I wish I was able to express this flurry of thought this mess of unconnected concepts, and these overlapping situations adequately and articulately. That is how it’s been: I, with these thoughts that I can’t get a hold of, make sense of, and develop in a clean cut and tangible linear way, because there is reliability in the calculated response. Yea, I’m meticulous, but baby I’m a blur a little unsettled, and a little less concrete, and I’m striving to live with a rhythm and find my flow. I just want to find a way to combine and collaborate all of this to move, think and create in a rhythm I have yet to find.
I have these vipers I held on to forever, but the venom is losing its potency, and I think I might have already left them behind (though, I know I’ll meet some again with a greater bite, so I’ll just pray to be immune.). I’ve got the glow of electronic screens that are unable to sedate me because living vicariously is losing its appeal. I believe this hollow morality; this narrow road of abstaining-without-a-cause is leading us off of a cliff, because its making us believe that we are worthy based on what we don’t do.
Yes, so the Bible is here to keep us safe, so we don’t have to think just repeat the words that make sense are easy to follow, tag on some cliché answers and right-wing rhetoric and you have a formula for a well lived and safe life. Don’t think, and don’t do, just wait and G-d will guide you. But how can He if we remember what its like to move? That rhetoric we’ve learned isn’t fit for the world you deny you live in, and it doesn't even fit the Bible we believe in. We give up, think we’re going to go early, and just watch it all burn. I’ve got this itch and I do believe its Spirit led, but I could always cover my ears, and play it safe.
You see, I am human completely, and hardly anything revolutionary. My job is eight hours of repetitious work by the hands of mine that are replaceable. My other time is hardly spent maintaining The Agenda (and that causes me to be reminded to put “time management” on The Agenda), or doing anything productive, though I was always my harshest critic. Vague concepts of a better way are a haze in my mind, and their application or a dream not yet dreamt. I, a bachelor, wonder if it’s a lonely heart or lonely lips (lips, be careful of the bite of vipers). And when I sing to You I can never get the words “I’m sorry” out of my head, and it’s always I’m sorry for what I’m not, and what I haven’t done. I could never earn Your love, and I can never get it all right. I don’t know if I take solace in that. I guess that is why its grace that gives us wings. Because we’re all going off a cliff, but its grace that gives us wings.
Mr. Silver Acura had the nerve to cut me off, but it’s after midnight in northern Reading and I know how these lights work, when red turns to orange, and when to breeze under red as its turning green. Baby, I got the edge. I cruise under this light as its turning green, and I man walks out from the cars with his arms up and book it hand.
He’s middle aged, and is dressed like he was out that night for dinner. I slow down, and his stagger to my car tells me he’s been out, but it wasn’t dinner that made his night. He walks to my car, thanks me for stopping, and asks me if I have a minute. I always have a minute for strangers. I pull over, but not without caution, I tell him I’ll talk but won’t get out of my car, my left foot on the break, my right foot resting on the gas, and they are ready to switch dominance in a seconds notice.
Elliott Smith is singing this moment like a soundtrack, he never heard it before, but tells me he loves it and doesn’t want me to turn it down.
He has the first name of a Biblical figure that lost his wife, and the middle name of a poet. He is a play write and a Shakespearean actor, and tonight he’s wondering if his relative is going to make out of lung cancer; tonight he’s saying everything he has done means nothing. Between his disclosures he sometimes pauses and rests his head in his arm, but the silence in the air and the alcohol in his breath (like the conversation I had at lunch) are reminding me that we’re all broken. He admires my youth, and tells me I’m powerful; he tells me he’s spent his entire life trying to be someone like me. He feels like his best days are behind him. His thoughts are disconnected and introspective, and out of the blue he says that maybe Jesus see us all as we are, and I tell him He does, and that He loves us regardless. At that moment I feel a little introspective.
He tells me his lover is waiting for him in that house right over there, and she’s probably upset. She’s the one that planted the plants by the car; the one that he enjoys waking up next to. He thanks me again, and says he’ll probably never see me again. I gave him my card and he says he’s made a friend. I tell him we’ll do coffee sometime, no, I don’t mind that you’re an “old man.” He thanks me, tells me he has my back, and he has the back of whoever else has my back. In a gesture he probably did a hundred times in his plays, he kisses my hand repeatedly, and I tell him to pray tonight, because I’ll be praying for him tonight. As, I'm pulling away I tell him: As long as we're breathing we have hope.
I’m driving slower now. Earlier that night I asked G-d to make himself real to me again. Elliott is singing The Biggest Lie, and I'm realizing sometimes Jesus has to be a drunken playwright in order for me to remember how true it all it is. I take my time and come to complete stops, and life feels a little cinematic; a little surreal.
