after all

you're all better than me, no surprise there.

tried to run with the Solid People but ghosts can't hack the grass.

there once were signs that I was made of the same stuff, but can't see them anymore, except in other lives that should inspire but only expose, and mine gets uglier the more the light is turned up.

nothing to say but sorry and that helps no one.

When I was young I was the nicest guy I knew

I thought I was the chosen one

But time went by and I found out a thing or two

My shine wore off as time wore on

I thought that I was living out the perfect life

But in the lonely hours when the truth begins to bite

I thought about the times when I turned my back & stalled

I ain't no nice guy after all

When I was young I was the only game in town

I thought I had it down for sure,

But time went by and I was lost in what I found

The reasons blurred, the way unsure

I thought that I was living life the only way

But as I saw that life was more than day to day

I turned around, I read the writing on the wall

I ain't no nice guy after all

In all the years you spend between your birth and death

You find there's lots of times you should have saved your breath

It comes as quite a shock when that trip leads to fall

I ain't no nice guy after all

- Motorhead

beside the point

just watched The Passion of the Christ for the first time since it was released.

there is nothing to say that won't be beside the point and about a trillion miles beneath it.

makes no sense at all.

the only right thing to do in the face of what He did for us is to live the life which He endured all of that to give us.

but seeing even an imperfect shadow of what that was brings the insectile fog that i have always called life to the deadest of stops.

God humbled Himself before His venomously seditious creation to be tortured to death.

what's your story?

nothing further, Your Honour.

God forgive me. God heal me. God be kind to Yourself and forget me.

no, please don't. the forget part, not the kind part.

i'm so sorry.

God bless us, every one

This is usually the hard part, coming home after celebrating with whoever has been kind enough to adopt us this year. All the anticipating, soaking up the lights and decorations everywhere, feeling God insidiously seeping into every little corner this time of year, even here in aloof, cynical New England. Jello Biafra is probably more liturgical than me, but I think I am starting to get this Advent thing more and more every year. The waiting, the anticipation, the yearning for all of this to well and truly change me forever, is as intoxicating as it is agonising. I savour and dread it all at once. Now it's over. There's a bit of anxiety at the prospect of the battles that loom ahead to keep the fragile little flame lit just a bit longer.

I don't give a toss if I sound cliche. I have the rest of the year to be hard-edged and hopeless, and I don't really want it. I want this. All the time. This is good. My God, I wish I could keep it forever. One day I will, but the waiting sucks.

Except there's always next year. Win. Epic win. Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift. He has blessed us, every one. May you find that around the most unexpected corners.

something

I followed. There was nothing. I still followed. There was something, but I wasn't allowed to touch it. The Leader held my head under the water until I gurgled submissively and screamed in terror what He wanted to hear. That I wanted something, very badly. He smiled, and pointed to something ahead. I walked toward it with joy and passion. I felt an egg hatch in my ribcage.
Something is always out of reach. I wish I had been allowed to remember that. Nothing has moved in my ribcage for a long time now. All my shirts smell like rotting meat. No one asks why.
I followed because I loved. Now I follow because there is nothing else to do. And I am tired, and I am alone. There are others nearby, but they cannot hear me when I speak, because they are enveloped in something. And something is always out of reach.

running riot in a corner

I am listening to my iPod while making the next work-week's lunches and washing the dishes afterwards. The Ramones, the Pogues, Husker Du, R.E.M., Flatfoot 56. I'm not particularly stressed, depressed, or much of anything, unless it's possible to be such a thing as desperately content.
Discipline is up next, an Oi! band from Holland. They cover an old Cock Sparrer tune, Running Riot. I first heard it very nearly twenty-three years ago today, either just before or just after a charismaniacal hubbub in a Sheraton banquet hall slashed life into B.C. and A.D. Cock Sparrer had this and one other track on the Strength through Oi! compilation. There were a lot of great tunes on that slab of black vinyl, but that one more than any other turned my blood to boiling whiskey and made all my leukocytes and platelets grow fists and boots and and laugh and hug and bellow and brawl their way through my veins.
I remember looking at the photos on the back cover of the album, skinny British white kids with a smattering of other shades resplendent in ladder-laced Doc Martens and tight cuffed Levi's, pressed tight against each other in front of a cheap nightclub stage and leering at the camera with gleeful empty eyes, or swarming all over a busy street on the way to a gig or a football match, cars frozen on the pavement like clotting blood. There were arms around shoulders and pint glasses in fists and naked scalps and flighties and sideburns and stories and pride and pain.
I miss the boiling whiskey. I miss the brawling veins. I miss looking life in the face and flashing a crooked grin and knowing I had it sussed. Except I never did. I did, and do, know the One who does, but I wish I could hear Him like I used to. I wish it was easier to feel Him slap me on my flighty-encrusted back and hand me a jar and tell me all would be well. I wish remembering those days didn't feel so much like a taunt.
The boiling and brawling had enough power to propel me anywhere, anywhere at all, but it fizzled, and now the corner is scuffing my boots and bruising my knuckles. I'd back out of it if I knew where else to go.

and so this is...

Another Christmas past. This year's was better than most. Even with a couple of solid kicks in the peepee place. For all my hand-wringing fume and fret I can absorb some pretty fair blows and still stand. That would be a dandy thing to know without having to absorb them.
But I can't complain. I am saturated with gratitude. It has its roots in some odd things, but they make perfect sense to me. Christ wasn't born anywhere near this time of year. The Roman church co-opted a pagan festival, apparently. I don't know the story and I don't care. Something for others to argue about, 'cause there's nothing at all more important than debating someone else into the ground, right? I know His voice, and in spite of all the cosmoline layered on my soul I can feel His presence if it's strong enough. It is just that, this time of year, at least for me, the essential spiritual retard.
This is real to me. And that only matters to the extent that it points the way for it to be real to someone else. It was real before I happened, and it will be real long after I'm gone. It would be real if I had never happened at all. The gift He gave us demands attention. It demands a response. And yet it doesn't, because it is free. There is no gun at my head, just a surety that it would abase me to subhumanity to ignore such a gift, or worse yet to dismiss or desecrate it.
My will and ability to respond are contemptibly inadequate. I can't even touch what other humans have done for me, let alone God. What I do for them is so ludicrously disproportionate to the love and gifts and sacrifice they lavish on me that I never make it through Christmas encounters with friends and family without feeling a little slimy.
Christmas, in defiance of all the waste and nonsense our culture has heaped on it, still sees God invading our world right on schedule the same time every year. It's supposed to change us. I want it to change me, forever. I think it does. I listen to songs that I know will bring me to tears, even if I'm cleaning a rifle when I'm listening to them. I detail strip every hour of the holiday weekend and stamp the imprint of every song and gift and conversation into my soul like arsenal marks. I want those things to define me. I want to always be the tolerable creature I turn into this time of year. Even more, I want to know that I am stamping those same lovely marks into other lives, especially those who have poured so much into mine.
This is a very overdone and roundabout way of saying thanks. I have a lot to be thankful for, and I owe a great deal of thanks to a great many people. If you read this, and you think you're one of them, I won't argue. It would cost me nothing if I was wrong to think you were. I do not expect to ever scratch the surface of approaching, let alone matching what you do for me, but that's not the point. St. Paul admonishes us to owe no one but to love them, and I do not ever want to default on that. I know that I will, and that hurts, but to my eternal amazement it doesn't stop God or anyone else.
So thank you.

back to the future

Today I went with my father and his girlfriend to three cemeteries. I saw the graves of his parents, who I knew well, and their forebears, who I did not. I learned that I am directly descended from veterans of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, that my family has roots in this part of the world that stretch back to the seventeenth century, and that a distant ancestor was once Lord Mayor of London.
That’s a rare thing in our culture, to be grounded in so many centuries of history. It perhaps explains my peculiar slant on things, which I inherited in large measure from my parents. I saw that in new ways tonight as Dad and I discussed Stephen King and Japanese culture and the movie Grand Torino. Clint Eastwood still kicks ass. I know it’s not very Christian of me, but I hate gangbangers. I want to get my genocide on when I see them. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
We live by a code that so much of the world is passionate about pissing on. We are losing ground every day. We don’t care. We’ll die with rifles in our hands ass deep in brass and grenade pins, at least figuratively speaking. To the rest of the world, we’ll just fade away forgotten by all but the very closest (and not all of them), but the rest of the world will never know that every day was a fight, and every day we went to bed the same people we woke up as held victory for us and those we love. We may fall, but we will by God fall forward.
I do not need to be a racist to be proud of my heritage. I do not need to be ashamed of my ancestors to be tolerant, compassionate, or responsible. What I need even less is to be the least bit concerned about how I will be judged by the fickle, flawed opinions of a vapid, predatory commercial nonculture. The gavel is held by One, and my fathers stand behind Him and beckon me to better things. I want to spend the rest of my life answering that call.