Early in the morning

I saw a man I thought I knew
I ran after him for a brand new life
But the train passed behind me
And I had missed it.

I know if something's too heavy
It wasn't meant for me to lift
But I don't know it's too heavy
Until I try to lift it.

Now I think I'm lost.
And I'm all alone.
And that's when I cry, Lord,
please take me home!

They'd banish us

The mystical flutterings of the leaves silenced every other noise, left the forest and found the open air like birds who thought there might be better places in the world.  Inside the forest you couldn't tell from the tangled branches where one tree stopped and the next one started. 

Flynn huffed and puffed like he did when he was forced to run in gym but this time it was Tilda and her 'Come on!' but it was all the same to him.  Her sneakers were red but his were black and bright green.

"I don't know why we have to run," he said when he got there.  But Tilda didn't hear him and she took slow steps as she looked around.  Sunlight made her feel like her face was swimming as she walked through it but Flynn just felt sticky.

"I wonder what kind of trees these are."

"I don't know," Flynn said.

"Well, duh. How would anyone know?"

They walked to the big rock that they usually went to with the other kids to tell ghost stories when their parents thought they were in the basement sleeping and most everyone ended up crying, even the boys who said they weren't afraid. 

Flynn climbed the rock very fast like there was a glowing prize at the top, but Tilda was very slow because she was afraid at small rocks just as much as the mountains.  When they got to the top they sat next to each other and the leaves didn't rustle, but birds called each other in the distance but they didn't hear that because it was all too much.

Tilda put her hands to her eyes and began sobbing and her tears wetted the ends of her fingers.  Flynn looked over and was as frightened as Tilda was when she thought about the mountains.

"I miss Tandy so much."

"Who is Tandy?"

"It was our dog.  He died."

Flynn didn't know what to say so he put his arm around her and she cried and cried.  In the years to come he would learn to try to talk to the crying person because he didn't know that it's only the arm that ever does any good. 

But arms don't do any good either because arms are not a dog.

"Today my mom was talking on the phone."  Tilda's face was still shiny but she was only sniffling as her thoughts slowed down.  "She was mad.  They are going to add some pews to the back of the church.  She was talking to Susan's mom about it."

"Why don't they want to add more pews?"

"I don't know." 

Tilda was pulling on her fingers and feeling her joints.  Flynn looked down at her hands but her red sneakers and doughy fingers and yellow dress were blurry and he asked,

"Do you want to be anybody?"

"What do you mean?"  Her eyebrows tightened.  She liked talking to Flynn.

"Well, I heard Ruthie say she wants to be a nurse.  Some others were talking about it.  They all had ideas.  And it's true, I guess," Flynn added from deep within his thoughts. "We're not anybody.  Not yet."

Tilda's thoughts wandered to movies and other kids' parents in their kitchens and her teachers and fire engines rushing down the street and she looked over at Flynn and he was tapping his feet as they dangled off the rock. 

"I don't think so."

"What?"

"I don't think I want to be anybody."

Flynn was a year younger than Tilda and was not supposed to be hanging out with her because if her friends knew about it then she would have to choose.  He didn't think she would pick him, but he was happy it hadn't happened yet.

"Well you kind of have to."

"No. Let's just stay here."

"On this rock?"

"We'll just stay here and not be anybody."

Flynn thought about this for awhile and no one said anything and everything settled into a listless memory gone by high school. 

"Promise you'll stay here with me."

Flynn looked at her freckles and the gaps between her blond tendrils and the woods surrounding them to a point, the point of ignorance of the trees and pews and dead dogs but a knowledge that they were there together.

"Ok. I promise."

The evening grew cool and the sky turned blue-grey and Tilda shivered as the stars poked their heads out from their covers. Flynn looked up at them and remembered his room where he usually looked at the stars through his window and he smiled because he liked this better and this is where he would be looking at them forever. 

A few blocks away the concrete porches scraped with the ankles of hustling parents leaving their doorsteps and hurrying out into the night.

I know it's heavy

This week has made me feel very strange.  I don't think it's been a strange week. It's the sort of feeling you would get looking at an enormous bed, the kind enclosed by draperies in an aristocratic bedroom, while the room is tranquil, sunlight filtering in through the window, the idea nudging you that there is some subtle story at work and one of the scenes is before you.

I got a ticket for expired tags while I was at a parking meter.  I had been really excited that someone left 49 minutes on the meter, but I had forgotten about my tags.  Second year in a row that they got me.  Well, that I got me.

I was coerced into volunteering a blood sample, for my mother.  I know, it's weird.  I rolled out of bed and drove myself to the little room waiting room where I signed in but there was no receptionist and no one took notice of me for some time.  I was still wearing my clothes from the night before, when I had gone to church.  When they called me back I gave them the order form, but the doctor - an older woman who seemed to have an eastern European accent of some kind, calling me 'Mr. Pilip' - asked for a photo ID.  I didn't have one, I realized, but I still had my nametag on from church that said 'Phil'.  I mentioned this but the doctor's and her assistants' only reply was to stare at me.  Thus I said 'I'll go look in my car' but when I couldn't find one the doctor said 'Well, you have your nametag from church.' 

Tuesday night we discussed the existence of God at church and there was a girl named Rita who asked me why there are people with autism.  People with autism struggle with relationships, and if the purpose of life is relationship with God, how does that make sense? 

Later that night my housemate Amanda and I walked in the rain down to the river, and when we got to the bridge a lightning bolt cut the sky in half.

Wednesday morning I was running late for work and decided I was stupid enough to try to bike there as fast as I could.  A car was rolling through a stop sign at the intersection I was headed for, so I hit my breaks and catapulted off my bike onto the pavement in the middle of the intersection.  The guy got out and said sorry, but by that time I had already picked up my glasses and gotten back on my bike.  But it wasn't enough: I was one minute late.

In the comments section of the write-up I wrote 'A wizard is never late. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.'

My hands and knees hurt all day.

It was rainy on Monday, too: Alex and I lounged on Stephanie's balcony and talked about Tender Is The Night.  Alex likes it for its breadth, while I like Gatsby because it's conceptual rather than autobiographical.

I have been in a daze from last weekend, when I slept tremendously to try to ward of the stress of everything.  I started talking differently too, I think.  I used to say too much, and there would be irresolution from how many things were said.  I've been more succinct, letting things be instead of becoming discursive.  There's still irresolution because people have to read into what you say, and they're usually a little off.  I suppose there's always irresolution to conversation; how do find the perfect amount of words, just the thing to say?

There always seems more and less to say. 

It's the month of May, and there is a lot that is going on.  Naps will be key.

What we believe

Our abstract beliefs often do not correctly translate into our experiences. We either do not understand the content of a belief, or we have wrongly predicted that we do in fact have the belief.

In other words, there is often a divide between some belief you say you have, and a situation in which that belief seems it would lead you to do some particular action you don't end up doing.

It's like when mom said that dad's girlfriend had been away, and he started sitting at lunch with her. Then when his girlfriend came back, he still walked with mom down to the lunch area and introduced her to his girlfriend. He did that instead of shrinking back from the situation. Since he liked mom, that showed that what he did was in harmony with his beliefs. What he believed meant something.

I often feel like this with respect to the truth; in fact, I have since high school. I've thought: I'll do anything for the truth. I want the truth so bad, it seems to matter far above anything else, I clearly want it, give it to me!

But: how do you live? Life has a double meaning. We not only do particular actions, like drink orange juice, go home for Christmas, buy a wrench from the store - we do larger things with our lives. We choose, in the long term, whether or not we will be an apologizer, or we will persevere, or we will be a good father. These things are not choices where we can just say 'I will be a good father' or 'I want to be a good father'. Being a good father actually looks like something, and it's by doing all those actual things that you end up being a good father. Beliefs mean things, and sometimes we're wrong about what they mean, or we think we believe them, but when it comes to actually doing what those beliefs mean we should do, we don't do them, even though we said we believed the belief.

What you will do with your life is different than what you believe you will do with your life. Life has to actually be lived: you will choose who to be. You have not yet chosen; in this moment, you have chosen a little more, but only time will unravel your complete answer. Your answer of what you actually believe.

Kierkegaard thought he lived in a country where everyone thought they were Christians, but no one actually was.  If you want to find out what you believe, check your life, not your head.

Maybe it’s completely unimportant to have a pang of hunger for truth at one moment in particular; maybe a life full of honoring truth is all that would matter.  That’s why when people ask for God to strike them down, or for him to reveal himself definitively, nothing happens.  God is interested in more than just your feeling in one moment.  He asks us: would you follow me if it was difficult, if you found me slowly, like a film where objects gradually grew colored?  God created the whole universe and gave you your whole life to get to you; how far would you go to get to him?  More than a moment of shouting 'Show yourself'?

So this is the intimate connection between our beliefs, our self-conception, the meaning of concepts, long-term actions, and life.

Love and life

You cannot view a thing correctly unless you love it.  This is true for life as a whole.

Therefore do not think, "Should I love or should I seek truth?" for they are one and the same.

I could never begin the list entitled "Things I'll Miss" for I would never be able to end it.

What a world.  Blink and you'll miss it.