My parents knew what was the good stuff. And as I grow on in age, I find that I am inheriting this gift, that I, too, begin to know what it means to find the good stuff. I recall back when I didn’t think about such things, took for granted the things they bought, for me to eat, for me to wear, for me to use. Growing up to discover for myself that when I got something, when I picked things out for myself, that somehow they weren’t the same. I realized that I was thinking on the concept of “quality†on only abstract terms. You begin to make choices in your going, exactly what is to be a part of it, when it dawns on you that you can decide you want to suck the marrow out of life — and possibly, if you’re lucky enough, you will be able to pass that ability down to the next generation, when they, too, take things for granted until it is up to them to decide what is to be a part of their lives. Here’s to the good stuff. That’s a little of what makes life worth living.
30 Aug 2008
27 Aug 2008
so many dreams have never touched the ground, or wanted to
so many of us never rise enough from the ground to see them
so many chances lost, to play the fates: a conduit be
24 Aug 2008
The problem is not that the churches are filled with empty pews, but that the pews are filled with empty people.
Night falls, as if time itself stopped, and everyone were freed from it.
Night falls, to resume the haunting of the moon, no one to know why.
Night falls, the spells of light to be dispelled, no such magic on through.
Night falls, we to escape the darkness in dreaming, but not always.
Night falls, where the fire speaks loudest, but lacks in subtlety.
Night falls, the distance between things becoming as infinite, in darkness.
Night falls, the cycle to remind us of the end — and a beginning.
21 Aug 2008
[Book.]
Is it a(nother) cruel trick? Is this a fiendish imagination of the invisible angels, that I be frozen in fear without a cloud in the sky, without a worry in the horizon, without any hint of cataclysmic resolution? Am I a mute Cassandra, only able to know the future, not even to speak it to be disbelieved; and even then, that the instantaneous prophecy prove false, after all? Jeremiah complained to his God that He had made him like unto “a drunken man, a man full of wine†— so what has my God made me? I am a frozen man, a man stopped in time, who has never heard the voice from above assuage his madness. Surely the mercy from on high shall merely let me go, trouble me no more with the deeper thoughts, the thoughts too heavy to form into words. At least release me from the gravity, when nothing wicked this way comes.
And it is just then that the ground shakes violently, where I am thrown to my knees.
[UPDATE: This concludes Chapter 2. The whole of what I have so far is here.]
18 Aug 2008
Do you want to see a miracle?
ohh ohh ohh, ohhh ohh ohh…
It seems so exceptional
That things just work out after all.
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.
Sun comes up and shines so bright
And disappears again at night.
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.
ohh ohh ohh, ohh ohhh ohh…
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.
– Glen Ballard & Dave Stewart
15 Aug 2008
words struck from the silver of starlight
and the dreaming that ensues
poetry in the cadence of a galaxy’s turning
taking eons to recite correctly
the equation floats across the cloudy night
the joining of two unknowables
one too many turns of the wheel
my imagination begins to swallow its tail
the visible world excuse itself
the apocalypse foretold a second before
all to awaken from the dream
the beginning was like the end: nothing
coming or going, sharpest void
12 Aug 2008
The goodness of God is beyond comprehension — that fact alone may be the source of many misunderstandings about Him.
[Book.]
In my imagination a meteorite hurtles down from the heavens and blasts into the car I see, exploding gloriously in a heave of wreckage. In my imagination the street splits open as a giant worm roars out of the depths of the earth. In my imagination everyone pulls off their faces as masks, revealing the demon personages they had been all along. Fire breathing dragons everywhere. Angels and devils climbing out of the alleyways and fluttering down from the clouds. Great tsunamis surging out of the collective of sewers. Or that most terrible of fates, out of the beginning of time, before the beginning: nothing at all. The worst thing that could possibly happen is that nothing happens. Tragedies, of them you can say, at least it’s sad; when the world merely shrugs off all your days, as like unto copies no one even wanted to see the original of: no one cares.
9 Aug 2008
[Book.]
I am suddenly overcome with inertia, an infinite weight that solidifies my limbs. Or is it something trying to warn me of what mayhap be on its way my direction? I carefully look from left to right, turning myself all the way around to spy the entire panorama: just buildings, a car that’s casually turning the corner, two people coming from one direction, one person from another, nothing anywhere that seems at all threatening. Is there some purpose to this paralysis, perhaps, that I am misconstruing? Cynically, that might be said to be the major impetus of much of human history: purpose misconstrued. But really, why am I not able to move, just now? And my heart, now, it starts to beat in a way that I can feel that it is there, in my chest. The adrenaline I can feel like I’ve just been injected with a chemical: I sense the widening of my pupils, the spring-loading of the muscles. My unconscious is preparing for something. Danger.
6 Aug 2008
there is iron in the blood, whether we know why or not
there is fire in our breathing, that ignites the others who listen
there is death in the eye, which we will awaken to, one day
3 Aug 2008
Isn’t it remarkable?
Like every time a rain drop falls,
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.
Birds in winter have their fling
But always make it home by spring.
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.
When you wake up everyday
Please don’t throw your dreams away;
Hold them close to your heart
Cause we’re all a part
Of the ordinary miracle.
Ordinary miracle
– Glen Ballard & Dave Stewart