As I look back and wonder why so many of my bridges went up in flames, I remember it's because I was holding the matches and decided it was time to strike. And while I may be forgetting the small details like the splinter-studded boards and even the termite-infested wood, I ignore these things and miss them now. I miss being able to take a stroll across those worn, wooden planks that could console me with every step just through their familiarity. I miss the view from those bridges and the route to which they led. But it is too late to rebuild them now. And even if I chose to do so, it would take too much time to wear back in those planks. And over a long time period of rebuilding and refamiliarizing, I may just get fond of those matches again, when driven so by the slightest splinter again. And I would find myself in the same here and now only many years later.

So, instead, off I go to find new bridges that challenge me with their step and show me a new display of territory. What is done, is done and cannot be undone. So now I look for what has yet to be done, and find joy in the conquering. I seek out the new and am acquainting myself with it, for the new may be better and may erase all possibility for previous regret. For regret will emblazen my heart as the matches did to the bridges and will leave me discontent and unhappy. But a hope for what is fresh and new is what reenlivens and empowers and will keep each step of the bridge-seeking process joyful an light.

Dear Mr. Calculus, I sure do love your flavor.

Peter

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

Fruitylicious!

Sometimes I think of where it is I've come from
And the things I've left behind
But of all I've had, what I possessed
Nothing can quite compare
With what's in front of me

Untranslatable

I am UNABLE to be understood. So stop trying.

Like a vault locked down

I feel locked into a fate I cannot change. “But you can do whatever you want,” everyone says. False. Whether it was me, my choices, or just the way things worked out, I walk a set path. A red brick, decades-old path for a set time. And now the challenge is not to find a new one, but to learn to love the one I am on. And if you ask me, to acquire happiness in a predetermined situation is a harder thing to do than choosing which path to originally take. So surrounded by red heads, blond heads, black heads, my brown head is number 714839314; I look out at the open road hoping to find contentment walking in the shape of a man or girl or even dog. Something I can see and touch. What a waste of my hope though, right? Don’t worry all worried Christian evangelizers out there; I know that my hope is in the Lord. But just for one second, shut up, please, thank you.

How long will this last?

I feel frozen, frozen as in stuck, stuck and freezing. Words that you don’t say are leaving me frozen. Like a cold, cold front. An affront to me. Chilly, I roll on. Fighting as a block of ice to stay warm.

Academia

It's an idea trading ground. The poor incubated puppies are breathing in the ether. And in their subconsciousness or apathy to think deeply, they confuse it all for normalcy.

A period of passing

7 days from the moment that He spoke until the moment that He rested, the earth was brought into being. Life was given life. Earth was at its start and peak of power.

7 days from the moment it starts until the moment it ends, I pain. Life that could have been, is now being flushed away. At the height of my power to give life, I am bleeding away and cramping for what could have been.

Life is a cyclical period of passing.

"I lie in awe of the power the Lord hath giveth"

Black sheep, black sheep

Life is going to counter everything you wish it would not. Everything good is a struggle, everything bad comes easy. You want a spoon to eat the whipped cream off the top of your coffee, they're out. You want to sacrifice your life for the nation to which you belong, and they don't want you. I'm like the black, pious lamb ready for the slaughter on the altar, but white is a minimum requirement. Status quo, IS a status quo. And unless you're the type to ski blind-folded down the mountain, you live a life of questioning, or reverse that, you question a life of living.

Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Happiness

Have I ever really had that “joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart”? I can’t say that I recall a time when I was ever overwhelmingly joyful not contingent on circumstances. And what I find most interesting is the mantra of the world in its “New Age” is to abandon materialism and embark in this hippy wave of anti-cleanliness and mental purification. It’s like we’re engaged in a hugely literal “surface warfare” against just skimming the froth on life. The spiritual side, the ooh-ahh ghost side of life, the flip side of the carpet is what people are trying to fill their hearts and minds and smoke detectors with incenses. But what I find hilariously hilarious about this journey of our world is that the happiness people once found in their “old life” of cultural consumerism is the same emotion of happiness people now find in their “new life” of nothing-but-the-dread-locks-in-my-hair kind of way of life. So what must change? Well, that’s what I’m trying to mine one pick after another. I think we’re missing something, and I say that with all seriousness. There must be something missing when our entire method of being has completely flip flopped, but we still see ourselves enjoying the same emotion. We are missing joy. A non-circumstantial happiness found neither in the Vogue-overloaded mind of a shopaholic or in the vegan, hemp-clothed mind of a New Ager. Joy comes from an Undefined Place or Person, however which-a-way you prefer. So the point, if there is one, that I’m seemingly trying to make is that addiction is addiction. And while happiness is mandated in a life of circumstances, addiction to a happiness divorced from joy is a life addicted to self.

Note to self

don't listen to anyone; know yourself; be listening ears and not a carping set of lips; you're a mess, try praying for yourself; be your own warrior, body guards aren't for poor people like yourself

Presbyterianism

If the cobbler of the town is a carping, gossiping, hypocritical, bastard, it makes me want to stop wearing shoes while still needing foot protection. When the leaders of the church care only for the theology which they have created, it makes me want to chuck all institutionalized form of religion while still needing my God.

Oh Destiny, Destiny

You very quickly begin to feel like a piñata in a world of ten-year-old bullies when the only thing you are known for is something you did not, cannot, and will never be able to do as a result of a striping failure to achieve. When identity attempts to salvage it’s broken shell pieces there is immediate condescension and disdain from onlookers, as if my piñata might as well be filled with shriveled and scorned prunes. It is as if people think I want what I got. True or False? FALSE – I hate what my life has resulted in, so I walk self-blindfolded and schlumping down a Carolina Blue plank for the next however many years.

Rubber Band Ball

Isn’t it frustrating how when someone you respect and look up to disagrees with you for the first time, they instantly fall from their respect throne to a prickly pin cushion of resentment, while you shrink into severe moments of self-pity, offense, and flared individualism. It is very unhealthy to be this way, I really should stop. But the more the people around me start to disagree or try or correct and maybe even out of well-intentioned help, I instantly recoil and use it as affirmation for my newly-being-explored solitude. Maybe this is the evil twin of the attitude I should have had a long time ago to be able to “foundationalize” who I am apart from this bee-hive of a world around me. But then again, I’m pretty good at rationalizing my horrifically helixed insights to conform to something I know I need and want; life’s a pretty easy lie to live when you make your own logic. Though, if I don’t make my own, I’m just conforming to someone else’s predisposed understanding of the way things should be for themselves. And since I’m me, and the problem of the matter is that I am allowing other people to mold my character clay, then using my own logic to apply to my own self should be the key to the secret garden, my friends. But please use caution, because for someone like myself who needs some method of personal checks and balances, or at least I fear not having one for the in-return fear of morphing my life into an indiscernible ball of all my internality, well that’s just it. And thus no matter how much I could ever try to disprove the existence of something larger than myself, the rubberband ball-through-a-paper shredder of a mess my life is capable of being and many times is, gives me all the more understanding of my need for an Ultimate Standard. Because frankly, friends, people disappoint and lead you astray, but it’s a lot easier to do that to yourself.

Tight Ropin'

Everyday I walk the line between uneasy and easy. I walk this line of mine surrounded by people that I have to decide are worth pulling me off my tight rope to make relationships. Very few people do I find worthy of such distraction. But sometimes I stop and I make an east-to-west scan, and occasionally I see a new poppy that may be worth stepping aside to snatch. But if that poppy is rotten or smells even the least bit stinky and mocks my whole attempt to let a little joy in my life, I resent all flowers. I then start, head hung, back to my line and keep on a tiptoe’n wondering why flowers hate me so much.

The iron-heavy droplets of my pensiveness

It’s an undecipherable flood. Not a rush, but a flood because I stand shoulder deep in a stagnant pool of my own thoughts. And in the most intense moment of my dislike for this water, I’m sometimes tempted to surrender to it’s aqua layers and go down like a heroic sailor shot in the battle by some rusty musket. But when the flood has receded, dried up, and evaporated, my gills yearn for some relief and I almost wish it back. And when I’ve done my rain dance and hopped in hooting circles all my heart allows, it comes trickling down, collects, and I find myself once again standing in this burdensome flood I love so much.

Mine Own Words

To walk alone is still walking. To stand alone is still standing. There is a purpose in the life you live merely by still having life. You are born with a purpose driven life, you cannot acquire it from the pages of some man's written fortune. But to flee not too far from the mother point here, speaking into darkness for no one to hear and sending your preciously-crafted words into a world of distracted, uninterested peoples is actually enlivening. I have no audience to please or crowd to make cheer or birds to make flap their wings; all I have is the air I breathe to please myself, and it’s not too easily scared away. There is an addiction to an absolute loneliness, and by that word I mean no onslaught of negativity or old-man’s tears, all I mean is “literality,” and if you will, alone-li-ness. Happiness can come from others with which you share your life, but for me, in this moment of typage, I’m going to go with… um NO. I drink my solidarity for energy and am loving the taste of it.

A Building's Wisdom

Do not go where there is a path.
Go where there is no path
and leave a trail.

Barking Inspiration

What I found at the bottom of someone else's bottle, however, is an awareness of how deeply and fundamentally I am exactly like them and every other hurting, broken person on this planet. I, too, am manifesting the symptoms of the disease of self-love, believing that I can diagnose the problem and with hard work and a good roll of duct tape I can patch it all back together.

Banjo's Two-sense

When animals run into the road, they are committing suicide.
It is your obligation to help them out.

Whitty Boy

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world.

Hymn

I love you, Lord
and I lift my voice
to worship You
O my soul, rejoice.
Take joy, my King
in what You hear
May it be a sweet, sweet sound
in Your ear.

Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity

God is Great
Beer is Good
People are Crazy

A Neverending Unknown

Why?

Lane Baker

The below statement is false
The above statement is true

"The Full Glass"

The shaving mirror hangs in front of a window overlooking the sea. The sea is always full, flat as

a floor. Or almost: there is a delicate planetary bulge in it, supporting a few shadowy freighters

and cruise ships making their motionless way out of Boston Harbor. At night, the horizon

springs a rim of lights -- more, it seems, every year. Winking airplanes from the corners of the

earth descend on a slant, a curved groove in the air, towards the unseen airport in East Boston.

My life-prolonging pills cupped in my left hand, I lift the glass, its water sweetened by its brief

wait on the marble sinktop. If I can read this strange old guy's mind aright, he's drinking a toast

to the visible world, his impending disappearnce from it be damned.

John Updike

I'm Alive

So damn easy to say that life’s so hard
Everybody’s got their share of battle scars
As for me I’d like to thank my lucky stars that
I’m alive, and well

It’d be easy to add up all the pain
And all the dreams you sat and watched go up in flames
Dwell on the wreckage as it smolders in the rain
But not me, I’m alive

And today you know that’s good enough for me
Breathin' in and out's a blessin' can’t you see
Today's the first day of the rest of my life
And I’m alive, and well
I’m alive, and well

Stars are dancin’ on the water here tonight
It’s good for the soul, when there’s not a soul in sight
But this boat has caught its wind and brought me back to life
Now I’m alive, and well

And today you know that’s good enough for me
Breathin' in and out's a blessing can’t you see
Today is the first day of the rest of my life
Now I’m alive, and well
Yeah I’m alive, and well

Kenny Chesney and Dave Matthews