XIII
If
you don’t want to be hit next, move! For pity’s sake move!
Are
They coming? Are They here?
Where
are They coming from? They’re everywhere!
Saturday, May 5, 2012
XII
XII
If
you’ve never seen someone bleeding--I mean really bleeding, it
comes as a surprise how much blood is in a man. Our great authors
have used blood in as many metaphors as there are stars in the sky.
But what do we know of blood? Unless you have felt it flow like water
around desperate hands, unless you have seen it seep and drain onto
shining steel, unless you have seen the suffering caused by your
fellow man all in the name of blood and what it contains, you do not
know blood.
To
most of us, blood is just something that comes out when we’re
leaking, be it from a cut after a fall, a nick while shaving, or any
of the myriad things which cause the delicate form we inhabit to
leak. It’s just a byproduct of life that occasionally we’re
reminded of. I’ve heard that some ancient societies used to worship
blood in some manner. Thinking on it now, it seems preposterous to us
that they would worship something that each of us has inside us. We
have it free of charge and in seemingly unlimited supply. Blood fills
our language from our bloody hells to our bloodlines. We use it as a
metaphor for nearly everything base and primal, yet how often do we
actually see blood?
When
you’ve seen blood, what you do defines you as a person. I was told
that by an old friend many years ago. When you see blood spilt on the
floor, staining everything in rust and wine, you know who you are.
You know what you’re made of. Whether you want to know or not,
blood tests us and defines us. From blood-oaths to blood-feuds, we
use blood to define conflict, but is it the blood that’s
conflicted? What does that red liquid care for feeling or emotion?
Our blood may quicken at the sight of our love, but it is our heart,
not the blood. Our heart is tested by blood as surely as the blood
flows through the heart and feeds our being. So our heart feeds our
soul, our spirit. You could almost say that blood defines a person.
But isn’t that what starts wars? Defining a person by their blood?
Using a person’s spirit against them under the guise of bad blood.
Yet
still, blood has no care for our problems and our whims. It simply
flows and brings life to those who have it. Life by one’s self,
death by another’s.
Friday, May 4, 2012
X
X
With
the last tintinnabulations of our voice chasing each other through
the air in ever smaller rounds, we look up at the great leader at the
head of our congregation. He stood over us, smiling with a smile that
would embolden the hearts of all those who saw it. He often smiled
like that when we sang hymns and psalms. I used to think he was
smiling in the light of the holy spirit, but was he? Perhaps he truly
was moved by the sound of the lord high and holy above us and through
us. Who am I to say what lay within that man’s heart?
I
think that perhaps now I know why he was smiling. I used to think
very unsubtle thoughts about the divine, the great theos politic. He
was my lord protector, I his loving serf. I spent much time in quiet
contemplation of my silly thoughts about the higher places of
existence. My thoughts were deep and important, I once thought. They
revealed to me the inner depths of the shining orreric mechanisms of
the universe. When I read what few thoughts I wrote down at that
time, I think that I must have been a mental defective. The thoughts
are so idealistic. My god was a utopia and he was a glory for all the
world to see; if only the world could see him as I did.
A
lion and a lamb was my god. A sword and a shield. A contradiction of
contradictions, each pointing in every direction and filling the
world like some great omnipresent field of life and motion. His whims
were not arbitrary; no, he was a purposeful and subtle architect of
all things done around us. If something happened, he had done it.
Maybe he had some ‘grand design’, maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was
like a small child choosing what happened on the flight of a moment
and the spur of a thought. It was a nice thought that everything
happened for a reason. Not some great cosmic reason leading to
‘everything turning out all right in the end’. Even then I
thought such an idea as a silly fantasy. No, my god was controlling
things as he saw fit in a moment and at a moment’s notice.
If
your standard god of ‘everything turning out all right’ is a
loving father, my god was a cheerful, if sometimes inattentive
friend. There was evil in the world not because he was imperfect and
not because people were evil. There was evil in the world because
that is how it was. No more, no less. Things were how things were.
Everything was change; everything was still. Everything was noise;
everything was silence. Everything was order; everything was chaos.
IX
IX
When
one is young, one thinks of dying as a great yawning chasm that opens
up beneath every day of one’s life. In my experience, it is a much
different prospect.
Of
course, there are days when death’s head hangs over your every
thought like some great malignant cloud, staining the sun the black
and green of corpse-flesh. But those days are the exception rather
than the rule. Those days in which the sun shines bright, but you
don’t feel its glow; those are the days which fill the last years,
months, weeks of your time.
We
are told that there is a season to all things; a time to grow, a time
to die; a time to flower, a time to spread seeds; a time to sow, a
time to reap. We are told that there is a time to all things, but can
we say that there is such a time? Can we say that there is some
divine weaver clothing our fate in rags or silks of doings and
thinkings and goings? What if there is no person to cut the last
thread of our existence? What if there is no fate to wear the clothes
of our lives? What if we do and think and go and no one in the
vastness of being pays the slightest heed? And if there is no one out
there, does that mean that what we call a soul doesn’t exist? Or
does it just mean that our soul is used up; drained away; freed from
our mortal coil before we are freed ourselves? Or does it mean that
it doesn’t matter what we do, we all go up to some heavenly aether,
regardless of our doings and thinkings and goings? Or is there a
vengeful god up in the sky to punish us when we break his laws and
his edicts? Does it matter?
VIII
VIII
My
shoes are too tight. My shoes are too tight, but it no longer
matters, for my feet have forgotten how to dance.
My
feet, which once knew how to charm with their nimble motions, no
longer know how to step in time to the barest tune. My feet do not
know how to dance any more but it no longer matters, for my hands
have forgotten how to hold another human being close to my breast.
My
arms, which once gave much comfort to those who found themselves in
need, in need of human touch; my arms have forgotten how to wrap
around another human and how to clasp another’s hand in mine. My
tools, my hands, have forgotten what it means to touch but not harm;
one too many times these tools on the ends of my arms have been used
to hate. But it no longer matters, because my voice no longer entices
those who hear to draw closer.
My
voice, my mouth, knows no longer how to whisper soft praise or how to
shout bold encouragement from the rooftops of the world. My words
which once held myriad traces of my soul in every fleeting breath now
only hold the vestiges of my remembered life. With each word and each
breath my human soul was drained away. My mouth now only knows how to
remember and how to lie. And each lie and memory--each memory and
lie, for where is the distance betwixt the two?--stabs into my heart,
for they seek to take my soul away still, to fill my speech with
life. But it doesn’t matter any more, because my heart has
forgotten how to love.
My
heart, which held my being, my passions and desires, no longer knows
how to love. But it no longer matters, because my shoes are too tight
and my feet have forgotten how to dance.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
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