WE

The rotting steal infrastructures, lines of rectangles and triangles screamed, crying at the passage of a quiet mass, solemn with 20/80 vision. We hear the dulled version through hours of foggy memory and swallows of cheap liquid poisons that burn our throat and churn our stomach. We move as a flock, as an entity shuffling our feet and tripping against the strings of nothing, as nothing smiles back. We are one, the unity of ten thousand tragedies, indifferent to us as they trudge along. We are dizzy from the madness that perpetuates with time and those quiet moments of solitude, though rare, often irreparable. We have one aim, one mind geared toward the three pleasures eminent enough to corrupt. We name them: God, love, and drugs. We name them magical realism, selfish satisfaction, and false sensation. We name them excuses not to think, immoral though admirable. One day we may name them petty, but not today.

The subway roars; our impatient anticipation transforms every clank and echoed footstep into a raging machine of transportation, eating the tracks as it comes our way - certain to remain its cycle long after we end ours. But our imagination fabricates sounds and it doesn't come for another five minute eternity. Flying underground we fail to determine the temperature of the current swooping us up with the weightlessness of feathers that form a wing. As we fall to our knees in suffocating laughter we feel the glare of solitary shadows, soldiers of the straight-edge, kings of condemnation. As if pressure diminishes in the pool of now vague sensation, our body melts into a misshapen cup, unable to hold substantial content without spilling all over your shirt. We are stains. We are the embarrassment of past mistakes still apparent to everyone, "Not so past," we laugh. We are a confused temporary agnostic, like everyone else. We are waiting for justification to believe in a God but we do not find it. We tried to fall in love but we stopped believing in it.

Today we admitted our disbelief to a surprisingly apathetic audience. We spoke with our trembling voice, the words advocates use to excite emotion, but we found them unconvincing. Our eyes filled with the tears we spent years building up, but the millstones pulled harder and the ocean was none-the-less drowning us. We almost lost our footing at the halting screech-stop of the iron beast, to the amusement of the annoyed wrinkled faces among us. To lose our faith, we feel aged; to lose our mind, we feel we never used it in the first place.

God. Sex. Drugs

In APenglish5 today we were discussing what is called a "level three question" which is basically an open ended question on philosophy that is derived from literary themes and situations. The question was (without references before)... What is faith?

My initial thought, my Freudian slip if you will, was "blind-belief." My conscious quickly took over however to tell me that it was a, "strong belief." Perhaps we should listen to our intuition more. The church teaches that faith should be without doubt but that doubt fortifies faith. My secret: I've never been without doubt. (And I don't think I ever want to be.)

My belief in God has slipped to the point that if you could see it as a line on a graph, I have recently slipped below the zero mark and lay somewhere close to the top, but just below. I feel I should almost say I have disbelief with doubts saying, "maybe God is real and maybe he does care", (the reverse of the last 6 years).

And tonight Ben, a Watershed employee I work with, came in to talk as he usually does. He told me all my music was about sex. I laughed and told him I went in weekly patterns of listening to music either about sex, drugs, or God. He told me this made since because they were the three most incredible feelings capable of humanity.

Suddenly, they all seemed on the same plane to me. That they are all just fixes for the emotionally strung-out and... weak hearted. I thought briefly then of the Buddhist ideology, of Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Deism, ext and I wondered... is religion a hoax? Is this a drug we've come to accept? Is this an orgasm of entire fantasy? Is it a socially acceptable cop out into a utopia we are unable to achieve on earth?

It seems logic is above this. If I can rationalize my way out I wont be waiting around for the next fix - for Sunday night, for a high or a shot, for sexual attention. While one day I persue one, the next day I persue another waiting until God, drugs, or sex satisfies. In a small way they all do, but in the biggest way, they dont.

Good feelings currupt us - they are a lust we all search after. Does it matter which medium we satsify this hunger in? Is it really healthy to have faith? I am full of questions and scared of their answers. For the past six years religion has defined me, and suddenly, I don't know if God is real.

I want to believe, I really do

I haven't fully understood this, and unnervingly never forgotten it. I feel like I could say that about a lot, lately. Ive been very introspective, Ive been interrogating my past. Tonight at church I was overwhelmingly flooded with a memory that didn't really make sense until now. I was in the seventh grade, undoubtably optimistic, unrealistic, and uncommonly happy. I went to a rally on the state house steps with my church, when Daniel was the youth pastor, I remember his missing fingers in this picture. I couldn't tell you now what the speaker said, I'm not sure it mattered, but I remember the worship. I dont remember the songs. I remember my knees pressed against the pavement, I remember my forehead on the ground. I remember me crying and crying and crying, and I remember what I was saying.

I prayed, "Please dont ever leave me. Dont ever leave. Dont ever leave me. Please. Please Jesus dont ever leave me. Dont leave me like everyone else. Dont ever leave."

I was twelve. Who knows where that sense of abandonment came from. I remember how hard i was crying, and how I didnt understand. Half way through I felt like a fake, I didnt have anyone leave me. Why was I crying about being alone? I didnt know why I was so upset, I thought maybe I was bringing this on, that none of it was real. It felt real though; I felt God. And now it feels like I was crying for what I had no idea was going to happen. I just kept on and on, "dont ever leave, dont ever leave me."

Looking back on it now, maybe he never has.

I see God in a lot of petty things; on most days I dont need convincing that he exist. What I wonder is if he cares, what I wonder is if hes active. Ive known the answers all along I just didnt want to accept them, I didnt want to accept that there is no single person to blame for all of this. I really wanted God to storm down from the clouds and stop these things that hurt; and he never does; and he never will. I do struggle with that, and I will, but I really want be with him again. Im ready to bury the image I had of God; Im ready to start over.

God, does grace reach this side of madness?

Cause I know this cant be the great peace we all seek.
oh my heaven, why do you have doors to close?
do you have clouds to stop his voice?
wont you come down from heaven
wont you come down
wont you cut through the clouds
wont you come down
and brother have you found
the great peace that we all seek
you say take a look around,
if theres a god, then he must be asleep

The monks are rising in Burma. Some have damned the soldiers as they beat them, and the soldiers broke down and cried because they honor who they're killing.

Bush met with the Dali Llama; apparently he has the right to meet with the "universal sign of

peace." What audacity.

Ron Paul is the most popular Candide on college campuses. This sudden rise in libertarianism is stemmed by bitterness and distrust in those who have power. This is our generation who has lost hope.

Barack Obama was asked last night why he wasn't wearing his AIDS pin like the rest of the candides. He said he didn't want it to gain him votes. What respect for purity. If hes just another lying politician, hes the best damn liar Ive ever heard.

Venezuelan children are having 'red' forced down their throats. No one will care.

Another raid in Darfur. Have anything to say UN? UN? Hello? Are you there UN?

As China's elections approach, democracy seems even further away.

As our elections approach, democracy seems like a farce.

The leaders of the Muslim faith met with the leaders of the Christian faith in Jerusalem to establish a public sense of peace between the leading monotheist religions of the world.

Switzerland isnt happy... impressive.

The State Fair is making news.

Nine More Months of This

I should go ahead and warn you, this isn't what I usually do.

If you're hoping for something that isn't going to complain, don't read this. And I mean it. It isn't interesting; it's just broken.

Take One, Action: I want this to be healing for me, not fuel a self-pity party, so I'm going to honestly try. When I came home from church today my fathers car wasn't in the driveway. That never means something good. I sat there in the dark, it was a little past 10, I had just gotten home from Midtown. Ted had left earlier, this weekend I cherished every second I had with him. Love is strange, sometimes you know it, and sometimes you feel it. It's a lot like God in that aspect, it's a lot of work, but Ive never regretted it. This weekend God let me feel it; I think he knew I needed to. Well when I walked inside out of the dark, my mom was sitting alone on the couch watching TV and drinking wine. When I asked her where dad went, like I couldn't have guessed, she only said, "the hospital." I knew from the awful awful stillness in her voice, that stillness only someone who has been broken by their environment can have, that my brother was the blame... again.

I'm filled with rage, anger that is so foreign to me save these past few months.. or years, it all starts to blend together. I wasn't born with anger like my brother, I was born with an allure to sadness. This rage in me, it is something deeply and darkly acquired. It is a demon now working in alliance with sadness and I am without restraint, without human boundaries, without ambition. Those few moments I am filled with hope are ripped away by the haunted walls of which I call 'home'. I saw a child with a gun and I shot back because I can't excuse him for his age, and I can't let him win. While he is laying in a hospital bed having calming drugs pumped into his veins, as they put him to rest, I hate him. And I'd call it something else less harsh if it weren't that, but I hate him, because he didn't just hurt us, he's hurting us. Nine more months of this.

It's all my therapist wants to talk about. I hate it because its such an cop out. It's such a easy way to talk about my pain without ever having to talk about me. Is my brother part of the problem? Yes, I couldn't fool anyone by saying otherwise, but there's so much more. He's just a cherry on top of it all. I guess it isn't just one thing it's an accumulation of things. Stress from school and work is a big one. College, the future. Fighting the perpetual and piercing loneliness. That lure, that hook in my lip, that metallic shine; the sharp sting that makes it fade away. It feels like every composition I craft doesn't mean a thing and I'll never be apart of Lexington though they say I'm left here for a reason. And guilt; that's a big one. When I hurt, it hurts everyone else. I just want to be happy for their sake. But I don't want to lie about it.

I feel like I'm losing control and I just want so badly to reason this out. Somethings don't make sense and that isn't something I like to accept. Knowledge has become my religion and... and I can't in my small frame of reference justify why this is happening to my family. My parents deserve so much better and it is not just, it is not fair, and God is somewhere, too far away, with or without condolence and doing nothing. I'm so angry with him. And my therapist is a moron, she can't help me, she doesn't even know me. She thought cutting was just a bad habit and once I 'stopped' that I was cured. If it weren't for my panic attacks I would have 'graduated'. She has no clue, and I'm angry with her too. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if God had intervened eleven years ago. Or three years ago. Or two summers ago. Or this past July. Or Friday night. Or two hours ago. Or right now.

When God and the Devil are sleeping around, and my shoulders are worn from their angels and demons, I will be doomed to pay for my years of silence. And I will have deserved every pang of solitude and morsel of brokenheartedness that the world would deem fit, because I should have saved them in the first place. I should've wanted to.

"Faith is Not an Intellectual Matter"

I know I believe in God because I will critize him to the deepest and defend him through eternity. I will tear down every institution that has built themselves in his name, and never lose hope in the individual. I know I love Christ because I dont claim a shred of faith that I dont have, but I am not faithless. I know that this will last becase while I fight it tooth and nail, I am doomed remember the miracles I have witnessed, and doomed to account for them on my dying day.

A Little Light Reading

The bodies were burning like charcoal in a furnace, emitting the same awful smells that traced the same awful memories for those watching in numb indifference. I was holding my breath waiting for a reaction from them, waiting, but they didn't even flinch. I could feel my stomach drop against the coarse moments of utter compromise; I was drowning in the cacophony of their silence. The smoke and ash billowed up with human flesh, and I was a thousand miles away but I swear I could feel the warmth of a house ablaze. I quickly realized how unadvised it was to breathe this air so I cupped my face in my hand, so dishonestly, and curled up on the floor, my only chance of survival was in being submissive. The smoke was draped over me like a thick wool blanket in the middle of summer. I was being strangled by the strings of cloudy human hair and skin and marrow from their bones; its all filling my lungs now...

I see a class, they're all sitting around talking about a book. And she's walking into the ocean. She's going to find freedom and she finds it by never coming back. They're all just sitting there, just sitting. I don't understand why the room is so foggy and why there's laughter over the intercom, awful drunken laughter. She turns around before she walks in, like she knows how much I want to follow her. But then she's gone, into the water. The waves are tossing and turning at her waist; they fill up and pummel her over and over again. The rise and fall of such a vehement force knocks over her small frame, and she reluctantly begins to move forward, her weak arms paddling, her thin legs shuffling sand around her ankles. I know she'll make it. It's easy to succeed when your objection is to fail.

But then she starts to transform, the whole scene, transforming right before me. Her hands grow thicker, larger, her face more angular, with stubble etched on. Her eyes and skin darken. Her hair falls out. The waves toss into sheets and blankets of royal blue and she lashes out at me, her boyish face in anguish, a lust bursting at the seams from her thick eyebrows. From 'his' thick eyebrows... I can feel the pressure of his body like a thousand feet of sea water. And it's all coming down at the same time. He's breathing so fast but I can't get enough oxygen to say a word. And I know in my silence is the acknowledgment of consent. I would swim, but I've lost fear for the sharks in these waters. I'm not sovereign in my own body.