tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67830583811425921572024-03-13T19:50:01.940-07:00Niles' blognilespfeifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12203694196420346877noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6783058381142592157.post-7282572589987682742014-05-15T00:30:00.002-07:002014-05-15T00:30:52.697-07:00Finding Truth Between Ying and Yang<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I want to share what
I’ve come to believe the most beneficial concept I’ve applied to my studies. I
wish someone had taught me this earlier, say in the undergraduate portion of my
academic career. It may be the sort of insight that one must experience, open
mindedly, in their own time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Avoid dichotomous
thinking. The academic world, higher thinking, has a long standing history of
separating into opposing camps that become their ‘religion’ or ‘political
party’. Nature V Nurture for example, from developmental psychology. Scholars
lose sight of their purpose, to seek truth and understanding, and become more
interested in defending their petty intellectual pride by holding to their
chosen theory like a life raft while attacking the threatening alternative. But
time and time again, almost every time, someone comes along and says both ideas
are true to a degree and the most correct understanding incorporates a blend of
both. They are both right in what they say and both wrong in what they don’t
say. The truth lies within the shades of gray. Bipolar thinking is the
hobgoblin of small minds, to paraphrase.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Let’s apply this to a
couple currently popular dichotomies under different schools, science and
philosophy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">1) Determinism V Free
Will.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Sometimes referred to as
“The great debate”, it's similar to nature vs nurture and will to come to the
same conclusion, that what happens is the result of the interplay between these
two forces. One would have you believe all of reality is already
pre-determined/ pre-existent and so nothing new can come into existence, that
all events in the future are unalterable, as were all events in the past. The
other that humans have autonomy and freedom to act based on their choices.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">There is a general
scientific picture of the world that lends itself to predictability and
certainty of outcomes and hence more to determinism than any notions of freedom
or free will. Indeed in many minds, science is still associated with the
deterministic picture of the world, as it was in the nineteenth century. Modern
science, however, draws a picture that is quite different.<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The world according to
nineteenth century science was, broadly, as follows. Very small particles of
matter move about in virtually empty three-dimensional space. These particles
act on one another with forces that are uniquely determined by their
positioning and velocities. The forces of interaction, in their turn, uniquely
determine, in accordance with Newton's laws, the subsequent movement of
particles. Thus each subsequent state of the world is determined, in a unique
way, by its preceding state. Determinism was an intrinsic feature of the
scientific WORLDVIEW of that time. In such a world there was no room for
freedom: it was illusory. Human beings, themselves merely aggregates of
particles, had as much freedom as wound-up watch mechanisms.<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In the twentieth century
the scientific worldview underwent a radical change. It has turned out that
subatomic physics cannot be understood within the framework of the Naive
Realism of the preceding scientists. The Theory of Relativity and, especially,
Quantum Mechanics require that our worldview be based on a critical
(scientific) philosophy, according to which all our theories and mental
pictures of the world are only devices to organize and foresee our experience,
and not the images of the world as it "really" is. Thus along with
the twentieth-century's specific discoveries in the physics of the micro-world,
we should consider the emergence of a properly critical philosophy as a
scientific discovery, and as one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the
twentieth century.<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">We now know the notion
that ‘the world is "really" space in which small particles move along
definite trajectories’, is illusory: it is contradicted by experimental facts.
We also know that determinism, i.e. the notion that in the last analysis all
the events in the world must have specific causes, is illusory too. On the
contrary, freedom, which was banned from the science of the nineteenth century
as an illusion, became a part, if not the essence, of reality. The mechanistic
worldview saw the laws of nature as something that uniquely prescribes how
events should develop, with indeterminacy resulting only from our lack of
knowledge; contemporary science regards the laws of nature as only restrictions
imposed on a basically non-deterministic world. It is not an accident that the
most general laws of nature are conservation laws, which do not prescribe how
things must be, but only put certain restrictions or constraints upon them.<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">There is genuine freedom
in the world. When we observe it from the outside, it takes the form of
quantum-mechanical unpredictability; when we observe it from within, we call it
our free will. We know that the reason why our behavior is unpredictable from
the outside is that we have ultimate freedom of choice. This freedom is the
very essence of our personalities, the treasure of our lives. It is given us as
the first element of the world we come into.<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Logically, the concept
of free will is primary, impossible to derive or to explain from anything else.
The concept of necessity, including the concept of a natural law, is a
derivative: we call necessary, or predetermined, those things which cannot be
changed at will, or by will. Meaning that scientifically speaking, free will
must exist, but so do events beyond the will’s influence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
2) Reality: real V illusion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 12pt;"> This one lends its
self to philosophical analysis as the question transcends scientific method.
The evidence of reality is self-apparent, presumed and obvious, as it’s all we
know. Thus the burden of proof lies on those who claim that everything we
experience </span><span style="line-height: 16px;">isn't</span><span style="line-height: 12pt;"> real, so that is where I will start.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">An illusionist might
assert: 1. One’s experience is theirs alone and none can live in another’s
mind. 2. All one can<i> truly and fully</i> be certain of is that
their own consciousness exists. 3. So external entities are perceived, not
proven to exist. 4. If one only accepts what is certainly known, then it is
more logical to think everything only exists in one’s mind. Conclusion: Thus
the mind we know exists is the only possible source for these perceived
external entities. (Solipsism) An example: Schrödinger put his cat in a box
with a vial of acid, and broke the vial from the outside. He theorized that the
cat is both dead and alive. Because we cannot be sure if the cat is either
until we open the box, we must assume both. Many quantum physicist believe that
the only reason matter exists is because we focus on it. If I place a cup on a
table and look away from it, it begins to dissipate into the cosmos, and only
fully exists when I look at it. This is true on paper, because if nobody is
looking at the cup, then the only way we know it is still on the table for 100%
is if we look back at the cup.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">A Realist’s response may
go something like: 1. We perceive things. 2. If we perceive things, those
perceptions are due to either external entities or an illusion. 3. Neither can
be proven. The inability to prove an entity does not disprove it. 4. If entities
exist then truth exists, as the fact of their existence is true. If truth
exists, reality exists as truth requires a reality to be true about. 5. If
illusions exist then falsehood exists, as illusions are false by definition. If
falsehood exists, reality exists as falsehood requires a reality to be false
about. Conclusion: Illusions existence is dependent upon a reality, similar to
light and dark. If light did not exist, neither would dark. If our lives are
illusions then there must be a reality underneath that illusion. Example: If
reality is an illusion of the mind, all that exists would come from that mind.
It then follows that the mind is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. Yet
the one is still subject to others (cannot control them) and learns things
previously unknown from interaction with others. These limitations of the mind
over its own creation is evidence for the ‘realness’ of others consciousness as
well as one’s own. Moreover, the fact that we successfully interact with
others, communicating with words representing ideas or things understood by
both to be the same entities is evidence that there is something external and
it must be real.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Both make strong, yet
inconclusive cases. Let’s apply this essay’s theory to an analogous query that
is easy to understand. How do we know that we all see color the same? We don’t.
It could be that red is red is red and is seen the same by all (barring
colorblindness). It could be that what one sees as red, another sees as blue,
but they both refer to the perceived color with the same word, proven by the
functionality of traffic lights. Our successful interaction with, dependence on
and learning from others all indicate that there is something real beyond our
limited perceptions. But it is also known that each individual’s interpretation
of the same events are often different (witness testimonies).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> An unbiased, open
minded analysis of the evidence leads to concluding that the most logical
answer to the reality/ illusion discussion is that there are elements of both
at play. There is the color (reality), proven to exist by agreement (shared
experience) between separate individuals. But neither sees exactly the same
thing (witness testimonies), meaning both also experience illusion, as two
differing answers to a math problem can’t both be right. So, reality exists but
everyone operates under illusion via their individual perceptions. There is a
reality that is of our minds own creation due to illusion, but there is also
the ‘true’ reality that is the absolute reference point we diversely perceive.
Like investigators sorting through differing accounts of a bank robbery, when
we take into account the full picture given we can eliminate anomalies,
identify accuracies and deduce what happened.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I believe the two examples
above lend strong support to the idea that the right answer usually lies in the
shades of gray. And that the division into dichotomy is the product of
different, incomplete perceptions that need one another to expose each other’s
falsehoods and lead us to the most complete conclusion. This makes things
much messier, more complicated and more interesting. But once we accept
it, we are in a better position to learn and evolve.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 12pt;">Who is the strongest and
who is in the best position to understand the following situation accurately?
There are three men who decide to join the battle between the red army and the
blue. Man one chooses blue because he comes from a long line of blues; two
chooses red because they are the larger army and seem poised to win. Three
needs to understand who is in the right in order to support either. So mister
three spends time in each side’s trenches, gives both equal chance and then
stands in no man’s land, between the two groups that now see him simultaneously
as friend and foe. From there he can observe both at the same time. As with
most battles, both sides have justifiable reasons to fight. Or they </span><span style="line-height: 16px;">wouldn't</span><span style="line-height: 12pt;">.
And both focus on the others wrong and their own right. Or they </span><span style="line-height: 16px;">wouldn't</span><span style="line-height: 12pt;"> fight. So who, of the three men is what an academic ought to be?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In closing, I implore
you to be the third. Argue, don’t fight. Debate, don’t try to be right. Seek
understanding with an open mind, but also a useful, active one that will go
where logic and evidence leads and productively contribute to the search for
knowledge and thus truth (there is no knowledge without truth). This is
how we sharpen one another and truly engage in education. This is how we
progress and evolve. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
nilespfeifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12203694196420346877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6783058381142592157.post-16410512698222125602012-07-19T20:29:00.000-07:002012-07-19T20:29:03.746-07:00Ch. 1<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Book 1 of the series ‘Diary of an imaginary man’ or,’ who I
almost was’: “A complicated birth”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">“I feel like Black Jesus got his hands on me and guides me
through life to put me where I'm supposed to be.” – Tupac Shakur<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<br />
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“A COMPLICATED BIRTH”<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></span><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We
lay on the chapel carpet<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Seraphs listened sweetly<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we collapse as a tar pit<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And herald emerald hearts
sent<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To repent discreetly<br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The sky splashed through stained glass<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Shepherd and his lamb watch shy
eyed<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As we begin breathing heavy and fast<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Naked skin dressed with Joseph’s coat<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of falling
fractured light<br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The air’s thick…<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Electric flute winds<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
wade through<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A proven myth <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>as Orgasms electrocute<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<br />
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<i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(Two are One, Three are One, Five are One)<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Pt. 1<br />
“Jesus must be black” [Awakening]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<br /><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
<i>It began as a conversation, ‘there’s no way to grow without pain’ he said,
and she replied ‘there’s no superman that hasn’t bled. Every prophet <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>loses his head at the root of a prostitute.’ <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It continued in the chapel, where vibrations got me high and
the wooden cross that hung over the pulpit began to sound like an emerald. The
empty pews appreciated music on that day more than I had ever seen them on the
Sabbath. A dove encircled in blue harmonized with the light and left me hypnotized.
The sky, through the window, was purple and the clouds were pink. The sky, I
thought, Must be His kiss- And He kissed my eyes again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Circa 1960 she said “God accept all my sufferings, my
tiredness, my humiliation, my tears, my nostalgia, my being hungry, my
suffering of cold, all the bitterness accumulated in my soul… Dear Lord, have
pity on those, with the guns, who persecute and torture us day and night. Grant
them, too, the divine grace of knowing the sweetness and happiness of Your
love” before her Comrades poured her innards out on the frost bitten pavement.
She remains nameless. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I sat in a coffee shop, he told me of his manifesto and we
dialogued on the misunderstanding of Marx and of Darwin; Marx was a prophet I
said, not a revolutionary, or a socialist, He agreed and said Darwin was a
religious man, and didn’t believe his own ideas, but only published them
because they were his, I wasn’t sure; He had lived on the streets since the
sixties. He didn’t shy from telling how he raped a few women, he said he
wouldn’t do that these days though, it was too likely that one would get
caught. It was easy to see how this was justified… the strongest survive. This
didn’t bother me as much as I might think. My old roommate confessed to me that
he used to molest people in their sleep. Jesus loves them both. The least I
could do is not be disgusted and by His Grace, I wasn’t. He asked me if I could
spare some money, he needed some brown (I noted how earlier he told me he stuck
to green and I told him that until two years ago I used to smoke) I told him I
appreciated his honesty, but only had the card I got us coffee with. He thanked
me for the coffee, it was the coldest it had been in Austin in a long time, and
school was canceled. He was a genius, he could’ve changed the world, solved the
Middle Eastern crisis and the global food shortage, not to mention the world’s
American economy, and he’s homeless and willing to turn a trick for smack. He
reads, more than I do, and writes far more too. In fact, he’s rented over 5,000
books, and read them all, before returning them to libraries in different
cities, It humbled me to be preached to by him, about the fearfulness of
people, “if you’ve got something to say, you might as well shout it” he shouted
(as he had been for the whole conversation) I’m ashamed to say I was
embarrassed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">A year ago I watched them in religious rapture. They spoke
as some angels do, like a jazz pianist hiccupping turrets on crack, but holy. I
could tell they thought they could tell I was uncomfortable. “Who would I give
my award for ‘best of show?’ the man on the floor, or the women who prophesied
over him? The man in the front, who said their money would buy them … miracles
and maybe more money” Yes, surely this was what I thought, as I stood there. I
was reminded of my old Gestalt group leader, who as an expert in the inception
of minds under the influence of emotional ecstasy, as well as Gestalt and
Reichien methods. He thought he was the one to start me down a mystic path… Or at
least that he would be the one to lead me through it… Or at least it seemed he
hoped he would be. He taught me how to get high by breathing and then convinced
me I hated my parents. He also over dosed on brown, he injected though. All of
the sudden I was back in that Hindu place in Singapore. The gestalt man told me
to remain present, there, with him, I saw visions of the golden idol, she had
many arms, and a blade in each, they howled at my face, BE HERE, BE PRESENT, BE
IN THE NOW! But I couldn’t, not when her arms danced before my eyes, I was
going down the disposal, I was being grinded by the blades, I was on Salvia
Divinorum, though I hadn’t partaken of it. Teeth chewed on mangled flesh and
bones. Eyes. Teeth and eyes. More teeth. No tongues. Only teeth. Gnawing.
Consuming. Devouring, bones. Wailing in the language of some angels. Tongue
less angels. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The eyes were blind. They
inhaled the stench of rotting flesh. The teeth, the teeth. The eyes. The raw,
deformed human matter I swam in. The sulfuric smell of his breath, in my face.
Full of rage. And endless network of flesh consumption, a physical narration of
the state of the nations. This meat packing machine, with the meat, eating the
meat, bones and all, with black hole mouths, would it devour it’s self out?
Completely? Was there hope for a new order? Can man follow another path? Can
blind eyes see? The Hindu woman idol was back, with her arms, and exposed
golden breasts, her crown. She spit me out, And now I was here again…
Surrounded by the ecstasy, the strobe lights, the people drunk and high on the
holy spirit. All listening to the man, with the microphone, who taught them to
get high by breathing, and chanting, and meditating, He reminded me of Gestalt.
I wondered if he would over dose on the holy spirit… I gave the blue ribbon to
him. I pinned it to his chest. He bled out on the pulpit. Every one said amen.
I stood up, slid down the aisle I had been sitting on. A jumping lady hit me
with her elbow. I didn’t hold it against her, how could I? She didn’t know what
she was doing or where she was. Did I? Back walking along on the street I
wondered… “On the day of Pentecost was Jesus a word wielded like a lever?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then again, why do I judge these people
so harshly? And judge drug addicts and prostitutes and drug dealers and sexual
miscreants and suicide bombers and violent pacifists and the blind guy who
wasn’t really blind that I walked home who pulled a blade and took all I had on
me that day and the guys with suits and ties who ride the bikes and try to
convert me at my door step and president Bush and president Obama not at all?
Not even Kim Jung Ill or Adminijab, not even Lady Gaga or Lil Wayne, not even R
Kelly or Chris Brown, not even Martha Stewart or Ron Imus, nor Tiger Woods nor
Ben Rothlisberger nor Kobe Bryant, but I do judge the racists in Nacogdoches
and the racists up north who think we’re all racists who’re from east
Texas...<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sociology and anthropology
maybe… Or maybe pride? Or maybe I’m just another hypocrite like the rest… yes I
know that much is true, I am a hypocrite.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Tsehay Tolessa taught me the Truth. She said “They forced my
hands under my knees and tied them there. They put a stick through these ropes
and hung me upside down. They filled my mouth with dirty rags. I almost
suffocated. They beat me, breaking my bones. Great pieces of skin hung from my
body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then they freed me from my bonds
and forced me to run with bleeding feet over a path with sharp stones. Next,
they put me in a small cell containing 62 people. There was only room to stand.
Stand on what? On bleeding feet, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>on
broken bones. The cell was completely dark and there was no air. Don’t ask how
prisoners fulfilled their bodily needs. There was one hole serving as a toilet,
but no one could get to it.” Tsehay could not even hold a cup, so others had to
help her drink, She stayed in that cell for over a year, As a result of
spending such a long time in darkness, she has not regained full vision, Tsehay
Tolessa was tortured for her faith in Jesus Christ by Ethiopian Communists, She
said that while they took pleasure in branding, breaking and slicing her skin
they would ask her “where is your Jesus now?” She said she only took pity on
her torturers, For they were more blind than they had made her, She said she
knew the Lord was always with her, alive in her heart, “Jesus was there, in the
midst of human waste, in the humiliation, in the blood and stench. He is more
than a King ruling in heaven, a bridegroom. He is the one tortured in prison.”
Were the last words I heard her say, And it made me think of Isaiah 63:9 which
says “In all their affliction He was afflicted.” <br />
<br />
I was back at TCs longue, after I listening to Tsehay, again. You might think I
reminisced with guilt, but I didn’t feel any such thing. I didn’t go inside TCs
much. I lack the confidence to dance and you could hear the blues music outside
just as well. I was usually Smoking weed and dust with the doorman. On our way
to TC’s my friend confessed that he was afraid of going east of Chicon street, I
took pride in loving it there. His apprehension made me feel braver. The door
man, Wigpen, as he told me to call him, called me kinfolk, I took pride in that
as well. The truth was I loved my friends there, and I loved being known by
name there. Every week, Kinfolk would bring his friends, all of us minors, all
of us white, and get shitfaced and high. “T”, one of Wigpen’s employees would
offer “massage for donations” to the outdoor patrons. I was her promotional assistant;
I would always echo “she’s got those Asian ladies in the mall beat, easy”. I
never got off the back of Wigpen’s truck bed except to get booze from inside or
return booze inside, because he would provide the weed as long as I kept
rolling the Js and blunts for us. He said I had a gift for rolling. Sometimes
6’9, who was the bouncer for that place, would take a few girls around back to
one of those giant blue crates people move stuff in, or some construction
places use as temporary office space, and make pornos. 6’9 would always joke
with me, saying he could make me a star, I told him I’d need a script first so
I could run it past my agent. The idea of having sex in its self terrifies me;
add in a video camera, professional actresses, and the prospect of the film
being posted on the internet. I misspoke earlier when I said I didn’t feel
guilt, I feel guilty about the pride I felt about loving that place like I did,
I wish I had loved the people more, and the idea of my being in that place
less. One of my friends, who sold the medicines, sass, pills, syrups, smack,
white chicks, cures for whatever ails ya… he called himself Black Jesus. <br />
<br />
Slavery just got cleverer, it never left America. Media and ‘economy’ are the
new whips and the upper class are the new drivers. The funny thing is, slavery
is now our biggest export. Fucking genius. Pure evil. But maybe Black Jesus
held the key to overcoming this new Roman Empire in a similar way brown Jesus
did, suicide. It seems to defeat the slave drivers of this world, the slaves
have to embrace the only power left to us, fearlessness, having everything to
live for and thus everything to die for. How can you defeat an army of martyrs?
Not terrorists, mind you, but martyrs, Jesus’s, Ghandis, MLKs…<br />
<br />
I came back to the room with Tsehay, I wondered how He was afflicted when I was
at TCs I wondered what He thought of me. I didn’t feel dirty, (I usually feel
dirty all the time) I mostly just felt like I wanted to visit with Wigpen
again. He always had good insights on anthropology and sociology. He told me of
the differences between me and him and that our focus should be on our common
ground, “skins just sand” he would say, It stuck with me. I always gave baby
girl a kiss at the 2<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">nd</span></sup> door, because she always gave me a stamp
instead of a sharpie X.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For some reason
that made me think of Judas, and I didn’t like that. I wish I could be Tsehay’s
friend… But she didn’t even know my name. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Now I’m back in Afrika with the kids, in the slums, with their
ribs like xylophones. Those guilt trip commercials didn’t seem to make it here.
How did I? Why had I been chosen to see so much, to experience Kenya? Why did
this place feel like real church? Jesus’ church? Why did their smiles radiate
brighter than any of our false toothed, rich Hollywood idols? Why were they so
joyful? Why was it so sincere? Few in America seem joyful…not sincerely anyway…
and why did they want to tell me about Jesus? Why didn’t they ask for food, or
money? They came to the rich white person, telling me about a gift they wanted me
to receive because I was in need. Some of their faces covered in flies. They
too were homeless, and I also met them on the steps of a church. Why didn’t
they have the angry ideas that we have, about a cruel God who allows humanity
to suffer? Where people really suffer? Everyone in America asks for money (from
street walkers to pastors) … There were so many flies that the local people
didn’t even bother swatting them away, not even from the babies the sometimes
bare-chested mothers would carry, I swatted at the flies at first, but took
pride in my attempts to not. As time passed, George, my family’s friend, who
showed us around the slums, said he had grown up in that part of town, He
opened up his home to us; He said Jesus gave him a job driving around rich
people like us (not his exactly words). He called us his friends though, and we
called each other family. This is a giant family after all. I was proud of
myself for not realizing me, my two sisters and my mom and my dad were the only
white people I had seen in however many months, pride in realizing something I
hadn’t till then realized… Damn my fucking pride. It’s the worst of me,
sometimes it’s my identity: Self-righteous bullshit, reverse racism, thinking
my experiences somehow separated me from my peers. I was reminded, there in the
alleyway, in a town in Kenya that didn’t even have a name, of Isaiah 64:6, “Our
righteous deeds appear as filthy rags before God”. That made me feel better
until I thought of whatever stained rag I had hidden under my bed at home, next
to a DVDs or two. Then I realized, some day, I would get to live in George’s
mansion in Heaven and make food with him. That would be perfect… I took pride
in thinking that way because I’m an ass hole, I’m a piece of shit in a pile of
dollar bill diamonds, George, and all of our friends, were diamonds in the
British Empire’s shit pile. Imperialism. Expansionism. Exploitationism. Now I
wonder if I should even write this, or destroy it like the rest of my honesty,
Truth. Damn. The truth. What would Jesus do? Yeah, he’d tell the truth, so I
press the floppy disk icon in order to save this. That’s the Holy Spirit, the
Truth, telling the Truth, those moments when a liar like me tells the Truth,
that’s the work of the Holy Spirit, not that tab that fills the offering plate.
The Holy Spirit is in the smile of an Afrikan child who may or may not die of
Malaria, if they survive starvation long enough, and dodge enough bullets along
the way. Yet somehow… they’re joyful, more joyful than anyone I’ve met in the
U.S… “Time is like the ebbing tide on the beach” I read, somewhere, which to me
makes technology like a documentary of a whore house, preserving images of the
human condition... Somewhere on that spider web internet there are videos of my
friend 6’9 and his girls and some guy like myself is out there producing rags
of righteousness to it… And if that’s true, I must be some sort of pimp, or
rather, prostitute, a prostitute who prays: I have a place, hidden deep in the
woods. No one can see it except God. An ashen tree stands beside it. And a
great oak towers over it, protecting it from the elements and A honey suckle climbs
the door post, and a blue bird nests on the roof, in the gutter and sings for
me daily. My home is surrounded by apple trees, who give me tender fruit. And
behind my house runs a crystal spring, who gives the purest water and beside
it, water crests sprout in abundance. God has sent hens to lay manna for me and
a sweet cow to give me milk and bees producing honey and the bushes around my
house yield succulent berries and all around me the most beautiful music
plays:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the song of the birds, and the lowing
of cattle, and the leaves dancing in the wind, and the cascade of the river. No
king could hire such music with silver or gold, it is the music of Jesus Christ
himself, freely given. Yes this is where George’s family and I will live, and
yet live still. This is where I have the joy of picking berries for him to eat
and making wine for us to drink. And he will sing for me, in French, Swahili,
Yoruba or some other tongue too beautiful for me to understand. “wa wa wa emimi
mo, wa wa wa alagba ra, wa o wa o wa o. ha le lu jah, ha le lu jah. Le me ke za
mulu ngu, m’ma lo a ke o ye ra. M’ma lo a ke o ye ra.” Lemekeza mulungu!!! We
shall shout together, in the language of some angels. But I will understand
every word and then we’ll build a fire.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Then we got back into his tour car, and he drove us through
the town, speeding through every red light because there were militant gangs
there too, who tormented with guns and knives. And my family’s skin smelled
like money, money with which to buy more guns, and shoot more of George’s
kinfolk. Yes, I think money mostly buys guns, literal or figurative. That’s
probably why Jesus told his followers to take no extra money and not even extra
clothes, that’s some intense shit, too. I wonder what would happen if I did that?
Were the disciples ancient hobos? What would we have done to them, shoeless,
homeless, and trying tell us they had a gift to give us? Preaching to us about
God?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I sit with my
friend Derek; we’re trying to study for class on the fourth floor of the Union.
We trade psilibicin vacation stories, his were colorful, mine filled a notebook
in 5 hours and convinced me I had aged a hundred years in one day. Making me
four hundred years old or so. He couldn’t help but bring up his cynicism toward
American politics, THE NEW WORLD ORDER, and the modern church. I think the last
part was because of the bible verses written on the back on my hand and the
WWJD bracelet I keep on my wrist, always. He says there’s just too much
bullshit in this world and too much that makes him fully aware that there’s no
explanation other than there being a God. But then how can this God allow for
drugs, rape, torture, murder, warfare. I had no explanation, I still don’t. All
I could think of was a part of AFALMA’s (Afrikan Association For Liturgy, Music
and Arts) report in 1991 which says “We believe in God, who conceived our
existence and from whom Africa earned its identity. The powers of darkness have
disturbed it but nobody could eradicate it. We are in the process of going back
through the stories in order to fully recapture our identity. It is not
necessary to trace back exactly the origin of Afrikan religion but it is
important to stress that our religious experience is part of our everyday life.
We want to fully worship God with an African identity. We are what we are
because God is who He is.” Particularly the part about recapturing identity, I
think this applies to all people. We’re all trying to recapture this distant
identity. Some good version of ourselves we know we used to be and really
should be. Derek told me that they’ve proven that Jesus was actually black. I
think he must be right. Jesus is black and beautiful, as beautiful as George,
and Tsehay and that Russian Lady… because they are who they are, and they are
who we were, because Jesus is who He is. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So it ends with this: there’s something about Jesus that
transfixes me, obsessively… Something different. Something powerful. Something
unique. Something strange enough to be Truth. At this point people usually
point out that if God were so loving, He would<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>stop all this of the suffering going on in this world. But it seems to
me that if God Himself is going to take on human form and suffer the way He
did, and be so near to those of us suffering right now, who are we to say we
deserve more than God? To say it’s unfair for us to suffer and die, when He
suffered and died for us solely because we rejected Him? Jesus is with all
people who suffer. As long as we suffer, He suffers. And I love Him for that.<br />
Yes Jesus must be black. They say the garden of Eden was in Afrika, and might
still be, somewhere in the unknown jungle. I think we are, in some way, through
progression, trying to return there, evolve into what we evolved from, even if
we don’t acknowledge evolution, or original creation, our entropy laden
progrevolution continues onward, and forward back to the future long forgotten
and long left behind. According to what I’ve seen, Jesus, the man from Afrika,
the paradox unifier, the living dead man, the the killer who gives life, the
servant king,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the man who took all the
sin on him and yet is holy, the joyful sufferer, the conquering pacifist, the
new old man, is carrying us forward to home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Alluring refrain<br />
breathes Grace<br />
(in)<br />
The passionate <br />
often suffer from<br />
a symphony<br />
(that)<br />
seems heaven Esq.<br />
to me<br />
<br />
He plays jazz music that reminds me of Night Hawks<br />
every evening on an old low fi record player<br />
in the room down the hall.<br />
<br />
“in that (place) the notes aren’t <br />
touching” “like their hands”<br />
“(we) sound like coffee and<br />
cigarette smoke” “drizzled (are) the streets”<br />
<br />
“Ta dat, dada” <br />
the brass chokes on a red ball<br />
down the hall<br />
down the hall<br />
he’s playing a lament for fall.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>~static~<br />
“My girl, my girl, don’t lie to me<br />
tell me, where did you sleep last night?”<br />
“(home.)“<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>nilespfeifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12203694196420346877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6783058381142592157.post-71628857472050371212012-07-19T20:28:00.001-07:002012-07-19T20:29:19.539-07:00Ch. 2<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Pt. II<br />
“The settling storm”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m sitting in
the passenger seat. The light green glow from the clock on the console that now
reads one twenty-three pulls my attention away from the window. One
twenty-three. I stare at the digital numbers, they stare back, maliciously. No,
I won’t let them have this power over me, not any more. I return my eyes to the
scenery outside the car. Suddenly I remember when I was here and where here
was. This was my road trip with Andrew to Telluride, Colorado last summer.
We’re on the border of Texas and New Mexico. We had just driven through a
series of ghost towns. I’m pulled away from these realizations by the sights I
now know to expect next. The sky above the prairie flatlands that ran out to
the east and to the west from the lonesome country rode I was riding along,
first seemed like an infinite abyss filled only by the blackness of midnight,
then in an instant the void was filled in all directions with thousands upon
thousands of glowing red lights for a moment, something like a pulse, and then
all was black again. These flaming eyes were uniform in height, maybe one
hundred and fifty feet above me and were simultaneous in their illumination.
It’s as if the sky parted its invisible eyelids momentarily revealing its
pressing vision. This would repeat every ten seconds or so, like clockwork.
Roaring thunder shook the air and it was dense with vibration. My skin is now
crawling over my body, hairs on end, frightened, but I’m still peaceful. The
world lights up entirely, day invades the night, for a flash, as somewhere
lightning must’ve just struck. In that moment I see three wings for every red
light, surrounding me, continuing out as far as I can see and they’re spinning
zealously. It’s curious to me that, despite the dense clouds, the blinding
lightning, and the deafening thunder, there is no rain at all. Only the
powerful wind propelling the wind turbines, and me. I look to my left, the
driver is Andrew still, yet isn’t. I see his ghost. I see the smoke slowly ebb
out from his nostrils as he exhales his last hit off his blunt. The smoke that
fills the cab of his car causes a distortion of the red lights, blurring the
edges, making it appear as if red halos surrounded the eyes. I long to be with
the wings and the eyes, and out of this jeep carrying me to death, I don’t want
to become a ghost, and I know that’s where he’s taking me. It’s now one
twenty-four. We continue driving, while the hundred thousand eyes light up, the
thunder rolls, the lightning reveals the wings of the turbines, and the wings
spin in circles. This continues for an indefinite amount of time. <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I leave the car. This hadn’t
happened before. I walk along the road, fighting to stand against the powerful
winds. Up ahead I see that the road seems to end, disappearing where a giant
body of water appears. I continue my slow trudge, and the water seems to be
approaching me as much as I it. I’ve reached its edge. There are two distinct
bodies of water, not one. They seem to be wrestling with each other, trying to
occupy the same space, but remaining as separate as they are unified. I fall to
my knees and peer into it. The water to the left is tinted blue, its essence is
blue. I see the past, my past. I see the car ride to this moment, and the
decisions that led to this moment, the situations that led to those decisions,
and the life that led me into those situations in an instant. In a moment like
the approach of an ambulance, when it’s next to you, and then passes you and
pulls away, I now am staring into the red waters, the other waters. The future
flashes before me, in a collage of image and time. The ground drops from
beneath me. The waters are now vapors. Individual little balls of water, floating
in space, suspended. Either the water had just separated, or the space between
the water molecules just expanded. Yet it maintained its shape. The waters
wrestled with each other, friction, a battle, a birth. Lightning. Electricity
erupted up from the surface of the waters in front of me and reached far up
into the sky. Pulling my neck backwards, and my head upwards. My knees still
felt the ground beneath them, but the world had flipped, I was both on the
ground and above it. The waters are the clouds over head. The bolt of lightning
reached from the ground to the sky and fell from the sky to the ground. It was
blue and it was pink and it was white. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This crucible earth spins in waning twilight<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- Lives everlasting through fire and water
are forged<br />
Until this fog reality fades into hindsight<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>- And we finally see that which we always stood before<br />
The graceful burden of blood wept by Truth’s Light<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- A voice of one calling out from the lunar
desert<br />
We build black holes with our paper and ink<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>- and pour them in your lap, pressed, and measured<br />
Light Fractures through stained glass windows, painting prisms<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- Wine pours<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>from the bastard cup and bread of human flesh<br />
The head that prepared the way, on silver, delivered from prison<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- A mass suicide of saviors tangled in
strings of barbed wire crowns<br />
(rusting crosses, burgundy seeps into mahogany, agonizing vision)<br />
Baptize me in the churning steams of a towering nebula<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- bathe me with the tender kisses of a
stellar flare <br />
And I’ll emerge, reborn a warrior of peace<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>- reciting verse like baby’s breath and angel’s hair<br />
A communion in the cosmos, techno color dream land<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- I’ll daily strap myself into this electric
chair<br />
and for a neighbor- foam at the mouth, contort and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- vomit ash and thorn- for a stranger
unprepared<br />
L S D G zus<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Silken sky, dusky glow<br />
will you please seize us?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Verbose fog<br />
thrilling self fission<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>light
after light after light<br />
Kaleidoscope vision<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>a thousand days (pass in) a night<br />
spinning saffron and neon<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>slick
cement dense with<br />
me sipping saucers of Freon<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>recycled shine<br />
in my mirror home<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>sign after sign after sign<br />
incense burning as an emerald throne<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>weary shifts
decompress my spine<br />
as cherry black birds dance back words <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a seraph spread a pinion<br />
across an Ebenezer-esque curse<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>listen,
stop. (now) listen.<br />
inhale crystalline, clandestine smoke<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>linger… longer…<br />
exhale fire, flies and fumes<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>delicious emission<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Silent cephas<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shy messiah<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Violet vistas<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Violent Delilah<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
<br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Crescent ocean<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Full lotus lips<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
<br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Silent motion<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Malicious ships<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Synesthesia- <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<br />
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<i><br /><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-symphony.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<br />
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<i><br /><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Azure Heaven<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bleu Celeste<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lapis Lazuli<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Neptune caerulea)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>will you<br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>mention me?</span></i>nilespfeifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12203694196420346877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6783058381142592157.post-88581279578018075922012-07-19T20:27:00.002-07:002012-07-19T20:29:36.264-07:00Ch. 3<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Pt. III: [purgation]<br />
“To sleep is such sadistic sorrow”<br />
<br />
<i>“It’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>solemn creature, this night.
Wrestling with shadows, shifting hindsight. Flesh. Mind. Temporal bind. Dreams
to fly, (flight when self idol appetite has died).” “Son, how do you feel about
light? The only rule is a shattering of the past.” “Sir, surreal is my
perception. (none are who they project themselves to be)”</i><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Tangled in the sheets, near empty bottle next to my pillow,
pills on the windowsill. Sleep? I’d love to. But all the liquor and all the
sleep aids in the world wouldn’t lay me down. Twenty- one. Twenty, twenty,
twenty… one. Twenty one years. Twenty one countries. Twenty five homes. Twenty
Twenty. I always planned on dying at twenty-seven. But right now I’m
twenty-one. Thirty seems like eternity. I’ve seen too much. I’ve lived too many
lives to sleep. Experiences fill a lifetime. My cup’s in a bathtub. She’s there
again, running circles in my brain. Such a crowded bazaar, the men in their
white gowns and flowing white head clothes. Women, all in black, faces hidden.
Scarf around her head, chador around her body, henna on her hands. She’s
running through the street, screaming. Screaming isn’t a word to capture it, a
word is such futile device. Pain poured from her mouth, like a dam now over
flowing. The voice of true terror, child birth. Of all the people in the
crowded street, she picks me. I look at her feet, at first. She grabs my
shoulders. I stare in to where her eyes had been. Empty sockets, smoldering, still
sizzling, singing. Her husband took an iron poker to her eyes. Blood covers her
cheek bones, now exposed, publicly for the first time like when mascara runs in
the rain. She’s still screaming, I’m un aware. It’s those two holes, voids all
consuming. Just her vacuum eyes and mine. I’m. paralyzed. I’m. Nine. She’s
blind. She runs past, like the passing of an ambulance. I’m nine. She’s blind.
I think. Though something says she saw me. No one seems to have noticed. Sure,
heads turned as she ran by, but no one has seen her. No one saw me. I see our
tour guide up ahead; he shrugs and beckons the party forward. I asked about
this, and was told it was rare for husbands to do this to their wives but was
common for the Islamic Secret Police in Iran. What is this Islam? Surely the
Quran cannot allow for such evil things? Much less command them. This was when
I first decided to read the Quran. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
don’t like being the last in line anymore. I turn over, now facing the room
with the white washed wall to my back. I caress the leather of my bible’s
binding beneath my pillow. Jesus. Why won’t you work? I want to sleep… I’ve
heard three days of sleeplessness leaves the human mind in a state of insanity.
Did you sleep those three days you were dead? <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Singapore. We lived in the YMCA that
summer. I was eleven. It was magical. I got my first pair of contact lenses
because I wasn’t allowed to play football in the street anymore, I always hurt
someone, and always returned bloodied in new places. I was running out of skin.
My guardians felt bad for me, so they got me contact lenses. I was self
conscious about my big glasses. The man who sold them had all of the
appropriate equipment, stowed away in the hole in his wall, where he practiced
etymology from a hole in a wall, somewhere in the back alleyways somewhere in
Singapore. I was scared and excited. He was friends with my guardians, so it
was cheaper. As we were returning to the Y… and… a parade! The streets were
full of flesh. The skin I wore was perfectly suited for the occasion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was the Thaipusam Hindu Festival, it was
an orgy of mutilation. It was a parade. My new eyes beheld visions that would
define them. Flesh intertwines with metal. Silver and gold weaved in and out of
skin, like a quilt. He wore limes hung from hooks that dangled from his chest
and stomach like a teddy. She wore a metal mask, the hooks pulled the skin off her
face in its four corners, and her forehead like tents. I wonder what creatures
took refuge in the skin tents. Flies? Maggots? Inchworms? Larva? Angels? I used
to make tents with sheets and couch cushions with my sisters, but we were the
only ones to occupy them. He had a pole running through his cheeks, and a lime
skewered on each end, he couldn’t close his mouth. I wondered if his jaws got
sore. They pulled a giant peacock float, with ropes tied to hooks, which lifted
the skin off their backs. He hung golden jingle bells from his back. Another
wore a metal cage around his entire self. Some golden goddess rode on his
bloody shoulders. My personal favorite, the bird cages supported by a system of
metal poles skewered through one’s skin. The birds seemed happy, swinging on
their little wooden support beams. I didn’t know skin didn’t tear like paper
until that day. It stretches more like rubber. Everyone’s eyes were glazed
yellow. And Empty. I opened my eyes. My bedroom stared back at me. My back snug
against the wall. The clock on my bedside table mocked me. As did the bible
under my pillow. My shirt was drenched. I took it off. I lay flat on my back
now. Hands folded behind my sweaty head. Position three in my nightly routine.
I cycled through the four positions countless times a night. Yet, pill number
three, with my face in the pillow, had yet to smother me. The room smelled like
skin. Metal and skin and blood and yellow eyes and dazed expression procession
and metal in skin and metal in skin and metal in skin and I return there again
and again and again. They jeer at me, mock my childish mind.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i>“Phantoms upon mirrored smoke, apparitions flit in the
eye’s corner. The future flirts to reveal herself. A game of inches, this way,
then that. And I’m enticed by guilty anxieties. The birthpains of
foreknowledge. The betraying blade of false mindedness. Salmon swimming upstream.
And I against her currents. She’s intent on impregnating me. That I might bear
her consequence. Though it’s not mine, not my place.”<br />
<br />
</i>I lay flat on my back. His hand is in my mouth. My blood is on his face. I
felt it surge through the veins in my lower lip and saw it in slow motion as it
erupted. I was Vesuvius on a surgical chair while the hand of death amputated
the cancer from my mouth. I was thirteen.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His hands invaded my very self, my
distant soul. I lay on the mat, which I previous stood upon, jumping, kicking,
twirling, dancing, learning my body. Green belt. Martial art paints air with
motion. I learned my body, but now he was learning my body. He was Persian, and
my parents were in Iran, while I continued my lessons during the day and took care
of my sisters at night. We were in Murdiff, UAE. This time it hurt, this time
he squeezed so hard I thought my testicles would explode. When I went home and
looked in the mirror, I was bruised. Mother, father, please come home.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My mother watched as he invaded my
mouth. The anesthesia wore off. My mouth bore the blade of a flaming sword. My
brain became white, molten lava. I squeezed the edges of the table. I felt
vulnerable.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today wouldn’t be different, I was
trapped, I didn’t know how to escape him. My teacher wanted me again today; I
could see it in his eyes. He wanted me more and more and more the more he had
of me. I was afraid, I was sick, I was alone, I was strong, for my sisters, I
kept it to myself. Did I enjoy it? Is that why I didn’t tell anyone? Who is
there to tell? When I was 5 and it was my baby sitter, I could tell my parents.
Then they fired her. This time I was alone. 12 is a tender time. But I learned
how to escape my body, and watch the devil ravish it, from a far. I don’t live
there any more, not when I need to escape. I live on the ceiling, the feeling
of floating is so freeing. I learned to let the wind do the leading. I learned
my body is not my being. And my being could be…<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think it broke my brain, that day. Like the
time I fell upside down from the second floor balcony. Time folded it’s self,
the fastest way from point A to point B is to fold the fabric of time and bring
them together. Pain lets us do this, it taught me to see. All things shall pass
but the word of God will endure forever. Time was a black hole as I lost my
senses, I saw a bright white light, I hoped I had died, but my eyes lied, I
still lay in pain on<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the operation
table. My mother had tears on her cheeks. Why doesn’t anesthesia affect
me?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why can’t I be numbed to pain?
Physical, or emotional, or spiritual… not even mental. I’m so tied into whatever
energy surrounds me. Reality hounds me. My mother was so strong, she didn’t
make a sound. My blood was on the surgeons shirt, and on the wall behind him,
and gathering in pools beside my ears.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I returned home. My tae kwon do
teacher would pick me up every day before lessons and then drop me off after my
learning was finished. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My sisters were
waiting for me with our tutor, she was white afrikan, and a little cruel to us.
I was afraid of her sometimes. But I was afraid of all women since I was 5, but
mostly now I’m afraid of everyone; but especially men. Except for when they
listen. So often adults would allow me to be their equal, this I loved. Now I
can’t speak with men. They cause too much pain. Our teacher recorded buffy the
vampire slayer and wanted us to watch it with her. Her Afrikans accent was
delightful when she wasn’t angry, it made me want to do whatever she told me. It
was the episode where there was no sound, and these strange men in suits would
glide across the ground. I wasn’t afraid as I watched. But that night, when we
were all alone, the demons came. They took the form of the images in our minds.
The stood on the other side of the door, in a screeching silence of satan. We
trembled, my sisters and me. We could feel them, hear them in the absolute vacuum
of sound, see them in the black hole darkness. They tormented us all night. We
couldn’t sleep that night. I would later learn how to get used to that. I
wanted to leave my body, but I had to stay for my sisters, I think in that way,
they saved me. Or Jesus used them to preserve me. Probably both. The next day,
time folded upon its self again. Sleepless nights, after a few days, or a week,
tend to stack on top of each other in my memory. Or maybe I just choose to
forget. The demons would come every night, satan, or whatever name my tae kwon do
teacher went by, would hurt me every day, and my sisters and I would pray. The
demons were held at bay by the sound of Jesus’ name. I learned that darkness
cannot occupy the same space as light. But in that place, there’s so little
Jesus, and so much dark, they come right back as soon as you let your guard
down. It’s like navigating underground caves with matches. But ultimately we
learned how to see beyond vision, there’s a non-physical light. Jesus can guide
the blind, with a little faith. <br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I take another shot. Memories pass
through my brain like boxcars boxcars boxcars. Number five and I feel dizzy. I
check the clock again. Only seventeen minutes that time. I couldn’t afford to
keep drinking this much. My tolerance to sleeping pills is too high, even with
the aid of alcohol. Someone once told me, when I confessed my inability to
sleep, that Spurgeon wrote, “Sometimes <em><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">the most</span></em> spiritual <em><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">thing a person can do is sleep</span></em>.” This made me fear I
was trapped in the physical, and maybe that I didn’t really love God. But how
can I not? When God loves me? I wish I could feel emotions. Then maybe I could
confirm that I loved God with a warm fuzzy sensation. And maybe that feeling
would ease me into sleep. But maybe sleep is an illusion. Sometimes the demons
try to torment me still, but they get angry and run away because I’m not afraid
of them anymore, and they get tired of getting burned by Jesus’ name. I’m
blessed to get to see these things so vividly, experience is a good substitute
for faith. I decide I’ll go far a walk. I started walking the night when I was
13 and lived in Cyprus. Something about wondering about cities at night was
calming, and prayer came naturally. Sometimes I would walk all night until
morning. Homeless people are just as interesting in foreign languages. And
either way, here in America, and in Cyprus, I can’t understand their words, but
I know exactly what they’re saying. They’re<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>asking, “How do you keep them outside you? I see that they torment you
too, the spirits, but somehow you can’t be touched, the ones in side of me are
clawing at you, drawing me to you, but we cannot touch you.” Darkness cannot
occupy the same space as light. When I pray, they always become angry and
violent. They don’t like to be burned. Fortunately for me, I finally lived in a
suburb, so there weren’t so many night people to deal with. When I lived in
Sharjah, Cyprus and Singapore, we lived in urban areas. Which were always so
alive at night, but never so peaceful. I wrote a book about a boy who was
possessed by demons when I was 14. It scared my parents, but it gave me
strength to express my confidence in the power of Christ to overcome the
darkness. They said it was too vivid and that people wouldn’t understand how
something so evil and so good came out of someone so young. I never thought I
was young, youth is just an appearance, and appearances are so deceiving. <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tonight as I walked the streets,
I met a woman who told me she was 2,500 years old, even though she was only 60.
There were probably a few inside her. As I walked I thought about what had
happened at school last week, I was learning Persian at UT’s summer school
sessions, and one day they decided we should learn self defense as a way of
learning the body parts in Persian. My Tae Kwon Do teacher was Persian. Those
memories flashed back. I smoked a pack a day and drank till I forgot every
night since then, which isn’t that unusual for me. The councilors at UT’s
mental health wing of the student services building refused to see me. So I
continue writing this instead. They asked me if I preferred to talk to a man or
a woman (before refusing me service) I couldn’t decide, I’m afraid of them
both. I’ve never chosen sex and know I never will. Maybe if there was someone
to talk to. But I’m thankful right now, there have been so many people I loved
because of being the way I am, that no one else has been able to love before. I
think I’m just broken enough for to be useful. I don’t mind that I’ll never
have sex, or kiss a girl, or be able to hug any one, because people trust me
and let me carry their burdens with them. It’s worth it to me to be a vessel
for His healing power. But I do wish I could forget… there’s so many things I
wish I could forget. That sounds like a fair deal… let me forget and I’ll
accept my role. Celibacy really is a gift, it’s just these images…<br />
<br />
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i>When my guardian angels get nose bleeds and then hang themselves from the
nooses from the mobile hanging over my bed, I realize I must have been
dreaming, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake
up, I need to find reality again, where my real guardian angels wait to find
me. <br />
</i><br />
</span><i><span style="font-family: Calibri;">green legions lead them<br />
the blood of martyrs feed them<br />
my fear and guilt keep them<br />
but we shall overcome<br />
and defeat them<br />
and then<br />
We won’t need legs to stand<br />
glass will return to sand<br />
the trees will clap their hands<br />
men and women will be man</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><br /><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
<br />
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i>Sitting on celestial rainbow rocking chair<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A son, in his father’s
lap, paints a master piece<br />
She quilts reality with threads of sight<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gently he guides
his son’s tiny, determined fingers<br />
Love shines from her endless silver hair<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Daddy, look at what
I made!” he says, pleased<br />
It’s impossible to fall from such a height<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He posts it on the fridge where
the memory lingers<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>~~~~<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>~~~~<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
He waters his human garden tenderly<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She swims through a sea of stars<br />
Feeding fleshly flowers grass and trees<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Waves of time churn
around her<br />
Pruning people shadows of the Heavenly<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Orion sings sweetly of
lover’s scars<br />
Weeping bitterly over fallen leaves<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Schizophrenic
dreams surround her<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>~~~~<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>~~~~<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
Intersecting, spinning disks descend<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Love- binds
Noah’s newest ark<br />
Electric, magnet, cloud and ocean<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Made of
human lives, together sewn<br />
He comes this time that we ascend<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This time,
carrying a history of art<br />
Freezing crucible earth’s slow spin<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-And brings
prodigal children home<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>~~~~<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>~~~~<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
A butterfly lies in grass with a broken wing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indian brushes
paint<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a glowing sunset<br />
Proving broken life is still a beautiful thing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of lilac, lily,
hibiscus, lazuli bonnet<br />
She perseveres despite just waiting to die<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Daffodil and daisy on
skylines out west<br />
Spread s contagious hope with wings open wide<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Petals sing the waning day’s
sonnet</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><br /><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I now realize that rest will soon arrive, in the form of a quilt, in the
form of one like a man, who was, was a man, who is, and who is to come, a Love
that will wrap around this planet and heal us, His tears will quench the flames
of hate, anger, and war that we<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>have
sparked. The storm is coming.<o:p></o:p></span></div>nilespfeifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12203694196420346877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6783058381142592157.post-26359021770748544782012-07-19T20:26:00.005-07:002012-07-19T20:29:50.073-07:00Ch. 4<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Part IV:<br />
“Walking the night to get through”<br />
One night, when I was 13 and living in Cyprus, after the oral amputation, I was
walking around the city with my friend. Some drunken teen agers in a car chased
me for a while, just trying to scare us I hope. I lost them by hiding in an
empty soccer stadium after jumping the wall. My friends and I always seemed to
have run ins with the Cypriot version of gangs, mostly a group of guys who
liked to go out and pick fights. My friend had a big mouth, but we had both
learned martial arts, which gave confidence but we soon learned that it means
absolutely nothing when it comes to a real fight. <br />
Tonight, I was reminded of that night, one of my memorable journeys I’d
otherwise forget. I walked under a bridge in Austin , half expecting to
encounter a homeless person. Somehow I was always able to convince them that I
was also homeless, probably because it’s true and we would usually talk and I
would tell them that Jesus loves them. Some didn’t like that, so at that point
I would leave. But tonight there was no one under the bridge and I slowly
crossed Austin’s Mopac highway and hopped the fence of the cemetery. Fence
hopping is more difficult with 4 Ambien… The graves reminded me of that night. <br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We got back to my house in Cyprus at
six that morning; the sky was a grayish hue of blue. There were brown mounds
all over the front porch. They were dead dogs. Over a dozen dogs from the
neighborhood that my neighbor (who didn’t care for dogs) had poisoned, and put
on our door step. It turns out that they hated us for being Christians and were
hoping that the police would arrest us. We learned this because there later was
a rumor that Christians sacrifice dogs in their religion. None of its true. The
police thought we did it, we were the only white people in our village so I
guess it was a smart move framing us (we lived in Kolossi, a small village near
Limassol, it was known because Richard the Lionhart had a fortress there, which
was the site of one of my sister’s birthday parties one year). My dog, my best
friend, Deira, was still breathing. She was vomiting foam. I cried and I held
her in my arms, and forbid my sisters to come outside. After Deira finally
passed, my dad and I dug graves for all of the dogs in the farm land next to
our house, while the police watched and cursed us. We covered the graves with
rocks after the police left.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was a fresh mound in the
cemetery tonight. Someone lost some one. For some reason I have always shed
more tears for animals that have died than I have for people. I stayed out all
night, even though I had class in the morning. For whatever reason, I’m writing
this, instead of doing my home work. It’s 6:49 and I need to get home work done
by 8. When Deira was still alive, she would lay on my feet when I would sit at
the table and write. I have a small sculpture of a boarder terrier dog on my
desk, as well as a picture of her. Why can’t I move on from the past like other
people? Every one lost a dog when they were a kid. Being there for it was
unfortunate. Sometimes I wonder how my memories could possibly be true, did
they break my mind?… But every time I talk to my parents about these memories,
they confirm them… I’m not sure if that’s comforting because it means I’m not
crazy, or shitty because it means I’m not crazy.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The last time I stayed out all
night was earlier this summer, before school started, I was in east Texas. My
friend had recently been released from jail for cooking meth. It was my first
time seeing him since he got out. I could tell he had already relapsed. He saw
shadow people in the trees by the trailer. I remembered life here when my
family went overseas. I was no doubt going to be different when I returned to
America, but I wasn’t prepared for how different, but it did save me from the
monster that consumed my friends back home, meth. He would twitch and mutter
jibberish, he spoke in the language of some angels, he may have been over
dosing. The rest of us were drunk, though I think some of them were also high. But
I was asked to pray. It’s strange to pray, while shitfaced, in a meth den,
death bin, with dead men, who thought I was a freak, and the type who often
called me a faggot… But I knew they couldn’t understand. A- sexuality is hard
to understand unless you’re like me, people will always assume you’re gay. I
began to pray. I could tell there were demons. I guess it was something like an
exorcism. I wasn’t sure if I believed in them until that night. But I did when
I saw my friend stop jerking about uncontrollably and stop speaking in tongues
as soon as I finished praying. The demons didn’t like it, and clearly attacked
him harder while I prayed, but in Jesus’ name there is no loss, we shall overcome.
But I couldn’t sleep that night either. So I walked around the pines all night.
Much like tonight. <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I used to go to a youth group in
Cyprus with my friends lead by a woman with an Irish name. I always thought she
was a lesbian, which made me like her more, except that she was hurtful to one
of my best friends who was also a lesbian. This is the stuff about the church
that made me so sick for so long, how harshly we judge those who share our
sins. So many gay Christians hurt the gay community. Anyway, this lady called
us out for being too goofy and distracting at youth group. We were asked to
leave her group. But there was clearly more going on around it than just our
happiness bothering her. I think she was jealous that a lesbian girl and an A little
gay boy were able to be happy and filled with joy during church, church is a
party, not a sanctimonious rule session, that’s how Jesus did it anyway. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She made my friend cry, and that was all I
needed to know to know that it I needed to go. We left together, and walked.
That’s when I walked away from the church, I still haven’t gone back really,
I’ve visited some churches though. It was this experience that turned me
against God, not the sexual abuse, which I suppose is queer.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But leaving was okay, there was a boy who
would sometimes go there too, one time he had me over for a sleep over. He
liked to wrestle. This made me uncomfortable, but I went along with it so no
one would think I was strange. But one night he pinned me down and began to
thrust his<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pelvis onto my ass. I wasn’t sure
what was happening, and froze. But when I felt his penis begin to harden I
freaked out and broke free from his hold and ran. I walked to my friend’s house
on the other side of Limassol. But returning to my point, I guess I just want
to realize how much we’re supposed to love. Love people because they’re just
people, the same as me and you and we and us. I do miss church though, every
time I go I feel so healed, up to the point of interaction with the people.
Praise music is magical in its healing power, but the critical and nosey
“accountability” of western Christianity carve out more new wounds which
eventually ruin the worship experience. It’s such a shame people try to
manipulate something so healing. The energies flying around in the room from
person to person when we’re all singing the same thing, it’s magical, it’s like
an orgy of the spirit. You can feel it flowing through you, connecting you to everyone
else, indescribable unity that I haven’t found anywhere else, a glimpse of the
future, healing your wounds, getting your mind off of yourself and onto the
Healer. I wish church hadn’t been ruined by Christians. I need it so badly. But
I feel so judged and condemned when I’m there. I’m starting to learn to not
judge those who judge me, which has freed me to participate. But sometimes someone
says something and I’m back where I started. But I think some day when Jesus
comes back, we’ll have forgotten how to judge. It’s kind of like the racists
people up north that think all southerners are racist. I judge the church so
harshly from the outside- labeling them judgmental, but in reality there are a
lot of people there who aren’t judgmental at all in church, I’m just judging
those who share my sin of judgment. We all do this, I think, it’s something I
need to think about when I get angry at church, I’m judging them just as they
judge me and Jesus said to turn the other cheek and love those who persecute
you, I think He was literally talking about anti-christs in the church- you
know those pious people who sit all high and mighty and condemn us queers. I
think some people go there simply to hurt people that they’re jealous of, and
that’s why so many people get hurt at church; churches let anyone and everyone
in. Open doors are a beautiful idea, but one with a poisonous side effect. It’s
seems to be common sense now that I’m writing about it, anything completely non-exclusive
is going to have mean, hateful and hurtful people in it. But they’re the ones
who need love the most. If I’m really to follow Jesus, I have to love the
people in the church that disgust me, and forgive them with all my heart and
find ways to serve them. The church is a call to service, which I think is at
the heart of love… I need to go back to church, hopefully soon. I need to forgive
the church, just like Jesus has forgiven me, and everyone inside the </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">church,
and every one outside the church.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<i><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">What
it is that wants to come out</span></i><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seeps
through fog as light<br />
A crawling under skin waits to be found<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moving beneath veiled
sight<br />
Blood is yellow and eyes are red<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finger
nails wail, tear, itch<br />
Piss burns as molten lead<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Cock,
shit, son of a bitch</i><br />
<i>Shh, sweet now, pain has passed</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wash hands, flush, smile at me<br />
“Weep for sleep” says monster behind glass<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Claw my face, shake violently<br />
Three headed beast jerks to and fro<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s only real if you make it real<br />
“Give in, give in, never had control”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Part
lips, tongue becomes demon eel<br />
Shadow people dance in the corners of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My eye which is a
moon’s half<br />
The room is my mind is a dead dove<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in the dark
the Lucifer Me laughs<br />
That churns between my teeth<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All
three, laugh, needing to feed<br />
Brown and pink, one fell in the sink<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From
gnashing of teeth, <i>they’re eating me</i><br />
So I pull all them out, one by one<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They won’t be quiet, these mouth people<br />
I only had six and a half, now none<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>I’m glad
they’re gone, teeth are evil<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></span>nilespfeifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12203694196420346877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6783058381142592157.post-90447693346025961272012-07-19T20:26:00.002-07:002012-07-19T20:30:08.576-07:00Ch. 5<br />
<h6>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: normal; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Part V:<br />
“Mission trips and painful hand jobs”<br />
<br />
If there's one thing I've learned by now about life it's this: you'll figure
out whatever it is your supposed to do once it has happened, and just like
everything that's happened in life to this point, everything will happen.
Trying to control your future is as futile and blasphemous as trying to control
your past.<o:p></o:p></span></h6>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">My first taste with racial discrimination, (a theme I would become
very familiar with in the Middle East and in Cyrpus) came during a family trip
to Mexico. We went with my grandfather to provide medical services and food to
an orphanage he adopted a long time ago. I must have been six; it was my first
exposure to true poverty, unlike anything we know in America. Children my age
were working in intersections, selling news papers for their families as young
as. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember meeting orphans who had
been burned with cigarettes, irons and skillets. They were so beautiful and so
kind, they were too young and innocent to know any bitterness or hatred. They
were also too young to know anything else about life other than the pain that
seems targeted toward the innocent and righteous. But this shouldn’t be surprising,
in all my years of studying the religions and philosophies of the world, I had
never found such a righteous and true set of teachings as Jesus’ and he warned
us the world would hate, persecute and torture the righteous and who’s more
righteous than children? It seems fitting we should bear the pain of other’s
evils, the evils of adults. Like little lambs, I guess that’s why Jesus said
“let the little ones come to me”, they’re the only ones who can really understand
His pain, being made to suffer for some one else’s evil; Jesus the sin of the
world who rejected Him, children the abuse of evil parents. Fortunately we can
find healing in the only man who can understand such needless suffering, Jesus.
Food for those who suffer. Which reminds me, if we hadn’t had gone to Mexico at
that time, the orphanage wouldn’t have been able to feed it’s children that
month, and many would have died of starvation. I’m blessed to have been a part
of something so eye opening, so young. It defiantly changed my view of the
world.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I told a lie earlier, I guess I’m
not completely celibate. When I returned to America, I met a girl, or rather a
girl met me. She gives me hope that someday I’ll love a girl enough to endure
sex in order to satisfy her needs. We met at my second attempt to join a youth
group (the place I was also introduced to drugs) and she gave me a lot of
attention from the start. My self esteem was so low that I didn’t know how to
respond. I was seventeen, but I didn’t have a driver’s license (that’ll be
relevant later on). I was gifted with music; I could pick up pretty much any
instrument and harmonize with whatever noise was around me. So the youth
minister quickly got me involved in the worship team at this youth group. I was
terrified of him though, because he was single and in his upper 40s and had a
way of touching, hugging and caressing us that made me feel violated, though he
never seemed to overtly cross any line. But later I would learn that he often hosted
sleep over’s for the boys of the youth group and kids from New Orleans who
would come and visit, this all lead me to distrust him severely. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a while I got invited to join a mission
trip to New Orleans, and it was during our training for this trip that we
became “boyfriend and girlfriend”. I mostly went to youth group to see her and
to play music, and get a hold of weed, I didn’t want to have anything to do
with God at that point. My physical relationship progressed with this girl
progressed as rapidly as my role in the youth group did. People would cheer my
name when I went off on a guitar solo and I ate it up. And later I would drive
my girlfriend home. I asked her if I could kiss her, she said yes. From then on
I was her bitch. I feel like she really cared about me, and thought she was
doing this to me out of love. But I hated all of it, it was physically painful
to engage in any kind of intimacy, but I was so afraid that she would call me
gay, tell the youth group I was gay, and dump me, that I went along with
everything. I know she meant to please me, and I gave her little reason to
think otherwise, but it was miserable. But one light hearted story is that I
stole my parent’s car, without having a license, and made the long drive to her
mother’s house, and knocked on her window and we had a midnight rendezvous. (I
was pathetically romantic hearted when I was young).<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I played soccer with the local kids at the Mexican orphanage and
something happened that ruined my heart for these kids who needed love so
badly. They circled around me and made fun of how my face turned read from the
heat, talking about how white people were weak and how white people change
colors. I know there are worse racisms in the world. But I was young and
humiliated and angry. I cried and stomped off the playing field. It’s just that
I wanted their approval so badly, and was only six years old, I didn’t understand.
I wish I had been mature enough to laugh with them. But I wanted to leave
immediately. Later on in life I would be spit on and beat up for being white
and for being American by Arab kids who said I was an infidel. Or Greek kids
who thought I was European. Or Turkish kids that thought I was European. But
fortunately by then, my parents had taught me that people who persecute us are
how God allows us to give God glory by turning the cheek and loving them
anyway. I must’ve been ten when I got spit on my some local Arab teen agers and
14 when I got beat up by a gang of Arabs during our second stint in the Middle
East (after our year in Cyprus when I was 13). Either way, I had a lot of hate
in my heart because of my martial arts teacher who repeatedly raped me and
broke my testicle. It was a lot of a 14 year old to have stored up inside. <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Soon I was asked to be a team
leader on the group’s yearly service trip to New Orleans, it was a year after I
came and was my second trip to New Orleans, Katrina had struck between my first
and my second trip. It was on the bus ride to this trip that our relationship
went to the next level. She put a blanket over us, while most of the rest of
the bus was sleeping and began groping my groin. It hurt me terribly, but I
didn’t want her to think I wanted her to stop. When she finally did, I tried to
seem like I didn’t want her to. I know this seems terribly twisted, and I hope
she never sees this, but hopefully no one will ever see this. I don’t want to
give the wrong impression, I was helplessly addicted to feeling close to someone,
and loving someone and having someone to love me, I just didn’t know how to
communicate that physical intimacy was painful for me. I cared deeply for her,
and she for me. It was because of this that I felt like I couldn’t tell her I
didn’t want to be touched, I thought it would hurt her too much and end what we
had. It gives me hope that maybe someday I’ll find someone like me, who will be
content with emotional and mental intimacy. But this encounter destroyed my
involvement in helping the post Katrina New Orleans folk, I was so consumed by
guilt and shame and pain that I forgot all about why I was there. It didn’t
help that our youth leader behaved strangely with the black boys in New Orleans
(at one point some of them visited us in Austin and he would host slumber
parties, which may have been innocent, but for someone with my background this
seemed incredibly suspicious), seemed to have a problem with me. On the one
hand, I’m sure he couldn’t understand why I seemed so uncomfortable around him,
but on the other hand I don’t think that’s fair grounds for getting angry with
me without cause. It made the whole trip feel like a losing battle. Except for
the kids. I fell in love with the special needs children that I met there and
was paired with them for our trip to the zoo. My mother teaching special needs
children, and I guess her patience rubbed off on me, because they took to me immediately
and I was the only one patient enough to take care of them. Which I guess was
rooted in that I actually just enjoyed being with them and loved them I even
found a school for special needs children in New Orleans and introduced our
group to their leader. But another guy got all the credit, and this made me
really angry and rebellious for the rest of the trip. God damn my fucking
pride, it’s such an ugly demon… It has ruined so many opportunities to serve
people. I should have supported him, I was already thought of like a golden boy
at youth group, he needed it the positive attention way more than I did, I
should’ve supported and encouraged him. Instead I began to shun him after that
and play the rebel for the rest of the trip. Which lead our youth leader to
call me out and scold me. He heard about me and my girlfriend’s actions on the
bus and gave me a good tongue lashing for something that had made me cry the
whole night previous through. Obviously when he released me from my punishment,
I locked myself in the bath room and cried. I had been humiliated for something
I didn’t want to be involved in. It’s was kind of like getting called a whore
for getting raped; except being molested isn’t nearly as big of a deal as rape
is. But if you’ve been raped before, it doesn’t matter to what degree your
sexual boundaries are violated, it all feels like rape. Either way I hate it
when people say that, it’s so evil. <br />
<br />
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i>Your hair was red, in the fall, when we met<br />
and returns, now, to blond, as words are said.<br />
You always consulted that beige daily planner<br />
even though you always seemed to be free.<br />
We were often Sunday dressed, hiding pasts long<br />
repressed, but that Oasis scene liberated me<br />
even though you didn’t seem to see, what I saw<br />
so painfully: Futures, a math simple enough to<br />
mistake. The result of a childhood cast in<br />
an infinite well. My only coin glimmered boldly as it<br />
fell. Eyes contact and flirt, classily, dangerously. <br />
We could be a seventh of what I write of your<br />
allure. With patience that tests my sincerity<br />
and demure, while I write poetry you’ll never read<br />
and confess the destiny in-between fourteen</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(that go on
endlessly.)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I always thought love was service, self-sacrifice
and helping to carry someone else’s hell, and if those are the terms, girl, I
love you damn well.</span></i>nilespfeifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12203694196420346877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6783058381142592157.post-36208568802975232482012-07-19T20:25:00.002-07:002012-07-19T20:30:23.113-07:00Ch. 6<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Part VI: [Illumination]<br />
“Are you experienced?”<br />
<br />
As you can imagine, I hated God still, and had since I was 13.</span><i><br /><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
<br />
</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I want to melt through the air, and drift<br />
away from the tea steeping beneath<br />
and into the throat of that bird<br />
outside my window that the wind<br />
meticulously rattles<br />
<br />
The children of poets are so elegantly<br />
named sometimes, like<br />
“Thoughts disentangle themselves when<br />
they pass through your fingertips” or Tess<br />
<br />
Sometimes I worry that I might<br />
accidently set the air on fire,<br />
watch heat bend light as if <br />
the tears from the sky were<br />
gasoline, and shout “this is our extinction event”<br />
<br />
Blood and feathers rest on my softened, wet<br />
windowsill- overlooking the coast and<br />
still, the rain hasn’t been strong enough to stop<br />
yet, as if it knew of my evacuation plan<br />
<br />
Remember the heart shaped stone on your desk<br />
you used as a paper weight or hand masseuse <br />
A few years ago your younger sister gave it to you<br />
Sometimes you would say her gift was prophecy<br />
though the implications of this were lost on me<br />
<br />
Thinking it would free you, I threw it off of a ledge<br />
and in its place left a locket made by my hand<br />
If you take me off the chain I tied around your neck<br />
I’ll be laying by the shore with lions made of sand<br />
<br />
I’m sorry my veins hadn’t enough wine <br />
to set your sail you into horizons</span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Sometimes
I want to melt through the air<br />
float into your throat<br />
and flood your lungs.<br />
<br />
</span></i><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">“It’s
legal, it can’t be too fucked up.” Sure. Never mind the torch lighter we paid
fifteen dollars for because the hallucinogenic chemicals aren’t activated by
normal lighters. “hold it in till you’re gone”…<br />
truer words he had never spoke. With his goatee and hair spiked into two
Mohawks running parallel down his skull. I torched the bowl and held it in as
he drove us around street light less suburbia. <br />
<br />
Spinning and stars. Constellations. Nebulae. <br />
floating through abyss. Was I looking into the lights, or were they looking
into me?<br />
There was earth. Back in the Andromeda. Back in the milky way.<br />
The multiverse. Travel was easy as thought. <br />
fluid. Streams of stars. Whirlpool black holes. <br />
the eye of God. <br />
To be light.<br />
my son. <br />
I told him everything in a matter of seconds.<br />
He’s not been born yet will be.<br />
I told him everything, without speaking. Our conscious nesses occupied the same
time for a decameter, like intersecting lines. And in that place eighteen years
of experiences rolled into a flash of lightning and passed into a life unborn.<br />
<br />
Unity, of universe, of micro world, of me, of all life, of God. Living in so
many places, identity shattered. Eternity in a second. A second held all of
time. We all spoke so fast words were like pictographs and each pictograph was
like an internet.<br />
He wept. What had I done to him?<br />
I placed my destiny on his shoulders. <br />
I’m sorry. Jesus took my sins on himself.<br />
I hope that includes the evil of putting my evil future of by a generation…<br />
The knowledge of life times, passed from one to another. Innate, still
somewhere inside… Who, what, when, when, where, why? I don’t know. Innate. What
shall I bear? What is inside of my cup? Just as long as Jesus is glorified by
it, I’ll drink any cup. <br />
<br />
His eyes were ablaze, as was his goatee. Satan was there waiting for me in the
driver’s seat. His blade he held to my face. Laughing, fanged, white. <br />
<br />
Infinite space between infinite lights. So many. <br />
Where was everybody?<br />
Unable to speak,<br />
to breath.<br />
panic.<br />
<br />
Still laughing. His horns, the fire, in a flaming chariot. To be put to death.
We were on a course. A course of death. There was no life here. Snakes
intertwined from my right shoulder to my left hip and across my lap. I began to
struggle.<br />
<br />
to breath. To breath.<br />
panic. Floating in space.<br />
would I ever get back?<br />
… earth, stability, ground, soil<br />
gravity. Please, save me. <br />
<br />
A car. In a car with my friend. It was night. My eyes were open. They had been
closed. Only for a second at a time. Time, so precious. Have to, need to stay
here. So I can leave. The blade. The laughter. The devil was trying to kill me.<br />
<br />
The multiverse now floats above me. <br />
A rapid descent.<br />
falling.<br />
my testicles rose into my stomach. <br />
racing heart. <br />
free fall.<br />
raw fear. <br />
<br />
I had closed my eyes. I was back. What was Shane doing? How could he laugh at a
time like this. The devil was in the car with us. Laughing. Wait. <br />
<br />
Earth coming into focus. <br />
so far away.<br />
closing in so fast.<br />
<br />
Open again, how long had it been? I fell for what seemed like hours… But only
had a second to gather myself before.<br />
<br />
Oh my God.<br />
Save me.<br />
Please.<br />
I close my eyes<br />
and brace for<br />
impact.<br />
<br />
This time I could turn my head. What was happening? I knew what was happening.
I had to escape.<br />
<br />
The sky was falling.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sky was falling.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was falling.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Life was falling.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Light was falling. …<br />
falling. <br />
landing. <br />
I was falling. <br />
<br />
My knee hit the pavement first. I was told it was loud and a miracle that
nothing broke. Wheels screamed. It smelled like sulfur. Like hell. Red lights
coming towards me. The door was open. My door was open. Reality was shaky, but
I was back. I was afraid to blink. … waiting… it happened. I stayed on the
ground. Praise God. That must have been the stupidest thing I’ll ever do, I
thought. Never again, I thought. <i><u>“I forgive you, even as you choke me
that way”</u></i> He said. Gently. But there were still consequences to pay. <i><u>“I’m
not fucking around.”</u></i> He said. Furiously. Lovingly. <i><u>“I love you.”</u></i><br />
…<br />
I felt unworthy.<br />
I love you too, Jesus. <br />
I’m sorry. I want to kiss you. I’m not fucking around. I’m not fucking around.
I’m not fucking around. I’m not fucking around. I’m not fucking around. I’m not
fucking around. I love you too. I need you.</span>nilespfeifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12203694196420346877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6783058381142592157.post-912944409167524732012-07-19T20:24:00.001-07:002012-07-19T20:30:52.726-07:00Ch. 7<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Part VII: “LSD and Mushroom Reality Soup”<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Spring 2010)<br />
Love between two. Love between three. Love is a hard topic. Can I love? I feel
like I have the hardest time loving Him who loves me the most. Yet I give my
life, fully, to people who don’t love me in the last. If you’ve read this far,
you probably have formed some sort of opinion. But this was the stage of my
life that formed the person currently writing. Whoever that may be, whoever he
will be. I’m sitting here, with a room full of people, who have thus far warned
me that I’ve had too much to drink and worry for me. That’s a nice feeling.
People who care enough to tell you when they think they’ve observed you
crossing some sort of perceived limit. The hookah pipe passes, the drinks re
fill and we, seem to be un able to find a fill. How can I reminisce, how can I
reenter that state of mind that forever altered my life. So the thing is, I
wronged some. I wronged a few. I fell madly into my version of love with a man
and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a woman. <br />
<br />
Mary, Elyse and Kendrick and I. I know that they hate me now, because I wronged
them. But honestly I’ve never given so much of myself, so much love to people
before in my life. Elyse was a girl I met at TCs lounge, everything about her
seemed to say, I need to see what love is. And I was only the tail end of a
shrooms binge. I thought I was finding enlightenment, and teaching my mind to
achieve peace in the midst of trauma. We fell in love. She said that she hadn’t
begun to heal until she met me. I told her I feel like I could be friends with
the anti-christ, that I could show him love. <br />
<br />
Sparks fly from the hookah as the people around me cheer. I’m too drunk to be
relevant. Though the fact is, I’ve had three drinks over the course of five
hours. I think we need people to pin our worries about ourselves to. Though I
do admit my form was rare tonight. Speaking so freely. <br />
<br />
Enter Kendrick. The ying to my yang. He was my Gilgamesh, I was his Enkidu. He
said he would be with me wherever I lead people. I said I’d love him forever. I
knew I’d die for him. He wanted to walk to Del Rio from Austin, I told him he
mustn’t, but if he does, I’ll go with him. I had no idea till then what it
meant to love a man or feel loved by a man. But I knew I’d die for him. <br />
<br />
But things became strange very fast. Perhaps it was the acid. Mary, Elyse, Kendrick
and I did acid together, and fell in love with each other. I loved everything
about them. Their every flaw, their every gift. I gave my existence to whatever
I thought they might need. I wanted Elyse, Elyse wanted Kendrick, and Kendrick
wanted me. But we all three loves each other completely. But it was Kendrick
and Elyse that found each other physically. The epitome of everything. I had
never felt such heart ache. The woman I would marry, and the man I would die
for, yet neither of them could find me. I wept for them daily. <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><br />
But the drugs were too much for me. I couldn’t recover. I was broken. I had to
leave. I had to get right. I had to find the Lord Jesus, my boyfriend, my
groom, my husband, my savior. IT seemed they couldn’t understand. I hurt them
so deeply by leaving. I had to run. I had to love Jesus like I loved Elyse and
Kendrick. And maybe then I would learn to love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love.
Love. Love. <br />
<br />
My new friends keep patting me on the back. “Are you doing okay?” How can someone
be okay re living something like Kendrick and Elyse… and Mary. Dear Mary. Mary
I love the purest. Mary knew the least of my love. Mary felt left out. Mary
didn’t know the torture I lived in, every second I lived with them. Post-traumatic
stress disorder, overdosing on sleeping pills… Somehow Kendrick knew when it
happened. He called me a countless times that night. How did he know? Are we
destined to be together? Whatever our destiny was, we were, as he said, “binary
stars”. <br />
<br />
<br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i>I fall when she sings,<br />
“That felt good”<br />
she said<br />
as I spilt the<br />
wine.</i><br />
<br />
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i>I wrote a book for her<br />
on her son’s toy<br />
xylophone<br />
But I haven’t the strength<br />
to read it<br />
<br />
Surely the moon<br />
must howl<br />
for you</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Angelic adult<br />
urer p<br />
urer<br />
than <br />
purity<br />
<br />
such a <br />
bandana<br />
she wears<br />
over her red<br />
hair<br />
<br />
surely her plain<br />
face homes a thousand<br />
views of perfection<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Fingertips swirl time<br />
on thinnest glass<br />
and fracture<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>wine<br />
<br />
she sews the sea<br />
with pitch and<br />
melody<br />
<br />
black berry lips<br />
blue stained <br />
filter<br />
<br />
endlessly<br />
as the sun gently<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>creeps<br />
upon the sea<br />
<br />
she sings so<br />
perfect peace<br />
Soars over me<br />
<br />
bitterness<br />
bitterness<br />
warm my bones<br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">One night I slept beneath<br />
a Celtic cross<br />
that hung crookedly<br />
over the sun set<br />
and ocean<br />
<br />
his voice touched my cheek <br />
I asked to hold him<br />
be still is all he told me<br />
and his song became wind<br />
and we were together holy (wholly) ?<br />
<br />
my hair’s aflame<br />
the sky with it<br />
rocking the sea<br />
with his perfect name<br />
has our love grown<br />
apocalyptic?</span></i><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br />
<br />
*** The Dark night of the soul*****<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(summer 2010)<br />
Having my love for Elyse broken at the same time as my love for Kendrick break
broke me. I loved them both so much and was happy for them both. But … I
snapped. Maybe the hallucinogens left me unstable for a season. It was probably
a combination of heart break and mental break that finally broke my spirit. And
this was the best thing that ever happened to me. I lived in constant fear of
being the Anti-Christ and my life was dictated by processing numbers, if they
could be made into a 6 or a series of sixes, I was terrified, but if it could
be made into a seven I took this as a sign of goodness. I was particularly
obsessed with the sequence 1 2 3. Add them, 6, multiply them, 6, divide them,
6. 123 haunted me everywhere I went. At least 6 times a day. At 12:33 and 1:23
and 11:23 I would debate suicide, if all this was God’s way of showing me His
plan for me, my best way to serve His Kingdom, was to fulfill the role of the
Anti-Christ, then I would have to kill myself before that happened. But if I
killed myself I would be trying to defy God’s plan, which I thought meant I
couldn’t go to Heaven. But I was also certain the Anti-Christ wouldn’t get to
go to Heaven either. The argument would go on endlessly. All I knew for certain
is that I wanted to want God with all my heart, and wanted to want to serve Him
with all my heart mind and soul. I just could never feel like I did. My mind
raced all day and all night. I was obsessed with numbers, my version of alchemy
and cosmology by day and astronomy and physics by night. I had to understand
everything. I tried to overdose on sleeping pills. I went for weeks with nearly
no sleep. I lived out of my truck, and tried to keep up studies at UT. I was
camping most of the time at whichever local campsite I happened upon or else
crashing with random people and keeping up with school whenever I came across a
place with Wi-Fi.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only thing that gave me any hope was I had
made a new friend. His name was Ian Berry. He was in one of my English classes.
He prayed for me before our final. There was no way I could pass. I don’t know
if it was Ian’s prayer or the all-nighters I pulled, but somehow I got a B on
the final. I think it was a combination of the two. But seeing prayer work… was
amazing. It gave me hope that someone would care enough to pray out loud in a
class room right before a very stressful final. And even more so that, maybe
God didn’t hate me after all, because He answered some one’s prayer for me. It
gave me hope that maybe I wasn’t the Anti-Christ after all. <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After finals (I got a 1.3 that semester), I
embarked on my “Journey”. Me, a tent, some weed, and the open road. One week I
camped on the boarder of Texas and Mexico, by a river called “The Devil’s”,
near Del Rio, and then drove over night to Colorado, where I spent the weekend.
This is also where I meet Lola. Lola was a giant black dog. At the time I knew
she was somehow significant, either a guardian or a fiend sent from either God
or the Devil. But for all my fearful thought, all I cared about was that I
wasn’t alone and she followed me everywhere I went. I wanted to take her with
me. But how to feed a dog that weighed more than I did? With death? I heard
that such a dog is an omen of death. I couldn’t decide if death would be divine
deliverance or devastating. I longed to die, but also feared it. If I could
die, then I wouldn’t live on to become that Anti-Christ. <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I returned to Austin I became
convinced I would die at 27 or 25, but knew if I made it past 25, I would have
to make it until 27 to avoid 6. I had always said I wanted die at 27 when I was
young because my heroes were Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix and Tupac. But after the
camping trip I was convinced of it. I began to attend mass. The first time I
went I was very stoned and stood out like a sore thumb as a non-Catholic
because I didn’t know any of the rules. I displayed this by taking the Lord’s
Supper. After he placed the wafer on my tongue, I waited with my mouth open for
the next guy to pour the wine. It was awkward, thankfully the person behind me
in line whispered “you gotta take it.” Something about that phrase echoed
through my mind. You gotta take it. I had to take it. I couldn’t wait for my
cup to be poured into my mouth. I had to take my cup and drink it. Just like
Jesus did. I realized I had some power of choice. I knew I had to try with all
my might to reach out for God with the time I had left. I was only 21… I had 6
years to make myself not be the Anti-Christ. After that, I went to the gift
shop and bought a rosary and wore it around my neck faithfully. I didn’t know
what you were supposed to do with a rosary, but I decided I would use it to
memorize scriptures and assigned a verse to each bead. And this was when my
mind began to heal. The obsession with numbers was less pervasive in my life because
it had to share brain space with constant memorization and constant prayer. In
the following year I used the rosary every bus ride, every time I wasn’t in
class or studying or speaking with someone. As fall approached, I realized I
needed to find a place to live for the fall. Some place where I wouldn’t be
alone. Because I hoped this might keep the devil from tormenting me all night,
every night. I prayed to live with my new friend Ian. I thought if God answers
his prayers, he might be able to help me too. I was ecstatic when he asked me
to live with him over the phone. But his roommates decided that they didn’t
want to violate the terms of the lease. I felt like God dangled a string of
hope but yanked it away. <br />
<br />
(Fall 2010)<br />
But God also works miracles. During the summer of 2010, living out of my truck,
using the internet as I found Wi-Fi hotspots, a man wrote something to save me
on my Facebook. “Hey, I’ve been enjoying reading your statuses lately; you
wanna get together for coffee?” And so we met up and had coffee. We talked for
hours and were naturally comfortable with each other, which is rare. That same
night, he offered me to stay in his room, thus providing me a place to live and
reducing his rent considerably. We had gotten on so wonderfully, it seemed like
God’s plan. I was overcome with thankfulness and moved in for the fall. I loved
the other roommates as well. Daniel, the artist. Lanelle, the hilarious one.
Rachel, the musician. And Alex, the one who tied us all together. It seemed
like a dream come true at first. We decided to do house church together and be
like family to one another. I was finally in a Christian family. <br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But things didn’t pan out. The man
whose room I shared had a past; an incompatible past to mine. One day he asked me
if I tried to molest him in his sleep. I was shocked; the idea of physical
contact with another human being had disgusted me since I was twelve. That’s
why images of women I would never actually come in contact with seemed perfect,
they couldn’t touch me, I couldn’t touch them, but they were beautiful. I
remembered him standing over my bed one night, but didn’t think anything of it,
assuming he slept walked. But now that sex was brought into the mix I became
terrified. Then my housemates Dan and Alex began talking to me about my
roommate’s past. As it turned out he had been caught molesting men in their
sleep before. <br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So there I was, with no options for
living, confronted with a roommate who sexually abused people with my past of
being sexually abused. The Universe, The Great Spirit of Life, or God (however
you want to describe it) has certainly got a sense of Irony. Thankfully I had
not been able to sleep in years, so staying awake through the night to make
sure he never touched me wasn’t such a large deviance form the norm. That
semester we became very close. We shared everything together, him being the
only person I felt I could trust with my past, and I being the same to him. We
fell into a sort of love, as I seem to do with every person I meet. With tears
of joy in our eyes, and arms around each other, we burned his flash drive which
held videos of his victims while they showered. And together we worked through
my struggles of hatred for those that hurt others sexually. He taught me how to
love the people I previously had hated. <br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there was still a problem. As he
and I grew closer, the house began to fall apart. There were two factions, Alex
and Llanelle versus Daniel and Rachel. I couldn’t handle the constant anger
between the two and couldn’t understand where it came from. I felt like a child
between two parents who had just divorced, constantly walking on egg shells and
trying to make peace between two who hated one another. Why? I never understood
why. But it seemed to start with conflict over Llanelle and Alex’s irritation
over the lack of cleanliness of Dan and Rachel. By this I mean they didn’t do
their own dishes. But trying to conduct house church like this tore my brain in
half, again. The stress overcame me and I left them in the winter of 2010. <br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Spring of 2011 was a blur of
school, alcohol, sleeping pills, pain killers and synthetic weed. Even to this
day all I remember is that my breakfast usually consisted of pills and beer and
a few bong rips before I left for school and the same routine before doing
homework until I went to sleep. Wash, rinse, repeat. Sleeping pills, pain
killers and alcohol became the only way to stay calm enough to get through the
day. Constant prayer and Bible reading was the only way to get through the
night. There’s a quote from the film “Fight Club” that sums it up perfectly.
“With insomnia day and night merge together<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It became difficult to differentiate
reality from waking dreams. The dreams felt like the rape, war and violence I
experienced as a child. The rest was a sea of foreign languages that I somehow
understood without knowing how. There movie that summed me up nicely. The
Matrix. In the film Neo jumps from a balcony but the concrete beneath turned to
a trampoline upon impact. Why couldn’t I end my life? I had fainted so many
times while driving, been in so many near wrecks, overdosed religiously, yet
still I lived. I started to wonder about alternate dimensions in which the soul
continues after the body had died. Was I experiencing the same reality as the
people around me that I perceived as real? How could I know for sure that there
was only one reality in life? Was I alive or dead or both? Everything became
grey. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at the end of it, once again I
found myself without a home, without a source of income and without any clue
where I would land. All I could do way pray that God would provide shelter for
the next semester and give me a way to fulfill the work He had set out for me,
that being school. I had become nearly fluent in Farsi over the last year and
so I decided to move on to Arabic, Tajik and Russian in the fall of 2011. I had
no idea the effects this would have on my brain. <br />
<br />
(Summer 2011)<br />
I had signed up for an immersion program in Farsi to solidify my proficiency in
the language before I began studying Arabic, Tajik and Russian. But before than
began I realized I needed to see more of America. So I embarked on a journey, just
me and my tent and my stuffed dog named “Timber” and a ½ pound of weed and some
magic mushrooms. <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first place I camped was a park
in a town called Castroville. I set up my tent and then played basketball for a
few hours. I had just had my blood drawn before leaving and felt near to
fainting while I played. But as I remember it that was the best basketball I
had ever played. After that I went on a nature hike and remember the flowers
seeming as eyes to me, as the eye of God watching me. This gave me comfort as I
began my journey. At the end of this hike I happened upon a giant, whitewashed
stone cross. It mesmerized me. I stayed there for a few hours praying. Then
when it became fully dark at night, I continued my hike. I had never seen so
many fire flies. I walked the bed of a dried up river and was surrounded by
fire flies. In my mind they were angels of God sent to protect me; though that
could’ve been the drugs. But who’s to say God can’t sent fireflies to comfort
someone the same as angels if He is fully aware of their state of mind
(omniscience). So maybe angels can be fireflies from time to time. Or I’m
crazy. I don’t know, maybe. From there I repeated my previous camping journey,
this time victorious. I went from Mexico to Colorado only sleeping at the camp
sights I found along the way. <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was during this time that I came
to a very important conclusion. The mind has been described as a series of
circuits much like that of a computer. I think a more tangible analogy is that
the pathways of the brain are similar to riverbeds. The rivers of the human
mind are plotted out by the environmental influences and belief structures of
the individual. The more one allows their mind energy to “flow” with in the
ingrained pathways, or “river beds” the deeper and more absolute those thought
patterns become. So a person who was born in Texas, lived in Texas all their
life and only received stimuli from the Texan environment will have deeply dug
river beds. The same as a person who’s lived all their life in the slums of
Afrika will have a set pattern for thinking, also referred to as their
“worldview”. But the saving grace for these functions of the human mind is that
the individual does possess the ability to choose where they spend their
cognitive energies. Meaning, even if the person has a very deep river bed in
one worldview, if they are willing and disciplined enough, they will be able to
“dam” off their thoughts from that pathway and re-direct them into another
current of thought, thus deepening the thought patterns of another world view
and expanding his or her ability to perceive the world and look at it from
multiple points of view. With these thoughts in mind I came to the conclusion
that I had either become so detached from reality that I was living in my own
alternate dimension, or I my life experience of globetrotting and alternate
states of mind had tuned me into a more universal “frequency” of perception. My
formative years had been spent in the wealthy suburbs of Dallas, Texas. They
had also been spent in the povertous slums of a plethora of third world nations
around the globe, from the Middle East, to Afrika, to third world Europe, to
Asia. I had experienced every state of mind I could find and I experimented in
every infrastructure of religion (belief) that I could fathom. Also, I became
convinced that because the human mind is primarily linguistic, and our
linguistic capabilities are what separate us from the animal kingdom, that
learning languages other than my own would broaden my mind’s ability to
perceive the world even further. Effectively damming off my usual riverbeds and
carving out new ones. But I began to wonder, at what point do the rivers merge
into a lake of confusion or enlightenment? Or both? Was I insane, or rather,
disconnected from the shared perceptual plane of other people? Or was I more in
tune than the people I knew? Whatever the circumstance truly was, all I knew is
things seemed to follow my thought trains. Meaning, the dreams I had seemed to
happen in reality the next day. The words floating through my mind during
conversation were repeated by the person with whom I spoke. The trajectories of
cars, and people, and things, seemed to precede their actual movements in
reality in my mind. I felt more in touch with every minor detail of my
existence, but at the same time fearful I had been cut off and was alone.
Nonverbal communication became far louder than verbal. The muscles twitch on
someone’s face, or the momentary movement of their eye told me far more of what
was going on inside their mind then their mouth. I became aware of how often
people say what they know they’re expected to say even though their selves felt
the opposite. To this day I struggle with this question.<br />
<br />
(Summer/Fall 2011)<br />
Finally my friend Ian’s offer came to fruition. It may have been a year late,
but I was overcome with joy that he and his roommates re-offered a room in
their house to me. I was sad because my understanding of the situation was that
because Ian had graduated and was vacating his room a year before the
expiration of the lease he had signed, I would sublet his room from him. I was
deeply saddened that I wouldn’t be able to experience daily life with my best
friend, Ian. But at the same time I was overjoyed at the prospect of
experiencing life in what was described to me as “a Christian community”. Maybe
now I would finally get to be involved in a family like house church full of
love, support, compassion and gentleness. A place I could heal in. But when the
day came for me to move in, it turned out my room had been rented to someone
else. So I was assigned to share a room with a different roommate. One I had no
foundation with. Because of my insomnia and fear of attacks in the night, I
elected to live in his closet because that door had a lock. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the summer ended, my room became
available to me. The house was empty, so I moved the previous tenant’s belongs
out for him and moved mine in and deep cleaned the house floors, kitchen and
bathroom. I thought I was finally at home. The semester began and I was deep in
the study of Farsi, Arabic and Tajik. All of those languages are closely
related, this meant that the sounds of the characters in Arabic and Farsi’s
shared alphabet had to take on duel identities in my mind, while I had to learn
how to simultaneously code switch the shared vocabulary of Farsi and Tajik from
the Arabic script and spelling to the Cyrillic script, which also required I
assign duel sound identities to the majority of the characters I had become
familiar with in the English language. While I loved this work very much, it
required constant mental disciple. From morning to night my mind had to sort
through the various vocabularies, sentence structures, grammatical rules, of
these languages simultaneously. My free time was dedicated to learning as much
Russian vocabulary I was able to absorb. At times I felt as though I wasn’t
able to communicate in any of the languages. At other times I would be chatting
with an Iranian, and Arab and Tajik in their native tongues and scripts on
Facebook while talking to my roommates in English at the same time and felt
fluent in all of them. It became very tedious typing in multiple scripts with
the same keyboard. The F key now had four functions depending on the context.
This is a good example of how my entire mind felt. But in that time I finally
learned how to be at peace in the storm. Effectively, I found the eye of the
tornado and learned how to stay there. I was at peace with the transformations
going on in my mind. Language learning had given me the ability to code switch
between multiple world views without feeling anxiety over the lack of stability
in my thought life. I learned to not care if I was crazy or not, all that
mattered was drinking the cup God had set before me, that is, fulfilling the
plans He had for me in my short time on earth. So if I was crazy, it was only
for one stage in the eternal saga of my life. This life seemed to me as basic
training, or two a days, while life post mortem became simulative to the war
itself, or the football match itself. Thus, every experience simply became
preparation for the next life. This gave me peace. As the semester drew to a
close, a myriad of medical and familial emergencies required that I spend some time
with my family in San Antonio. And it was in this time that I was born. </span>nilespfeifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12203694196420346877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6783058381142592157.post-73441750241245761602012-07-19T20:23:00.002-07:002012-07-19T20:31:11.435-07:00Ch. 8<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Part VIII: “The first day, let
there be light<br />
<br />
(Winter 2011)<br />
<br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m sitting in the passenger seat. The
light green glow from the clock on the console that now reads one twenty-three
pulls my attention away from the window. One twenty-three. I stare at the
digital numbers, they stare back, maliciously. No, I won’t let them have this
power over me, not any more. I return my eyes to the scenery outside the car.
Suddenly I remember when I was here and where here was. This was my road trip
with my friend to Telluride, Colorado last summer. We’re on the border of Texas
and New Mexico. We had just driven through a series of ghost towns. We drove
eighteen hours straight, through the night, from Austin to Telluride. I’m
pulled away from these realizations by the sights I now know to expect next.
The sky above the prairie flatlands that ran out to the east and to the west
from the lonesome country road I was riding along, first seemed like an
infinite abyss filled only by the blackness of midnight, then in an instant the
void was filled in all directions with thousands upon thousands of glowing red
lights - for a moment, something like a pulse, and then all was black again.
These flaming eyes were uniform in height, maybe one hundred and fifty feet
above me and were simultaneous in their illumination. It’s as if the sky parted
its invisible eyelids, momentarily revealing its pressing vision for a moment,
then, realizing it had been caught in the act, nonchalantly closed them again.
This repeats every seven seconds or so, like clockwork. Roaring thunder shook
the air and it became dense with vibration for a few moments. My skin is now
crawling over my body, hairs on end, frightened, but internally I’m still
peaceful, somehow. The world lights up entirely, day invades the night, for a
flash, as somewhere lightning must’ve just struck. In that moment I see three
wings for every red light, surrounding me, continuing out as far as I can see and
they’re spinning zealously. It’s curious to me that, despite the dense clouds,
the blinding lightning, and the deafening thunder, there is no rain at all.
Only the powerful wind propelling the wind turbines, and me. I look to my left,
the driver is my friend still, yet it isn’t him anymore. I see him as he really
is: a ghost. I see the smoke slowly ebb out from his nostrils as he exhales his
last hit off his blunt. The smoke that fills the cab of his car causes a
distortion of the red lights, blurring the edges, making it appear as if red
halos surrounded the eyes. I long to be with the wings and the eyes, and out of
this jeep carrying me to death, I don’t want to become a ghost, and I know
that’s where he’s taking me. It’s now one twenty-four. We continue driving,
while the hundred thousand eyes light up, the thunder rolls, the lightning
reveals the wings of the turbines, and the wings spin in circles. This
continues for an indefinite amount of time. <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I leave the car. This hadn’t
happened before. I walk along the road, fighting to stand against the powerful
winds. Up ahead I see that the road seems to end, disappearing where a giant
body of water appears. I continue my slow trudge, and the water seems to be
approaching me as much as I it. I’ve reached its edge. There are two distinct
bodies of water, not one. They seem to be wrestling with each other, trying to
occupy the same space, but remaining as separate even as they are unified. I
fall to my knees and peer into it. The water to the left is tinted blue, its
essence is blue. I see the past, my past. I see the car ride to this moment,
and the decisions that led to this moment, the situations that led to those
decisions, and the life that led me into those situations in an instant. In a
moment like the approach of an ambulance, when it’s next to you, and then
passes you and pulls away, I now am staring into the red waters, the other
waters. The future flashes before me and away from me, in a collage of image
and time. The ground drops from beneath me. The waters are now vapors.
Individual little balls of water, floating in space, suspended. Either the
water had just separated, or the space between the water molecules just
expanded. Yet it maintained its shape. The waters wrestled with each other,
friction, a battle, a birth. Lightning. Electricity erupted up from the surface
of the waters in front of me and reached far up into the sky, pulling my neck
backwards and my head upwards. My knees still felt the ground beneath them, but
the world had flipped, I was both on the ground and above it. The waters are
the clouds over head. The bolt of lightning reached from the ground to the sky
and fell from the sky to the ground. It was blue and it was pink and it was
white. <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I open my eyes, the light of the
television I had forgotten to turn off before falling asleep floods into the
space where the darkness that the inside of my eyelids once were. It’s morning.
The images of the dream are still fresh in my mind, and flood through it like a
slide show.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve had vivid dreams
before, but this one seemed more than a vivid dream. Maybe it’s because this
one began in one of my favorite memories, the wind turbine field. Memories and
dreams seem to be intertwining more and more these days. Often this had me
waking still under the impression that whatever I had been dreaming of was my
primary concern. Sometimes it takes me a few minutes to realize I’ve woken up.
I turn on my side and feel along the floor alongside my bed matt for my
glasses. The familiar living room is a blur of color, the red of the leather
couches, and the brown of the heavy Indian furniture blends with the beige of
the walls. But as I lift the glasses to my face, the two little worlds of
clarity grow larger as they approach my face until only the edges of my vision
remain fogged and the lenses rest in front of my eyes, just beyond the reach of
my lashes. I’m reminded of something I had heard in physics class. No matter
how close two things get to one another, they never actually touch. I roll off
my matt, and as my hand touches my parent’s Persian carpet, an audible spark of
static electricity jumped between my skin and the fabric of the rug. I wonder,
is that it? Is the illusion of touch something like lightning falling from the
sky? But in reality, no matter how near your finger is to the doorknob, there’s
really a troposphere between them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I rise to my feet, after I check the
microwave’s clock in the kitchen which is only separated from the living room
by the bar, which on the kitchen side supports the sink. It’s four forty-four,
one minute before my alarm goes off, and as usual I preemptively switch off the
alarm on my phone, so as to avoid waking anyone else in the apartment up. I
look over at my cat, Noah, sprawled out on the floor, on his back. He’s pawing
at the air with his flame pointed feet, as he usually does when he’s trying to
manipulate me to rub his cotton white stomach. The movement seems different
today, mechanical and at the same time organic. I’m aware of the muscles beneath
his skin, pulling this way and that, like rubber bands. His light orange nose
flares like a rabbit beneath his sky colored eyes. I love his eyes, because
they’re nothing like the eyes of a cat. They’re human. Well, human except for
the mask of orange on his face and ears, the mixes through his body of white
fur. This fur, it’s made up of millions of individual hairs, some white, some
orange, but from this distance it appears as one mass. It’s like the
television, when viewed from afar it looks life like, but if you touch the
screen with your nose, you see individual cells of color. Perspective and
scope, the influence of these things on our perception of reality is paramount.
I watch the movement of his feline arms, the twitching of his nose, the rising
and falling of his lungs under his coat, the sweeping motion of his tail.
Synapses sent form the brain along the nervous system, into the muscles, which
then respond as told by the mind, yet unconscious of sending the commend. It’s
all electricity; no one has to tell their lungs to expand and contract in order
to breathe, electricity propels the life systems, on its own accord. Then when
you move closer to the screen, you see the atoms, the quarks, the leptons. As
it turns out, the building blocks of life are simply little balls of energy, in
ordered spheres of chaos. Light and heat: electricity again. From the smallest
particles in the world, to the World Wide Web, (www., or in Hebrew 666), to the
storms in the sky, electricity is fundamental. Even the atoms of dirt, or
rocks, or stones, or wood, at their base are made up of energy. Even the water,
which conducts electricity, at its root, would not be without energy. And now,
we’ve harnessed it in such a powerful way, we can communicate with it, travel
around the world with it, create with it and even kill with it. Electricity
makes the world go round. What is electricity? We think we control it, because
we harness it, but do we, through any act of will, compel it to continue to
keep our hearts beating? <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I walk over to Noah, across the living room of
my parent’s small, cramped apartment, filled beyond maximum capacity and bend
over and stroke his fur. I love watching the fur change from groupings of hair
standing on end to a unified mass of hair, all laying sideways as my hand
passes over them. The vibration of his purr stimulates my hand which runs down
his spine and chest. Straightening up, I stretch my hands to the ceiling,
inhale deeply and exhale. My muscles feel fresh, rejuvenated, filled with oxygen.
I return to the matt and stow it behind the sofa and fold the blankets and set
them neatly on the couch under my pillow. My mind slowly begins to transition
from ponderings, to the day ahead and the life to follow. It’s the first day of
finals and I need to leave my parent’s place in San Antonio by six or so in
order to get to my bus stop in Austin in time to get to my first final, which
begins at eight. I chuckle out loud to myself as the school’s slogan enters my
head, “What starts here changes the world.” I can’t help but feel as I do when
I watch a beer commercial, skeptical. It’s a good slogan, it’s just very grand.
Though I can’t lie to myself; that is where I want to be. I want to be a part
of, or at least to see, the changing of the world. I want to be important, and
to have left a mark, or made a difference in the world. Like every one, I want
my name to mean something a hundred years from now. That’s why I have my plans.
I don’t know how to accomplish these things yet, but I do know how to put myself
in the best possible situation to accomplish these things. I knew, coming out
of high school that my best chance to get into UT was to apply to the liberal
arts department. Once you’re in, you can change majors to something more
prestigious, I told myself. But now I know that I can maintain a higher grade
point average if I stay with my English major, in order to increase my odds to
get into law school. It looks good if your grades improve yearly, just as long
as they don’t start off too low. So I made sure to take the more difficult
classes earlier on in my colligate career. This year, I’m free to build my GPA
with electives. I also take special care to select classes that wouldn’t appear
to be easy if one were to look at my transcript, but that were still well
within my range to pass with high marks. Everything was going according to
plan, my grades have increased significantly each semester and now I was poised
to close with a few 4.0 semesters just in time for grad school. <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These thoughts continue to race
through my mind as I selected my clothes for the day out of my laundry basket,
which I kept on the love seat in the living room, as I don’t have any sort of
closet space or dresser since there’s no room for either in the already
overcrowded living room. Blue jeans, the same pair I wear every work day (my
only pair), and a black thermal shirt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
look over at the microwave again in order to check the time, five o two,
already. Damn, it feels like no matter how much time I give myself in the mornings,
it’s not enough. I tell myself to stay focused; I don’t have time to waste
thoughts. I step into our bathroom, and lock the door that leads to my parent’s
bed room and the one that opens to the living room. I avoid looking at the
mirror as I undress, as is my custom. I don’t much care for the appearance of
unclothed human flesh, especially when it’s my own. I wonder at the obsession
people have with this is, why they waste so much time, money and effort to see
each other without clothes, when we really look better clothed anyway. And if
you happen to be that one in ten thousand who has a nice body, you’re probably
on television showing it off already, not waiting around to share it with quote
unquote regular people, like the ones who drool over you. People spend a lot
more time than they realize, striving for things they already have. Such as
visions of beautiful nudity, when all of the people who are beautiful when
nude, they’ve already seen nude or can see, if they turn on the television or
get on the internet. I have a hard time not judging people who seem to be
slaves to their primal instincts. I appreciate sex, as a beautiful thing, a
gift from God. But this modern, casual idea of sex drives me crazy. We’ve taken
something beautiful, and God given, and made it cheap, dirty, and filled it
with guilt. I guess that’s Satan’s number one task though, perverting the Holy.
I just wish people weren’t so willing to miss out on pure, perfect,
un-perverted sex. They turn this down for immediate gratification, cheap
thrills, and youthful lusts. I reckon the problem is that people don’t
understand that it’s more a spiritual act than it is physical. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I pull the shower curtain back, start the
water, and wait for it to warm up enough to not punish me when I step under the
faucet head. I continue developing my plans. After law school, I’ll need to
actually practice law somewhere, successfully, for some amount of time before
transitioning into politics. <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I step under the now lukewarm
water. I waste no time, rapidly cleaning myself, turning off the water while I
soap up, and then back on again when it’s time to rinse off. As I spread the
soap over my skin I notice the beads of water collecting and running down the
ugly, faded looking orange tiles on the bath room wall. This interrupts my
thoughts. Something else forces its way into my crowded mind. Water. They say
our bodies are ninety-eight percent water and if we were to remove all of the
water from an average sized human body, all that would remain would be a small
mound of dust, about three inches high. But, despite this fact, the beads of
water condense and roll along my skin, the same as it does on the plaster tile
wall. What is it that separates me, and my body, my mind, and this water
falling on me? Water conducts electricity. Another interesting fact is that the
amount of salt in the ocean, three point four percent, is the exact same amount
as the salt in human blood, three point four percent. I wonder if this is some
kind of cosmological coincidence. Is coincidence even real?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or is it like luck or fate, just something
we’ve made up to make ourselves feel less at the mercy of the unpredictability
of our universe, the utter failure of our cherished Newtonian physical understanding
of the universe. We like the illusion of control. But the fact is, we people,
we rest in the middle space between two infinities that defy predictability and
order at every turn, the bigness of the universe, and the universe of micro
biology. There are quarks which, one single quark can occupy two difference spaces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are Quarks, which can move from point A
to point B instantaneously, without traveling the distance between point A and
point B. If you split a Quark, and place half of it in China, and the other
half in America and then reverse the spin of the one in China, at that exact
same moment, the one in America will reverse its spin to match. Photons, that
is light, travel at the speed of light. Unlike, say a car, which if it
approaches a dog at ten miles an hour, and the dog runs away from it at five
miles an hour, the car then would be approaching at five miles an hour. With
photons, if the dog runs from an approaching light beam, at say ten thousand
miles an hour, the photon will still be bearing down on it at the exact same
speed. What the hell? That defies our laws of nature. Obviously, that’s why
Einstein had to come up with relativity. But all relativity is, is luck, or
coincidence, or fate. Essentially it’s, we don’t have a clue, and we don’t have
control, so we need something to give us the illusion of control, so we give it
a name. Science seems to me to be Adam continuing his given work in the garden.
Naming things makes us feel powerful and like we’re in control. It gives us the
comforting illusion that we know what’s coming next. If we can observe 1, then
we observe 2, then we know that the result will be 3. But reality is, infinity
up from one, infinity down from one, infinity between one and two, and
spontaneity lands us at any random interval depending on its fancy in that
particular moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What really gets me,
in the end is this, why do we, people, essentially simply condensed masses of
water, infused with electricity, or energy, have consciousness? <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I turn the water off and step onto
the red matt on the floor, grab the blue towel hanging on my parent’s door to
my right, and dry myself. Dry myself, rather, transfer moisture from the
surface of my skin into the fabric of the towel. I wonder why my skin doesn’t
absorb water like that. I know that science can describe the process, and
explain the difference. But that doesn’t answer my question. My question is,
how do the little packets of energy, that make up the quarks, that make up the
atoms that make up the cells of the towel, know to remain static, as the energy
packets that make up a towel, rather than skin or anything else. What is it
that makes me any different from a towel? At the basest of bases, the smallest
of smalls, we’re identical. Is that why the bible says that stones could sing
the praises of God? Is that why Jesus said not to claim Abraham as their
father? Because God really can raise up children for Himself out of rocks? Did
Jesus really know quantum mechanics over two thousand years ago? What the hell,
because science now gives validity to those crazy ass claims. Maybe the word of
God really is the only reason a towel is a towel, and I am me. Because science
sure as hell can explain, in great detail, that my skin doesn’t absorb water.
But it damn sure hasn’t got any explanation as for why. This is why, any
rational, free thinking person must acknowledge that science is essentially an
exercise in faith. It takes tremendous faith to wake up each morning. Modern
science knows that we have solid grounds for our faith that if we drop an apple
it will fall, but the reality is the leptons in the atoms in the cells that
make it an apple could, if they chose, to move from point A to point B
instantaneously, and transport the apple to the North Pole. As I step off the
mat, I look at the deep blue indentions where my feet had been a moment prior.
Did I just decide to step off the matt? Or did little packets of energy decide
to jump forward, and my mind, ever so dependent on the illusion of control,
fill in the gaps and record my perception accordingly? I would disregard my own
thoughts as the ramblings of an insane man, except for the double slit
experiment which means observation alters the behavior of sub atomic energies.
Thus, if I dropped the apple with observing it, it might just land on the North
Pole or if I didn’t observe myself shower, we might not need drains. <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After drying myself, I put on
the clothes I had selected for the day and unlock the bathroom doors. I walk
into the kitchen. Damn! It’s already five thirty eight. That’s probably just
enough time to eat a bowl of cereal, brush my teeth, pack my bag, walk to where
my truck is parked and leave by six. Unfortunately it’s a ten minute walk to my
car from the apartment, because there are not enough spaces in the complex for
all of the cars, so every night a few people have to park outside the gate
along the street. Last night I had been chosen by my late arrival for the honor
of the freezing mid-January trans-apartment complex walk. I pour my traditional
Kashi cereal into the bowl and follow it with the milk. I sit on the counter in
the kitchen because the table has become a shelf for books and bags and
whatever else we don’t have room for the on the floor. As I shovel the
tasteless cereal into my mouth and swallow it half chewed before the subsequent
mouthful is forced in my mind drifts back to my plans. I’ll probably need to
speed by seven or eight miles an hour instead of my usual five, preferred for
its safety, I can’t afford any tickets and cops aren’t supposed to pull you
over for five or less. Eight would be risky, but I needed to get to campus in
time to finish the homework I was too tired to do last night. Those three
additional miles per hour, over the course of the hour and a half drive could
shave off ten to fifteen minutes added on by the walk to my truck I hadn’t
accounted for previously. It can get hard to stay motivated, but I have a plan,
and I have the will power to make that plan happen. We will overcome the
obstacles and won’t let anything prevent us from bringing our destiny to
fruition. The bowl is empty, aside from some left over milk. I drink the
remaining milk and put the bowl and the spoon in the dish washer, put the
necessary books and my laptop in my back pack and leave the apartment. Taking
one last look at the microwave clock as I close the door, it’s five fifty
eight. Everything’s going according to plan. <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The winter wind is cold and has
teeth, despite this being Texas, and despite this being San Antonio, Texas, it
was bitterly frigid outside. This is the coldest it had been in Texas, ever.
Yesterday’s news paper by the bus stop said we had reached record lows of
eighteen degrees. As I stepped out from under the protection of the apartment
building I realize it’s raining a bit. Shit. I pick up my pace from a brisk
walk to a flat out run. I get some sort of pleasure out of running with my
heavy backpack on. It really doesn’t seem to be slowing me down that much.
Perhaps the extra motivation of avoiding hypothermia gave my legs special
strength today. The rain drops, once little specks, are now substantial
pellets, almost frozen. I hold my breath as I pass the dumpster. I’m pretty wet
at this point and still only halfway across the complex. I pass the buildings
in a flurry, building 4, building 3, building 2, building 1 and the front gate.
I punch the pass code into the pad just beneath the door handle and fling the
metal door open. It’s rigged with a spring, so it flung back and the handle
caught me just above my right hip. I’m still frantic, so I don’t have time to
acknowledge the pain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I continue my run
down the street that runs adjacent to the apartment. It’s raining an animal
shelter at this point. I’m wet and freezing. Finally I see my truck; it seemed
a lot further this morning than it did last night. Wishing I had a fancy button
on my key to unlock the door from a distance, I pulled my backpack around so
that it was in front of me, unzip the font compartment, and fumble around for
my keys, while running. Found them. I reach the truck, unlock the door, and get
in. The rain sounded like pings of small stones on my car’s metal frame. I put
the key in the ignition, backpack in the passenger seat, and go. <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t turn on the radio, because
I use the first leg of this drive to recite verses to myself. Not only do they
give me a peace, but it’s supposed to keep one’s mind sharp as on ages if they
train their mind to memorize passages of any sort, secular or religious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m in a rush, so the words pour out like a
waterfall as I pass housing subdivision after housing subdivision, going 55 in
a 45 zone. Psalm 34:17-22, I turn my windshield wipers onto the highest
setting. Luke 9:23-26, I press the AC button and turn the heat on. Romans 8:28
– 29, “I know that God works all things together for the good of those who love
him and are called according to his purpose, and for those he foreknew he also <i>predestined</i>
to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that he might be the first born
among many children.” As the words left my mouth there was a blinding flash of
light. I heard something. It wasn’t thunder; it sounded more like a sharp
crack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now there was more cracking. I
slow the vehicle down. Then I saw it, a telephone pole in front of me was
falling over, onto the road. I slam the breaks. The tires don’t have enough
traction and I begin to slide while making that very irritating squeal. My car
skids to a stop maybe 7 yards away from the fallen pole. My heart is racing; I
turn on my hazard lights and step out of the vehicle. The power line that ran
alongside the road, dependent on the large wooden pole, had come down with the
pole. It was jumping around in the street, dancing on the wet pavement, sending
sparks of pink electricity in all directions. I am transfixed. I stare at the
electricity. Pink, blue, and orange sparks send the cable jumping upward, only
to bounce into another puddle of water. I had never seen anything like this. I
felt as if in a trance, or even possessed. <br />
<br />
******************************************************************************<br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He stood there, with a blank expression on
his face for five minutes or so. He watched the electric cable’s play in awe.
For once, his frantic mind was still, void of thought. His inner voice was
finally silent. He was unaware of the cars that had lined up behind him, and
was now unaware of their u-turns. Rain continued to fall, on him, all around
him. It was a sharp rain, the kind that stings the skin. After minutes of
silence, an idea formulates in his mind. A force, beyond him, pulled him back
into his car. Now he was not listening, and obeying, he was simply following.
He follows himself, feeling outside time. As if he had done this before, maybe
in a dream, and was now following through with the déjà vu. Time was no longer
one dimensional, only going forward, linearly. Now time is as it really is,
moving out in all directions as a blanket, rather than a line. He had done this
before, had done this in the future, and was now in the moment where the two
intertwine. His mind was void of thoughts, but knew something all the same. He
knew exactly what to do, what each successive thought and step was, though he
was not aware of his final destination yet. He closed the door, turned the car
around and drove back the way he came.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He drove back to the apartment complex, this time punching the code to
open the gate, and drove up to his parent’s apartment building. A spot was
available right next to their building. He took it. He got out of his truck,
back pack in hand and returned to the apartment. It seemed that he forgot he
was soaked to the bone, because he dropped the bag, took out his laptop,
plugged it in, and began typing right away. <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His dripping wet fingers left
small beads of water on the keyboard at first, but as time went on it was more
of a layer of moisture that covered his laptop, rather than independent
collections of water molecules. He didn’t take time to marvel, but he did note
that he was somehow able to recall every thought that had gone through his head
that morning, from the dream to the present. The past was catching up to the
present at a rapid pace. It never reached the fore front of his mind, but a
deep realization was impressed upon it all the same. While all of his plans,
dreams, and work towards being a person who changes the world filled 98% of the
landscape of his time, it was in one moment that his true imprint on this
planet was going to be made. He had willed himself to accomplish more, do
better, and outperform everyone around him as long as he could remember. But
his defining accomplishment had fallen into his lap, unplanned, unprepared, and
unintended. Somewhere deep beneath the waves of thought that he was aware of,
the irony struck him. He worked so hard to do something important, all his
life. But the most important thing he would do came effortlessly.
Accomplishments hold some weight; they affect the world, momentarily and on a
very small scale. But this, these words he was writing, had the potential to
outlast his life time. Affect generations of people. Who has more eternal
clout, a wealthy politician or a poor writer? Only time would be able to tell.
But the ripple effects of one moment’s inspiration would never be lost on him
again. Somewhere deep inside him he realized that a moment can be a black hole,
which defies the rules of space and density. A lifetime of effort, importance
and gravity can somehow be pushed into the space of a few minutes. As he drew
to the end of his frantic typing, he felt complete. He wasn’t bothered by
missing class. Somehow, now, it seemed less important. He wasn’t sure what it
was, but something inside him had just changed, and changed permanently. Often
the biggest changes in life occur beneath the awareness of the person or thing
being changed. While countless hours of analysis, argument and thought had
brought no conclusion, a moment outside these parameters had all the answers.
As he pressed the save icon he thought to himself that he’d like to go for a
walk in the rain.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> Once I learn to not need to leave a legacy that<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll final be able to do the latter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>nilespfeifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12203694196420346877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6783058381142592157.post-71600581139731976182012-07-19T20:22:00.001-07:002012-07-19T20:31:32.469-07:00Ch. 9<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Part IX: “A construction site at
night”<br />
</span><i><br /><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Life is hatching. <br />
We live upon TheEvenHorizon<br />
Jesus, our supermassive black hole<br />
<br />
The weak shall inherit the earth<br />
The King’s brothers and sisters will<br />
be trusted with the one of the lazy<br />
To Him who much was given will be more<br />
The first shall be last and the last first<br />
The march of the martyrs will precede<br />
The return of The King comes to retrieve<br />
Paradise Lost, human perfection, Eden<br />
<br />
</span></i><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so begins the end to usher
in the beginning. Hawking’s information paradox will be realized to be his
cosmological constant. His biggest mistake will turn true. Black holes do
eventually disappear. Predictability goes out the window. Cause and effect are
disconnected. Information can be, and is lost (sort of). “One could predict the
future with absolute certainty, but can’t be certain of anything of the past.”<br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Earth, and humanity are currently
“splashed” upon the event horizon, perceiving ourselves as living, while also
dead, thus, the grace era. Why we are still sinning as Christians and yet
sanctified at the same time. And we have been living on the event horizon for
all of human time/existence. For it seems to as an eternity to us limited to
live with-in linear parameters of time but from the perspective of ultimate
reality the entirety of human history is only a second, the blink of an eye. We
live where time has stopped and is irrelevant.<br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Life, creation, began as God created
a Big Bang (Jesus, The World) from which all creation came. This then became a
black hole when Jesus died on the cross. The “grace era” is where people are
entering the second phase of the birth of life, or the “sanctified era”. When
all is united in Heaven, or, a singularity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After which, Jesus takes all of us into the spiritual dimensions of
string theory. From 3<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">rd</span></sup>, to the spiritual, unperceivable fourth
dimension. We’re currently on TheEventHorizon. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b>Information appears to be
lost as it travels from the 3<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">rd</span></sup> to the 4<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup>, but really it
is only transformed from physical to spiritual.<br />
</b><br />
And I realized to get to 777 you must first overcome 666, the name of what
humanity made ourselves into. Jealous of God, striving to be God…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But we will overcome and receive our new name.
Perfection will be restored.<br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Hawking “Information Paradox”:
Black holes eventually just disappear. Predictability goes out the window.
Cause and effect are disconnected. Information can be, and is lost (sort of).
“One could predict the future with absolute certainty, but can’t be certain of
anything of the past.” –S. Hawking<br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why? Because there is one variable
that no one has considered yet. That “The Universe” can choose. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>End of “A Complicated Birth”: Jesus,
our galaxies supper massive black hole theory. Life, creation, began as God
created a Big Bang (Jesus, The World) from which all creation came. This then
became a black hole when Jesus died on the cross. The “grace era” is where
people are entering the second phase of the birth of life, or the “sanctified
era”. When all is united in Heaven, or, a singularity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After which, Jesus takes all of us into the
spiritual dimensions of string theory. From 3<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">rd</span></sup>, to the spiritual,
unperceivable fourth dimension. We’re currently on TheEventHorizon. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b>Information
is lost from the 3<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">rd</span></sup> to the 4<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup>, but really it is only
transformed from physical to spiritual.<br />
<br />
</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Earth, and humanity are currently
“splashed” upon the event horizon, perceiving ourselves as living, while also
dead, thus, the grace era. Why we are still sinning as Christians and yet
sanctified at the same time. And we have have been living on the event horizon
for all of human time/existence. For it seems to as an eternity but from afar,
only a second. We live where time has stopped and is irrelevant. </span><b><br /><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
<br />
Only God is true.<br />
</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">
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<span style="font-family: DFKai-SB; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "B Zar"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">He glides<br />
through<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>empty<br />
spaces<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>inside<br />
meye<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>mind<br />
where<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>leprosy<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>took <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>root.<br />
Earth<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>blooms<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>while<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>visions<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>breathe<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>frequencies<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>prism<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>life<br />
that’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>still<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pouring<br />
from<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the <br />
stone stricken in<br />
the desert.<br />
He still bleeds<br />
water<br />
fall<br />
ladders<br />
over<br />
Jacobs<br />
stone-<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pillow<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>laiden<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>mind.<br />
We<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>salmon<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>swim<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>up<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>stream<br />
flea<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>bitten<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>hymns<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>sing.<br />
I<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>hear<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>them<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>dance<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>up<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>stairs<br />
I’m<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>entranced<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>by holy<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>clover<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>eyes.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span><span style="font-family: DFKai-SB; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "B Zar"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>nilespfeifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12203694196420346877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6783058381142592157.post-75031689291710566822012-07-17T23:49:00.004-07:002012-07-17T23:49:45.113-07:00recent "poetry"The sky is falling around our ears<br />the news is a sum of our fears<br /><br />Chaos follows me like a friend<br />the sea and sky seemed to blend<br />as my friend and I make a mends<br />and we return to our home and kin<br /><br />Please stop speaking into my ear<br />your lips are decieving and lead to fear<br />even sleep can't free me from your forbidden<br />fruit and wine lulls me to listen<br /><br />Everything seems connected...<br />Everything is trying to tell me something<br />
that seems to be something that couldn't be<br />could You be up to something to set me free?<br /><br />Teach me to listen, tell me my mission, melt me with fission, mold me, hold me, unfold me...<br /><u> <br /></u>She told me to fall in love with Him on earth<br />where were we when we met?<br />follow feelings far from firstbirths<br />my bones break bottles, bricks, and bones<br />re-birth...<br /><br />She asked me, what would you do differently?<br />please let me, rape myself indifferently...<br />anything to be, some one other than me<br />she told me: "please, just shut up and hold me"<br />we found peace...<br />
...free<br /><br />I've found a way to hit rock bottom again<br />going back back to where I began<br />He's the only one who stayed<br />as I preyed upon the ones who prayed<br />
<br />
...The future comes back in flash backs...<br /><br />The more I see the less I understand<br />the codes you use to reveal your plans<br />but my God doesn't change like shifting sands<br />and evil shadows die at His hands.<br /><u> </u><br />
She spoke bullet storms right through me<br />and I saw her dreams with eyes that bleed<br />
and every color rhymed<br />
to help me remined the future<br />
to forget, and we raised a toast<br />to the ones who bled the most<br />Words forged in fire tell our story<br />and to suffer must be worship<br />and to heal must be glory<br />redemption lied ahead<br />my life but instead<br />at the end<br />I remembered her<br />in full.<br /><u> </u><br />
<br />
"We stand alone"<br /><br />Again into the grey, the space in my mind where night is day<br />I've forgotten how to pray, and I can't exercize these demons in any way<br /><br />I guess I was born evil, that is to say, I was born a man<br />From my primeval, God should've used black clay, so here's my divan<br /><br />That's my poetry, the only way I can let some one know me<br />My life is solely, and alone is the definition of the soul of me<br /><br />Satan let go of me, I can't keep swimming in a dead sea<br />So I hold the Truth and go on another demon killing spree<br /><br />It's all I learned to do, hunting goblins since my youth<br />These scars are the proof, I'm already dead, so I've got nothing to lose<br /><br />All these lives I've lead, taught me more than all the books you've read<br />I've eaten The broken bread, and swallowed hell heated lead<br /><br />Maybe you misread, just like you, I bleed red<br />But like a silver plattered head, I didn't choose to <br /><br />Do you<br />understand what I just said?<br />one you're dead, what's left to dread? All my blood's been bled.<br /><br />We stand alone, individual infinate complexities feeling unknown<br />No where's home, biblical dissonent entities thirsting to atone<br />For all we've sown, an evil we store in our bones<br />Can we be more than Adam's clones?<br />Living lives instead of loans?<br /><u> </u><br />
<br />"A love song eternal"<br /><br />I lost her, fantasizing an object, the object of my affections, my heart belongs to her, and hers...<br />who knows? not me, that's all I can see, I just need some one to know me.<br /><br />A nostalgia for the present, slipping away into deserted days, future, a tunnel I cannot see<br />dark or light, or black or white, I've never had a real friendship to risk destroying<br />with intamacy, all I know is I don't know anyone who wants to know me<br />I see my death, I'm alone and lonely, just an endless stream of thought, there's no such thing<br />as just dancing, Everything means everything to me and I've lost everything.<br /><br />I'm a waste of her time,<br /> I'm a dissapointment, <br />I'm lost<br />I've lost...<br />nilespfeifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12203694196420346877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6783058381142592157.post-28714304939189119042012-06-04T14:39:00.001-07:002012-06-23T05:17:35.313-07:00The intention of this blogHi friends and family and curious Georges who've fortuitously found their way here through the web. <br />
So I considered trying to publish or somehow try to make money off all the work, money, and sacrifice that I put into this piece. But then I decided it might be fun to give it away to the world and just post it in chapters on a blog.nilespfeifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12203694196420346877noreply@blogger.com0