Often enough.

If you're going to start taking me seriously, please don't start now. You'll have a bad time of it. A fairly rotten time, indeed - I'm sure of it.

Holding me at far too high a standard. Expecting far beyond what could actually be produced - far beyond what I have here to offer you. Yet you name me great, label me magnificent, acclaim me beyond conscious ability...

Is it merely an excuse; an easy trek to lead you away from the criticism, frustration, conviction you ought to feel? Is praise, approval, adoration born simply and purely from the inability and fear to face the reality we're all placed in anyway?

I do; I wonder at your honesty. At your graceful ability to sidestep the issue, make me the conniving fool, make you the innocent victim. Time and time again. Make all this work out to make you look the better, despite the applause and harrangue. Stir up motives of untoward desires and passions that aren't admitted, pulling strings behind the curtain of those dim eyes. I wonder at your version of sincerity, how authentic it must seem from there - from here, when we're not watching.

I wonder at your straight-forwardness. At your unintentioned deception, at how unintentioned it can become when your intentions seem self-evident. I wonder at your bluntness, your eagerness, your paintings of your truth.

How often you've held me in esteem, when you meant to tell me you hadn't had the time to. When you'd said there was nothing to say, only you hadn't found the words to say it. Or, when it wasn't worthy, worthwhile to reply.

How often your words have been lost to the cosmos, when you hadn't had the mind to share them. How often your thoughts have been lost in translation. How often it never made it that far.

How often we have all felt death when life was only looming in the dark distance - simply out of our grasp to remember it, to obtain it, to entertain it.

How often, in life's past, has I can't come out as I love you.

-RK

Terminal illness of the academic

You'll have to pardon the lack of writing. I've been ill - physically. So ill, in fact, I thought I was next-near dying for a stint. And beyond that, I was just a mess. Nerves and anxiety and stress...but that isn't your problem.

However, other than that -- other than pathetic complaints on the situations of life at current, I have nothing more to proffer here. No inspiration, no insight into deeper things or even deeper meanings. Not even anything vaguely useful on the academic front.

I've heard it said once, Poor liberal studies major. I thought it was funny. Then.

Now, it's one week into the damn thing, and already I'm exhuasted. Tired out of academia. Sick to death of being nothing more than just another "academic" on a roster list. A number or a last name on a sheet in a class of sixty, where no one else gives so much as a damn why I am there. A student. Shuffled off the face of the planet, essentially shoved into a hole called class -- and forgotten about by the larger population. The real world, they don't acknowledge us. Not yet. Not until we have a BA and an MA and a damn PhD to prove to them we're actually worth just what they've heard us say we must be. Fresh from the university zoo.

But I am worth it, despite their goals and stipulations and hierarchies of soceity. Despite their new-age cast system. I am still human. I am still alive. I am still worth, at least, the cost of living. Am I not?

Disillusioned - that's a good word for it. Maybe it's because I've gotten past the point of wanting to just research life. Because I spent a year seeing the world -- now I'm tired, fed up, ill to my stomach of just pretending to experience it; pretending to be a part of it. Pretending to be a citizen of this country, this city, this life. Just playing house in a dormitory room with fake freedom and forced religion and false felicity.

I want, more than this - more than anything - to be alive.

Something between these walls and these buildings and this degree, stifles life. Something about the worthwhile-ness of it or the assumed weight of it, or the prescribed importance of it bears down like some thick, heavy breath. Like a millstone about my neck. After having a tantilizing taste of life, after having ideas of how to live; it's too damn easy to be disillusioned.

A lifelong student. What worse could I do with my life, what worse could I invest in myself. What other ruin could I prescribe to myself. But to research and never do. But to teach and never know. But to find inspiration, but never passion. But to live and never be alive.

But to study, and never find. To be a student, and never myself.

-RK

random process

Three strips of gyro and a baklava later, I believe in You again. As if, somehow, the whole understanding of Love ended at the crossroad of another crisis of fatih. As if the things we talked about and the doubt they planted somehow made me less complete. As if, in Your infinite plan, You didn't think to plan for this.

But You did, didn't You? You planned out the scope of this life, the destination of the end of it, and the purpose for the living it. And maybe they are all right about You -- maybe You don't have a pad and pencil where you scribble down everything I will have ever done and will do and have done. Maybe You really don't look down the spectrum of time at all points and know. Or maybe You do.

But it doesn't matter, does it?

It doesn't make the difference I made it out to make, last night. It doesn't change the purpose - the goal - the aim - the will of life. It doesn't make life pointless, random choices I decide in a vacuum and then enact in some sort stage that we consider this life to be. It doesn't mean that our choices are irrelevent, and it doesn't mean Your plan is not infinite.

Balance. Again, return to the idea - the symobl - the concept - the truth of balance. Return to the combiniation of day and night, light and dark, male and female, you and me. Return to the basis of everything that has formed a foundation for the thing. Return to the whole reason we've been doing this from the first place.

Love. Purpose. Balance.

There is no black, no white. There is grey -- there are shades of life. There are echelons of variation in the world. There are colors of diffent hues and shapes in different sizes. And all of that, taken into account, and balanced out - is life. There is no line between the sky and the ground. There is no horizon. There is no present. There is only the line we percieve between the two. There is only the line we percieve between balck and white. There is only a difference we percieve between you and me - between this and that -- between us and the rest of the universe.

In reality, all things are connected. All things have to balance with all others.

Likewise, there is only the balance of the extremes -- the uniting of the two ideas and concepts and idealogies that bring us to any point of understanding.

Yes. You were right - we have freewill; it was both our gift and our curse, in ways. But regardless, we will always have that. I have the ability to make my life a succession of random choices that will only lead me in circles about myself. I have the ability to live a purposeless life, a pointless random existence with no higher calling at all. But I am not bound to.

At the very same time, I have the ability to choose God. I have the ability to decide that my choices will not be random decisions made in a vacuum that will lead me only in circles. I can choose to allow myself- despite my faults and my inability to constantly choose correctly, wisely - to fall into line with the purpose, the life, the infinite plan that God designed from the very beginning - from Day 1. The life I was meant to lead.

But that life, I must choose. I am not automatically predestined to it, but I am also not automatically fated against it. I, in my freewill, must choose.

That's what all life comes down to then - a choice. The choice. Do I choose to live an existence in which my life will be guided only by my own mistakes -- by my own feeble understanding and my own inability to discern the future? Or will I allow God to lead me to the destination He created for me, despite the inevitable mistakes I will make?

The choice, as we discussed, is still mine.

-RK


PS. I owe a thank you to all of you who helped me with this. So -- thank you.

Going East

The day is soon. Soon to be gathering up my wayfaring bags, putting my key in the ignition of a indigo-colored clown car, and going East.

East - where life rests in a humid, smoggy sky. East - where the red moon rises and the orange sun sets.

Where the grass is browner, and they feel a need to call a despondant, waste-littered dried-up marshland a river. Where coffee may still not be espresso, but there's more atmosphere than in the west. Where, at the very minimum, there's enough reason to keep going back. Where we lay our heads on the high days and rest our souls on the low days and cower under shadows on down days. Where there's enough of a city to get out the black and whites and at least shoot a few decent shots. Maybe even of few with you in them.

East. Far enough east to find a life. Far enough east to find cooler weather and a yellower sun and a bluer moon. Far enough east to feel safer -- for now.

So for now, I'm traveling east. Meet me, if you go east too, at the river.

-RK

pardon my language.

I'm angry at the world tonight, and how it operates. I'll apologize first. Then, I'll just jump right on in:

I'm really doing my best to try and not fuck up my life. Did I tell you that? That I'm trying to not be a failure - that I'm trying to do what is right. I thought I had told you, but then again - that didn't mean you were listening.

So I told you again. Because it was important that you heard it from me first...

But nobody is honest. No one ever really tells you how they feel -- or what they think -- or how they see things, until it's far too late. Until you've smashed your heart on the rocks and cracked your head on the fall and broken your back on the spikes, in fact.

Then, they'll say, "Well, I would have told you so. But I just never did."

I wish you would have. Told me then. Not now, not like this.

And so, you try the other time around to ask. But nobody is honest. Isn't that lovely? Isn't that helpful?

Everyone is so damn good at I told you so, that they never actually take the time to. Just so they can tell you so.

But I don't need to be told I was told so. I need to be told so first. So I can know. Not guess, not think, not just reason off my own logic. So that I can have your wisdom and your insight and your words - and your thoughts too. So I can be wise.

But wisdom doesn't come from you. But that's only because you refuse to give it.

Because everyone refuses to give it. Even when you ask, it seems.

And I don't know why.

But it hurts, anyway. I wish you'd just tell me...

-RK

No insurance for the impossible.

Twenty-two.

It's been a long road, I remember you saying. But you weren't talking to me, then, were you? Still, that's all I remember. You saying that - that it'd been a while. That, maybe, you thought of me. That the sky outside was still grey - that maybe you would think of me again. That you still wanted to -loved to. That you still would one day need to.

Did you know what you were doing? Did you know how you would move me?
Well I don't really think so...

But I'm older now. Each day, sure, gets us older. But when the earth has rotated a full turn - you feel it. You feel the changes: skin growing less elastic, your smile growing more plastic. The pops that come when you bend each joint, trying each angle with tenderness, with uncertainty, with care. Testing your back for fissure-points, your eyes for flickerless light, your bones for strength and breaks.

Testing yourself to see if you're still alive; if you'll still be alive this time next year, when the earth finishes your cycle again. When the morning of the end of an olde year dawns, drags on into a day, then sets with a burning oragne sun. And then, the next stirs you awake on a flat air mattress. Not to tell you you're alive. Not to tell you life is brilliant - not to tell you the world is wonderful - not to tell you goodmorning.

But reminding you, today, as you lie there half on the floor, half pushed up against the sticky, mucky, sweaty plastic of the deflated matress - you are now officially a year older.

Happy birthday.

-RK

he said it too

What's that you say? Today it's my birthday? Well, merry christmas to me.

I feel something like this guy.
Minus the bounding out of bed.

Yeah. and thanks for the link, Aj.

-RK

[time changed from 15.55 to avoid placing conflict]

Never have

I can be quiet. I can be still. I can listen, and observe, and think.
And not speak.

Try not to exist, not to be noticed, not to be much. Follow all the lines in the grain with my eyes - not tracing them with my hands. Hover my heart just high enough above you - close enough for you to feel its warmth. But I won't ever touch you.

Know you, but never hold you.
Hold you, but never have you.
Have you, but never know you.

So I'll be quiet. I'll be still. I'll listen, and observe, and think.
But I won't speak.

And I'll never have you.

So burn me up inside. Set my fire all alight. Let me flash and twirl and fly. Let me dance for just a little while.
Then let me flicker, simmer, die.

Because I'll never have you.

-RK