ah, irony

So on our way out to camp, I notice this gentleman’s truck in front of us at a stop light. We decided it would be worth it to follow him, and as luck would have it, he parked after about a half mile and we surreptitiously snapped a photo. This is the kind of thing that just screams “post me on your blog, ppl will think itz hilariouszzz!”  So, here you go.

sharp things

hope can be a knife
that cuts on both sides,
so you have to be careful.
there are those who fear
so much to bleed
they’d throw away the blade,
and live as best they can;
those who hold it so tight
the blood begins to fall,
they’re the ones
that haven’t yet learned
to fear, but they will.
I haven’t the skill
to hope unscathed,
but what is faith
if not the reason for blood?

astronomy (and extended metaphors)

the thin line between
loving and wanting,
the firefly in the jar
or the star in the sky;
the one soon to die,
the other so bright
but so far away,
cold light waiting
quietly for the day
like I’m waiting now,
breath held tight
against the darkness
fingers crossed
in simple unspoken prayers,
that the light won’t be
dead before it reaches us,
here on our separate hills
overlooking the night.
but how foolish we are,
waiting for a distant star
when look, behind us,
a rising sun, it is morning

yuletide

the world groans
under the weight
and you start to wish for
childhood and the days
of holding hands without
your fingers interlaced,
and then you realize
how far you’ve yet to go,
that to stars and trees and love
we are infants still
and being happy,
not being ready,
can be enough
in this world of maybe
and how laughable it is
to feel alone
in a world that has a sky,
and a song,
and you

munich

    I finally got around to seeing Munich. I’m sure pretty much everyone else has already seen it, so I’ll spare you the “omgzzz it wuz so awsummz, etc.” It had a lot of ugliness, and a lot of truth. That’s all I’ll say about the movie itself.
It’s things like this that get me thinking about how completely fucked humanity is (note the rarely-used expletive. that’s how they’re supposed to be used). We’ll do anything to hold on to our fragile happiness, even if we have to steal it from others. Every crime and atrocity stems directly from people looking for fulfillment. I tend to think we’ve looked in a lot of the wrong places.
These kinds of movies can also be fodder for a lot of existentialist garbage that would take away even our hope that things can be different. I can’t go that route, and I pity those that do. It’s a damn bleak philosophy. The fact that we’re capable of recognizing how far we’ve fallen gives me a great deal of hope. We have at least an idea of how things should be. There’s not a whole lot of theories that account for this. I can really only think of one that recognizes both how far we’ve fallen and how high the place we’ve fallen from. (I’m borrowing heavily from Pascal here, he states the ideas that had been bouncing around in my mind for a while with more clarity than I’ve ever managed to.)
Well, enough philosophy. I start feeling pretentious at about the point when I start name-dropping French mathemeticians. The bottom line:
1) we’re fucked (again, emphasis)
2) we realize this, so
3) things must at some point have been, and can potentially be again, different.
I could think of worse ways to spend my life than trying to make this happen. I also recognize how utterly egomaniacal I’d have to be to think that I could.
So again, the dilemma. Give up hope of reaching something I have to admit at least used to exist, or look for help from something that would have to be bigger than any human endeavor in recorded history (which I think you’d have to agree, has very few, if any, examples of the kind of thing I’m looking for). Ah, getting philosophical again. Sleep sounds good. Forgive my long-windedness.

boredom

Boredom is no fun. That statement was obvious. So was that one. Yikes, better stop before i get caught in another loop of infinite redundancy. The last time wasn’t very pretty, I had to do some pretty fast math to escape. I need a project or something. Maybe building a fort. It’s hard to really get started on anything else with this relationship stuff looming on the horizon (or wherever things loom). I tend to get obsessive, which I really am trying to work on. It springs, no doubt, from an overactive imagination and general inability to let things lie.
The park today was beautiful, I had to just get out of the house. This place has a way of weighing you down when you’re in it by yourself for a while. I sat underneath a tree, and read one of my favorite books, Winds of War. That’s what has been occupying most of my time, I guess. I found out I definitely have a 4.0 for this semester, which is something of a relief. I have to keep it pretty high for my scholarship, and as much as I’d like to start my career as a writer/vagabond/world traveler, I’d just as soon finish school first. Driving and being outside was a good thing, and I went on a walk this evening. I feel so shady walking around on the streets at night, even if it’s the suburbs. And there’s always some jerk of a dog who has to set off every other dog in the place. Well, the stars were worth it. And the wind.

introspect this

Being home is strange. I’ve spent the majority of the past two days at home, basically alone. The combination of having pretty much nothing to do and a certain big issue (at least to me) on my mind is a pretty good recipe for me getting all obsessive and worried. Nothing out of the ordinary, I suppose. I forget sometimes how much of a wreck I really am.
The contrast between my writing and what I actually say is on my mind for some reason. I wonder sometimes, which one is closest to who I really am. Writing is safer, somehow, which is both good and bad. It’d be nice if I could close the gap a bit. Or if all my important or difficult conversations could be carried out on paper. Something still always seems to get lost in the transcription from thoughts to words, written or spoken. It’s like that one Death Cab song. The boundaries of language I quietly curse, etc. (if they’re not indie enough anymore, I’m sorry. Connor Oberst. Devendra Banhart. Wolf Parade. Harbinger. Happy? Now go away.)
Confusion is becoming a more and more frequent occurrence for me. I don’t know if this is necessarily a bad thing. I’ve been ironing out a few certainties, and they’re the kinds of things that actually matter, so that’s a comfort. Things like patience and selfishness are becoming more immediate to me. It’s tough to care about someone and not be able to know how they feel right away, and to feel like you care more than they do, whether that’s true or not. There’s so much fear there, that only grows with the prospect of not being alone, because you have more to lose. I’m pretty messed up, from what I can see so far. But there’s always hope, or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.
Man, coffee aftertaste sucks. Sleep is looking better than it did.

intellectual humility

    I’m not at all sure about things in general. I’m beginning to realize that searching might be better, and somehow more honest, than believing you have all the answers. It’s something too many people do. Christians and Atheists, Liberals and Conservatives, Libertarians and Everyone else, etc. I mean, as a Christian I find myself tempted a lot to regard a lot of things as irrelevant that I’ve “already got all figured out.” But I don’t think that’s necessarily right. I get the feeling more and more that very few of us are doing Christianity as it is meant to be done. I think the Bible has a lot of truth in it, but I’m not so sure that it’s immune to error. I mean, how many scribes and scholars has that thing gone through to become what it is? And does that really matter anyway? I feel like if someone asked Jesus, “How old is the world, exactly? I mean, carbon dating and a lot of science points in one direction, but the Bible and some other science points in the other,” then he’d just shake his head. We’re missing the point, you know?
Wow, that was kind of tangential. My main point is that it seems a lot safer to assume that we don’t have a clue than to assume we know everything and try to conform reality to our theories. Naturalists have just as  big a problem with this as theists, if not bigger. Not that the majority of either side will admit to this. I guess it’s more comfortable to feel like you know. I’m definitely not immune to this either, by the way.
Ah, words, idle words.

indigence

sigur rós is beautiful,
especially tonight for some reason.
i was a complete bum today,
i feel vaguely disgusted with myself.
unresolved things give me indigestion.
cell phones have spoiled us.
i couldn’t imagine how insane i’d go if i had to wait like three months for a letter to get to my girlfriend in switzerland or some such, and then another three months for it to get back, assuming the ship carrying the mail doesn’t get sunk by U-boats. Ah, simpler times.
i keep telling myself i need to write this month,
since at school i get burned out on essays.
we’ll see. boredom is like quicksand.
maybe at least a poem or two will occur
(to the collective groans of all 3 of you who read this stuff)
at least exams are over.

refugees

though clouds like soldiers gather
to war on the fading light,
still would i look into those eyes
see the heavens captured,
kept safe and secret until dawn,
while all around the darkness
claims its apparent victory,
we sit huddled like refugees,
our treasures on our backs
yours hidden in those eyes,
mine as well,
we know something too good to tell
and whisper it without words
while the world around descends
into night,
but only for a time,
for you hold the captive light

(i should be studying for finals)