Everything Burns Part II

We are bullets in a chamber.

Here we are, loaded, cocked, locked, and ready to rock. I think it's a shame and a sham that sometimes we as people are seen as interchangable non-assets, just pieces of lead encased and ejected until another comes around. But we are not parts of a bandolier. We are not faceless piece of flesh. We are humans being. Each of us deserving of our own reality show. 

Yet we swap out people so easily. I think of all the people I have ran in to, befriended, talked to, seen, faces that have their own contours and shapes and expressions. Now, some lines do fade and blur, and voices are more like shadows, but I think about the people I have roomed with, experienced life with, and how I don't live with them anymore. How sad it makes me that I had life with them for a part of my life and now we are on our own things, our own time zones, the sun setting at different times for us all, but like one of my favorite songs goes, "it's just the world spinning around."

The world doesn't change much, I reckon. Well, it does, but not as far as human consciousness is concerned; it evolves technologically, from the wheel to the air and so on and so forth, but we, humans, we still feel the same things nomadic herdsmen felt thousands of years before. We still desire to be held, to sleep somewhere that is comfortable, to watch. 

I find it amazing that I have that in common with someone herding sheep at the time of Christ. Or even further back. Maybe all the way back to the beginning, and further forward to the end. 

It's nice to know that some things don't change, and that some things do. 

We are family. 

set in motion

So my faceless readers, with your backs hunched over your shoulders as you peer into this white nexus known as the Internet, you maybe have wondered where have I wandered off to? Have I been raptured (obviously not), have I grown a whispy blonde beard and headed off into the woods (no good forests left anymore), or have I just grown weary of the world (maybe)?


I have been busy, and the book is still not yet done, Lord knows when it will be. I have a literary agent on hold as we speak, waiting for me to submit a book proposal that I don't know how to write. I have never been good with honestly pumping myself up to other people; I feel as though the things I say are not really true, but just residual self images of me that I think exist. And sometimes when I try to write something, I watch the cursor blink on and off on its own metered time, and I get lost in the times when it is gone, comes back.

Maybe that's how I am, blinking on and off, part of me here, part of me gone, over and over again. And when I fade back in, blinking only for a moment, my head is clear, and my heart is fresh, and I start watching people live again, and notice my own life, my own being, how bushes feel when you pass by them, how the wind blows into the trees, how the sun only appears to set, but it's just the world spinning around.

And that is a sobering thought. That sometimes what I think and believe and rely on in this world is merely a fabrication caused by my perspective. I was on my porch today and watched a couple sweeping their deck across the way, and they held hands and drank some red drink out of a clear plastic gas station cup. Unbeknownst to them, never will they know me, or care to. They, like most of the world, will live their lives without me, never hearing my voice, or watching my quirks when I talk. And they are fine with that, and in some way I guess I have to be, too.

This is me, blinking on. Soon, I'll disappear.

You could untie your end and let it go.

Far too long has it been since I last blogged. And I'm not sure why, maybe because I find writer's block is more like writer's dam, and the words that I want to say don't make sense to me, most of the time, and because I find inspiration harder and harder to find, hiding under some worthless rock somewhere. But nonetheless, muses come in the oddest shapes and sizes.

I put my ear to a large seashell last week, one bigger than my head, and I heard the waves of the seas moving, and it made me wonder if that's what it is like to be deaf, only hearing the ocean for the rest of your life. And I thought it sounded pretty peaceful, to be like that. Or if it is a low hum, like tires on a car going down the highway. I have found much peace in those two sounds, so I, of course, would not mind not hearing anything after that. But what of the mouths of your friends? And what does G-d sound like to someone who has never heard a voice before? Many questions, few answers, such is life.

I also went to a thrift store and a flea market last weekend, something I have not done in far too long. But this time, instead of digging through cheap shirts and finding old furniture to stock my apartment, I found myself saddened by the depravity of the business. I saw old portraits in frames of old families smiling. I witnessed an old man gathering old magazines, and I wondered who they were for. I saw a man buying earrings for his wife, old dangling things with rust on them, and he looked so proud at his purchase. I'm sure most of these things were items of the dead that they just could not take with them. And in the flea market, I saw sad worn out faces peddling small things, ripped off sunglasses and faded records. And they made no attempt to harass you to make you come and look at their treasures, just followed you with hungry eyes as you went down the aisle.

In times like these, it is so hard for me to find hope, to see the good in things, to see the sun. But I know in the markets of the poor there must be some wonderful little pearl, something that makes them go. And you can't hate the human spirit of determination, but maybe you can hate the way we go about doing them.

My book is almost done, it's taken two years. Chapters roll out like cement trucks, slow and lumbering, but I think it might be the best thing I have ever done.

The Place That You Have Come To Fear The Most.

This is going to be a different kind of blog, for once. I guess so, anyways.

It's more for the prayin' type of person, people who believe in a higher power. If you don't then that's fine, too. Think about it, if nothing else.

I know someone who knows someone whose mother was just diagnosed with colon cancer. Now I know that sounds like the beginning of an urban legend, but it's true. I received a text message earlier tonight about it, and I guess it got me thinking.

Life is precious, whatever this part of our existence is. And the times and memories and places and faces that are pressed and burned and recorded in our minds are unique and particular and beautiful and sad all at the same time. We are like the chaff, here for a moment then gone.

But in that time, that quick rise of dust in the timeline of eternity, we live. And we live around people and with people and even for people during that brief instance. And we grow to love them and nurture them and birth them and, sadly, bury them. It is the way of the world, the way things will always be, it seems. But as vanilla and neutral as that sounds, it holds so much more breadth and depth to it. Entire lifetimes, years go by, we interact and interweave with one another. It blows my mind that we, as humans, can be.

Love. Maybe the most amazing gray matter here. It exists, I hope it does. I think it does, I've seen it, been apart of it, am a part of it. I could go on and on until I was blue in the face about it, but it is one of those things that when people experience it full on, unbound, it can change your world. And I hope in that Love, I want to believe that it is out there for me, that whole "one for me" kinda Love. It exists in many parts, has many hands, but that certain one seems to elude me.

But I say all of that to say that I am thinking of this person, and her family and the memories and the images and all the things going on inside her head. And I hurt for her, and for her husband and for her children and friends. So pray for her if you can, pray for her husband and her children and her friends. Pray that G-d will heal her, if He wants to.

Finally, I hope that one day when I'm old and gray and full of sleep and that perhaps if Love has found me and kept me for a bit and I am holding her hands, both our hands wrinkled and worn, and our fingers are arthritic but entangled, we will dance in an open field under stars and constellations that have been there for thousands of years. And her eyes, to me, would have never changed, neither her smile or the way she smelled, and I would smile, probably with false teeth, and that she would rest her head on my old shoulder.

Pray for her, that she would do the same. Pray for me, too, while you're at it. And pray for yourself.

We are the Hollow Men

Like old trees, dead on the inside, only maggots and slimy creatures living inside. Our heads are filled with straw, we talk and mumble in meaningless phrases, empty words from empty mouths and empty tongues. And masked with our best makeup to make it all better.

But it's not better. It's never better.

I love the Eliot poem "The Hollow Men". I love men who spoke the truth and it still rings true today. There are some parts of the human condition that do not change with the fashion trends and technology. Whether groaning in silence or spewing lies, man remains the same. I wonder if lying has evolved, like we supposedly have. I don't think so, on both parts.

"Our dried voices, when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless as wind in dry grass or rats’ feet over broken glass in our dry cellar"

That's pretty much it.

And I love in his poem how he tries to complete the Lord's Prayer and he can't. Instead he talks about the end of the world. I'll post the end of that in just a moment. But I want to talk about the Lord's Prayer. I used to think I was pretty good at prayer, enjoyed praying in groups of people out loud, voicing our needs and wants from my kneeling pulpit, but it was mostly hot air to fill up my self righteous balloon. And it flew for a while, until I was destroyed. Now, it's different. I talk to G-d with honesty, with simple words, like I am talking to him, not preaching at others. Now, that's not to say I am better than anyone. In my honest opinion we should just do like Jesus says and pray the Lord's Prayer everyday when we wanna talk to G-d.

The last line of T.S. Eliot's poem goes:

"For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the worlds ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper."

In "Donnie Darko" Roberta Sparrow says, "Every single living creature dies alone." And I think that physically yes, we die one at a time, in our own unique way, capping that unique life that we led. With a whimper, with a cry out. But in other ways, no. We die together, we die holding hands. But we still give up our last breath. We give up the ghost.

And that is how we go, that is how the world ends. Whether alone or not, whether a bang or a whimper, it will end, but a beautiful ending it will be. As Tolkien said, "(The) grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back and he beheld white shores, and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise."

That is my ending. Can't wait.

revival, an old man crying.

I have began to realize that even I will, too, grow old one day. And my body will not work the way I have always known it to be. And climbing hills will be harder, and making fists with toes will hurt. And my skin will bunch together and not be so soft. My hair will turn gray, and my sight will grow dim. I will be less able to run, and perhaps even at times to walk.

I will die.

We will all die.

But for now, I will look forward, and see others grow old before me, watch their skin sag and backs hunch over, and voices change. And when I see an old man cry, I will have to turn away, because if something moves someone who has seen so many things, who am I not to crumple under such thunder? Old eyes with tears filling, I'm broken.

Old men remind me of my grandfather, and the years from his death continue to widen the gap of visible, tangible memory. I remember certain aspects of his life as I knew it and saw it, riding on his enormous four wheeler, teaching me how to fish, quiet walks in pastures, laying with him in his recliner watching John Wayne movies and Andy Griffith. Hearing him laugh. Seeing him cook. Knowing that he was a survivor and that I carry half his name and a quarter of his genetics. I can recall his face and his body type, but I never knew him as the strong man of his youth, as a peaceful person caught in a war. As a young man who left with brown hair on his head, and returned with gray. A killer forever haunted by his memories of duty and survival.

He did not talk about the war much, if ever at all. But I, in my childhood ignorance of the horrors of man, and in my fascination with adventure would ask him about it. Maybe nag would be the more appropriate term. I'd want particular stories, places, battlefields and maneuvers. And he would tell me them, water them down to, I think, keep me innocent and to hold back his pain.

When he died, or was close to death, I cannot remember which, my grandmother brought down a very old faded green suitcase out of the attic. She popped open the locks and letters and pictures fell out of it, its contents love letters written to my granny, pictures he had sent back. This small country boy traveling around the world.

When he passed away, I remember old men crying at the sight of my stiff grandfather, arms folded, regal like a knight in his casket. I could not look at him, did not want to have the last thoughts of him as this, this body, this hollow thing asleep before me. But men shook my hand with tears in their eyes telling me stories I had never heard from him, giving me pieces of the puzzle. And I thanked them.

My mom cries sometimes when she looks across the pond at his old house. The pond is drying up now, its life seemingly feeding off of my grandfather's life. She looks across and stares at her old house, where she grew up, where he quietly raised her with powerful words not spoken. I'll see her cry and put my hands on her shoulders, and whisper, "I miss him, too". And she will say back, "After daddy left the pond started dying." And I'll just nod quietly.

Maybe that's Granddaddy in me. The gentle nod, the quiet words, the pushing through hard times.

When an old man cries, they are tears of age, of wisdom, of a love once lost and lived.

At once, gazing at stars

Night was lost on my naked eye,
while the stars were clothed in light
we all tried to prove
that we were men that night.


And time passed us by in a small
slight movement to the dawn
while the buck laid with the fawn
underneath the white night
with the black light.

The Percussion of the Forward Gunner.

As surely as bands
bang their drums
and sing their songs
so, too, our ships
have come and gone,
cutting through the dark air
and water so light,
both of us knowing
our lanterns were blown out that night.

Though I just might!

Maybe, someday,
sail this way.

Unlovely.

Lately, during the day, I have been preoccupied with a particular notion to kind of let myself pass away, to look past my own shortcomings and failures and sadness, and look towards other people, other places, other times, and other faces. That this world is hard, that this world is sad and un-beautiful is no real surprise to most of us who have lived in it for some time.

But to find beauty in a rather ugly world, in a world that, for the most part, would not reveal its true self, is a much harder task, and one that I, unknowningly, have found myself taken. That path is overgrown in my own mind and in my eyes, hard to push through, hard to see past. That carwrecks, handicaps, personal and impersonal imprisonments have banished us from a place where we can smile all the time. That the unlovely can be loved, that ugly people, rather inside or out, can be found in the position of being in loved or in loved to, I think, points to a fascinating truth not found normally in our societal books, philosophies, or television programs. I have always heard, "there is someone for everyone", and for the most part that seems to ring true. Even grotesque is beauty, in its own right, and if truly beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

And this brings an interesting point to mankind, or maybe just to me, who seems constantly stuck five years behind most everyone else in their own personal autonomy and self actualization. The unlovely are loved, and passionately, at that. Death, dead animals, dead people, dead children in some weird format are a beacon towards hope in an otherwise hopeless world. There is a final point, there is an end, should comfort some.

But the idea that there is love for us who have are not on magazine covers (and even for those who are) is quite a nice sight for sore eyes. We who are despised and reprimanded will have our day in the Sun, because, if nothing else, we are loved when we shouldn't be.

I'm late for work.