where in the blue, where it's new

I read a book this week in the shortest amount of time I have ever read a book. Two days. It probably took about 7-8 hours altogether. I do not read so very fast and this was a very short book. To the tune of only 129 pages with each individual page only amounting to about 3" x 5.5" and the margins were also quite substantial. So I am not sure how much pleasure I can take in this feat. But that is okay because the content of the book was quite humbling. It was C.S. Lewis' fantasy about the inhabitants of Heaven and Hell called The Great Divorce. It was a truly remarkable read and without a doubt has deeply affected my view of the two places.

It kept bringing to mind this collaborative song by The Chemical Brothers and The Flaming Lips called "the golden path." It is about this guy who is in a sort of dream where he is confronted by "demonic forces" while navigating "a supposed golden path" to "silver mountains" in the distance. There is a part of the song when he decides to stand up to the "specter" who is tormenting him with questions about how he might have come to die and what to do now. He cries out to God - "Help me, Lord. I've found myself in some kind of hell." But then he feels foolish because he "doesn't believe in a Heaven and Hell, world in opposites, kind of reality." But he trudges on toward these mountains where he hears singing (Wayne Coyne to be precise): "Please forgive me, I never meant to hurt you."

And this is very akin to the journey many of the characters in the The Great Divorce found themselves on. The only difference is that the song's poor soul is all alone save a few ghoulish roadblocks. In the book a host of glorified spirits descend from the mountain in order to discuss with the inhabitants of Hell the obvious benefits to living encapsulated by love and joy for all eternity as opposed to, well, anything else.

the good times are killing me

When I was much younger and had only been writing poetry for a couple of years I wrote this poem called "listen." I entered it in a contest in ninth grade to get put in this collection called The Ohio Anthology of Youth Poets. It was chosen to be among hundreds of other dilettantes in the publication. One of the last lines in my poem, a line at which I know cringe miserably, has taken on actual meaning to me. I can't help but believe I originally wrote it for the immature and yet common writerly notion that it sounded very much like something I would read in what was my understanding of "poem."

If these are the best days of our lives,
I want to be listening
to the songs of yesterday.

(the line breaks are what I think they might have been. I don't actually remember)

Even though this is terribly cliched and seems to me like a reinterpretation of something I misheard when eavesdropping on my grandpa and father discussing my dad's childhood and old phonographs it actually popped into my head while listening to the Modest Mouse song "The good times are killing me" and the sentiment seemed to be the same. If this is as good as it gets and I am miserable (which I am not currently miserable, I am actually extremely content and jovial) then I don't want to detach from "the bad times." They musn't have been that bad after all. Perspective is becoming more and more obviously crucial to me. And I am becoming that true perspective can only come from truth. From honesty. Especially honesty with ourselves. Honesty that even a grand, spectacular day doesn't have to the end all and be all. We can hope for better days. And we can be honest with ourselves that the dark days had glimmers of some kind of heavenly light within them. Maybe a song.