A dream - The end

Nuclear war was imminent, and Leah had been sent back to Denton to get her affairs in order before going back the monastery to await the development of events.  Matt and I were at the house packing, and Leah was there to say good bye to me.  I was in denial that any bombs would fall, even though we had heard on the radio that there had already been several cities around the world that had been destroyed.  I knew this, but I said out loud that I didn't believe it.  I didn't want to leave.  Matt was urging me to hurry, and I was putting on my boots and lacing them up.  I began to grow very afraid, and I found myself wondering if it would hurt more when the bombs landed since it was cold outside, and whether or not it would make a difference if it was summer instead of winter.  Leah told me that she had been instructed to get back as soon as possible and not to become distracted, and I panicked and reached out for her, and she was there, and she grabbed my hands and pulled me out the door.  Then I was in a car with Matt and Leah, and I could feel my mom's presence but I don't think she was there... but I cried out for her, and said "I'm scared mom!" and she said, "Leah's there for you, she's there, she didn't leave.  Hold on to her." And I reached out, but I felt like I was blind, and I couldn't see, but she was there, and she put her arms around me and we sat there together in the car, in the dark, holding each other.

Little blue fowers.

This is how I feel when I hear this:

A bad feeling starts to well up inside of me, down in the center of me. Like a spring bubbling up, but black instead of clear. It continues to fill up my insides, until a sadness starts to leak out of my eyes and my nose, and I feel like I'm drowning in it The awful, horrible, beautiful melancholy which is this sound pulls me toward it. I feel like I'm attracted to it, but that's a lie because it's pulling me. And I feel so stupid for being sad, because the feelings that these sounds evoke in me seem so familiar and beautiful, but my sadness is a dull monochrome compared to it, in the truth of things where nothing is hidden. And I'm colorless and embarrassed and I despair.

Taking a dump at 32000 feet.

Have you ever watched a plane fly over, late at night and during the small hours when nobody around you is awake, and imagined what was going on up there in that little tiny improbable capsule of comfort, isolated and exposed? You can probably assume that at least the pilot and the copilot are awake and busy talking to air traffic control and getting ready to land that thing. And there are probably at least one or two passengers either jibber jabbering away about something or another, or maybe reading a book or watching the last few minutes of the in flight movie, or fiddling around with their phones, or doing something else to occupy the time, like sleeping or just sitting there being quietly terrified, which is normally what I'm doing when I'm up there in the sky in a plane, a gazillion inches above the ground and rapidly losing altitude.

Or maybe somebody is simply taking a dump up there in the sky. Just think about that for a minute. Out of all the billions and billions of people who have ever lived and died on planet earth during the last several hundred thousand years - since there was even such a thing as people - only we few who have been alive during the last 50 or so years since planes with communal lavatories have been regularly criss-crossing the skies can claim the distinction of positively having been very nearly or possibly even exactly underneath a mile-high crap as it was being taken. I mean, it's simply an inevitable statistic that a dump has been had by someone, or more likely several somebody's, directly above your location at some specific point in your life. Probably many specific points.

So that's what I find myself frequently thinking about at times like these, at night, when I'm out walking and observing and soaking up the probabilistic expressions of quantum fluctuations as collapsing wave forms. What's going on up there right now above our heads in those hundreds, or even thousands of big, hollow lozenges that are constantly sailing through the skies at ludicrous speeds and getting ready to not explode upon impact at Love Field, DFW, or maybe even the Denton Airport?

Is that weird? Not that all of those thousands of mid-air loafs are being pinched every single day... no. What I mean is, is it weird that I even think about it at all? Is that weird? Am I weird... e.g. defective, and/or deformed? Mentally, that is? Has my fragile little mind been warped by 43 incessant years of jury-rigged jihad by the tin-hat terrorists?

I don't know, but it keeps me up at nights. See what I mean? It's 4 o'clock am (4:23 now) and I've been thinking about this since at least 12:30.

The despair of failing to deal with the failure of dealing with despair.

When I'm all filled up with anxiety, I gasp with short, staccato exhalations, like some kind of dysfunctional panic attack. This is the way I express despair, by puking up oxygen. Why is that the overriding motivator in my life? Despair? It's very uncomfortable and I don't like it. I assume that there are some people whose lives average out on the right hand side of zero. Right? That's true, right?

The me I sense inside of myself is a misshapen caricature of something that used to be, or might have been, or could have been good at some point in somebody's memory. What is this ongoing thing that's happening with my being awake time? It feels like I'm surrounded by a polluted cloud of defective potentials, continually collapsing like an elaborately set up domino fall which leads straight to hell. Is this all my fault, that I don't know how to be strong, or just ain't strong enough to figure out how? I don't like it and I don't want it, but it sure feels like I'm stuck with it, so is that my fault?

I know that these are terrible things to think. But I have this compulsion to express myself, and when I start up that machine, this is the stuff that comes out. This ugly thing that I've just written is the common denominator by which the moments of my life are divisible.

As an alternative, I could either lie or just write nothing at all.

On the bright side, I'm pretty sure it doesn't have to be this way... but that's kind of like saying, "I'm pretty sure there's a million dollars in gold buried somewhere."

The abiding sadness

Earlier tonight I went outside to smoke a cigarette.  This, after spending most of the day inside and in bed, idly watching crap on youtube and thinking about how much church I've been missing, and regretting the heck out of it.  And being tired, just so tired and not up to anything.  I use that as my excuse for neglecting that which is the most important, my spiritual health; as I am too tired to think of anything else that might be more accurate.  I console myself with the knowledge that I'll make it up in the future, when I live close by again, if ever... and that I'll even go to church in the morning.  But I know that by then I'll be too tired. 

Anyway.

I stepped outside at about 7:30 and sat down and lit up a smoke and loaded up my e-book on my phone and commenced to reading of True Grit.  I didn't even know it was in my e-library.  I ran across it yesterday and started reading, and it's a helluva good book, by the way.  So, as I was getting settled, I looked up and was suddenly and forcefully cognizant of the living evening as it passed through and around things such as the sky, the clouds, the grass and the leaves, and the tree branches and the air, and myself.  Even in the dead things, like the painted wooden and artificial structures of the houses, and the hard substance of the pavement, and the scattered gravel.  I got up and wandered in a kind of daze over to the road and did a slow 360, looking at everything and mesmerized by the beauty of it all.  You'd never realize that there are so many colors of green until you have the knowledge battered into your eyeballs, which is what it felt like to me.  Getting battered by beauty comes somewhat close to almost describing the feeling of wonder, but to attempt to go further would almost feel like an insult to the plain and simple truth of it.  So I'll just say that at the time, I felt overwhelmed by the simple feeling of the moment and the fact that I was imbedded in it, in this one, particular coordinate of ongoing existence, and that I had the senses to absorb the information which describes it, and that I was this thing which could soak it up and turn it into a sensual phenomenon that my body and soul could recognize as beautiful.

I stood there inside it for as long as it took to finish my cigarette, and then I walked back into the dark house.  Upon leaving that moment behind, I immediately felt a strong sense of regret and remorse for just being away from it, and separated from all of that which I had just witnessed.  And I realized that, even though my heart can break for the beauty of the world, and I can marvel at the miracle that I am this persistent witness to it, I despair at my awareness that none of that wonder has ever touched the deep, abiding horror which occupies the roots of my soul and stagnates there, and it doesn't quell the abiding sadness.  This puzzles me quite a bit.

1:08 am

It's 1:08 technically, the a.m. part.

Okay, running commentary. It's starting to rain now. For a good long while, it just threatened, with lightning and a few little drops.

Haha, okay. It looks like another false alarm.

What's up with all the traffic at 1:15 a.m., anyway?

So that pre-rain smell is happening pretty good right now, and yowza wowza, dadgum but that lightning is bright... it's blinding.

Okay, its raining now, but still kind of wimpy like. I seriously hope I don't get struck.

Uh... I don't know why I felt the need to qualify that with a 'seriously'. Or why I had to even mention it to begin with. Of course I don't want to get struck by lightning. But maybe I do, huh? Maybe? What if getting struck by lightning gives me super powers? What then? Do I still want to get struck by lightning? Do I, or do I not want to get struck by lightning? It's a tough question.

Its 1:28 a.m. now and rain. Lightning, too. Now the rain is just a couple of plitter platters on my umbrella, so I'm closing it. I don't have to worry about spider webs.

Uh oh, now it's coming down again. Whoops, and it's also 1:42. Dang. This ain't exactly the most comfy I've ever been, you know. What the 'ef am I doing out here anyway? Yeesh. I must be retarded. Oh yeah, that's it. Man, am I stupid.

Emergency, emergency.

Well, that just happened. It was a bona-fide emergency, and it just happened. And I actually had to deal with it. Just now, you know. And now that it's resolved, it's done. But I'm not going to say what it was, because its too hard to explain. And it's raining, and right now I have feelings of hatred surging through my uncertainty principles.

Okay, this is what happened. No, never mind... anyway, it were just this thing, you know? So anyway, just forget about it. I've already forgotten about it.

So, what happened was this... aw, for Pete's sake! I already forgot about it! What's wrong with you?

Now my phone is getting a little wet on the inside, because a couple of months ago I bit down on the front glass part pretty hard with my teeth while I was trying to unlock the side door, and it cracked the screen, and so now the wet can get in. Who would'a thunk that would happen?

But it did.

2:15 a.m.

A dream - Missed the train

I had to catch a train at 11:28, and it was already 11:00, and I was supposed to meet Jennifer at this coffeshop/bookstore to hang out before I left.  I looked around and saw that I wasn't even packed yet, but I went ahead and started walking to meet up with her.  I was late getting there, as I was supposed to be there around 10:30, and I didn't see her anywhere, but the door guy said that she was waiting for me in the back where all the regulars hang out.  So I went through the store, and on the way to the back, I passed someone who I thought was Jennifer.  I looked at her and smiled, and she smiled back, nervously, and kept walking.  I turned and started to follow her, and she looked me in the eye and I got a good look at her, and I saw that it wasn't her.  She said, "Sorry man, I got nothing for you!" and hurried away, afraid that I was going to accost her.  I said, "Oh, it's just that you look just like somebody I know..."  but she had already gone.  I examined myself mentally to see if I really presented a threatening image.  I decided that I didn't, and that the girl was just weird.  So I got to the back room, and Jennifer was there, lying on this big mattress/sofa thing with a bunch of other people.  Jennifer looked up and waved me over, and I kind of picked my way through and over the mattress thing to get to her, stepping over people and items and books and stuff.  I got there and plopped down right next to her, and my arm naturally went around her shoulder as I settled down, but not purposefully.  I just seemed natural for it to fall there.  I hurriedly removed it, because her boyfriend is super sensitive, and I didn't want to upset him.  He wasn't there though... so I looked at Jennifer and said, "My train is about to leave, like... right now!" And she laughed and said "You don't have to go anywhere, you can just stay here with me!" And I looked at my watch and saw that it was 11:30, and that she was right, because I had missed my train.

Down the hall

It's been, what... 49 months I guess, and for the most part the pain has been relegated to an obscure closet, way way down the hall and locked up tight, with the lights unscrewed.  I can even forget it's there most of the time.  Sometimes I'll become aware of it though.  Something at work will remind me of her, or I'll run across a memento from back then, or I'll just see that Pantocrator icon she gave me and I'll realize that I've only thought that I'd forgotten.  I realize it's unlikely that we'll ever see or hear from each other again, and it seems to me that I've pretty much come to terms with that... but I'll never, ever forget, and I'll love her, more and more it seems, every day until my life reaches its final moment.  Weird, that.  Normally I'd have been totally fallen back out of love by now for two or three years.  Anywho.  That's that, I guess.  Time for beddy-bye.

Just frikin' super cool.

Wow... the most amazing thing happened today at work. I can still hardly believe it. I don't think I've ever been so completely discombobulated as I was today, when I had the flummox forcibly ejected right out of my brain by a fistful of unexpected, unfettered flabbergast. So this is what happened:

There's this regular customer who has been coming into the store for years. His name is Travis Lee, and I've known him as a close acquaintance for most of that time, as he comes into the store several times a week.  So, today when he was in the store, Jennifer complemented him on this really cool, bizarro alien octopus thing he had tattooed on his shoulder. I expressed my appreciation along with Jennifer, for It was indeed a pretty cool tattoo, and I asked him what the story was with that thing, to which he replied that his dad was a science fiction author, and that it was inspired by something he had written.

This of course is piqued my interest, so I asked if his dad had anything published, expecting the answer to be either no, or that he was self published with only a few dozen or maybe a hundred or so copies of whatever mediocre novel it was that he had written ... so when Travis replied that yes, his dad was published, and in fact was the author of several works which had spent several months each on the New York Times bestseller list...

...this was about the time that my jaw began to come unhinged, as I just kind of stood there staring into space, wondering vaguely who this kids dad was while he stood there, smiling and obviously waiting for me to take a guess. Finally he said, "My dad has co-authored several books with Arthur C Clarke."

He had barely uttered the last syllable when I blurted out, "No fucking way (pardon my French), your dad is Gentry Lee?!" followed by several back and forths consisting of no way, yes way, holy shit, yup, wow, I can't believe it, yep, it's true, wow, yup, and all this time I never even knew, yup, it's pretty crazy huh, which went on for a good two or three minutes, with me reaching over the counter and pumping his hand up and down like a lunatic.

Now, I realize that most people reading this have never even heard of or know who Gentry Lee is or what he even does, with no idea that in the world of science fiction authors he is a major player; one of those rare heavy hitters who actually, really did experience the privilege of co-authoring several books with Arthur C Clarke himself, the man who wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey and Rendezvous with Rama, along with a myriad of other classic science fiction books throughout his decades-spanning career. Oh, and he also came up with the idea for communication satellites.

So, suddenly finding out that this guy who I have known as a fairly close acquaintance for the past several years is, and has been all along, the son of Gentry Lee, a science fiction author with who's works I have been intimately acquainted and have respected for the past 25 years, was probably the biggest surprising shock that I've ever experienced, ever. At least, I can't think of anything else that has completely knocked me out of my socks like that.

Connections

I'm always making friends at work and losing them.  It's a process, like a chunk of life shaped like a rotating drum, with new friends rolling up as the old ones vanish underneath.  I've made friends... good friends, the best friends I've ever had.  And then they go away, and I never see them again.  They're all gone.  They've all passed through my life over the past seven years like a story that wrote itself as it rolled across a cylindrical platen, and then disappeared when the paper ran out.  A phenomenon of fluctuating friendships.

Now there's Jennifer.  We talk a lot about everything, stuff that neither one of us would probably ever tell anyone else..  I don't know where she finds that trust in me.  A couple of  months ago I was walking down Hickory toward all of the bars on Fry Street.  I had my nose down in a book, as usual, so I didn't see the shape that was barreling toward me until the last minute.  It was Jennifer.  She'd been hanging out at one of the bars and had spotted me as I approached, and before I knew it, I was on the receiving end of a full speed tackle hug.  I don't know if I've ever been tackle hugged before, but that kind of thing elicits a feeling which is sort of indescribable.  The feeling you get when you're accepted, and liked, and included in someone's list of things that matter.  That somebody is really aware of you.  It felt like... instant joy, maybe?

Then there are the ones that are gone.  Olivia told me that she loved me more times than I can remember, and I have no idea why.  She's gone now... where to, and doing what, I have no idea.  Matt was always trying to get me to hit the bars with him.  A few times I did, and I'd almost forgotten what it was like to have a good bud to share drinks with and talk with, the way guys talk to one another, but he's been gone for almost a year now.  I saw him a week ago before he left for North Dakota, of all places.  He gave me a hug and said goodbye, and I almost got choked up.  Brittney helped me so much when I first got back from Alaska and was just a complete wreck with a broken heart.  And Leah... Leah's gone.  I'm still somewhat discombobulated about that.  I haven't seen her or spoken to her since October of 2011, since she up and left, to go live at a monastery.  Can you believe that?  It's like something out of a badly written movie.  How the heck does that happen in real life?  Man falls in love.  Woman leaves man.  Man howls ceaselessly in anguish.  Woman runs away to monastery in order to escape the noise.  That actually, really happened, and now this person who was once my best friend - the center of my life, around which all of my thoughts and actions revolved - this woman who I was in love with, who I still love as much as I ever did, now is just somebody that I used to know a few years ago.  It's a hard concept to grasp, that a thing such as this can actually happen in real life, to real people. It's just... incredible.

These people have all consistently brought me into their trusting folds, and I'm always kind of flabbergasted that they do.  They've all, every one of them, reached out with emotional bonding irons to forge a connection between us that always hurts when the time inevitably comes to wrench it loose.  Jennifer will leave eventually, too.  I wonder who will be next?  I wonder if my emotions will eventually break from all the cracks, like metal fatigue, that have formed as a result of so many connections having been made and broken, made and broken, made and broken, made and broken, made and broken... again and again and again.

Ki-Ki

I've got the sweetest ki-ki-meow in the world. Every night when I get home and every morning (or afternoon) when I wake up, he runs into my room and hops up on the bed, meowing his little ki-ki head off, and hops up on the bed and snuggles up right next to me. A rare kitty, one that's actually more like a dog than a cat. His name is Shady Cat, but he answers to meow.

The smell of the universe

Today I was feeling very depressed, all day long. I... for a little while, more than I usually am. Anyway. It was really busy today at work and I didn't get everything done that I wanted to, even though I stayed for an extra hour. I just felt overwhelmed with the regular workload I usually deal with, and gave up without a fuss at about 1 o'clock.

It's the see-through top layer of life, what we call real life, the conscious, awake part that seems important, which seeps into my pores and permeates my body with poison and dilutes my soul and spreads it thin. It seemed especially sticky today though, and I left the store fed up with how thick it felt... not wanting to be fed in any direction, or to be aware of any feeling which described the quagmire.

That's a good word for the thick, interminable stuck thing which occurs between sleeps... quagmire. Just looking at that word makes me feel like my tongue is going to tie up in knots and die trying to say it. It's the perfect word to describe what awakeness feels like to me most of the time.

And that's how I felt tonight, when I left the store. Stuck in the thickness of the quagmire, and just wanting to be out of it for a little while before bed. So I left work tonight, dissatisfied but relieved, and I turned off my brain except for the music part and the walking part, and the subconscious part that processes random craziness.

I had this crazy crazy crazy epiphany tonight, and I'm not sure if I can remember exactly what it was about, but I'll try to right now. It had to do with this music I was listening to, a British band called Doves. It's that rare type of music, which is made out of and resides at a certain level of good, that fools your awareness into noticing and recognizing a single moment, and then immediately taking that advantage to bludgeon it into that rare state of clarity and happiness. You know, that one.

So that's what happened tonight. The music pierced that vulnerable part of my facade which I always keep facing towards all physical phenomena, and I found my whole self being swept away, all of it. This is the point where all of that thing occurred. Should I try to describe all of that thing? Okay, I'll make a half assed go at it.

All that thing was a feeling of the present moment, and the music inside of it, with me mixed up in there somewhere, going on and on and on, but not even lasting an instant... Outside of time, I guess, is the only way to sort of bullshit my way around what that feeling means, because it's actually pretty much impossible to describe it.

Here's another way to describe what it wasn't not like - try to imagine actually being a song. That's what you are, a song. A piece of music. A whole bunch of notes, all existing together and making this sound which is beautiful, and that's what you are. But do you only exist whenever those notes are reverberating as waves through a medium? What is that song as it is being physically played? Does it still exist afterward? What is music anyway? What am I, that I recognize music?

Well, I realized that music is this thing that exists outside of time, and that it is just like anything that means anything at all. Everything that has meaning exists for ever and lasts forever, because how else could it not? Those were kind-of, sort-of the thoughts that were going through my head about two hours ago. And for that brief, one moment out of a million moments, I felt like I belonged. That I was natural, and that I was okay.

And right at the peak of that feeling, right when it was really really kicking in, this cat. This cat came slithering up out of the shadows. This cat was making a beeline for me, with just about all the purpose that a cat can muster... but that never happens. That isn't supposed to happen. Cats don't act like that, especially stranger cats. If they did, I wouldn't have given two and a half hoots. Cats don't happen like that. Not to me... not when I'm out walking, anyway. Stranger cats just don't come shunting toward me along purposeful, predetermined paths.

What it felt like, was... this cat, which exists in this perfect state of nature, only ever doing what it is supposed to and meant to do, homed in on my moment of clarity.

This stranger cat just up and appeared out of the zilch and entangled my quanta with its q-bits, and for about a minute it seemed as though I thought that I knew what a moment was. That cat.

And that's all. The universe smells pretty good right now, so I'm going to go to sleep.

Doubt

This here, what I'm about to inflict upon whoever happens to read it, is for any atheists or agnostics... and for me, the constant doubter. But before I proceed, I'd like to establish a common denominator or something. You know - a place from which to firmly ground this fountain of bullshit that I've long espoused, upon which I'm about to embark.

But first... this just happened, and I gotta mention it. I'm walking, and it's dark, but there's some city light reflecting off of the low cloud layer. And as I'm walking and composing this story, I see to my immediate right, not ten feet away, on the other side of this barbed wire fence which I hadn't previously noticed, a miniature white horse galloping full speed, right past me, as if that were the most normal thing in the world to see at 4:30 a.m. on N. Locust in Denton, Texas. So, yeah. That just happened.

Anywho, what was I talking about?

Oh yeah. Ain't consciousness and awareness just really f'd up? Its like... you know, just think about it. This whole self-contained aliveness thing, this first person perspective we all have of piloting these meat machines from inside our own personal bone canisters, like H.G. Wells's Martians tromping around, ensconced in the hoods of their fighting machines, clumsily stomping this way and that way, observing and thinking and doing and trying to figure things out and be happy as we stomp around - amateur pilots at the helm of these miraculous organic engines - trying to connect and communicate and discover some kind of meaning to existence, but mostly just being giant douche bags to each other and to everything around us.

I digress, though - what I originally was saying was this: just take a look at existence around you. It doesn't have to be a long examination... just a brief glance. Life everywhere, right? Or the product of life? And not just life, but other things; all of which are held together by this ubiquitous 'thing' called the strong nuclear force, and another thing - a reality bending something or another called 'gravity' - which occurs as a result of the existence of every single thing, now and forever. And with all of this going on, the circumstance which describes the end result of trillions of different combinations of the raw materials comprising the universe agree with a particular outcome which can only be described by life itself.

Now, with all of that craziness actually being a real thing, how can anyone conclude that it is all a result of the completely random and unconscious processes of nature, which also happen to follow some arbitrary laws which ARE, for supposedly no reason at all? Man. Man, oh man. Sometimes it's the easiest thing in the world to have faith.

This is what I find myself thinking when I'm having doubts about God. It always serves to kick my mental ass and spiritual health back into gear.

Another right this minute minute

Right now it's like a dream. Right now, right this minute. It's more like the memory of a dream, actually...
That's so weird, how I get these feelings. It's surreal, like this moment is a page out of a children's book. Not a book written for children by grown ups... this is more like a story that has sprung straight out of the mind of a child who has yet to develop the idea of a reality that's more than a few minutes to either side of now; where the substrate of existence is so simple that concepts like good and evil can find nothing tangible upon which to take root. There is only the pure interest of being, and a strong will to continue being, according to the natural rules of movement along the zeroth dimension of the absurd simplicity of now.

Dang, don't I turn into a convoluted windbag when I start thinking about stuff.

13 dimensional string theory, God, and quantum music.

Have you ever been so emotionally moved by a piece of music that you wished it were possible to actually BE the music? To somehow exist as the actual notes and chords and harmonies and melodies, with the entire song comprising your life, with the beginning as your birth and the end, your death? Even if it's just a short song, or just a piece of a song.

I've got a theory as to what music really is. You know how music is made out of math, basically, and how the universe is also made out of math, which - functioning as math does - is essentially just a description of vibrations? And how musical notes are simply the atoms and molecules, which together and in abundance make up a medium which can vibrate at certain frequencies, and how those very atoms are, according to 13 dimensional string theory, actually, at their most basic and fundamental level, individual pieces of the very essence of space-time vibrating at different frequencies, with specific frequencies describing the specific bosons and force carriers which comprise all forms of matter and energy, which in essence means that (I just saw a shooting star, by the way) the fabric of creation can be accurately described as, and in fact is, the penultimate musical instrument, with the laws of physics as the musical theory, and matter and energy as the notes, and the struggle of order against entropy as the time signature, and the galaxies, stars, planets, and all related macro and micro phenomena as the theme, and with life as the complex and interwoven melodies which bind it all together and give it meaning, with God as the composer and conductor?

So, what music is - that stuff we actually create with our minds and hear with our ears - is the expression of ourselves in God's image, as we were made. It's an essential part of communion with God, which is why we feel such joy and ecstasy when we hear it and write it and play it and sing it... it's just that most of us have forgotten what it's for, and what that feeling means.