4 years

As I walk by the church tonight, I can see oil lamps burning through the windows. It's strange to think that four years have passed since I first stepped foot in there. In a lot of ways I still feel like a stranger there, but at the same time, seeing those burning lamps gives me a feeling of security, like those are the home fires being stoked and tended.

The Lonely Strangers

The Lonely Strangers

by

Elias Ashley Davis

The lonely strangers sat side by side on the secluded park bench in silence. Neither of them could think of anything to say to the other. Finally, one of them started to say something, but stopped. The other, reacting automatically to this attempt to make a connection, also tried to say something, then stopped. They both sat there for a few more minutes in silence. Finally, both of their faces lit up as they started to say something at the same time, but being abashed at the embarrassing juxtaposition, they both stopped. Another short interlude passed. Then what seemed like an epiphany occurred to both of them simultaneously. They looked at each other, opened their mouths as if to say something, and then stopped; embarrassed that they had both shared an epiphany at the same moment. After another long pause, one of them took a deep breath in preparation, looked the other one in the eye, and finally did say something... something very large and incredible, and pontifical, and important, with such profound verbosity that the words were deadly and beautiful. The other, taken aback by this sudden outpouring, almost said something... but then someone else showed up and said something that just killed it, so the two lonely strangers just continued to sit there, saying nothing and looking like a couple of retards.

Thoughts of you

My thoughts of you keep falling into their accustomed places, so often now that I'm beginning to wonder if what I'm feeling anymore is real, or if it's just a habit. There's no way to really know, you see, and that's a truth I've come to realize with some dismay... that the memory of life isn't organized the way you or I or any of us would want it to be - like a story, with a beginning and an arc and a moral, and characters that grow and develop, and the resolution of conflict, and then ending with a lesson well learned, leaving plenty of room for a sequel. It's mostly just this chaotic mess that only happens to seem like a poem every now and then, and we want so much for it to be a poem that we learn to lie to ourselves. And from there we build our delusions, and wreak the inescapable havoc of hope.

A dream - lost in time with Giant Monsters

First I was watching events, and myself, from the third person.  I saw a much younger and healthier version of myself standing on top of a building with the wind blowing my long hair all around me.  I was happy, and triumphant, because I had traveled back in time.  I was going to find the younger version of my wife and start life all over with her.  But someone from the future was still in contact with me, and she (I dunno who she was) was saying to me, "Are you really going to abandon your present wife, your future wife, here in the present while you luxuriate in the past?"  My point of view switched to the first person as she showed me a view of my future wife without me, growing older and older, lines forming on her face, lines of sadness as well as lines of age, but still beautiful.  I changed my mind and decided to leave the past.

Something happened though, and I got lost and wasn't able to go back.  Everything was a confusing blur, and I was watching events again from outside.  I saw a view into a shower, a prison shower.  It was shower time for the prisoners.  I saw the young version of me in the shower, and heard someone say to me, "He knows how to do it.  He's the one you want."  So I saw myself walk over and stand very close to someone who I at first thought was my wife.  I was very confused, but they weren't doing anything... just standing there, very close, as if comforting each other.  Then I saw that it wasn't my wife, but a young male prisoner who looked a lot like her.  The young version of me said thank you to the guy, and walked away.  I saw everything from my own eyes again after that, and I realized that I was looking for a way back to my own time, and my wife, and somehow I'd wound up in prison.  The young kid in prison was a version of her in this weird timeline, but she was a man instead.  But he was able to remember things from the correct timeline, and he'd told me how to get back to her.

Then all of us prisoners were in line in a very large bathroom with urinals spaced very close to each other along all of the walls.  Just the way I hate it, with no dividers.  Nobody was using them though, and the line was just progressing slowing around the room.  It so weird that I suddenly burst into gales of uproarious laughter.  I was looking across the room, watching one guy shove a cream pie into his mouth and then spit the whole thing out, intact, across the room into another guys face.  It was the funniest thing I'd ever seen.  The line progressed, and finally I found myself in the prison halls, and I was wearing a prison jumpsuit.

There were two people with me... my brother Matt, and one other person who was a close friend, but not identified.  We began to walk quickly down the halls, and that's when I realized that what was happening was very similar to dreams I've had before which have recurred, but I didn't realize that what was going on at the time was a dream.  What happened was, we were walking very quickly and gradually we found ourselves outside the prison and on the streets of a large metropolis.  My friend said, "I don't think we're supposed to be out here, did we escape from prison?"  I replied, "I've dreamed this before, this is so weird.  We're definitely out of prison, but I don't know how that happened."  Then Matt started running, and we ran after him.

As we ran, we dodged around different people.  It was like an obstacle course, trying to keep up with him.  I looked for my wife in the crowd, hoping that this was all happening for a reason and that I would find her here, and I got separated from my friend.  I heard him yelling to me from the other side of the street, "Keep us in sight!  Don't lose us!  Follow us around if you see us change direction!"  I looked over to the left across a busy street and saw them running flat out, up a hill towards a cross street.  The day was overcast and dreary, and the only color that stood out was a bright red hat that Matt was wearing, so I kept an eye on that.  When they got to the top of the hill, they both saw something that I couldn't see, and I heard cries of dismay and panic.  "Go to the right!  Turn with us, follow us!  Oh dear God, no no no!"  And then they disappeared behind buildings as they took the cross street. 

I had wound up in a public park, so I ran through bushes and around trees and down a hill into it, trying to catch glimpses of them between buildings on top of the next hill as they ran.  I glanced behind me and was filled with an immediate sense of fear and dread.  Dark clouds were churning in the sky, and I could hear a deep rumble with a more organic sound layered above it, but it wasn't something I could describe.  It had the effect of instantly sending me into a panic for my life.  I was more scared than I'd ever felt, and I suddenly remembered that this was just like another dream I'd had before.  I knew, I was positive, that there was a giant monster behind me, that it was attacking the city, and that it was coming closer, and that there was no way to escape from it.  This is what my brother and my friend had seen from the top of the hill that made them cry with such fear.  Even though I was terrified, I looked behind me again.  I saw what looked like another hill emerge above the hill I was running down, and it had bony protrusions growing out of it, and it was moving upward and would soon come into full view.  I didn't want to see it, so I turned back around and ran as fast as I could toward a copse of trees, and I hid in there.  I could see my brother and my friend occasionally through the buildings and trees as they ran, and then both of them suddenly stopped, looking in the opposite direction to the one I'd been running, and then they both started running towards me.  I realized with horror that there were two monsters, one ahead of me and one behind me, and that there would be no escape from them. 

I called out to my friend and my brother, and they joined me in the trees, just as the first monster emerged over the hill.  It was just enormous.  About 10 times as big as the Cloverfield monster, and it was looking right at us.  I was hoping that it might miss us, because we're so small, but no such luck.  It looked similar to the Rancor pit monster in ROTJ, but like I said, much much larger, and shaped more like something that walked on four legs.  It's mouth opened, and as I looked inside that gaping maw, I saw that it was large enough to swallow an entire football stadium, with about a hundred thousand attending people, and it would still be hungry.  It was just an incredibly huge, empty space for its head to be wrapped around... just unreal.  Insane.  At that moment, all three of us just lost our heads, and we darted out of the trees in different directions.  I was running in blind fear, as were they, with no particular strategy for evading these monsters, except to just keep moving.  I heard the second one roar and had to cover my ears, but I looked up at it and saw its tongue emerge from its mouth.  I was very long, impossibly long, and it just kept coming out, and I realized that it was prehensile, because it was grabbing trees and tossing them around as it looked for me, and that there would definitely be no escape with two of these tongues writhing around the landscape. 

All this time I had been thinking to myself, from the moment I heard the first screams of fear from my brother and my friend, that this was impossible, I've had this dream before, this can't really be happening, this is just a dream I've had, but it's really happening... how can a dream like this be real?  It can't, it's impossible, but here it is, happening, and it's real, and this is all really happening, and I just can't believe it.

I heard my brother shout to me, he was shouting urgently about a cave, that I should go into the cave.  I saw the cave, right there, and I ran inside.  I don't know what happened to my brother and my friend, and I kept running, deeper and deeper into the cave, wondering if the monster tongues could find a way inside.  I eventually found myself at the other side of the hill, and could see the second monster outside, with its tongue probing all around.  It must have smelled me with its tongue, like snakes do, because it instantly darted towards me.  I ran back into the warren of tunnels, and the tongue followed me.  I though that it had come to the extent of its reach because it suddenly stopped and splayed its end onto the wall of the cave, secreting this sticky white stuff everywhere, but it detached and came after me again.  I knew that it would be over in just a few seconds, so I stopped and drew a small foldable knife that I'd gotten for Christmas last year from my back pocket.  I opened it and determined that I'd at least give this giant monster tongue a good couple of gouges before it got me, and that's when it got me.

My first grave watch

I remember my first grave watch. I raced to get there at something something a.m. in the big fat middle of the small hours because I had overslept and was late. How can I describe what it was like to read that first psalm, psalm 102? I really can't, it was a surreal experience. A first time is always an important moment in time, like... like something that forms and then stays. Like writing your name in concrete. The moment is a thing that can be molded and caressed and put together and loved, all on the fly, and then it it is set in stone forever and ever and can never ever be changed. It kind of hurts to remember a moment that means something, like that night, at my first grave watch. It was like I was in a state of hypnosis. And it was joyful, even though it felt like the saddest thing I'd ever read at that time.

Baby Talk

I don't know a lot about what happened when I was baptized, or how God works in my life, or what the plan is, or much of anything at all. I'm pretty sure though that once I was baptized, things changed and I was no longer wandering aimlessly and without hope. I think that baptism might be a threshold - to put it simply - which is crossed. On the left side of the threshold, there are confusion and misdirection and anguish and despair and ignorance as the predominant properties. But on the right side, there are the Holy Spirit, and a plan, and love and guidance and the grace of God. Now, those things have to exist on the left side as well, or else how would anyone find their way over to the right side? Right?

The trick, or the hard part to all of this, is being able to start moving in the right direction to begin with... to the right, so that you have a chance of crossing over that threshold (I think it starts with really really wanting to, or wishing to). It's like... everything is flipped now, like the complimentary colors of a negative and positive picture. Despair and hope are flipped. It's hard to tell the difference though, during the course of each day, because we're emotionally retarded when it comes to knowing God (we're meaning I'm), so we (meaning I) confuse hope and despair because they're not as easy to tell apart as green and red, or blue and orange, or purple and yellow, or black and white. It's hard to tell them apart, as stupid as that sounds.

The way I'm describing this is like baby talk, I know. But it's these little realizations I have which occur to me in baby talk every now and then that help to keep me from drowning in despair. Knowing the difference between that side and this side, and being aware that after living for 30 something years on that side, that I somehow wound up on this side... well, that gives me a lot of hope. It's just hard to put it into the right perspective and to keep it there.

A startling truth

I think I've discovered a startling truth.  I regret the choices and mistakes I've made which led me to my present life condition, but I'm glad to be here. I regret getting hooked on drugs, but I'm glad the despair gives me a reason to pray.  I regret losing my only real friend, but I'm glad I got the church out of the bargain.  I regret not being a social creature, but I'm glad I have my solitude.  I regret that I don't have a financially stable career doing something I enjoy, but I'm glad I have my job.  I regret being a wreck of a person, but I'm glad I'm not dead. It seems to me that all of my regrets are balanced by something I'm glad of. On average, then, I have no regrets at all. But I'm also not a bit happy. Perfect balance. On average, I don't feel anything at all. I think I don't exist.

Orthodoxy In Space!

Thank you, Russians, for being awesome!  Ok, lets see... now all we need is a space church, a space priest, a space choir, some space readers, space vestments, space incense, space candles, and a bunch of space parishioners.  And Sacraments In Space!

Good will

I miss Leah more than it seems like my heart can bear sometimes.  It's been almost three years, but here it is.  I've been waiting patiently for it to go away, yet here it is.  It just hangs around on my heart, like a kitty using its paw claws to scratch itself a comfortable spot to settle down onto.  Only this kitty never finds a comfy spot, and it never settles down.  It just keeps on.  I have enough faith to know that there's a reason for this; to know that it's not just a product of my f'ed up'd-ness.  For one thing, I really do love her, so that's maybe why this ain't just drying out and spinning down the drain like the other times... but there's still something wrong with that love, must be.  Oh Lord, I'll try to do whatever You want.  There's good will inside of me.

Up and down

Real life isn't like a book or a movie, where you can be sure that when you get to the worst part, you still know that everything is going to be all right.  It's not like that... when you get to the worst part in real life, it feels like it's the end.  It really does feel like the worst part, the real worst part, like there ain't no recovery from it.  That feeling is always real, and at the moment it's occurring it's always undeniably all-powerful.  I don't know how we pull ourselves out of that, what with it having really happened and everything.  Maybe it's because when we actually do feel it, when we're experiencing things as bad as they've ever been, and it feels like it can't get any worse, the reality of the situation is that things can get worse, and probably will, eventually.  But that also means that if things can and do get worse, that things can and do get better, and that there will be an end to what feels like the worst experience, ever.  This is what I've come to know, anyway. 

I sometimes marvel at how much the life I've already lived up until now is like a movie or a book.  How there has been bad awfulness, experiences that have felt like the end of life, yet there they are... just memories, followed by more memories of how things get better, after.  Then things get bad again, worse even... but they get better again, too.  Many, many times it's happened.  It will probably... no, certainly will happen again.  I dunno how many more times, but I do know that there will always be an end to the bad to make room for the beginning of the good, and this gives me the assurance that the bad has a life expectancy.  I don't always know how long that will be, but it's always a period of time that winds up being endurable.  I feel pretty sure right now that I'm not just speaking for myself, although I'm the only person I can speak for with any certainty.  Doesn't that sound retarded?  But I think it's true.

Running commentary

Tonight I walked for a good bit. It was what I like to call one of my epic walks, a walk where things happen. It started with a meteor. Actually, no, that's not right... It had been going on for a while before the meteor; that's just when it got interesting. Right after the meteor I decided to head out into the Denton wilderness. Geez, my hands are cold. I'm wearing gloves, and it helps to blow on them really close to my mouth, but dang! Cold. Anyway, so I'm walking out on this path near this public park, and there are some close hills that make the horizon seem very near. I saw a silhouette of several trees there on the horizon, and thought... there go the Ents. Those are giants over there, giants out of mythology. I stopped to stare at them for a while, and then I'll be fragnappled if they didn't start to move! At first it scared the ever living crap out of me, but then I remembered the horizon, and how the hill made it seem abnormally close. That didn't calm my incipient panic though, because those were people, four of them, walking along in the same wilderness as me, in the dark. If I had been wearing overalls, I probably would have shit in them. I considered turning right around, but then I thought, Ash, don't be a retard. This is real life, not a movie, and those people most likely aren't serial killers. So I kept walking, and they kept walking, but our paths never crossed and we all disappeared into the dark to each other. No harm, no foul. Later I was walking by the lake, and it was so still that the reflection of the city lights in the water seemed like another complete world. By this time fog had begun to roll in, and everything seemed ethereal... like a dream. Dang my thumb is cold. It would really suck to fall down right now. Anyway, I became pretty captivated by the reflection, so I bent over so I could look at the world upside down. I saw all of that foggy reflection as the real world, and the real world as the dream. It reminded me of a recurring dream I have, one that I have often wished I could live in forever. It's impossible to explain how that dream feels, but to put it crudely, it's like a desolate longing for comfort that is never fulfilled. So I kept walking, and the fog continued to fall, and I watched rays of volumetric light seeping through the nearby tree branches, and the fog got thicker. Once again, I felt like I wanted to be up in those tree branches, dreaming away eternity. I must have gaped and gaggled at this spectacle for several minutes, because I kind of lost track of time. I think I stared at the stars for a while, because I remember orienting myself towards the north using the Big Dipper and Polaris as a guide. The Seven Sisters were just visible as seven, and I marveled at the distance between the Pleiades and the Orion Nebula, a vast distance of light years which I could traverse with my eye in half a second. It didn't seem real at all. Now I'm home and I hear sleep calling. I love my sister and my brother in law. And their dogs, too. Dogs represent all the best qualities of people.

Just Started Year

I worked a little bit late tonight, because we had so much beer going out the door and it kept needing to be stocked. It was about 11 o'clock by the time I left the store, and on the way home, a cop flashed his lights at me as he passed me. Even though I know most of the cops in Denton because they come into the store so often, this scared the crap out of me. I'm afraid of cops, always will be... it has to do with my illicit history which I hope I will be able to leave behind me someday. Anyway, most of those cops know me too, and since I wasn't captured and taken to hell, I'm sure he was just wishing me a happy new year in his cop way. A few minutes later I passed a house that was partying it up and counting down to the rollover. A guy and a girl ran by at that point, both with a beer in each fist, and when the countdown reached zero they swung there beer laden arms around each other and kissed. I felt a little jealousy at that moment, as I usually do when I'm reminded of what I don't have, but those moments usually pass pretty quickly. Now I'm almost home, and I can hear regularly intermittent fireworks. Happy New Year everybody! I just know those fireworks are going to keep me up while I'm trying to sleep.

The Jesus Prayer

You know how the pilgrim felt saying the Jesus Prayer?  That pure joy with the pain in his heart?  I know that's true, because I've felt that twice.  The first time it happened, I'd been walking around for hours at night in utter despair, saying the Jesus Prayer, over and over like a zombie.  I wasn't expecting any mercy or anything at all, I was just completely overcome with hopelessness.  Then it was like I began to rise up out of it.  It was surprising.  It was weird.  It was completely unexpected, and when it happened, I couldn't quite believe it.  I kept going up and up and up, until I was overcome with joy.  I didn't know what to make of it.  Everything was suddenly all right!  It was amazing.  Just flat out amazing.  I kept walking, and then I felt that pain in my heart, like it was described... like a hot nail.  It wasn't intense, so I don't think I was very far into a real state of prayer; just at the beginning.  But it was still recognizably there, and I remembered the pilgrim, and I put it all together, and I almost lost it all because I got so excited.  But the state persisted until I got home, and got in bed, and closed my eyes, and drifted off in the most blissful state of contentment I'd ever felt.

The next day I was so excited when I woke up.  I couldn't wait to get outside and walk so I could say the Jesus Prayer again, over and over.  I reached a similar state of bliss, again.  Everything was beautiful, and there was nothing wrong with anything, anywhere, and everything was just indescribably joyous and beautiful and right.  I spent the day like that and on into the evening, but I didn't get the pain in my heart that time.

The next day I was determined to do it again, but it never quite caught that time.  After that, I just kind of forgot about it.  I've tried to get that back again, but have never been able to since then.  That was back in April of 2010.

A problem

I wrote the other day about being stuck.  Well, that's certainly true, I'm stuck for sure.  It's a problem, and a tough one.

A few of years ago I had the first inkling of a feeling of an urge to become a monastic.  It was back during the summer of '09, when I was talking to someone who was telling me how they would like to visit a monastery.  It was a very tiny little realization of a thought, but it was definitely there; that first hint of a desire to become a monk.  Later that year, while I was attending a vespers service in Tyler - it was October of '09 - I had another epiphany, and for a while after that, I recognized that old feeling again, but this time it was a desire to become a priest, or a deacon, or something.  A reader, maybe... I'm pretty sure I'd like to be tonsured as a reader, at least.  Anyway, that was back when I thought I was going to be married soon, but since that relationship ended back in April of '10, I've thought more and more about moving to a monastery to see if that kind of life suited me.  The feeling that I should become a priest has subsided a lot.  I don't think I'd make a very good one, but what the heck do I know?  The urge to move towards monasticism, however... that one has been growing for the past three years.  I've prayed often for God to make this feeling stronger and more clear in me if it was His will that I should become a monk.

Lately the desire to check out a monastery has been growing, becoming stronger and stronger.  There are times when I'm absolutely sure that's what I want to do, to become a monk and live a simple solitary life saying the Jesus Prayer constantly.  Maybe even a hermit.  The problem is, I'm stuck.  I'm an addict... I'm addicted to drugs, alcohol, caffeine, food, comfort, and everything else material.  If I could just get rid of my need for substances though... if I could just eradicate that from my life, there would be no obstacle that I would feel that I couldn't overcome which would stop me from just moving to a monastery flat out and abandoning society.  It's the addiction that is the clincher.  It's a problem, and a tough one.

If I could just get out from under this problem, I think everything would be ok.

A dream - Some kind of explosion

Clint and I were touring a factory that made chocolate, and we watched huge chunks of it going down these ramps into machines that just tore them into component atoms for processing.  I thought it was a little more than was needed for chocolate, but what did I know?  I imagined a human going into one, and was immediately horrified.  I couldn't help it.  I kept imagining it.  I mentioned it to Clint, and he agreed... yup, that's horrible.  The tour ended and we were outside.  It was a nice campus, in California somewhere, with modern glass buildings and tended grass and ordered pathways.  There were a lot of people around, everyone going about their business.  Then somebody started yelling, and he ran by and brushed me slightly as he passed, and he was yelling for everyone to get back inside, get back inside, now!  I looked around and people were confused, and starting to panic.  I looked for Clint, but he was gone.  I ran up one of the paths to the top of a hill near one of the buildings so I could get a better view of what was going on.  I saw a few flashes, like lightening, and then felt something pulling on my arm.  I looked down, and little kid, about 5, was gripping my hand for dear life.  I got to the top of the hill and could see across the valley, which was being lit intermittently.  I dashed for the safety of a nearby building and the kid got left behind.  Then there was a blinding flash and the loudest sound ever, and extreme heat.