The Way Things Go

11:50 p.m.

Often, I get excited about things.  The excitement is blinding in its quickness and its intensity.  It fades, sooner than I expect it to, every time.
There are others things which I am rarely expressively excited about, but I keep coming back to them over and over because I really do love them.  They stick.

In my excited micro-explosions, I feel as though I know so much; in my quiet, insistent, tenacious love affairs, I tend to feel about as knowledgeable and capable as an infant camel.  Maybe that's okay.  Maybe that's what learning is.

———

12:03 a.m.

Sometimes ignorance and knowledge both feel like sickness.  Sometimes, I'm afraid that people will stop learning about things that are important, and even people who do want to refine themselves with learning and truth and real knowledge will be culturally corralled into having useless fluff stuffed into their brains 90% of the time instead.  Sometimes I'm afraid that people will know too much and the whole world will turn into a Gambit Pileup of everyone trying to pull others' strings, and we'll never know who's going what way.  Sometimes I want to hole up and have no contact with anyone because I'm afraid someone will bleed on me at the wrong angle and it will be the break point that kills the infinitely fragile person lurking inside this thing called myself.

———

12:20 a.m.

Every once in a while, I wonder if I am a good person at all.  Jesus said no one is good except the Father.  But then, I think that Paul said later on (post-Crucifixion/Resurrection/Holy Spirit outpouring, amazing etc.) that the Father sees Jesus when He looks at us, and Jesus was the image of the Father.  But sometimes I wonder if there really is too much darkness in me.  And really—if I can't get rid of it once and for all, why can I not at least channel it?  I could do great things with darkness.  Instead I'm squashed up in some inexistent corner, horribly terrified and horrifically angry and wrenchingly sad and much too apathetic to do anything about anything.  This is dark, and I know it, and for now I will refuse to care, even peripherally understanding that later I will know this isn't me, or not me in my entirety.

———

12:40 a.m.

Tell me, where do existentialism and faith diverge?

———

12:42 a.m.

Be still, and know that I am God.
~
Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.

———

12:55 a.m.

Sometimes it takes some good, hard thinking to ready one's mind to listen.  Sometimes, thoughts can be exhausted to emptiness.  Noise might be a gateway to silence, and silence a slippery road to clarity, or to peace, or to something else that we need.  Sometimes, it is desperation and not satisfaction that draws us upwards.

Manuscript

Sometimes, I don't understand how I can work up enough emotion over vicariously experiencing something I've never experienced in reality that I actually need catharsis.  I wonder what the natural endpoints of emotions are, and how many of the actions we think will be solutions truly would be solutions if we were able to try them all out.  I wonder what really constitutes love.  I wonder why the word hasn't gone out of fashion.  I wonder what plucks the chords in our hearts that make us not want to leave the moment we're in.  I wonder why sometimes our need to understand is completely subsumed by our need to wring our hearts into intellectual uselessness, into ornate literacy, into philosophical mazes (into the instinctive and mechanical scrawling of oxymorons?).  Who follows us down the paths we take in the night?  Who defines waking dreams?  When your heart is full, does the fact that you understand nothing matter?  Does stream-of-consciousness writing really exemplify as much serious thought as it weirdly, ironically seems to imply?

———

EDIT / 2:58 a.m. / And what happens when the yearning for understanding returns?  Are we more or less lost?

A Playlist for Change (Summer 2011)

Just because everything's changing
Doesn't mean it's never been this way before
All you can do is try to know who your friends are as you head off to the war
Pick a star on the dark horizon and follow the light
You'll come back when it's over
No need to say goodbye


             The people were overjoyed, they took to their boats
             I thought it less like a lake, and more like a moat
             The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flood-lands to your door
             Has been silenced forevermore
             The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row
             It seems farther than ever before
             Oh no—
             I need you so much closer

I woke up and wished that I was dead, with an aching in my head

I lay motionless in bed

I thought of you and where you'd gone

And let the world spin madly on

     "Allow me to introduce myself.  My name is Tumnus."

     "I am very pleased to meet you, Mr. Tumnus," said Lucy.

      "And may I ask, O Lucy Daughter of Eve," said the Faun, "how you have come into Narnia?"

      "Narnia? What's that?" said Lucy.

     "This is Narnia," said the Faun, "where we are now:  all that lies between the lamp-post and the great castle Cair Paravel on the eastern sea.  And you – you have come from the wild woods of the west?"

      "I – I got in through the wardrobe in the spare room," said Lucy.

      "Ah!" said the Faun in a rather melancholy voice.  "If only I had worked harder at geography when I was a little Faun, I would no doubt know all about those strange countries.  It is too late now."

      "But they're not countries at all," said Lucy, almost laughing.  "It's only just back there – at least – I'm not sure.  It is summer there."

      "Meanwhile," said Mr. Tumnus, "it is winter in Narnia, and has been for ever so long, and we shall both catch cold if we stand here talking in the snow.  Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, how would it be if you came and had tea with me?"

Welcome to the fallout

Welcome to existence

The tension is here, the tension is here

Between who you are and who you could be

Between how it is and how it should be

Am I losing my mind?

Vacuumed every room for the second time today

You can't go through your life without killing something or someone at one time

Losing touch with everything that I like, keeping busy day and night

Am I farsighted or just blind

It was right there in front of me, but the whole time

I swear I saw nothing wrong; I swear I saw nothing wrong at all

       With the mention of Derbyshire, there were many ideas connected.  It was impossible for her to see the word without thinking of Pemberley and its owner.  "But surely," said she, "I may enter his country with impunity, and rob it of a few petrified spars without his perceiving me."
       The period of expectation was now doubled.  Four weeks were to pass away before her uncle and aunt's arrival.  But they did pass away, and Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, with their four children, did at length appear at Longbourn.
       …The Gardiners staid only one night at Longbourn, and set off the next morning with Elizabeth.


                                   Dreams come clever, hearts now severed
                                   Difference of forever
                                   And I'm lost there
                                   I finally found that life goes on without you
                                   And the world still turns when you're not around
              

I would find a different way to go

There's no signs in life to guide you on that road

And if it's the most important thing you say, make sure they understand

Every way you wonder if you're wrong…

Inaccurate and imprecise, there is no gift without a price

 It's lonely out in space on such a timeless flight

 And I think it's gonna be a long, long time

 'Til touchdown brings me round again to find

 I'm not the man they think i am at home, oh no no no

 I'm a rocket man

 Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone

Yo, el otona

Yo,  el vespero

He sido un eco.

Sere ina ola

Sere la luna

He sido todo, soy yo.

Yo, el verano

Yo, al ebano

Soy la sonadora.

Past is past, you never really gave it a shot

To survive with your one last shot in the dark

And if your conscience weighs a little heavy tonight

Maybe you'll find that

Empty boxes on the stairs remind you that there's no one there

Is it everything you thought it would be?

Can you tell I'm not myself

I'm a slow-motion accident

Lost in coffee rings and fingerprints

I don't want to feel anything, but I do

                                                                                                      I want to change the world 

                                                                                                      Instead I sleep 

                                                                                                      I want to believe in more than you and me

                                                                                                      All that I know is I'm breathing

                                                                                                      All I can do is keep breathing

                                                                                                      All we can do is keep breathing—now

             

              And so it is, just like you said it would be

              Life goes easy on me

              Most of the time

              And so it is: the shorter story

              No love, no glory

              No hero in her skies

I said, "My pretty Creole girl, me money here's no good.

If it weren't for alligators, I sleep out in the wood."

"You're welcome here kind stranger;

our house, it's very plain.

But we never turn a stranger out from the lakes of Ponchartrain."

I need a heart that carries on through the pain

When the walls start collapsing again

Give a soul that never ceases to follow

Despite the infection within

I'm waking up now in this empty house 

Doing my best to keep my comments down to a minimum

But it's just so hard to bite my tongue

I'm waking up now and its just so loud

'Cause everyone here loves somebody else

And somehow I always seem to get left out

                                                                                                           Trees fall, and so do men

                                                                                                           Even the walls start caving in

                                                                                                           And you feel like there's no pretend for you

CREDITS:   (yes, these are all links)

"The Call" – Regina Spektor

"Transatlanticism" – Death Cab For Cutie

"World Spins Madly On" – The Weepies

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – C. S. Lewis

"I Dare You To Move" – Switchfoot

"Keeping Up With Changes" – glowfriends

Pride & Prejudice – Jane Austen

"Naïve Orleans" – Anberlin

"Everway" – Circa Survive

"Rocket Man" – Elton John

"La Sonadora" – Enya

"On Your Own" – Green River Ordinance

"Hear Me Out" – Frou Frou

"Keep Breathing" – Ingrid Michaelson

"The Blower's Daughter" – Damien Rice

"The Lakes of Ponchartrain" – Deanta

"Deteriorate" – Demon Hunter

"A Deluge of Separation" – The Sophomore Attempt

"Falling" – Ben Kweller

I don't really NEED a duck...snuggly or otherwise.

Deepness, I spurn you. 
I am going to write something utterly shallow and futile.  
Such as, "I like grapes."
Except — can you say anything shallow these days?  Can you say anything without having it overanalyzed?  Without an ulterior agenda?  Without accidentally saying something profound about God or about yourself or about the universe?

Elf-knots of thoughts.

I feel as though I have nothing deep and meaningful to write.  You may have noticed I failed to post yesterday.  I'm frustrated with my voyage into NaBloPoMo.  

I just don't have enough time to think.

I've always heard that college students who are serious about their homework don't have enough time to do that homework, sleep, and carry on a social life.  I've always been a bit of a loner, so my social life is continuing at about the same rate.  I'm not getting as much sleep, but that's not due to lack of time.  I'm feeling the loss very much in terms of space to think.  Intellectualism has lost a faithful follower.  I spend a lot of time being introspective, or pondering mysteries that have no bearing on my life.  (I thought that when I started this blog I could write about some of it, but not much has come up.)  I feel so stuffed in by the necessity of making deadlines and keeping to schedules and "prioritizing" all the things I have to do...there is no time for all of the impractical, or less tangibly practical, thinking that needs to be done.  My mind feels so tied up in itself that I have no creative flow anymore. It's been weeks since I've written a halfway decent poem and longer since I've done any fiction writing longer than a sentence or two.  Every time I sit down my mind goes, "But, Kiersten, YOUR BRAIN DOESN"T WORK, remember?  You broke it trying to keep up with your schoolwork."  And maybe I have.  It surely feels like I at least pulled some gooey grey cerebral muscle up there.  I never much liked mentally cooperating with practicality, and now I feel interminably mired in practicality.