Aliens

Aliens

I find this all difficult to accept.

That I - as in myself as a tangible thing - am nothing but a white canvas stretched over a white ceramic mold. And I am conditioned to tell myself that tomorrow is the day I will make everything happen that I couldn't make happen today. When in truth, I have no true feeling of solidarity in the day that is tomorrow.

Look at yourself. A portion of liquid dripped over a sugar cube. You've given yourself the purpose you intend to live the rest of your life for. How can this be construed as pure? As meaningful? When it is nothing but absinthe. You are nothing but absinthe. A concentrated amount of alcohol poured over the world. A world that dissolves beneath you.

And yet.

There is love.

There is a body you engross. There is a heart that beats. There is the tangible. The backward and the forward flow of time. The ever-flowing extract of mind-dew. We call these thoughts.

We! As if there were others who could ever fathom the exact perspective you possess. That is the folly of man. Thinking there is a "we" somewhere amidst the "I's."

I would challenge my own doubt. I would struggle and scurry away because I know that I have felt partnership and companionship and camaraderie. But these feelings of togetherness - so theoretical - make me feel so alone in comparison.

Perhaps that is the mission. The aim. That we try to discover this loneliness in ourselves through our understanding of empathy toward the other. Toward those other white canvases stretched over white ceramic mold. Toward the statues that are ourselves, embodied in some distant figure. Aliens.

I was born in the Midwest. Missouri to be precise. All of my time spent there was spent running away from an inescapable winter. Inches upon inches of snow that would inevitably fall in December and January and February. But today I looked back at all my winters. And only a minute amount - a handful at most - had any hint of snow.

I saw the winter in my mind. I saw how cold it could have been. And because I saw it, because I felt it tighten my skin and pores, I feared it all my life. And the same goes for these aliens. These strangers that all of us - as if there were an "us" - struggle to coordinate with. All the safety we've felt in the arms of our friends makes us fear our time spent alone.

This is the misconception of my generation:

That being alone is a burden.  

We have become accustomed to the touch of another human. We have been spoiled by compassion and empathy. We sit in front of our computers and wait for an answer to our lonely hearts crying out for recognition.  

But if we could only take some time away. If we could bask in the truth that comes from experiencing loneliness in its entirety, how brilliant our appreciation for this life would become! We would see these white canvasses stretched across a gigantic, massive mosaic! We would see ourselves in the hearts and eyes of our friends. And really see. Really look into the mirror for once.  

I have come to understand that the only way to see yourself is to be alone with yourself; to feel the hurt in yourself and to compare that hurt to the happiness you've been given through the people that call themselves your friends.

Those other lonely beings. Those other strange entities searching for a partner. Those other tattered pieces of this cosmic mosaic.

Those aliens.

Invisible

Invisible

[not able to be seen with the eyes; hidden from view; not readily noticed or detected]

some people imagine invisible lines. they draw them in an intangible place somewhere in their heads. these lines, although they are never clearly defined, and never given any exact parameters, divide the one drawing from the one trying to cross over. but as i’ve said before, they are invisible. all of us do this without even realizing it. we send text messages, emails, facebook messages, and even on rare occasions will write letters to tell someone our perception of the particularities of a relationship. and in this distance, the one perpetuated by non-human interaction, invisible lines are drawn in an invisible place. they destroy us. they destroy our friendships. they destroy the parts of our lives that we grew up building and making strong.

sometimes it’s useful to imagine these lines are actually out there. i wonder how they would manifest. if we would all be encased in a cocoon. or if we would all start to get tangled within each other’s fears. but no matter how i imagine it manifesting, it always appears to me as a limitation. and i realized that these limitations are set by another invisible piece of the human condition.

                                                                                    fear.

           

                                               

                                                invisible lines

                                                            drawing invisible pictures

                                                                        of an invisible emotion.  

i’ve been angry over the past few days. very angry. very bitter. questioning how i allow myself to still feel the sting of something that has faded from my life. ashes in a storm. i let an invisible rage consume my invisible thoughts. so last night i drank myself to sleep instead of going out with my friends or watching the sopranos for hours on end. i sat in total darkness with my bottle of whiskey and contemplated the directions i could take from that point on. this was intentional. this was some kind of twisted meditation. but it fucking worked for me, believe it or not. i woke up this morning and realized that everything i have been feeling and thinking and wandering and hoping for is all

                                                                                                            invisible.

my fears, predominately, are invisible fears.

            my dreams, although vivid, are invisible dreams.

                        my goals, for the time being, are invisible goals.

and somehow there are people who believe that this whole blog, this project that i am doing for myself more than anything as a source of cathartic release, has some kind of specific purpose. those people can’t see that the purpose is also an invisible idea. 

fear is a funny thing. some people are afraid of the physical. but i would venture to say that most people on this planet fear things that they cannot see. and the fact that they can’t see any of it makes them even more afraid of it. and that fear snowballs and they begin to see their fears take shape in reality. but what they ignore, or fail to see, is that they are projecting their internal anguish - pain, doubt, regret - onto something that is easier for them to understand. they also fail to see that it is all invisible. it is all imaginary.

so what am i getting at? i don’t really know. i guess i just wanted to put more invisible ideas into the invisible cloud of invisible information and hope that some invisible peace will take place of some invisible fear and my invisible mind can rest for an invisible moment.

Faith

Faith

i sat and i listened when i was young. i was baptized and i was saved. saved from what? saved from who? i just don’t understand. when i break it down and dissect it all, i just become envious.

                                    maybe it’s because i’ve lost my faith.

which is not to say i don’t believe in… well fuck… i believe in something. i believe that at one point we were all part of the same hunk of shit. we were all clumped together in this giant ball of matter and eventually it exploded, or imploded, and the shit that made us up expanded and grew and evolved and here we are.

                         a bunch of faithful fucking humans.

i was raised in a religious household. my mom and dad, over the years, became more and more convinced that the church and the bible was full of truth. i don’t think they are wrong. i also don’t think they are right. i think they are investing their time in what makes them happy. and to me, as long as my parents are happy, and my sisters, and - well pretty much anyone who goes to church and believes in that shit – i think that is all that matters. i don’t buy into it. and that is my choice. i’ve always thought the church is a big fucking scam. and i’m sorry if that hurts anyone’s feelings.

but if there is a God then i truly believe he would be alright with me. maybe that is some kind of twisted self-righteous justification. but nonetheless, i really do believe there is more to our existence than living and dying. i think that we are tied together by some forces of nature that supersede human understanding.

there is this theory called the big crunch. much like the big bang, it is based on the idea that everything started off in this little atomic vortex and exploded out into oblivion. but the big crunch is what happens at the end of the big bang. the universe is expanding and growing and eventually it will stop. this theory suggests that once it stops growing, it will start moving in reverse. back to where it started. they tell you to imagine a heartbeat on a universal scale.

            bmp-bmp.

                        bmp-bmp.

                                    bmp-bmp.

now imagine each of these beats is our universe. the first compression is the big bang. and the space between this and the next compression is our existence. and the second compression is the big crunch. these scientists, or astronomers or whatever, can prove this. it's called red shift. this is how we know that the universe is expanding. and the way i understand it: (which isn't necessarily accurate because i'm a fucking writer and at the moment, i've had a few drinks) it's a "what goes up must come down" sort of situation. 

the point is that everything is relative.

                        that we can only see things on a relative scale and our perspective is limited.

and to have faith

                                                when everything is so obscure

                                                                                                            and abstract

                                                                                                well…

i

become

so

fucking

envious.

think about how many heartbeats you’ve produced in the time you’ve read these words. think of how many universes have existed and ceased to exist on a scale that we can’t even quantify from our perspective. think about the life and the death of a billion universes. a trillion galaxies. an infinite number of lives.

                                                                        gone in a matter of minutes.

                        yet faith alone carries us forward.

there are people in this world that read the bible and feel restored. they hear words from a preacher and feel rejuvenated.

                                    how?

                                                            why?

i think this is a matter that will never settle in my mind. mostly due to the fact that the God i believe in isn’t watching over me. the God i believe in is me. it is in my brain and in my blood and in my heart. and the interconnectivity of the human race with the rest of the universe, that is the soul.

it’s actually pretty scientific if you break it down. there are only a few chemicals and forces that have existed since the dawn of time. since the beginning. and those very physical aspects of our lives hold us together. like glue.

we

            are

                        all

                                    made

                                                from

                                                            the

                                                                        same

                                                                                    shit.

                                                                        yet

                                                            we

                                                all

                                    try

                        to

            deny

it.

we all want to be a unique piece of the puzzle

                                                but the puzzle is so much greater than us

                                    and we are all just one giant piece.

so in the midst of this, in trying to understand it all, there are the masses that have faith in something more. there are the hundreds of thousands that KNOW there is more to life than what is in front of us. and these people, whether you are one of them or not, carry us all forward. because by some miracle… by some chemical inaccuracy… these people have gone beyond reason and logic and science… and they have connected on a level that many of us will never achieve.

                                                and as i’ve said before.

                                                                                    i am envious.

i wish i could find the same faith in myself that i’ve seen other people find in God