songs about water

lately, sleep is either all i have, or unatainable.
tonite, it's the latter.
nights like these in Sidney, i would walk to the pier, look out over the ocean. at night, it was black, like a sky without stars. it was the safest place i knew. you could look into it forever and never find anything more beautiful, dispicable, or bewildering than yourself. nothing with which to compare yourself and come up short. nothing to which to liken yourself in ways you don't deserve. i would sit down near the water, on a ledge beneath the visible plane of the pier, and in my invisible nook of damp wood, i would pray. sometimes the wind, the waves would invite me to speak my prayers aloud, echoing my frustration, my turbulence, and i would tell it all i could in the time we were allowed. sometimes, my prayers would be silent, like the ocean, empty on the surface but inderneath alive in ways too complex to be understood. two unsearchable depths reaching for one another in the dark and sharing secrets too deep for anyone to see.
i miss the ocean.

tonite, i walk instead to a place out of my past. a park i once loved.
there is no peace in childhood for a man forbidden to stand in the park.
i can feel their eyes, unfortunate spies. my love is not for them.
uneasy, i proceed.

i find a spot on the hill, a place i know i stood when i was 7 and the world was something that i didn't have to understand because it loved me and that was all i needed. standing there now, i whisper tears of mourning, thinking about all of the things that once were, all of the beautiful things labeled fragile in a language i never learned to read. i kneel, then slowly fold myself into a crevice full of gras, and lie there for a moment, thinking how simple it would be to just remain curled here in this ball until the end of time, if only time would end tonite.
i am not there long enough for the end to come. or maybe i simply wasn't quite ready for it, just now. i pluck a strand of grass from the patch in front of me and wonder, if i were to eat it, of this place would become a part of me in some concrete way, if i could carry this peace with me until i am too ole any longer to remember the taste of grass in the night. instead, what happens is my eyes, wandering across the immediate landscape, fall upon an empty condom wrapper.

so it's true, then.
everything is broken.
i feared as much.
feeling slightly soiled, now, i stand, the hill's surface no longer offering the simplicity and hope i want, anything that has not been spoiled like a fruit i once couldn't get enough of, but that is now inedible.

memory.
childhood.
innocence.
something of each remains, as shards will remain, no longer capable of holding the original shape, bearing no likeness to the form they wore while they were whole. now they are capable of hinting only, clues, scraps of evidence of something larger, something more beautiful, alluding to the grandeur of loss in tongues fragmented beyond repair.

my name is shard.
i remember no other name but this.
i was not born this way.
forgive me.

i am home now, in that same way i whale might say it were home upon arriving in a tank in some aquatic zoo and being taught to do tricks for food.
i wonder if my performance matters.
either way, i hunger.

i miss the ocean.

some lyrics i can't stop thinking about (edited mostly for lenghth and repetition) from a song called pet by perfect circle. it's much more powerful with music:

don't fret precious i'm here
step away from the window, go back to sleep.

lay your head down child
i won't let the boogeyman come
counting bodies like sheep
to the rhythm of the war drums

pay no mind to the rabble
pay no mind to the rabble
head down, go to sleep
to the rhythm of the wardrums

pay no mind to what the other voices say
they don't care about you
like i do. like i do.
safe from pain, and truth, and choice,
and other poison devils
see they don't give a fuck about you. like i do.

just stay with me.
safe and
ignorant.
go back to sleep.
go back to sleep.

i'll be the one to protect you from
your enemies and a voice of reason

i'll be the one to protect you from
your enemies and your choices, son
they're one in the same
i must isolate you
isolate and save you from yourself.

swaying to the rythm of the new world order and
count bodies like sheep to the rhythm of the war drums

the boogeymen are coming
the boogeymen are coming

keep your head down now, go to sleep, to the rhythm of a war drum

stay with me
safe and ignorant
just stay with me
i'll hold you and protect you from
the other ones.
the evil ones
don't love you son.
go back to sleep.

all the things i can't say...

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why is this page still blank?
why am i so terrified?

i'm sorry that there isn't more.

finally, something good to say

i'm excited. it's not often i get to say anything positive about people.
but i'm forced to put my general cynicism aside, at least momentarily, as a wonderful example of character crossed my path and broke me out of my negativity.

so, i was at work. we were doing inventory in a safeway. i was, as is notoriously my tradition, hiding in the back room so as not to have to count the freezers, which, for reasons i won't get into just now, i simply can not deal with.
the crew can't help but notice this absence.
it doesn't go over well with them.
they talk about me, when i'm not there. they complain. they gossip. they vent their anger in what they feel to be appropriate and justified ways.

i don't hold this against them, even when i come back and overhear trailing whisps of their conversations, because i know that i have been guilty on occasion of making the same kind of remarks, feeling and expressing the same bitterness at something i don't understand but which makes my efforts seem longer and harder.

so, we're a few aisles past the freezers now, and i'm working beside charlotte. she's a bit of a mystery to me, sometimes, the way she acts, the way she speaks. but this latest interraction would be the most mysterious of all.

i'm paraphrasing from memory, but i will try to be as accurate as possible, because the words and the ideal behind them deserve as much integrity as i can muster.

"i have to apologize to you" she says. "i was complaining with kevin about your avoiding the freezers. i don't know why you don't do them, i'm sure you have some kind of reason, but i shouldn't have talked about you like that, and i felt i had to apologize to you. i didn't say anything before because i don't want to seem like i'm prying, i'm curious about why you don't do them, but if it's personal then it's personal."

honestly, i didn't know what to say. about halfway through, i started absolving her, telling her that it was okay, i expected people to behave that way, that i knew they were talking about me (although she was one of the few i didn't know about, thinking she might be above that... and to an extent, she proved to be). finally, i stopped trying to talk her out of apologizing and just accepted it, because i didn't want to minimize it, didn't want to take away from her, from her curious and amazing level of personal responsibility, on which i complimented her before our conversation ended.

i'm not sure how to go on from here. part of me wants to say that this kind of thing should be so common that it doesn't warrant several paragraphs on a blog. part of me wants to get these words into as many hands as possible so that people will know that such actions, such a character, is possible, regardless of the world in which we live. most of me, however, is just wishing, as everyone wishes without doing much of anything to realize the wish, that i was a little more like that.

it can't be easy. to live that odd and displaced integrity. i would have found it terribly difficult to apologize to someone for something they knew i did. but there she was apologizing to me for something i most likely wouldn't have had any idea about, not because i needed to hear it, but because she didn't feel right about herself until she said something. that's what accountability looks like. real, actual, self-driven accountability.

really, really amazing.

and while i'm a little saddened that there's not much, much more of it in the world, the little fragments that i happen to see every now and again manage to renew my shaky faith in humanity, if not necessarily my own humanity, and i can see how a god might be able to love us, though i would still see the love as being more selective than necessarily true.

one step at a time.

thanks, charlotte.

censorship, and the message we're sending...

watched the tbs version of The Wedding Singer the other night. it was interesting, in that same way that all tbs movies are interesting, once you get past all the edits, alterations and cuts.
sometimes, our notions of decency and propriety scare the hell out of me. it was worthwhile, in the censor's opinion, not only to screen out the "obvious" words, fuck, bullshit, etc, but also to change ass to butt on several occasions and change asshole to the much more benign jerk. sure. fine. it's all been done before, it's nothing new.
however, for a contextual view, let's consider some of the other dialogue in the movie...
like adam sandler's song about linda, which ends with:
somebody kill me please,
i'm on my knees,
pretty pretty please,
kill me,
i want to die,
put a bullet in my head.

and also contains the bit:
and when i think of you, linda
i hope you (censored) choke.

interesting, we can't say fucking, but we can certainly wish someone chokes just because we hate them. nice.

and of course, it's equally entertaining to have a conversation in a bar, where, while in the process of getting completely drunk, an old man can't tell sandler that women will rip your heart out of your ass, because ass is dirty, but CAN tell him, just a few seconds later, "you need a prostitute".

fascinating.

don't get me wrong... i love the movie. and naturally, the television gurus are working under the same assumption we are, that the movie is aimed for an audience that will be able to discern and appreciate the scenes as they were intended, for the purposes of humor, which is why it's okay that one of the central themes is blatant infidelity... because it's funny, right... but doesn't this all beg the question, isn't that the same audience that has heard all their offending words before, and would understand that with equal adult appreciation? is the message okay as long as we clean up the way it's delivered so as not to offend delicate sensibilities?

all i know is how little sense the whole thing makes.

kinda like lumps, the new black eyed peas song. worst thing ever. not really related to sensorship at all, short of the fact that i wish they'd just have left the whole thing blank, or perhaps replaced it with a different, actually good, song.

unfortunately, people like it.

sigh.

peace like a river, and other things that confuse me with their unintended truth

whoever first said, or sang, that they had peace like a river had obviously never seen a river before in their life.
rivers are many things. few, however, would personify peace.
rivers are turbulent. rivers rush. rivers flood. rivers carry poisonous minerals, large volumes of human waste, dead animals, many broken things of all descriptions, and, for all that, an occasionally dizzying array of life and vitality.
an interesting interpretation of peace. next we'll be singing about how we have hope like an ozone layer.

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the people who belong to the establishment will always be right, and will always be justified by their own parameters and feel nothing but assured of their rightness.
because extremes are useful for illustrating points, let's use the pope. he's infallible, based on the structure that his religion has created. he can say and do anything even remotely dependent on that structure, and he will just simply be right. it doesn't matter if you're a devout catholic or an atheist, the pope will still be right in his own place, in his own world, in his own mind. he doesn't have to try to understand you. he doesn't have to think about things like abortion, or homosexuality, as though they involve people with different structures and different abilities and different thoughts and different realities... because his reality is all that matters. he won't hate, just condemn with love, and then only because love is one of the necessities of his own establishment.
there should be a new rule... that people who achieve power over the lives of others should be required to try to understand them a little... that probation officers be required to think a little about how the offender might be feeling every once in a while... that police officers do something not necessarily by the book because the book, in one instance, might not be the best way to do it.
and there's the heart of it. all these people, no matter how secure they are in the structure and institution they choose, still need the ability to understand that they, too, can sometimes be wrong, and that the way they do things, the way they've always done things, the traditions and patterns and reliable regulations that give the illusion of order, can also be, on occasion, incorrect.
there is no infallible rule. and even if there were, people would finda way to abuse it, whether consciously or not, to achieve the basic societal drive for more power.
love is the only way out. not rules. not punishments. not excommunication. not indifference. not systems and structures and theories and practices and traditions. love.
the only problem is that it doesn't fit in the structure, and as such, we're painting ourselves wrong from the beginning. after all, it's nobody's job to love, and nobody likes doing more than their job requires of them. but it's everybody's responsibility to love, whether we like it or not.

i'm failing.

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everyone needs to be saved. there is not a person alive who doesn't need salvation in some way, shape or form, every minute of their lives.
generally speaking, this salvation is found in idols.

an idol is something that will not save you.

a poor man most likely thinks he needs to be saved from his poverty. his god, whether he acknowledges it or not, is money. with just a bit more money, he'll say, my life will be perfect.
the man in the house down the street from this poor man has the life that the poor man wants. a good paying job, a car, a satelite in his back yard. but he hates his job. and he's lonely. with a good woman, he says, when i get a better job or that promotion i've been gunning for, he says, then i won't be as miserable as i am now. i will chase these things because i need to be rescued from the way i feel about who and what i am.

if you've ever had a fantasy about winning the lottery, you will know how compelling the idea can be. if i just won that 15 million dollar prize, i could do anything... i would be free, i would be happy.

it's all an illusion. these things, though they will make your life more comfortable, will not bring you fulfillment, wil not give you peace. they will not save you.

and you do need to be saved.

i was thinking about this as i chased my own particular vapors this week. the things i want, the things that tempt me, that claim to offer me some kind of wholeness, are consistantly failing to be any kind of salvation whatsoever. and the arguments in their favor seem flimsy by comparison of the one stark fact that stands in their way.
if life remains as it is, i will kill myself.
i would be lying if i said this wasn't the path i would like to take most days. but something about it rings false, feels hollow, just doesn't measure up, though to what, i'm not sure.
if this is something i would sooner not have happen, then i must find, among all the things that i think i want and that maintain my belief that life is bearable, the one thing that will save me.

it won't be the cd i want to buy. it won't be the movie i want to see. it won't be the slurpee in my hand, the money in my wallet, the food i eat. people live for all of these things. i live for all these things. it's an existance. nothing more. i am tired of an existance; i want a life.

yet i find myself arguing for the contrary... you can't, i tell myself, or you will lose all these things that you love. if i love these things, why am i not happy? if i can not get rid of them, what makes me think i own them any more than they own me? if these are my excuses to live, why am i still here, and if i get rid of them only to find something less in the search for this answer, what will save me then?

these are brutally demanding questions. i don't want to wind up lost and without any comfort whatsoever. i know people who have tread that path, and i know people who have failed in that pursuit. i know my weaknesses well... i do not know my strengths. perhaps it's because we've so seldom spoken. perhaps it's because i keep convincing myself they're not real.

i am still chasing vapors. i am still clutching my hand around them and wondering disconsolately why there is nothing in my hand. i am still hurting myself.

only i can stop.

first i must learn how.

a few things, anyway...

sooooo...
another curious, and mildly tedious, debate rages on in the world of smaj. i can't say i'm terribly surprised.

none the less...

5 things i don't understand about my generation...

1. meeting people at the bar. people wear clothes reserved specifically for the bar, use language specificalyl tailored to the bar, and then stand around in a bewildering haze of light and noize that is impenetrable, trying vainly to shout pithy things to each other that lose most of their meaning after having to be repeated 3 times. "i'm going to the bathrooom!!" "what?!" "never mind!!" and so they get drunk and dance instead, and wonder, later, when they find themselves in the same bed, why they're having such a hard time talking to each other.

2. language. i find it hard to believe, essentially, that the same people who wailed in highschool about shakespeare being too difficult to understand and who speak a brand of english i will only describe as "marginal" out of kindness, have no problem with a sentence like "'sup, biatch, snoop dizzle is the shizzle, my nizzle, he's off the heezy. fo'sheezy.

3. our own melancholy. it's one thing to be aloof, distant, sullen, moody and depressed when you're a teenager. it's almost trendy, almost expected, and you have no problem finding shirts or music that share your disposition. however, when an entire generation of such youths wake up one day to find themselves sullen, moody and depressed adults, it's no longer fashionable, just kinda sad.

4. i-pods. don't get me wrong, it's a cool invention. but with it comes the advancement of the death of society. if i had a buck for every person i have seen on a bus, walking down the street, sitting on a park bench, eating lunch, with those infernal speakers in their ears, i would be quitting my job. people used to talk to each other every once in a while. now we're too busy inventing things that free us from the burden of interraction to notice how small our lives are getting.

and number five, special thanks to tank, smaj, and the originator of the tag...

5. a) our need to constantly evaluate our society, our generation, our peers, to discuss the foibles, follies, pitfalls and perils of our collective mentality, but rarely, if ever, to actually examine ourselves in a proactive and personal way that has nothing to do with anyone else. after all, if nobody else is going to change, we're trapped by the social structure, embedded in our subconscious for safekeeping. as good an excuse as any, and one i'm often guilty of hiding behind.
b) our ego-centered arguments that bear on nothing of real importance short of vaulting our verbal cleverness and our creative use of rhetoric over that of another, generally by getting into debates over trivialities and imbuing them with an almost rediculous emotional tenor that will be denied if asked about but is the driving force for the entire "discussion", which generally spirals out of control as all sides decide the last word is rightfully theirs.
thank goodness for the wisdom of batgirl.

and, in the spirit of what smaj was trying to accomplish, i offer whatever i can think of, in the few remaining minutes of my internet time, regarding what i might love about my generation.

i think all i can really come up with is that i'm glad we're stubborn. we come up against walls far higher than we can climb, we go through depressions that seem bottomless, we are burned and scorned, we are pressured to be better, stronger, faster, smarter, and then told that our efforts to be these things are generally not quite good enough (whether someone else tells us this or we tell ourselves, the results are the same). we are abused and then told that we are responsible for the way we are. and yet, despite any of this and more i might have missed or forgotten, we are still alive. still struggling. we know it's a struggle, and yet, at the very bottom of the barrel, we still, more often than not, look up and try to climb that stupid wall one more time. if we all had a little more to work with than just trying to save our own lives on a day to day basis, this generation could accomplish more than any that came before it, and possibly any that might come after. we live in the shadow of the oncoming personal apathy of consuming selfishness, but we are not dead yet, and we have, whether illusive or not, some modicum of hope, or we would not be here to discuss it to death.
: )

and please, if you're going to post a comment, don't, just this once, use it to exalt another empty argument. we can do that tomorrow, if you like.
: )