How I know I was known

You chose my funeral song. The Neko Case song you chose for your own would make a beautiful and fitting dirge. I hope whoever buries you knows of this and fulfills your request.

I was/am listening to the Starflyer 59 album containing the song "We the Ordinary," the song you reverently chose to play at my service should you outlast me. I remember you were sorry for having chosen this song after scrutinizing it some but I was and still am imminently moved by your choice. There is only a faint tinge of a remembered hope in this song unlike the usual threnody that tries to push images of "the great beyond" and arriving in better places or flying away to home.

We're ordinary people
Close but not the worst
But I think you know
We're all the lonely people

Alone but not at first
But I think you know

The older living people
Who've been through even worse
But I think you know
Just like the other people

Alone but not at first
But I think you know
Sometimes we don't have a life


True, very true. Maybe one of the saddest songs I have ever heard but also one of the most resonant. I used to my brothers and sisters who share the same faith I do that we have the ability to not even know what it feels like to be lonely because we have the spiritual presence of our Lord's comfort. I was incredibly foolish. Jesus was a man isolated and rejected above all and knew practically nothing but loneliness. I had not intended to go here but I used to use this matter of loneliness and the supposed lack-there-of as a selling point to myself for why following Jesus Christ makes sense. I once wrote a very simple and creativity poor poem in high school called "I like goodbyes" that explained why I prefer parting rather than greetings. I said I liked the intense feelings they engender because I found those more profound than the ones accompanying meeting someone new or the gradual warmth of a friendship burgeoning over time. I relished loneliness because I thought I was above it and it was a sort of luxurious treat to partake of when I knew I had stored up enough joy to withstand it. The rush of self-inflicted isolation was thrilling.

Little did I know there is nothing as heart breaking or despised as the person truly alone. I thought emotional pain was a game because I was delusional concerning the immense wall I had constructed around my heart and soul. There has only been one person I have ever truly loved selflessly and only one person who has showed me that love of that sort exists. Also, belied by your duly chosen requiem for me, you were the only person who truly knows how lonely I have been my whole life.

I have no idea if that warrants a thank you or something else but nonetheless I thank you with only fond thoughts from now on.

I also wish to point out that on the ablum containing "We the Ordinary" it is only two songs away from "Fell in Love at 22," the song we danced to at our wedding. The most hopeful and perfectly nostalgic song I have ever heard.

blocked. no, not blocked ... beleagured

But hey, look. I'm fucking prolific. I think I might just break last years record of 26 posts. An accomplishment I don't think I will be brandishing too conspicuously. This blog in and of itself is a pitiful testament to the lack of humanity I have come to accept as my lot. I was empty but now I am seemingly only full of less than positive things to say. So who's to say I am better off or not.

I lost my keys today and I cried. It is no secret that crying is a daily activity for me. But the keys really got to me. I went to a lunar eclipse party the other night on the winter solstice and it was miraculous and mystifying. I felt so much and so little staring up at the color-shifting night sentinel. I was very aware of the Earth and the Sun and the power of planets. I felt moved and movement. I felt the order or things. Many people in my life refer to the Universe in similar terms to the way people who claim to be theists refer to God as someone upstairs liking them. These people in my life will say things like the Universe really has my back. After losing my keys for absolutely no discernible reason and in an extremely brief amount of time I cursed the Universe for having the back of those who are in much less turmoil than I currently find myself and instead merely shitting upon my shitty situation. The connection was lost and I feel heavy-laden. Jesus Christ, unhand your light yoke. I am crushed and abandoned.

a toast

There is a Bjork song I listened to once and I posed the question asked in the song to my car partner. "Where is the line with you?" AT the time I was referring to sexual perpetuity I wanted to assure myself we were congruous. As with all things at this very particular time in my life this memory and Bjork's query has taken on new meaning and received a new context. So where is the line? The surer I become about what it is I ought to be doing the more I become inverted and entirely unsure of everything. What is my place? Where once I felt like (in the words of Bilbo Baggins) butter spread over too much bread I now feel like those burnt corners of the toast that the butter never reaches and will either be torn asunder from the rest and given to the dog or left on the plate to become stale, worthless and wasted.


I do have confidence in somethings, however. American justice is not dead nor entirely ineffective. My terrific friend was granted the payoff of determined justice seeking. In the name of self preservation and love of the ideal of a safe, peaceful city she has proved hope and diligent resistance can combat any evil. Dragging into the light secretive injustices can embarrass and make impotent those who think they can get away with treating another human as anything less than an incredible creature worthy of respect and compassion.

maybe we never married

I took my good friend, Tim, on a date tonight.

A person can say things in an inward only manner. Speech from the heart. Speaking only by means of not speaking but knowing and existing in. Perhaps if she never said it in her heart nothing ever happened. But then it was a sham and I have been fending off that notion so I don't want to invite it as a possibility. Real is only barely relative but I know there were aspects that must have been real concerning the last five years. I refuse to engage the thoughts that keep hounding me saying I made a nearly unforgivable mistake and my doom is loneliness as retribution.

Maybe it was easy because it never was.


Nothing is simple now and I am rebuilding all of it. I know I am young but I had such a structure.

Clementines surely saved my life and erasing your name

Waking up is easy but the second my brief rehearsed routine of feeding my cat and standing in the center of my bedroom wondering what to do next has concluded I begin trembling and feel hungry and nauseous and I stare so long the top of my head begins to ache.

I ate a bowl of cereal because I knew I was hungry. It was delicious and repugnant. So I walked over to the couch, got down on my knees and wept. I asked God for relief. I asked for ability to let go. I was clutching the afghan covering the cushions, pushing my fingers through the holes like they were eye sockets and I thought about forgiveness.

I don't want to medicate. I am not disordered. Everything is well ordered and falling into place. Every friend and every breeze bringing winter in further tells me this is all normal. I should not be ashamed. I am not ashamed I have failed and I am crushed.

If I felt nothing the problem would lie with me. My mind and body are not the problem. Don't worry about me. I don't. I have immense worries and I tremble for a reason but it is not for my own sake. This, I am told, has been the root to all the trouble however. An ostensiblly unhealthy view of love in a modern context. Looking outside one's self for satisfaction and comfort because although a person may be truly lovely and strong a person is not enough. I fear I may only ever love myself because no one else would desire to. For years I had enough love to sustain two people so I am entirely certain I have enough to love my mere self. That has never been a strain for me.

I am hungry again. A little shaky and a mostly uncertain about everything. But I now eating clementines and going for a walk.