Drove home late tonight after four cups of coffee at Perkins with Alex. We talked about Caitie and he reinacted Prince of Thieves. Death, romance, family relationships. The external features of stories.

Earlier I sat on a bench at Dexter Falls as Paul and dad played basketball and thought about life as I read Kierkegaard. So many people spend their lives waiting, thinking in the future they will realize all the values of their life. But there is only now. I saw a boy running through the grass. That is what I was born to see.

I feel like I haven’t been in the words I’ve been saying recently.

Sometimes someone will say something to me that doesn’t make sense given who I am, and it betrays a misconception they have about me. I will think of an earlier scene in my life and think ‘If they had been there for that, they wouldn’t be saying this to me now’. But there is no way to straightforwardly explain that to someone. So you have to conform to what they think, or just say nothing. You end up many people or no one at all in a situation like that.

Some people stretch and stretch and stretch.

‘I think people feel a lot of drama quietly underneath their daily actions. Like there is a big story going on. It’s capturing that that I think is the real challenge.’ -at perkin’s.

Listened to Copeland on the way back. I’ve been trying to fight off my demons. Sadness is a choice, even if it is a choice of negligence.

We went over the perks and downsides of isolation.

What if I died tonight?

Everyone has a story that they think is their big difficulty, like resolving their issues with their parents. But really there is an even bigger story than that, the story of how you respond to that situation, whether you see it from eternity and choose to become holy. It’s hard to keep that in mind though. I forget about the big story and then I end up sad because I think my main goals are about how things go here on earth. But all is eclipsed by the story of you kneeling, praying, and getting up to live in his mercy.

I haven’t been writing recently. It all feels so…far away.

There’s this long white lump under my skin. Looks like a worm is under it. It developed while I was playing starcraft. It’s scaring me.

I’m not a very good big brother.

Drowsy like a daisy.

Howdy to milady,

have you been following me lately?

Have you been frowning, have you been achy?

Or living loudly, living greatly?
We live shrouded in maybes,

so no one allows me to be crazy -

we’re all as hollow as we are lazy.

 

Do you smile politely, thinking ‘I hope they like me’?

Drowsy like a daisy, dazed at all the drawings.

Alone in an alley, did you know to fight me?

Lovely like a lady, the lake of all our longings.

 

When it’s a crescent the moon is just a peasant,

like my thoughts when I’m knee deep in a pond,

and all my friends are gone.

The crickets in the thicket are singing his song,

I listen and wonder where things went wrong.

Why is the world brown, who moves time along?

Is the mud in the ground where my name is drawn?

What are the sounds of a place without a dawn?

Would you come down here just to make me strong?

 

I know you drained the promises from the goose that’s in the sky,

like how most people grow up without ever wondering why.

A pleasant sacrifice to the god of everything nice,

like when we used to think that the trees were dead –

but that’s more true of the me that’s in my head.

and the people that snuggle with greed as they go to bed.

But wouldn’t everyone just like to be free instead?

Do you think you would flee on your night of dread?

 

I turned magic into mud, sat in the middle of my blood.

The food of feet and fetters can’t feed us like the feathers

of birds who hear and heed all that’s in the heather.

But I can’t look up, not since my last retrieval,

and I no longer see which thoughts of mine are evil.

Like the disorder amongst the kingdom of the beetles,

silent in their waxy hate as they whine and wheedle -

and now do you run to the regal, or fight amidst the fetal?

 

Wishing we were more than statues that blink

in the eyes of those who are happy to think,

they know everything that we try to trap into ink.

Finicky, do you miss me? Will you come quickly?

Will you be finishing, do you feel wishly?

Like a moment that flees, or a fish that’s visiting?

A ladybug on a branch, an invisible glistening?

Something with wings that’s quietly listening?

Sometimes the restaurant where I work is open until three in the morning, and it takes us hours afterwards to clean everything up. Last weekend I was working late and talking to one of my favorite people there. We talked about life logics.

 

A life logic is a connection between different scenes in your life, an explanation of why you go to the different places you do. The problem is that sometimes you have competing life logics. One life logic might be that you want to get married, while is another is that you want to travel. One logic says that you are a creative type, another says that you should major in accounting. One logic says that you’re soft-spoken, another says that you always get what you want.

 

Competing life logics come to the fore when you are in a position where you feel like there are two logics predicting your next action at a specific time, but the actions are incompatible. All you can do is stand and stare, and feel sad that you don’t know who you are.

 

The year is over. Another yesterday gone.

 

I can’t wait for a time in life when there won’t be a regular part of the year where people you have come to love suddenly exit the scene.

 

Why do crying people part? Well, they have the one life logic, their friendship, but then they have the other one that says they should go somewhere else and be around other people instead.

 

But when old logics pass, you do at least get to see their beauty. I really don’t have a lot to say. I feel cramped up, like I’m trying to make it better with words. Or like this interpretation packages it up, makes leaving ok. I guess it doesn’t and the feeling is one I’ll have to walk away from my computer with. I think that’s how it is a lot of time; we convince ourselves we have closure, but eventually you learn that sometimes there just isn’t any. Anyways, it was a rough year.

 

But relationships are redemption. There are some people I don’t know how to say I’ll miss. 

 

I have many saviors.