It was cold and rainy all day today; the autumn winds have set into motion.  Late last week we had something of a heat wave, so the fall is hitting us with a feeling of freshness and originality, like the cartoon leaves rolling off the cliff in Pocahontas.  The skies are reflective and somber, but we’re still happy for the change of seasons, a skip in our step, our sights set on what is ahead.  So many things to leave behind, so many things to look forward to.

Books make us think in ways we never did before.  So many times you can never get to that place with someone in conversation, but while reading we let our guard down, and we’ll really think about things, and maybe even change our minds.  That’s a good thing, and a good reason to read.  I was thinking about the moral reality presented in The Road, and realized that while reading we view the arena of human interaction as though a god, and then put down the book to once again be in the arena ourselves.

What does it mean to let our guard down?  When someone says something mean to you, like ‘you don’t really know what you’re talking about when it comes to movies’, you face an immediate decision.  Most people you know you have something bad to say about.  In that moment, you can either use it to direct everyone’s attention to their shortcoming, or just let what they said seem true, and not say anything.  (It is an odd fact that we care about what others think—but let’s just assume it makes sense for now.)

So it would seem that letting your guard down is beginning to assume that people are going to be sensitive to all they know about you.  They aren’t going to wield it for evil in front of others, and make you look bad.  And if they do, you have an opportunity for grace.  And the fact that you can say something but don’t, is moral reasoning, is the realizing of your character, that no one else can see.  The formation of our character is so often something no one else can see; as we all scurry about our days, are not our inmost thoughts still ticking away under the radar, withheld from those who would not understand?  This is how everyone is, but we all pretend that those thoughts don’t exist until we trust someone, and think they are in a position to understand. 

And that is what letting your guard down means: if someone is trustworthy, they are someone who will gloss over your mistakes, your shortcomings, and will always be looking to the best you could be.  Thus to leave someone’s faults behind is to believe they are the best in them, and as you believe it, they become it.  To have a good friend is to become the best of yourself.

Another important and difficult thing to note about someone being mean to you, is that it doesn’t matter if you make your strike back in front of them, or away from them.  Sometimes we’ll think we forgave someone and showed them grace, but then hurt their image by pointing out their wrongs and shortcomings to someone else later on.  But this is to not have shown them grace; you must protect people, even when they are not around.

Fall mornings walking to class; I know I’ll remember these times someday, when I’m old and thinking, ‘I didn’t know what I had.  I didn’t know what I had.’ 

Leaves skip down the street, and we wonder that humans have always seen such things, and believed in the invisible on such a basis.  And so we smile as each gust full meets our face, for life is a sweet and precious thing.

The other night I was walking along the ghostly streets of my campus in the middle of the night, tired, overworked, and trying to get home.  As I walked, half-conscious, some words drifted into my mind, and after they did I realized they connected with a person I had to say goodbye to recently, a permanent goodbye.  So I kept them in my head, and scrawled them down when I got home, and then fell asleep.

I don’t know why people are always leaving my life, or really why any relationships end.  I’m not sure I want to know.  I’d rather stay the idealist that I grew up.  Maybe I’d rather keep forgetting these things.  But there are moments, terrible, terrifying moments, when we are forced to remember.  And in those moments, we have to remember how to say goodbye. 

Ships of the East

I always forget things
like how to say goodbye
that anchors get swept away
and why ships leave their ports

I always forget things
like the sun on your face
why there are colors
and where life’s secrets are stored

I always forget things
like what I mean to you
how beaches were made
and when I last put up a mast

I always forget things
like the rain that Fall morning
the worlds we’ve run away from
and that I can’t touch the past

I always forget things
like where I woke up yesterday
that there’s no horizon in space
and that it doesn’t matter what I say

I always forget things
like that everyone exists just once
the bigness of the ocean
and that that meant you could sail away

Nostalgia lets us know that life is beautiful.

Because I remember the snow falling down the windshield, the feel of death and grayness in the wintry world all around, but a serene beauty within because we got to live, and now we know each other.  We are always living on the same earth, but we pass from world to world.

Can you find out later on that you were never really in a relationship you thought you were in?  I think so.  If someone misinterprets who you are, they cannot properly said to be in relationship with you.  Certainly something is to be said for the fact that they were around your body, and heard your words, but of you they knew nothing—you were but a book written on another planet in a language they could never learn.

One of the worst things you can do to a person is read into their actions the worst of intentions.

I always imagine a black space, and in that black space is everyone I have ever known.  They exist there in some ethereal form, not the form we live in here, where our bodies reveal us imperfectly, as cracked windows.  This is the person as they truly are, as they make decisions, and think their most honest thoughts.  And before them I am, and our relationship is perfectly clear, unlike on earth where it is always a thought off to the side.  This is where you can truly rejoice at those you have connected with, and fall to your knees before those whom you’ve wronged.  For there everything is laid bare in the unadulterated stillness of souls before one another in a world of blackness. 

And yet if there we saw those we wronged, would we be able to fall to our knees?  With no distractions, would our bitterness leave?  If the blurry and particularized world of objects faded away, would we bring our souls to perfection?  For we know that we should love, but we want so badly to hate; do we not writhe with agony in the moment of decision?

That is the world that lurks beneath this one, a hidden world of the decisions of souls, beneath the words and smiles, the strangers walking down the street, the houses lit with parties, the governments meeting in illustrious halls, the back alleys filled with those truly in need and those crazed with want, those meeting at coffee shops, libraries filled with our thoughts, the beds of lovers, and everywhere else we go and everything else we do.  History is a creation where souls work out their fates, and we have found ourselves amidst its pages.  It is a soft and subtle, but if you listen closely, you can hear within yourself the thoughts of death and the thoughts of salvation; but live in hope, the truth is not far from each one of us.

And how can all this pass by unnoticed?  Let it never be said to us,

The world was made from nothing, and you have made nothing of it.

Out on the land, living outlandish lives

It’s been a pleasure being an outcast with you

Outside and cast out of the main cast

Throughout the lands we’ve been castigated

And cast and crated, through and through

Outlined by the lines that lead us outside

But I’m fine as long as I’m out with you by my side

We ruled out following the rules, like true outlaws

For we’ll outlive these laws,

before we too see our way out.

So we cast our lines as the lives of outcasts

Hoping that as fools these fools we’d outlast

Until we meet the grave, and get out at last

Out of our minds, but heaving out the last laughs.

We like ideas without being willing to participate in them.  Other people do ridiculous things, and we celebrate them.  But it is a much different thing to be that person and to see that way. Thus, to see something as an idea is not truly to see it.

Knowing things about someone is only the first step of knowing who they are.  You must also know their importance to the person; how do they see those things?  What is the first thing we should think about them?

A procrastinator about life will never have to answer the question “But when will you do what you need to?” because they procrastinate that too.

Some people do their thinking way inside their head.  Our words are unanswered knocks, and eventually we go away sad, for we know they are right.  Relationships are hard; the weight of another besides ourselves.

Sometimes the only way to get your point across is to say everything except for exactly what you mean; that is what the poets realized so very long ago. 

We think about how time is always fleeting, and even that thought took up time.  So relentless.  Thus, time to go read.  Everybody win today, okay? Because when will we win if not Wednesday? Hmm?

I have got the sillies.

One time as a cop a car passed me with a really cute blond in the driver seat.  I pulled the car over for speeding, but everyone in the car started running.  My first time in pursuit on foot as a cop.  I went after the blond, because I didn’t want her to be the one that got away.

There was this kid who had just had surgery, his name was Nate.  We wanted to make him happy the night he came home, so we constructed a fort out of blankets and couches for us all to sleep in.  We thought we would have to take it down right away, but our parents actually let us keep it up for two weeks.  Fortunately, our fort night for Nate turned into a fortnight. 

“So what kind of stock trading do you do?” I asked her, taking a sip of my coffee.  Her lip curled.  “Why would you ask me that?”  she cried as she burst into a fit of tears.  She then hurriedly turned and stormed off, her long hair streaming behind her.

I want to muster a giggle in my last breath, so people can say I died laughing.

In fast-forward the moon is winking at us.

“Watch for fog”.  Oh man, I can’t see anything. Honey, wake up and help me look for fog.

To ask ‘For here or to go?’ I ask ‘Are you an innie or an outie?’

Ok, I’m super hungry! I ran into people I didn’t expect to yesterday.  It was awesome! I love that! Ok goodbye.  Those are all the thoughts you get.  haha 

If you marry someone, that of course means that they are The One.  Because of that, to propose I’m going to offer my wife either the red pill or the blue pill.  And I’ll say, “After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”

And of course, my wife will be really into fashion, even when I’m trying to talk to her.  So there will be times when we’re walking through the city and I have to stop and say, ”Were you listening to me, dear? Or were you looking at the woman in the red dress?”

She also won’t like how during dinner time I play with my silverware, putting it on my nose and stuff like that.  She’ll say it’s not a good influence on the kids.  So she’ll tell me to take the spoon of my nose, but I’ll slowly turn to her and say, “There is no spoon.”

That will probably lead to our first fight, where I’ll say, “Come on. Stop trying to hit me and hit me.”

Finally it will all be too much, and we will have to separate.  After a big fight I will explain to her how I can’t take it any longer by saying, “I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This reality, whatever you want to call it, I can’t stand it any longer. It’s the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I’ve somehow been infected by it.” 

Thus we separate, and it is all over.  Then after that we wake up in our beds, and we’re in the fantasy land known as being single all over again.