one that was long and degrading; spanning what I think was 6 months. The type of death that was much more painful for those watching than the actual dying. The horrible, terrible sickening death of watching your husband, your father, your grandfather, your great-grandfather become someone else, someone foreign until finally he gives way to the final euphoric release of mortality.
Heavy, heavy shit, that no eleven year old wants to think about.
Pardon me
I've been rather neglecting of this little blog; be prepared for about 5 posts today...
I've also been extremely nostalgic and writing down every memory I can...well...remember.
I've also been extremely nostalgic and writing down every memory I can...well...remember.
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