Winners and losers, turn the pages of my life
We're beggers and choosers, with all the struggles and the strife
I got no reason to turn my head and look the other way
We're good and we're evil, which one will I be today?
There's saints and sinners
Life's a gamble and you might lose
There's cowards and heroes
Both have been known how to break the rules
There's lovers and haters
The strong and the weak will all have their day
We're devils and angels
Which one will I be today?
[Chorus:] Are you happy now with all the choices you've made?
Are there times in life when you know you should've stayed?
Will you compromise and then realize the price is too much to pay?
Winners and losers, which one will you be today?
There's a a light and a dark side
Standing at the crossroads, there we'll meet
There's prophets and fools there
The lies and the truths will be at our feet
I got a reason to turn my head and look the other way
It's heaven and hell here, which one will I live today?
Which one will I be today?
- Social Distortion
Friday, May 22, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
where are your accusers?
I was sure that the only reason they stuck around was because they didn't know what kind of fuckup they were dealing with. Now I think they do, and they're still here. That hurts almost as bad as being alone, because I can't understand it. The most beautiful thing involving other humans that's ever happened to me, except perhaps marriage, and it's so alien to all I've ever been wired to believe that I'm locked out of it by my inability to grasp it.
I understand punishment, reprisal, reaping what one sows, the law of returns, call it what you like. I do not understand an economy where my most inexcusable defects do not mark me for contempt and rejection. What the hell's in here that's worth what one has to endure to get to it?
Someone please pick up a fuckin' rock so I can get a clue again. Oh God, please don't. Whatever. I don't know. I wish I had a brain. This heart shit is getting old.
I understand punishment, reprisal, reaping what one sows, the law of returns, call it what you like. I do not understand an economy where my most inexcusable defects do not mark me for contempt and rejection. What the hell's in here that's worth what one has to endure to get to it?
Someone please pick up a fuckin' rock so I can get a clue again. Oh God, please don't. Whatever. I don't know. I wish I had a brain. This heart shit is getting old.
Friday, March 20, 2009
exchange
1 Corinthians 15:35-49.
We try so hard to be immortal, invulnerable, to rise above the predations of a fallen world that beset us from the outside and betray us from within. God sent his beloved Son to assume the form of the only innocent man who ever lived for the purpose of being tortured to death, and He did it for no other reason than to cancel out the debt we could never pay. And he sought to cancel that debt because only then could He lavish on us what we so doggedly yet despairingly strive to secure for ourselves.
Sown in dishonour and weakness, raised in honour and power. In seeking strength and honour we cling to the very things that keep us from them. Sincerely, perhaps, but still clinging. It is such a job to get to the point where we even realise that, and then there's choosing what to do with that realisation.
When I obtain something at great personal cost, I will defend and retain it relentlessly, even if it is miserably inadequate for its intended purpose - unless something better can be had. What God offers is not only vastly better, but free for the asking - or almost. It will cost me that which He seeks to replace. And that is terrifying when it has already cost so much. I can easily believe that what He offers is better - until faced with discarding what I have in favour of it. I have invested so much of myself in these things, and now He strolls in to toss them out? All they have cost me screams in protest - unless I take a good hard look at what His offer to me has cost Him. And when I can finally choke down the last of my shame, I find it a little easier to remember that He only seeks to toss those things to make room to give me Himself - and then what else could I possibly need? What have I ever accomplished by my fuming and fretting? Hasn't He prevailed in spite of all my efforts? Have my seemingly bottomless defects and ineptitude ever thwarted His plans for me of good and hope and a future?
The terror and the beauty of it is that I depend on Him even for the faith I need to let go, and the grace to cover my lack of it. The amazing thing is that He understands, that even having paid such a monstrous price for His gift to me, He sees my struggles and losses and what they have cost me - and He still cares. But only to the end of setting me free from them, of bringing me to the point where I value His sacrifice so immeasurably more than any paltry cost I could have paid. All the things I have fought for and invested in will only retain their value if they are lost in and to Him so He can raise them by the same power that raised Him from the dead - the very resurrection He would share freely with anyone willing to accept it, if only we can let ourselves die.
I pray He knows as He knows His own Self that this is what I want more than anything else to be true about me - that I who was dead in futility and weakness am now raised in His love and strength, that I have attained the adoption as His son for which He has predestined me, and that I reflect His glory in the unique manner for which He created me. The only thing worth fearing is failing to receive that indescribable gift from Him, and the only way I wish to be free from that fear is to receive it. And there is no one on this earth whom I would wish to miss out on that.
We try so hard to be immortal, invulnerable, to rise above the predations of a fallen world that beset us from the outside and betray us from within. God sent his beloved Son to assume the form of the only innocent man who ever lived for the purpose of being tortured to death, and He did it for no other reason than to cancel out the debt we could never pay. And he sought to cancel that debt because only then could He lavish on us what we so doggedly yet despairingly strive to secure for ourselves.
Sown in dishonour and weakness, raised in honour and power. In seeking strength and honour we cling to the very things that keep us from them. Sincerely, perhaps, but still clinging. It is such a job to get to the point where we even realise that, and then there's choosing what to do with that realisation.
When I obtain something at great personal cost, I will defend and retain it relentlessly, even if it is miserably inadequate for its intended purpose - unless something better can be had. What God offers is not only vastly better, but free for the asking - or almost. It will cost me that which He seeks to replace. And that is terrifying when it has already cost so much. I can easily believe that what He offers is better - until faced with discarding what I have in favour of it. I have invested so much of myself in these things, and now He strolls in to toss them out? All they have cost me screams in protest - unless I take a good hard look at what His offer to me has cost Him. And when I can finally choke down the last of my shame, I find it a little easier to remember that He only seeks to toss those things to make room to give me Himself - and then what else could I possibly need? What have I ever accomplished by my fuming and fretting? Hasn't He prevailed in spite of all my efforts? Have my seemingly bottomless defects and ineptitude ever thwarted His plans for me of good and hope and a future?
The terror and the beauty of it is that I depend on Him even for the faith I need to let go, and the grace to cover my lack of it. The amazing thing is that He understands, that even having paid such a monstrous price for His gift to me, He sees my struggles and losses and what they have cost me - and He still cares. But only to the end of setting me free from them, of bringing me to the point where I value His sacrifice so immeasurably more than any paltry cost I could have paid. All the things I have fought for and invested in will only retain their value if they are lost in and to Him so He can raise them by the same power that raised Him from the dead - the very resurrection He would share freely with anyone willing to accept it, if only we can let ourselves die.
I pray He knows as He knows His own Self that this is what I want more than anything else to be true about me - that I who was dead in futility and weakness am now raised in His love and strength, that I have attained the adoption as His son for which He has predestined me, and that I reflect His glory in the unique manner for which He created me. The only thing worth fearing is failing to receive that indescribable gift from Him, and the only way I wish to be free from that fear is to receive it. And there is no one on this earth whom I would wish to miss out on that.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
the times they are a changin'
free to leave, but go where? they claim to accept, but it's mostly tolerance. patiently waiting for the kid to get a clue he will never grasp. what really stokes and fumes deep within me is lost on them, and maybe on me too because I can't remember it anymore, and I can't grasp their world any more than I can make them understand mine. they respect my freedom to be myself which means I will always be a million miles away.
even so they are changing me irrevocably. I don't know what's right or wrong anymore. I watch and embrace and tolerate things that something inside me is screaming at, and I no longer recognise the things I thought I was made of.
I love them too much to walk away but am too weak and deformed to keep up with them, and who the hell am I to think any changes they needed would come through me, even if I wanted to make them or even knew what they were?
I have no idea what I am turning into, only that I like it even less than what was before, if that's even possible.
even so they are changing me irrevocably. I don't know what's right or wrong anymore. I watch and embrace and tolerate things that something inside me is screaming at, and I no longer recognise the things I thought I was made of.
I love them too much to walk away but am too weak and deformed to keep up with them, and who the hell am I to think any changes they needed would come through me, even if I wanted to make them or even knew what they were?
I have no idea what I am turning into, only that I like it even less than what was before, if that's even possible.
Monday, February 16, 2009
courage?
From Old French corage (French: courage), from Latin cor, “heart”. (Wiktionary)
this ain't heart, that's just a muscle in the ribcage.
this is duty and a lack of alternatives.
this is a machine that doesn't know how to stop.
this is fear of punishment and of losing a place that was never mine.
the kid never learns.
this ain't heart, that's just a muscle in the ribcage.
this is duty and a lack of alternatives.
this is a machine that doesn't know how to stop.
this is fear of punishment and of losing a place that was never mine.
the kid never learns.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
fragged
Heart like a grenade. Fragments everywhere. Pieces in Kentucky and North Carolina and a couple of schools I'd really not want to ever set foot in again. More pieces embedded in other people - family and friends here, in other cities and states, in Germany and Iraq and Australia and Britain and God knows where else. Others thrum and burn at a voice or a song or a memory. Some have been flung so far out into space as to be almost nonexistent.
Such a short fuze. Takes no pull at all to set it off. One word or verse or thought in the right place and it's fire in the hole. Anger to joy to lust to despair to euphoria to numb.
Whole hearted. Sounds great. Lots of pieces for God to collect. Only He can find them. What's my part of the deal?
Such a short fuze. Takes no pull at all to set it off. One word or verse or thought in the right place and it's fire in the hole. Anger to joy to lust to despair to euphoria to numb.
Whole hearted. Sounds great. Lots of pieces for God to collect. Only He can find them. What's my part of the deal?
Thursday, January 1, 2009
reload
New Year's Day.
Not a bad one. This year the wife and I were up too damn late New Year's Eve watching Twilight Zone reruns and playing Trivial Pursuit with Kevlar and K-bar at their apartment with their cat Spyder going berserk around us. Finished the bottle of Tullamore Dew that Cap'n Caveman was kind enough to buy us at Knox last June. Got up too early and did not much, at least not much I'm going to detail here. So there was plenty of time to think.
I don't want to think anymore.
Last year at this time wasn't so hot. We went to a NYE party at church, after the previous night of watching Hogfather at J & J's while thoroughly 'faced on Pusser's. I put my arm around my niece Koly when someone old enough to know better made her cry with a thoughtless remark about her musical tastes (which are, by the way, superb). We did iPod karaoke over the PA system and I watched much more talented vocalists than me prove themselves to be just that. Then we got all introspective and asked ourselves what we made of 2007 and what we should do about 2008. Not good questions for me. I lost my grip and made a general arse of myself. Woke up the next day feeling horrible, went to the range with Craig and managed not to put my Mosin-Nagant M44 under my chin, though I badly wanted to.
New Year's is the same anvil I've been beaten on every year. And I am not looking any better. Everyone tells me I have changed dramatically and still am. I want to see that. I want to know what they know, but I don't. When I lost it at the karaoke party someone very dear to me held my hand and told me that it wasn't my fault. In general, in a broad-brush, all-encompassing sense, it wasn't my fault. Life wasn't my fault. I wasn't my fault. She cut through the fog and effortlessly saw something I didn't, and I wished I could see it with her, but I couldn't, and I still wish I could, but I still can't. I'm trying. I'm failing.
I love these people. I want to be on the same page with them. But the love that feels like it could crush my ribcage like a grape doesn't come out the way it should. Love gives and doesn't run out. When I move toward them it feels not like giving, but taking more and more. I want to give, act, live, move in that love but it falters. The defects and weakness rise to the surface and there is nothing to give that's worth receiving. They tell me I do okay by them but it's not okay on this end. The love curdles into an ache that never goes away. It turns into glass walls and I can see my friends on the other side and we can pass little things back and forth underneath but I can't break the glass.
Every new year is a reload. Fresh start. But I'm not fresh. I'm tired. I want to hide from desire, from yearning, from heart. There's no place to go, so obviously I won't. Just on the off chance that it means a goddamn thing, I'm not a volunteer. I was, and I'd like to be again. Endurance is a good thing, but it can't be the only thing.
God, don't leave me here. Did you make this for nothing? Your prerogative, but I was led to believe that You didn't. Desire is a lie and a baited trap and a mirage to chase into oblivion unless You fill it. Please.
Not a bad one. This year the wife and I were up too damn late New Year's Eve watching Twilight Zone reruns and playing Trivial Pursuit with Kevlar and K-bar at their apartment with their cat Spyder going berserk around us. Finished the bottle of Tullamore Dew that Cap'n Caveman was kind enough to buy us at Knox last June. Got up too early and did not much, at least not much I'm going to detail here. So there was plenty of time to think.
I don't want to think anymore.
Last year at this time wasn't so hot. We went to a NYE party at church, after the previous night of watching Hogfather at J & J's while thoroughly 'faced on Pusser's. I put my arm around my niece Koly when someone old enough to know better made her cry with a thoughtless remark about her musical tastes (which are, by the way, superb). We did iPod karaoke over the PA system and I watched much more talented vocalists than me prove themselves to be just that. Then we got all introspective and asked ourselves what we made of 2007 and what we should do about 2008. Not good questions for me. I lost my grip and made a general arse of myself. Woke up the next day feeling horrible, went to the range with Craig and managed not to put my Mosin-Nagant M44 under my chin, though I badly wanted to.
New Year's is the same anvil I've been beaten on every year. And I am not looking any better. Everyone tells me I have changed dramatically and still am. I want to see that. I want to know what they know, but I don't. When I lost it at the karaoke party someone very dear to me held my hand and told me that it wasn't my fault. In general, in a broad-brush, all-encompassing sense, it wasn't my fault. Life wasn't my fault. I wasn't my fault. She cut through the fog and effortlessly saw something I didn't, and I wished I could see it with her, but I couldn't, and I still wish I could, but I still can't. I'm trying. I'm failing.
I love these people. I want to be on the same page with them. But the love that feels like it could crush my ribcage like a grape doesn't come out the way it should. Love gives and doesn't run out. When I move toward them it feels not like giving, but taking more and more. I want to give, act, live, move in that love but it falters. The defects and weakness rise to the surface and there is nothing to give that's worth receiving. They tell me I do okay by them but it's not okay on this end. The love curdles into an ache that never goes away. It turns into glass walls and I can see my friends on the other side and we can pass little things back and forth underneath but I can't break the glass.
Every new year is a reload. Fresh start. But I'm not fresh. I'm tired. I want to hide from desire, from yearning, from heart. There's no place to go, so obviously I won't. Just on the off chance that it means a goddamn thing, I'm not a volunteer. I was, and I'd like to be again. Endurance is a good thing, but it can't be the only thing.
God, don't leave me here. Did you make this for nothing? Your prerogative, but I was led to believe that You didn't. Desire is a lie and a baited trap and a mirage to chase into oblivion unless You fill it. Please.
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