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| february 2002 |
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| Be Love Do | 5:35am thursday, 28th february |
Another blast from the past, I was deep in my psychosis when I did this little number (this period):
be not but love
do not but love
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| Nightmares | 5:44am tuesday, 26th february |
I think even lions have nightmares. Something dark, unnamed.
I think there are horrors that even nightmares cannot imagine.
I think nightmares, sometimes, are the only way to wake me up.
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| Heroica | 12:20am monday, 25th february |
There was this one time I saved the universe, back in my madness. It was in September of 1994, (reference in my story here). I was just sitting there, just having awoken from sleep, when in the air above me it was as if four fuses in a neat row were simultaneously lit. These were not the ordinary type, which led to an explosive, but they were, in fact, the groundwork for existence itself. It was like the fuses were the strings upon which all being relied, and they burned swiftly through the air. I felt another mind on the other side, contending with me, an evil trying to destroy all that was, and I willed to try and keep things together. I was confused, though, on what I should concentrate on.
But then, a space opened up before me, and there was someone sitting there who told me something like, "When contending with existence, keep to the soft things, for even the hard things must rely on the soft." I took this calm voice's advice. I put my finger right above my solar plexus, the center of my chest, right on the breast bone, but what I was concentrating on was my skin — softness. The four strings of existence flew away and off into the distance, and I had won. I was breathless. I had saved all existence in what I had just done.
Come to think of it, this was the day that marked the beginning of when I thought I was the Archangel Michael. Perhaps it was because of this, that I had proved myself in a great deed in my head, that my head thought I was that greater one. Whatever. That event was just wild.
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| Some Quotes | 4:29am sunday, 24th february |
"There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking." - Alfred Korzybski
"Eighty percent of success is showing up." - Woody Allen
"The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God you fear everything else." - Oswald Chambers
"A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog." - Jack London
"The difference between fact and fiction? Fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy
"Life is the biggest bargain. We get it for nothing." - Jewish proverb
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." - Leo Tolstoy
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| Not Forever | 6:37am friday, 22nd february |
Do you remember when, as a child, you tasted the best thing you had ever tasted in the entire world? For you it will probably not be the same as me, but you know what I mean. It is amazing the entirety of flavor that just takes over your mouth, and the taste is all that is, just for a few moments — you are one with the savor. You swallow it down, and you are convinced that that is the one, only thing that you want to eat for the rest of your life. You can't believe that you could ever get tired of the taste. But if you're lucky, you've never tasted that flavor since that magical time.
It's because you eat it again, and maybe it's almost as good, some 99% as good. But you can't stop there, because it's too delicious. You have to have some more. So you eat more, and more again, and after some number of times eating this wondrous stuff, you get used to it. And then you grow up, you're suddenly not a kid anymore. You've had this stuff a hundred times. It's still good, but you get the feeling that you don't want that to be your only taste for eternity. And you discover other flavors down the road from there, but that sensation — that childlike sensation — is gone.
I know that even if I ate the best thing I have ever tasted, nowadays, it wouldn't be the same as if I were that child of ago. I think I've gotten used to tasting, in general. You grow up. You put away all that stuff — the stuff that, as a child, you thought would last forever.
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| Never Dreamed | 12:29am thursday, 21st february |
These are the dreams that never flowered,
these are the plans that never came to fruit.
These are the memories that were never recalled,
these are the ashes of a day blown away.
I have never been there,
I can't tell you how to get back.
I will never go there,
I can't imagine how anyone would.
These are the mistakes never caught,
these are the songs never written.
These are the formulas never solved,
these are the miracles no one sees.
I thought I told you,
I think you must mean someone else.
I have to believe this,
I never dreamed that dream.
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| Just to Be | 12:01am wednesday, 20th february |
Sometimes, there is a calm. Sometimes I get rest from the entire world, it seems, that there is a moment I have to myself where nothing disturbs me. Just for a moment. It's something that overcomes me and passes, something I cannot plan, sometimes to go by relatively unnoticed. It is not really a moment of clarity, just a sense that whatever is going on in my life, that everything will be all right. See if you've had them too — they're brief, and their quiet nature is so that they are merely segues between one chaos of life to the next. Not deep thinks are they, but moments of pleasant lightness that may bring a slight smile.
If you think back, you'll probably find that you've had them, and didn't know what they were. They are no deep mystery. They are quiet hopes strengthening themselves amid the bustle and tussle of daily travels and daily busies. They are your heart taking over from your head just for a moment, telling you to relax for a second, that things tend to work themselves out — sometimes better than you can imagine. We get stuck sometimes, stuck in the crunch of everything needs to get done yesterday — these little times unstick us for a brief interlude, when somehow, you don't need to make sense of things, and just to be is enough.
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| Dreams Redux | 9:31am monday, 18th february |
I cling too much to dreams, sometimes. I think that is what I do. They do serve a purpose, though, that is for sure: these dreams press me on when nothing else will. They keep alive my hope. But some of the dreams I have, some of them I think let me hope the wrong things. These are dreams that reach distant some fiery things, unkempt and wild-eyed things. Some of these dreams, I am playing with lightning, trying to provide a conduit between nature's untamed and the circuits of civilization. But difficult, still, that I must lay some dreams to rest — I have been dreaming some things for a long time, now.
I will keep my feet on the ground. The dreams I must leave, it is not hard to tell which of them they are: those are the ones for which I would have to leave everything behind. The dreams that are good, I can take everything that I have with me, and keep them as I go. That is how I can tell. It is as Jean N. Grou put it: "Be sure that it is a mistaken devotion which interferes with the duties of your natural state of life."
No, I will not let all my dreams die. I have just gained perspective, a sliver of prudence these years on, on what dreams do not help me to dream them. It is only that I must keep to the narrow way, and dream wisely.
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| Time | 1:12am sunday, 17th february |
Time is an ether, and way points blur together, formless.
Some instants happen forever, played over again and again.
Born yesterday, tomorrow I die — today is my whole life.
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| Eyewing | 12:09am saturday, 16th february |
A picture I drew about four years back:
It's something like an element of a dream, I think.
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| Mettle | 9:32am thursday, 14th february |
Had a minor little something or other yesterday, when I was reading a comic strip about Philip K. Dick. R. Crumb did it, some years ago. What tripped it was when Crumb wrote about Philip K. thinking Elijah had come upon him, and this crystallized a paranoid trip from about five years back. I was told, once, that I had been replaced by the Antichrist, that I wasn't really the person who had inhabited this body before 10/7/88, but the dark seed himself. I asked, then, who had replaced Philip K. Dick? And the answer was Elijah. My paranoia had a field day with that connection yesterday. It is not real, though. I must overcome it.
All of it must go, and I understand that. All thinking that I'm someone else, greater than I am or worse than I am — all of it is false. Let me be just the dreamer that I am, I should want no more than that.
My life is interesting enough without the psychosis livening it up like it does. I pray I will hold on, and that I have the mettle to withstand.
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| Traveler | 1:08am wednesday, 13th february |
I feel I am a traveler, no homestead keeper am I. I go from destination to destination, and I remember my days when I was not like I am now, back when I was far, far away from here. Life is not all a journey, you know, as some would have you believe. There do exist way points along the path, where we meet with other strangers, each on his own road, where we roast some meat on the fire and talk about where we each have been. Places where we connect. In these places some stop, and they travel no more; in these places people find a home.
What do I carry with me as I go? I think there is more that I carry within myself than material things that I bear. I have shed much of the materials that garnish life — the truly substantial things are, paradoxically, the things we can't touch. The essences, the memories, of friends; the flavor of love; the triumphs; the shames: all these things are those which matter most. These are the elements of a home, a home I have never truly found.
Perhaps there is no real home for a soul like myself. Perhaps there are only the camps along the way where we set up a teepee to weather this storm, or that. Places where we rest for a spell. Some friends new we make, some friends old and we lose touch. We leave footprints, though. We are not ghosts, not yet. And this traveler will call home sometimes the places where he stays, though it is half-hearted. I have written this before: I have wandered so, so far that every place I go is home. It means I have forgotten what the word means. I am a traveler; the road is my home. I carry my heart to every stop along the way, so all these places are my home. I only hope, as I pass from this place to the next, that someone will see the footprints I have left and think of me, and smile.
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| Somewhere | 12:43am tuesday, 12th february |
Let me take you somewhere.
Let me take you to a twilight land
where dreams are forged,
where rivers flow through the sky.
Let me take you where the pegasi
spread their wings, crossing valleys
where the rainbow ends
and where time was born.
We will drink emotions by the glass,
speak and be carried away
by the sentences, far away from
the capture of any doubt.
It is no drink or strong concoction
that I use for our voyage.
I will use no magic for our flight.
The place I tell is where
we put on our true faces, the place
where we have always belonged,
what our hearts in secret
whisper in quiet longing.
It is what home is meant to be,
closer than our own imagination.
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| The Flood | 8:49am sunday, 10th february |
I think one day all my memories will overcome me in a flood. One day the dam will burst and a torrent of images, emotions, and smells will carry me down a raging river, turbulent waters of all that made me the entity I am. I think I have built myself too much with the work of repression. Of denial. There is too much I have tucked away in the corners, and some day on, what is in the corners will fill up the whole room. There must be a threshold, I think, the proverbial straw that will make my mind buckle and yield, when one more thing I try to forget will make it all come back to me. The doors of perception will break open from the strain of all that is contained in the room they conceal. All of it, all at once, will show.
It may be a necessary thing, though, that I should face my past. And if I will not face it, that it will put itself in a place that I cannot hide from it. O, the things I have seen. I am not alone, though, am I? Everyone runs away from something, somewhere back in the past, no? Everyone hides from at least one experience of violent emotion and its throes, or cold and deliberate act of malice. I am no better, I am no worse. And perhaps I will be forgiven, in the end. But I do not look forward to the telling day when all my ghosts appear before me and demand reckoning. If you see someone on the street somewhere, frozen with a face of shock, that would be me. Be kind. Tell me I am still a human being.
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| Good Enough | 8:29am saturday, 9th february |
I must tell myself I am good enough. Hey, me, people can trust you for things. They can count on you for things. Sometimes you are more than adequate. Strange how used I got to failing. My psychosis really did a number on me, back when, like this entry talks about. I can do it, I can make it. I think I must realize that. You know, one of my most frequent prayers to God and Jesus Christ was, "Help me make it through." I think He's done it. My God. I think I will make it, after all. I think the feeling must come over me gradually, but that feeling — I get it now. Do what you have to do, and things will be all right.
That feeling is even stranger realizing the delusions of grandeur that I've had to get over, thinking I was the superman. Contradiction — that is perhaps one of the conditions of being human, no? Thinking both that you can move mountains but not be able to correctly pour a glass of water? The little things: what I did was put myself in charge of the little things. Paying the bills. Doing the laundry. Washing the dishes. That's it, isn't it? Take care of the things you can, and that's the secret. Somewhere along the line of taking care of things, you realize it: you can make it if you only try. Everyone fails — not everyone really tries.
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| The Wind | 12:03am friday, 8th february |
The wind brushes by me like we have never met before.
My eyes are heavy with darkness, the rain enshrouds me with motion.
I have wandered so, so far that every place I go is home.
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| Memory/Dream | 1:45am thursday, 7th february |
Sometimes I get confused between what is a memory of life or a memory of dream. I will think of something I have seen before, and if it lacks corroborating evidence, I wonder if I have really seen it or if I dreamed it some night back. Sometimes, I think I have seen something, like some words repeated in a book I am reading when I have skimmed ahead, then, reading on and not seeing those words, I will think I have dreamed it. Then there's the last layer, when, further on in the book, the words appear and repeat, that it was real after all — I was just not patient enough. I have to watch myself, and sometimes I get a little compulsive about checking on matters, not trusting my memory.
The dodges and parries of reality. Perhaps I'll never get used to it all; perhaps none of us do. We all have imperfect pictures in our head of what the world really is, and yet we seem to manage, more or less. When you think that you have the absolute market on What Things Are, therein is the madness. When you think that nothing is true, the madness is there, too. The sanity is when you realize everyone's model of what is out there is built on assumptions, and everyone has colored their picture of the world to the tint of their soul. Sometimes you are right, sometimes you are wrong. We all get by on the little bit of truth that has weathered the days, and a little bit of faith that things are as they seem.
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| Face | 9:23am tuesday, 5th february |
I don't let anyone in. I mean, I don't think I ever have. I went from precocious child to insensitive teenager to too cool college student to schizophrenic to an upright survivor. Nowhere along the way have I let anyone in to the inmost me, though for some time, it would have been quite difficult indeed. Maybe I've reached the point though, that maybe I'm ready to open my soul to someone. I think I've done a little of that on this site, which you have read, something of what's going on inside which I share with (really) no one. This is faceless, however — I think I'm ready for a face, now: a face to nod and look concerned, a face that listens.
I'm not sure what I'm saying, come to think of it. Perhaps it's because, as I said, I've never let anyone in before. I don't know how it's done. But I can't live my life closed up anymore; I can't keep building the walls that that requires. It's exhausting to always be on the defense about what you are, and that would be because what you are you are all the time, after all, so that's walking tiptoe forever. I'll start here, so, to you out there. Kind of training for until I can find the face that I need. I don't think those faces come cheap; if you ever find one (or, lucky stiff, more than one), regard it that you are a soul blessed. I'll look, now, look for that face. I hope I recognize it when I see it.
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| Me | 12:27am monday, 4th february |
In that last episode of madness, I had thought I was a prophet. Not only that, I had thought I was one of the Two Witnesses of Revelation (check your Bible, Revelation 11). And I thought the other Witness was Rosanna Arquette. (More regarding Ms. Arquette can be found in my story.) I even wrote a message to her, here on this site, that we perhaps were they, indeed. And there is this post, which is the one before that message to Ms. Arquette, that there were four more years until the end of the world. Let me correct this, though, that even if I were what I thought I was, the four years from September would mark the Antichrist's ascension into power, and that the end — or more precisely, the return of Jesus Christ — would happen after three and a half more years. So, actually, I would have had seven and half more years on the planet from last September, and not the four that I was thinking. And of course, all of this — prophet, Arquette, and end of the world — is a trap.
There were reasons I did think I was a prophet. Several times, I have seen the future, or seemed to. But perhaps those were illusions, too. I must understand myself what I have advised others to do who have written me: that I must put these delusions to rest. It is difficult, however. I even have words the Jesus Christ cartoon in my head dictated to me (here). It is difficult, even though I would wish rather to live a long and prosperous life, left to other, my more realistic dreams, to pursue. After all, who would not want to be an extraordinary figure by a decree of God? That is the trap: that we think ourselves far more special than the world would ever know about. In one, but only the mundane, sense, it is true, but in the more important sense that sanity tries to shake us into seeing, all of it is false.
This is what I have been wrestling with in the past few months. I pray that I will see it through — that I wander to the lands where sanity calls. The struggle is perhaps a noble one, that I must choose the lesser of two rewards and keep choosing it, that I must struggle to be less than what circumstances seem to project. In the end, I am only me: not a man of thunder, throwing lightning to the ground, but a man of rain, caught in the downpour of days going by.
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| Candlespeak | 12:32am sunday, 3rd february |
Candle, am I a dream?
By the waterfalls of Heaven, does some
grand dreamer imagine my own "I am",
that I should take care lest any step
be the crack of a branch that cracks
open the dream, and I
be nothing but a fantasy gone?
How can I tell I am real?
Candle, my dreams once took to life, too,
do you recall? So,
how do I tell I am not a thing
that lives and breathes by the dictation
of a greater whim? Sometimes
I feel as thin as air, after all.
Hm. I think I will live, candle,
as if I matter somewhere — even if
I am a dream, some dreams of mine
have moved me, too —
even if I am a dream, I can mean
something anyway: that I, a dream,
can touch the dreamer, too.
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| Man Who Ran | 7:54am friday, 1st february |
There was a man who ran away from everything that had ever happened to him all his days. Whenever something went wrong in his life, he never faced it. He was always running. He ran away from his parents when he was young, and he moved from place to place; he was always getting into some sort of trouble, and then he'd run away again. He lived like this for many years, a drifter who would take an odd job here and there for money, never making any real friends because he'd never stay in one place long enough to get really close to anyone. He knew, though, that he could not keep it up forever, that at the end of each of us was death, and there was no man in the world that could run fast enough or far enough to escape the last thing of life.
Then, one of the days he thought about death, he looked in the mirror, and looked, and looked. He couldn't remember how long it was since he really looked at himself. And then he realized that in all the things he was running away from, it was really just one thing he was really trying to escape: himself. And that in running away from himself, he was letting death win, that each time he avoided a piece of himself from committing to a moment, he was letting that piece die. He looked in the mirror and saw how successful he had been in his running — he almost didn't recognize himself, the man he had become. And that was all it took for the man — just one long, hard look at himself — because after he understood this, he put his roots down there and then, and never ran again.
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