The years change with me

Some people look different from the side. They turn their heads and they're surprisingly unfamiliar; even abstract. The people I meet with and eat with are ciphers to me, sometimes: shape-shifters. Identity (mine, mostly) frays at the edges more often than can reasonably be considered desirable, and in fact so regularly that I can't really dismiss it (me) as contained or neatly codified. It's a lot about memory, I think, and all tied up with the way I forget names of novels and acquaintances so easily. Ironically it's a lot about being singular, in probably as many senses of that word you can conjure. I think of James on hopelessly sleepless nights like this - of the man who sways to and fro with the winds of flimsy doubts and doctrines. Is it winds or waves? Either way. Sometimes I feel too multifarious for the faith I profess; far too messy and dispersed. Do you, new friend?

coffee

never say never.

right?

needs to stop caring needs to stop caring needs to stop. ok? oh for someone to not blow it - would be nice, wouldn't it? and, well, i probably need to make something change so my insides are less raw, etc. there's a peculiar grief in leaving home and picturing yourself as less alone than you really end up being, or than you really are in that all-of-life ultimate sense. (don't i know it.) actually, it's probably me - the ruining everything, that is. or it's just the whole universe and the person holding it together, except he doesn't ruin things as a matter of course so yeah i guess not which means - i don't know. that fanciness and niceness and kind of profundity to the everyday that comes with things that work out or are in the process of working out is what i think i want. for kicks. i would also like to sleep for several days, so good night.

A parable for the two of us, lately speaking

"Now they were different people as they started back. Four times they had driven along the shore road today, each time a different pair. Curiosity, sadness, and desire were behind them now; this was a true returning - to themselves and all their past and future and the encroaching presence of tomorrow. He asked her to sit close in the car, and she did, but they did not seem close, because for that you have to seem to be growing closer. Nothing stands still."
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1941), The Last Tycoon (London: Penguin, 2011), p.114.

freaken hell.

why do i still care? what the hell is wrong with me? jesus, take this away from me forever. i truly, completely, absolutely wish that i'd never met him.

Friday Night

my days are full but my nights are empty.
i walked out to put the garbage in the bin and i wished you would drive up, playing out the romantic gesture that used to always seem just around the corner, just off the sidewalk, just outside my house. and not because i 'deserved' it, whatever on earth that means, but because you had to, you loved to; you couldn't not.

my spoken faith

to change the world / to shatter the spell / to settle me down / to illuminate tomorrow / to break into pieces / to reel everything in / to let everything out / to sit at His feet / to release the tension / to unravel order / to puncture the everyday / to step up and out / to drive away into the sunset / to elucidate, to explicate / to take away these frames / to drink up eternity / to be filled with breath / to answer with reality / to tell fairy tales / to orchestrate happy endings / to make him miss me / to fall to sleep.

sufjan stevens - i walked

i walked
because you walked
but i won't probably get very far