the monday awards... brought to you by the letter "j"

a couple of awards, given at my discretion for actions and non-actions alike which deserve, in my humble opinion, some kind of honor.

the "Flip-Side of a Coin Well-Spent" Award
this award is humbly, and with honest gratitude, offered to jerry.
having been in a place where i have written things to people in the past, my former church and my former best friend included, they have consistantly and unreservedly burned me, calling me "manipulative", charging me with deliberately provoking their emotions, as though it had nothing at all to do with MY emotions at all, like i live my life just to twist other people into serving my purposes. they've told me to "take it somewhere else", that i should just pack up my emotional insecurites and peddle them in another venue. they've said a lot of hurtful things.
so yesterday, shortly after creating my post, i sent jerry a link to it. and within an hour of that email, jerry had mailed me back, asking me to meet him. and, upon my arrival, i was met with not only an apology, but an honest opportunity to express my feelings and have them validated, and to hear the other side of the story, and offer my own appologies where necessary.
this is what human interraction is supposed to be about. honesty. people caring about other people.
not in a very, very long time has someone willingly interracted with me in such a selfless way, and i will not soon forget, nor ever stop appreciating how it made me feel, just for once, not to be scorned and brushed aside, not to be spurned, not to be further debilitated by the responses of others to my various weaknesses and failings.
thank you, Jerry.

the "Ricky C. Quanced Me on that Sack of Dank" Award
given generously to Tall J, who is always welcoming in a safe and peaceful way, who almost unconsciously (or so it seems) displays, in the little subtle things he says and does, that he cares for the people he's with regardless of who they are or whether or not they deserve it, and whose company is just genuinely enjoyable, no matter what, if anything, is actually happening. sometimes, it's nice to just talk about random stuff, laugh more than you've laughed in a week, and recognize that simple things are just as good as complex ones.
thanks, J., "you rock the radocity of the world"

that pretty much wraps up anything i might want to say, so have a good one, and remember, you can't spell jenerosity without j... although if you were to do so, your odds of passing english would be slightly higher.

a wish and a wasted star

this was supposed to be a positive post. in fact, for posterity (can't spell posterity without 'post'... mmmm...cereal...) i will still publish the post i meant to have here in it's entirety, because i like it, even if what i'm feeling now flies in contradiction to some of it's loftier ideals.

letting go of a grievance, of a grudge, is extremely difficult.
we become convinced, in our mind, that the weight is necessary, that without it, our gravity would be insufficient and we, now rendered insubstantial, would simply float into the inky blackness of oblivion. we become convinced that without the hard, impenetrable exterior, we would be easy targets for a world whose sharpest and deadliest arrows are often the ones that disguise themselves as love, forgiveness, and compassion, and that agaist such spears, we have only this one defense, so we must use it constantly.
this is not a "lie of the enemy". he speaks to us far less often than we like, in our self-importance, to believe.
this is not the "fallen nature of man", since man has only ever had one nature, and only fell as a diamond might fall from a setting, retaining it's worth despite the time spent off the master's hand.
no, this is simply something we tell ourselves to mask our fear, our insecurities, and our monumental pride. knowing that lovign everyone leaves us open to pain we don't think we deserve, we decide instead to build defenses against such pain, not realizing that these same defenses work with equal strength and vigor against that ability to love. But being terrified of "being hurt again", we close that door, padlock it, hammer some cartoonish boards over it, slide a fw end tables, a sofa, and the statue of liberty in front of it, and then, in one of the greatest contradictions known to humanity, sit patiently on the other side, waiting for someone to come through.
what would it look like if we simply dropped the burden? if we carried no biterness with us, would it be easier to go out into the world and make the lives of others less bitter as well? if we didn't have our huge, protective shell on, would we find that we could get closer to the shells of others, examine them for access, instead of simply bumping like fairground cars and veerign off in another direction altogether?
in this spirit, today, i examine the grudges in my life. whether warranted or not (and don't we all feel secretly vindicated by our ability to make them ALL feel warranted?) they have no place in the life i most want for myself.
i claim no strength above and beyond that available to any human. in fact, i often claim less. and i know that, while one or two of these heavy things might be manageable, the whole at once will overwhelm me. so for now, i take the coffee table away from the door, leaving the statue for a day when, after the exercise of moving a few more smaller pieces of furniture, my strength is up to the challenge.
still, without the reminder of that single injustice blocking the small window of my door, i can once more see the possibility of justice withuot taint, and its allure will, i pray, be too strong for me to ever fully conceal again.
these little bits of progress are not much, and i know that if someone wanted to come into my living room for a cup of tea, it would still be nigh on impossible, or would at least take desire enough to squeeze down the chimney and bear the soot and pain. but perhaps we can sign things to each other through the patch of glass i've cleared, and after my apologetic explanation, we might make an effort, together, at moving some of each other's burdens, and making space for others to come and share in the labor, and the reward.


there, that was hopeful, wasn't it?
and yet, today, all i have left at the moment is to ask the question "why is it the moment we're feeling good, about anything, a bunch of stupid things happen that take it all away from us?
all i wanted were a few simple things. i wanted my bike fixed, and after dropping 80 dollars into it, it still doesn't run the way i want... i've had to take it back to them twice today, and the problem persists. it's a simple, stupid thing, but all it would take to make me happy would be the proper functionality of something that people know how to fix, but fail in doing so.
i was supposed to be somewhere important today at 2:30. i was under the errant impression that i was supposed to be there at 3. so, i was bewhildered to arrive at the first destination at 2:30, thinking i had all kinds of time to get to the place i was supposed to go, only to learn that the person going with me had already left, seemingly without me.
so i proceeded to the final destination, and, arriving still at only 20 to 3, was further overwhelmed to find everyone gone.
distraught, now, and quite bereft of comfort, i called jerry, who was my friend, and supposed to be there with me, to help me through some of the processes that i completely didn't understand, having so seldom dealt with them.
instead of finding one miniscule scrap of compassion, i find instead accusation, a cool indifference that sounds very much like disappointment, and finally, some demands that, easy tasks for him, he decided instead to bequeath to me, even though i will find them much harder, and be rewarded less.
having been in a particularly emotional frame of mind this week already, i was crying by the time i got off the phone. not that he seemed to care at all, admonishing me that it was my fault, that i brought the consequences, so i should deal with them.
the fact that it was all just based on a stupid missunderstanding makes it worse... now, it will wreck a bunch more things in my week, add more stress to my life, and leave me feeling, i don't know, like somehow i failed, although it was so contrary to how i wanted things to go that you'd think people would see that, instead, would see the desire i wear instead of the failure tattooed underneath it. 10 stupid minutes cost me this. and i don't know why it's affecting me so, only that i wish i could have received ONE, just one, warm and kind word from the person that i was still getting over trusting to lead me through the process to which i was reluctantly resigned.
instead of feeling like i can fix things, now that everyone has already decided how they will view me, i feel stupid, mostly as a result of those perceptions, coupled with the desires and expectations in my heart that i never seem to manage to meet in any satisfactory way.
so, whatever. i'm sorry, i guess. i never intended to waste people's time, never intended to give them futher doubts about any particular segment of humanity simply by my fragile association.
i just wish that one time, someone might understand me.
but instead, i'm sure i'm only going to find further lack of it as i move to fix any of this.
jerry, you could have helped me. instead you slapped me in the face with your commentary. thanks for nothing.

so that's all i've really got to say today, except for one burning prayer, which i offer right now to anyone who might avail themselves to listen:
i pray, beyond my capacity, beyond my hope and faith in humanity its flaws, that somehow, starting with anyone willing, the world might become more about supporting people than pointing out their insecurities, that it might become more about saving people than abandoning them to fates they don't understand, that it might become more about compassion than regulation, that it might be, in short, a place where kindness and love flourish, and people won't ever feel the need to hide, to be ashamed, or embarrassed, or like they are failures, especially for relatively petty matters. let's encourage each other in this above all things, to be ourselves, and to know that it's a perfectly acceptable thing to be.

something obvious, something alalogous, and someting strangely comfortable...

first...
the obvious thing i'm going to say is that nothing is inherently evil, nor is anything inherently good. an object, a skill, a theory, a concept, these things are incapable of their own morality, their own corruption or salvation. it is only through our own interractions, regards, beliefs, judgments, that we give power to the benign, that we lend our own morality to those things bereft of such taint.
today, the subject to which i'm applying this knowledge is dissociation. because, i'll admit, i have been guilty of judging the talent in a completely negative light. it seemed to me that it was cheating, somehow, an open deception, a denial of "who i am". after all, if we're to make any progress in the world, so we're often told, we must "face ourselves" and "be real" and "honest" about "who we are".
that's bunk. we decide who we are. we are not, despite prevailing oppinion, capable of deceiving ourselves, because we create ourselves daily. we are who we believe we are, who we allow ourselves to be, who we let society or friends or family or religion or industry tell us we are.
and so, the skill of dissociation is no different... it's just another facet of decision. i'm not "denying myself", i'm creating myself, or recreating, anyway. the self i have now, after all, was shaped by the things i allowed to be shaped by, and odds are i accepted at least a few thigns that i didn't have to take onto my shoulders. so by recreating my identity, i can chose the pieces i want, leave the ones that are undesireable, and strike out from there.
the only factor that is of any consequence, as usual, is perception. because people simply do not believe in change. if i were to walk into my former church right now, for instance, they would naturally assume i was still the same person i have always been (ignoring the fact that, before they loathed me, they loved me like a brother). if i were to take up with a shrink (don't do this, ever, it's a terrible thing to make yourself endure), he'd most likely tell me that problems can't be dealt with this way, that it's "repression", or "escapism", or some other meaningless word that carries a negative connotation only because we allow it to. you don't have to spend years slogging through your past just to "get over it". burn it. leave the ashes in a barrel. you have the power to decide what parts of your life will affect you most, which lessons you'll carry and which you'll discard, what pieces of yourself are fit for redemption and which are best cut off and left for the fire.

secondly,
the anlaogy that i'm going to paint involves an idiot.
perhaps that's unfair, and judgmental, so let me just say rather that it involves someone who, without my knowing him well, strikes me as being selfish, indifferent, a little ignorant, and too sure of himself to be of any real use to others.
his name, just for interest's sake, is mersad.
he was supposed to put a new engine in my car.
we TOLD him to put a new engine in the car. after a long explanation, of course, involving fluids having leaked into the crank shaft, that the head gasket was the original culprit, but that it was beyond repair, and that it would cost about 1500 dollars to have it done where we were planning to get it fixed.
he quoted me abotu 800-1000, for the same thing.
fast-forward, now, to a few days later... he calls, says the car is ready... my mother goes to pick it up, only to find him pulling up to the house in it... and it's, SHOCK!!!, overheating, badly. the same thing it was doing before it was "fixed".
the reason, you ask? well, turns out that, instead of putting a new engine in there, he decided, after his own few tests, that it would be fine to simply replace the head gasket, fix the sparkplugs, do a couple other things and call it the job we paid him for. now asking, still, the same 800 dollars, for a job we could have got done at an actual garage for the same price, had they not already told us that it would be completely unprofitable, and would fix nothing.
which, clearly, is what it did. "this comes as as much of a surprise to me as it does to you" he says to my mother. who, i'm very certain, was not surprised in the slightest, having known that the car needed a new engine.
i'm concerned that, had she not seen the overheating, had he not driven it, he might have just handed it over to us, taken our money, and left us to discover on our own that he didn't do what he was asked to do at all, but instead did whatever he felt he wanted to.
so.
mersad still has the car. he says he found a couple of engines, but that there's no way to know how many km are on it, and he "doesn't trust that". instead, deciding he would rather trust himself against the experienced advice of two auto-repair shops and try to fix something unfixable.
fascinating to me.
is this what we do to God? he calls us up, says "if you really want to fix your life, you need a new engine, just put one in and it'll be fine", and we, instead, secure in our own knowledge and understanding, run a few tests, decide it's salvageable, take the easy way out, and slap on a bunch of superficial repairs that won't fix a damned thing, and then give it back to God, saying it's fixed, telling him that what we did was better, somehow, than what he wanted us to do, like he doesn't know better, like he's just going to say "okay", hand us a wad of bills, and thank us for saving him from his requirements of us.
we're so slow, sometimes, to grasp these things.
either way, if you ever come across a mechanic (and i use the term loosely) named mersad, don't give him your car.

and...
for something strangely comfortable, i ask the question, when does comfort outweigh functionality?
i have two bicycles.
one of them is relatively new, even if i bought it used. it's steering is incredibly responsive. the disc brakes it has can stop on a fraction of a dime. it cost more used than my other bike did new. and i don't trust it. at all.
my other bike, i've had forever. it's sturdy, comfortable, and i feel completely at home on it, i feel alive riding it, i feel like i'm in a place where i belong.
it's not as good, probably... it can't stop as quickly, it no longer changes gears properly, and it's heavy. but i believe in it, i trust it, i know it, i love it.
so. what's more important? my marriage had so much amazing potential. as one unit, we had an assortment of skills and strengths that would have been the envy of most people, of most couples. but there was no trust, not at the end. and that's about all that mattered. the potential evaporated under the weight of our simple lack of comfort, lack of belief in each other, in the trust of our strength.
it's something to think about, anyway.
comfortable shoes are nice. new shoes are not comfortable, but look shiny and impress people. but in the end, do you want sore feet, and at what price?

that's it for me.

lessons

a few things i learned this week...

- the chicken and cappicola wrap at 7-eleven has 56% of your daily recommended fat intake. this is what happens when convenience stores try to do health food. makes you think twice about the McDonalds salad, doesn't it? just another fine example of things in the world that seem good for us, even occasionally purport to be good for us, but certainly arn't. still, really, really tasty. what a shock... something bad for me is also something i want.
- since my last post, i've discovered one of the reasons for which i cling to all possibilities, and as such often fail to get rid of the things i should. it seems i live my life as a sequence of individual events and concepts instead of lifestyles. what this means is that, if there is something destructive but entertaining in my life, and something good comes along to challenge it, i don't change, i just shelve the bad thing for a while. that way, if the good thing doesn't work out, then i'll have the bad one to which to return, and it won't matter at that point because i've lost the alternative to it. i'm never going to change if i keep that up. it's like i'm walking around eating a sandwich and keeping a pack of smokes in my back pocket, convinced that if i drop the sandwich and it becomes inedible, i'll at least have the comfort of the cigarettes. but life isn't just about that one sandwich, it's about cultivating a lifestyle, it's about learning that no matter how many sandwiches i drop, i should keep shopping at the deli, instead of the smokeshop, and then, when the moment of failure or weakness comes, the temptation isn't there to readdict me to it. that will take some thought, some change, some dedication, a lot of things that i either don't think i have, don't typically invest, or wonder if i'm capable of sustaining. but thus begins the trek toward a life that has merit.
- plans are good. plans make life happen. a lot of the time, i just go with the flow, or spontaneously decide things without conscious reason. this also makes nothing change. the first step is to have desire. i have about a million of those. that's about as far as it ever goes, however. i jump right from desire to unfulfillment, somehow or other entirely skipping the process of making a plan whereby i might actually achieve my goal. so that's this week's mission... or this month's... or this year's... to get down, on paper, what exactly my plan is, and then actually set forth to make it happen... no matter how it goes, it has to be better than all of this wasted abject hope. it would be nice to put hope in something realistic and tangible, just once, for a change of pace.
- i may have to more or less give up the internet... it seems that often, i find myself chatting with the wrong kinds of people... and when i get of the net a few hours later, find that i have the worst headache. by contrast, the other night, i spent a couple hours chatting to my girlfriend on msn, and when i got off, i felt great. i don't know if the other people are poison or if she's an antidote, but i think maybe both are a little true, and i should include this new knowledge in future decisions.
- i'm very, very tired of hating myself for the things that are in me... the other day i was thinking about lines, blurring... whether or not there is a point where dark grey and light black are equally satisfied, where someone can take a small measure of pride in the progress they've made without shooting themselves over all the things they have yet to fix. i'm looking for it, and when i find it, i will be that much closer to the balance that i seek and crave.

that's all for now. more later, as i keep learning. wish me luck.

shumway or another...

"you know I'm jealous of how you can just turn them off
those bad ideas that feel so soft" -matt good

It’s good that this post comes on the heels of the last, because they’re connected in a few small but vital ways.
I often end my posts with a question, one of the many things that I don’t know how to do, don’t understand, don’t have a solution for. This time, however, I’m going to begin with a question.
I do this because it’s THE question, it’s the question of all my other questions, it’s the tool with which I would most be able to construct the life I want, the one that looks most like the positive portions of my divided imagination. The question, then, is this:
“How does one make a complete decision, adhere to the resolution, and simply accept one single outcome?”
This is the quality that takes ordinary people and turns them into role models, examples, leaders, heroes. This is the ability that is often labeled strength, or steadfastness, or courage, or determination, or integrity. These are the traits I want for myself, the ones I can imagine, the ones I can even occasionally see within my heart, yearning to get out and express themselves to the world.
But the choice is always only partial for me. I decide that I want the feeling of freedom, the experience of release, but I just don’t want to sacrifice the possibilities that die in that decision… if I were to make freedom whole, it would mean negating forever the comforts of my captivity, and at times in my life, those comforts were all I had.
But how I would love, just once, to decide and not undecide, to lock a door behind me instead of wedging it open with a triangle of uncertainty, to walk without looking back, not because I’m afraid of the consequences of that backward glance, but because I’m excited about all the possibilities that exist without it, because I’m confident in my choice, and in my ability to adhere to it.
If only insecurities didn’t pounce so aptly.
An example. A simple one, one that I’m sure many will be able to relate to (not that I’m deluding myself into believing that many will read this post).
Eminem is very, very talented. His voice is unique. His rhymes are often clever, typically creative, and occasionally brilliant in a way that no other person has defined the word. His lyrics, however, are often filth.
To his credit, he generally expresses them in jest, be it a contemptuous jocularity. That’s fine. Most of the time, that’s also how I receive them. But, as I said in the last post, there’s the trouble of that pesky subconscious, ever listening, ever picking up subtleties in the messages. So while I might just be listening to some smart rhymes and some catchy beats and hooks, my subconscious is getting the impression that things like rape and murder and intolerance and degradation and objectification are suitable fare, and if for popular music, then why not for thoughts, dreams, life?
Hence the problem.
On the purely conscious level of superego, I am well aware that the short-term benefit to my life that this music offers is certainly not outweighed by the long-term benefit of simply discarding it. But as always, I fear the choice. And my fear grows a voice in the dark and whispers to me. “what if I want it back tomorrow”, it asks, knowing that it would be a waste to have destroyed it only to spend more unnecessary money getting it back again. “what if I change my thinking and decide that it’s fine? What a fool I’d look for being so rigid in my thoughts, for being so legalistic, so rashly judgmental.” And those arguments work, at least before the choice is made. And if I finally DO make the choice, there is an instant pang of regret. Knowing that, at that precise moment, it has lost, it lingers, hiding behind my inflated confidence in my own progress, my pride in having accomplished something difficult, my appreciation of freedom.
But when a moment of weakness comes (and they always do), when, for a brief second, I miss that which I have relinquished, regret pounces swiftly from it’s clever blind, eager to convince me that I was entirely wrong in my decision, that I was stupid to give it up, that I was deceived about my own lack of strength, that I’m silly and weak for having sacrificed something that, with a little more practice and exposure, would be inconsequential.
But it’s making these things inconsequential that IS the consequence. It’s the numbness to pain, it’s the blindness to sin, it’s the acceptance of the unacceptable, that hardens our hearts. Commonplace atrocities serve only to dull our senses and make us that much less aware of who we are, who others are, what love is, and how to express it in ways that are beautiful and real.
But I’m already convinced that I made a mistake, and in the end, once more secure in my own strength, in my ability to distinguish truth from lie, good from bad, and thereby consume them both equally without consequence, I wind up, after all of that, with 4 of his CD’s instead of the 2 I had to begin with.

I want to make choices that last. I want so badly to simply keep walking, to shatter the things that hold me back and not find myself frantically gluing the shards back together the next week. I want it with all my heart, with all my soul. My mind and strength, however, have to get on board, for it to truly happen, for true freedom to come.

soon. i can only choke on fur so many times before i decide that maybe, just maybe, celery would be better for me, regardless of the flavor to which i've become addicted.

we all live in a yellow subconscious...

the subconscious is a powerful thing. it's truly amazing, the amount of stuff we know that we're not even really aware that we know, the amount of stuff we're thinking about that we have no idea we're even considering.
i was riding in my car the other day, and someone was talking on the radio, mentioning a few band names... a few minutes later, i was whistling a song... i didn't even recognize it at first, had to think about what it was i was whistling... then it came to me... "tinfoil" by limblifter... which, after thinking further about it, i realized was one of the bands the announcer had mentioned...
a few days after that, i was looking through a book of foam buildings that came with a 708 piece 3-D puzzle of St Basil's Cathedral that my girl and i picked up at value village... shortly after thumbing through that catalogue, i was wandering her place and whistling that presidential tune, you know the one, dum, dum-da-dum, dum-da-dum-da-dum-da-daaaa-daaa... anyway, turns out one of the puzzles available in their booklet was, of course, the white house.

so i'm thinking, clearly none of us are as in control of what we're thinking as we claim to be, or want to be, or believe we're capable of being. and that's kinda frightening. because, frankly, i put a lot of crap in my head. and i delude myself into believing that, if i think about it while i'm listening, or watching, or reading, if i just take it on a level of entertainment and deliberately filter out any message, that it won't affect me in the slightest.
how ghastly. how arrogant.
we can't control everything we think. and we're bound to miss messages, intentional or not, or accept them despite our desire to the contrary simply because they make part of us happy, or excited, or alive...
this all, i've got to say, worries me slightly. i don't know exactly what to do about it, either, because while i'm dramatically aware of the benefits of having a purer mind, one less cluttered with all the things i enjoy but that bring me down, that steal my life, my love, my hope, i still cling to those things, duping myself into believing i can have it both ways, can hold on to that stuff for the fun and still excape their cumulative effect on my mental processes...
until i start humming them one day for no reason, and realize how discordant i have become with the rest of the music, how grandly i'm ruining a piece i used to love.
so... get rid of it all, feel legalistic and stupid and weak (even though i know i'm weak regardless)... or keep it, and worry about long-term effects of momentary pleasures.
hmmmm...
so many choices in life are so hard.

a short story that takes forever...

once the initial deception is accepted, it is so easy to remain deceived, to become further deceived, to become completely deceived.
it happens this way.
there is a forest full of bear traps betwen your house and work.
this, in itself, has never presented a problem. it's always been easy enough to get up a little earlier and simply take the paved road that goes around the borders of the forest.
but eventually, the question comes.
in the beginning, it seems so little like foolishness that we are content to formulate a supporting belief almost without thought, accepting each rationalization without question.
"after all, it's shorter to get to work if i go through the forest. if i'm careful, there's no reason it should be unsafe. i could get an extra half-hour of sleep in the morning. there's trafic on the road, anyway, there's probably just as good a chance of getting run over as getting stuck in a bear trap..."
it doesn't occur to us, at this point, to question why we wouldn't want to go through the woods, because all of our resources are fully occupied with making it seem not only okay, but better than any available alternative.
and so, one mornig, tired and mildly rushed, we slip into the shadows under the trees, believing we're making a good choice, that we'll come out ahead.
almost immediately, the correct question finally comes. "is this wise?" but now, of course, it's "too late". after all, there's not enough time to go back without being late, and even if there was, you're already partway through the forest, and going back again would mean having made the risk for nothing. wasted risk is tragic, after all.
and so, impressed once more with our brilliant logic, we continue. and, having sated the question of the wisdom of our actions, we ever so gently and inconspicuously lower our guard.
it would be easier to avoid the bear traps if they actually looked like bear traps... but they don't... there is no gleam of silver teeth and snapping strength to dissuade us to step, instead there is the shimmer of desire, the pique of curiosity and interest, the sharpness of wit and clever vice. it's easy not to step in a bear trap... but stepping into the world, stepping into the bright colors and exquisite tastes of our various poisons, is easy.
and so, walking merrily along, paying no heed to the things in the forest that do not belong there, that are not wood and moss and fern, we walk carelessly right into something much stronger than we are, and our walk through the forest that was only supposed to be a shortcut is violently halted.
the trap hurts at first, because we're unused to it, but at the same time, the pain wakes us up, fills our body with adrenaline, with sensations that we have never experienced, and in a strange dark way that we were never meant to experience, we like it.
the thing about pain is, eventually, the body gets used to it. this is our body's great deception, becoming accustomed to something to the point where release would actually cause more pain than simply enduring our slavery. release, after all, means losing not only the trap, but probably a goodish quantity of blood, and perhaps the use of our leg as well.
staying, on the other hand, will eventually mean death.
but still, our mind ticks away in it's cleverness, consumed with convincing us that the easy way is honestly easy. "it's better to die here with my vice than to live without a foot, to have to spend x number of weeks in hospital, to have to face telling everyone in my life about my foolishness, to live with the fact that i lost that foot, that blood, that face, and have nothing to show for it. at least this way, i have something."
and so we while away the hours in the forest, contentedly polishing our trap, waiting for starvation to set in so that we can be free from the consequences of our poor judgment.
so... here's the thing...
how on earth do we pull that trap open? how do we decide, once it's off, that it needs to be destroyed?
there was a girl at our church, and while i thought it was extreme and a little over-the-top, i had to admire what she managed to do. she had a fragmented guitar from a kiss concert. a cool keepsake, to be sure. but she decided, at one point or another, that it was weighing her down. and so it passed, she came to the church with the splintered noose, tossed it in a barrel, and burned it. i would have thought to sell it, perhaps... but then i'd think that if i could give it to someone else, there's no reason why i couldn't have it... and soon enough, getting rid of it would cease to matter, and it would hang on my wall and whisper to me about the woods, about my foot, about the way i used to like the pain.
it's easy to burn things we hate... or even irrelevant things. it's burning the things we think we love, the things we want, or believe we need. that's what's hard. it's easy to throw out a pack of cigarettes. it's hard to quit smoking. it's easy to break a bottle of booze... it's hard to be sober. it's easy to shatter a disk. it's hard to stop objectifying. it's easy to refrain from making a phone call or two... but getting rid of unhealthy friends is nearly impossible.

so here i sit, still stuck, hating the teeth in my ankles but not knowing what to do about it... not knowing how to make that final decision, that final break, and just accept the fact that my foot will never be the same. it's what i long for, the freedom, but i want it all... if i'm going to be free to walk on crutches, i want to be free to run. i need to find the will and desire to be content with walking, to be content with the injuries i've caused myself, knowing that they will remind me of how far i've come... it's perspective all over again, where i want to be able to see my freedom for what it is, but all i can see is the impediments i drag along with me.

but i'm still learning.
one of these days, it will sink in, and then... oh then... let the burning begin.
i just hope i have a big enough barrel.