2004-09-19
Sad Beginnings Bring Joyful Endings

hearing: On My Bones - Kendall Payne
reading: The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
feeling: Painfully stark Hope and a strange, darkly Joy. And after third and fourth thoughts, I had an epiphany, and I think that I have decided that this is not insanity claiming me as I have been screaming. I believe I am saner now, than I generally am...

Why does everyone seem to fall into a pit at once? (Or so it seems to me, but maybe that's just the strange insanity overtaking that which lurks beneath the masks...which I am trying and trying to pry off again) But everyone's so caught up in themselves and keeping from others and not being troublesome and ugly ugly pride and whatever other reasons they may have, that we're all shuddered in seperate corners crying by ourselves.

Some inside.

Some in school gyms all by themselves.

Some in pillows.

Some in showers (me).

Many Many Many more ways.

I say, we all X out our eyes so we cannot cry any more tears in seclusion. We will not cry again.

Shall I be the first to begin this gouging process?

No?

Read on...(Even if we don't solve the problem of the tears, even though it is not touched on again, even though what comes after has absolutely no bearing on the beginning, I just want to demonstrate that there is hope left in the world. That I do have hope left. Maybe you can draw a happy ending for the beginning from the unrelated end. The ending which was concieved, constructed, and composed long before the beginning was thrown out...)

Our lives are tangles of millions of threads. Knots of truth, morality, self discovery, people, and relationships for us to untangle. We work our whole lives extracting as many threads from these endless labyrinths as we can, and winding them onto their respective spools and feeding them through sewing machine processors to churn out as much of the tapestry of life as we are granted to see. Searching for the threads we need like the missing piece of a puzzle, searching for threads we cannot and will never see. We study the messy, hazy tapestries through eyes plagued by hyperopia. Crying and stamping our feet with frustration because we can�t make out the picture and the threads are heaping up. There are too many meshes of threads to untangle. Frustration wins out and we turn our backs on the messes and riddles of life, and try to wander away, whistling nervously as we pretend that we�re freer now. But the gray entanglements come creeping upon us like so many genetically enhanced vines living and breathing, straight out of an old wives tale; behind our weak eyes and stooped spines. Keeping to our metaphor within one, the greenery throws out suckers and creepers to bind our ignorant hands and feet, discreetly wrapping about our necks to choke the life from us. And then we must turn back and face these baffling ties, and set at the weary work of untangling them again, and untangling them from the positions which threaten our lives. Oh that it was easier, oh that we put on our glasses to understand the guide book a little better, oh that we left our glasses on, oh�oh to lament these�to lament that humanity was not what it is. That it was changed and reversed to a time before the Fall. Before this dreary winter descended upon us� We rebuild eternity that way and it is not our place... So�When will the endless spring come? The marriage of spring and summer, unthreatened by such a disastrous autumn and biting winter�

Wait for it. Wait. I throw on my partially broken spectacles and grope for the guidebook. Staring out the window and gazing steadily at the beam of light falling through the clouds so thick. It alights on the loosening point of a knot of several cords which I hastily untangle. Then I twine the free threads about their respective spools. It all seems familiar, oh so familiar, these threads and these spools, but I heed not their intimacy. I feed all of it into the machine, not stopping yet to stare at the next piece of the puzzle which I cannot complete here. I am watching out the window still. With tears different from the lonely ones I continue to shed; sparkling in my eyes. Something better is coming and rushing. Some day. This is not forever. These threads are not forever. The brokenness I feel inside is not forever.

We are not prisoners without hope of bail. Twitching and quivering on the horizon is our release. Work swiftly. Eternity will fall upon us soon enough�

before & & after