Find Out Where The Good Things Are

He gazed up at the sky, but there were no stars.

I told him not be silly, that nature breathed and nature lived regardless of our awareness of it; told him there were stars, he just couldn't see them with these clouds and inversion and the shimmering lights of a society not yet put to bed.

He was insistent, pulling me back down against him, a position from which I would never worry about the stars or lack thereof. In fact, the stars could shatter and crumble and land in blazing heaps across and around my body, but if it happened when my hip was touching his like that, I wouldn't notice.

I would never notice.

I would never notice the world melting with him, for with him the world's already melted.

I wondered what it would take to convince him about the stars, to convey that they were waiting, hidden, quiet, subdued, but existent. And waiting. I wondered how to narrate such a thought.

I didn't say anything, a symptom of contempt I develop in the dark, where my mind is too logical and fluent than my mouth wants to be, and I leave words to my eyes to convey. I speak at night with my face, for my mind can't manage to work my lips for that purpose.

It's a marvel how he sides with the idea of his heart, that conclusion that the stars are missing, vacant, gone. That undercurrent that he's looking for them, that he wants them dearly, but can't manage to believe they're beneath the clouds, they're present without the city, they thrive above the mountains. I want him to understand that a search of grandeur will be wasted, a quest of high proportions will be futile, for someday soon the clouds will fade, the city will sleep, and the stars will twinkle where they've always been.

Waiting, as they've always been, for a boy to open his eyes and look up.

a jumble of scattered moments.

I considered myself diminutive.
I withheld my hand the way the sun skirted behind clouds.

I...



I count days like sheep, watch how many pass before I start to nod off, before the consciousness I maintain by the struggle of my cognitive mind sinks beyond measurable ability and I succumb. I am lost, drifting, sleeping with the weeks that pass by, lending me no cause to consciousness, no momentum for movement, while the world within and without me spins with minute details I must attend to: words to right and remember, colors to craft and create, and I am sleeping.

Eternally sleeping.

Because nothing's come yet to keep me awake.




I wanted to say something.
To set myself down and spill it
Like the cat did the milk.
My trouble is this,
My trouble is specific:

Truth.

Truth is my flaw.

Because what wants to flow,
What yearns to be knocked
From urns 'round my feet
Are the facts, reality, truth.

I want to be honest.

With a public forum,
I find I can't;
As ironic as this seems
When one considers the fact
I created this page
For factual musings in
Fictitious settings.

But there's the rub:
I cannot craft fiction for this.
I cannot say it with metaphor.

I cannot spell the truth
With lies.

I cannot tell you without facing
Your eyes.

I Don't Want to Hurt Anymore

I'm wishing on stars and counting the planets and laying under the table and dreaming.
There is my folly. Aye, there's the rub.

I feel like I'm falling. I get a brush of weakness, a sag in my spine, and that's when it crumbles. That's when my hopes and ambitions tumble in salt from my eyes. I have to remind myself. I have to actively press the board to my back, straighten up and smile, as half-hearted as it may be. I have to remember that my greatest heartache, my greatest trial, will lead to the greatest outcome; the greatest version of me.

"Know thou...that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good." (D&C 122:7) "Thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment." (D&C 121:7)

Whatever is coming down the pike, how ever far off it is, is far superior than anything facing me at this moment, anything that's shaking my confidence and solace. Far, indefinitely more incredible than my current woes.

The folly, the rub, is looking too far ahead to that silver lining that I've constructed doesn't qualm the anxiety of the now, because that may very well not be His outcome for me. Life should be lived in the present, however undesirable the present may be. I can't look forward with optimism, because I don't know where forward is. I can only look to Him in faith, and wait for forward to be now.

Here is my test, here is my trial. Endure.

Wait.

Trust.

He will do right by me. He will not allow me to fail.

It's only difficult if I focus on how difficult it is.

Pull yourself together, for heaven's sake.



Don't you dwell in the future, for it's miles away.

Something Burning Up Inside

Fire either flares or fades.

It has the capacity to grow and sustain itself, to breathe and thrive, but can just as likely snuff out and die.

Naturally this is all contingent on under what circumstances the flame is produced, but for the sake of this post ignore all your Smokey the Bear arguments and lend yourself to the notion that fire either flares or fades.

In Regina Spektor's song The Calculation, she sings, in the chorus, "Hey this fire is burning, burning us up."

This fire is burning me up.

And burning me out.

These flames that burgeoned from the pit of my stomach are no longer content contained in my body. This vessel is not sufficient for growth.



Fire either flares or fades.

I sat back on my haunches and watched the wood alight, wondering for the thousandth time what it is about life that is so combustible by an element I commend man for taming.

Or, in the very least, harnessing.

Fire's ability to spark from nothing primarily interests me. This phantasmic creation of destruction, heat, light, is a feat synonymous with electricity as one I'll never comprehend regardless how numerously I set fire alight or intricately I am tutored on tungsten. These chemicals, these reactions, this microscopic world that reacts and exhibits itself frantically about every atom of my being will forever be lost on me.

I am doomed to wander through a realm I vaguely understand, victim to whatsoever occurrence the natural world sees fit, as I am unable to contradict it.

I am a harnesser of fire.

I do not in slight assume I've tamed it.

Chasing Rubies

It's kicking in, this idea that I'll make it.
I'm dropping all the weights and chains
That kept me stationed back with "maybe"
And doing as I feel.
I'm making motions, striking chords,
Taking strides towards
Whatever is coming at me.

I'm plowing into darkness,
A fog of secrecy wrapping about my lungs,
But through the process
I am content.
Ready, aware, content
That regardless where I end,
I end there for a purpose;
For a reason undisputed by God.

It is comfort, this strength,
This remarkable means of letting go.
It is security to choose,
To strike a match of agency
And let the fire loose.

I am ready here, and waiting.
Good things are coming soon.

Exposition

People are always saying you're the author of your own life, you write your destiny.

Yes and no.

Life is like a novel, life is a story, but if you were the author you'd know what was coming next. You'd know what course would get you from point A to point B. You'd be the one creating it. There would be no need for faith or trust or error, because if you knew everything--if you were writing your life--you'd know the end. You know what to avoid and what to strive for.

You're the author of your actions. You're the embodiment of a character. You are victim to traversing through a realm scripted by another and choosing and succeeding and falling as you may. You are lenient on exposition, exposition only the author can provide. You can convince yourself all you want that you know what's coming next, but how could you really?

This is not your novel. This is your chapter, your moment in a volume that will span the dawn of man to the demise of evil and beyond. Your part is as integral as the others, with regards to the furthering of the plot and the benefit of other characters. But fundamentally, you are all the same. You are all as unknowledgeable as the rest, you are all moving through space trying to pen something worthwhile of yourself.

But you can't.

Not without the author.



More or less I'm using a literary metaphor for God, if you missed it. To speak plainly, for I feel the inclination to do so, it occurred to me how little I know. I've been waiting. I've done what the author has hinted and I've stuck around; I've waited. This weekend I gleaned some information I'd been lacking for several weeks, information I rather considered vital, information that has brought me back to a state of peace or homeostasis. I was wondering over the idea of why it took so long for me to learn that, why those simple statements were spared from my ears for such a length of time.

And the word popped into my head: exposition.

In my acting class we're studying performance of monologues, and one thing the teacher keeps stressing is 'why now.' Why does this character need to say this now? People don't walk around telling their darkest secrets or spilling their hearts out or rampaging at a constant rate. There is something that has brought them to that moment. What brought it about? Why now?

I'm not the author here. I'm not the author and God doesn't take the monotonous path of foreshadowing in a Rowling-like fashion each pivotal moment of my life. He will answer me if I ask, He will extend a hand in help, but He is all knowing. He is Creator and Master, and He knows when to plant seeds and when to let truth bloom. He knows when 'wait' will suffice, and when exposition should be delivered.

How can I not trust this? How can I not trust that though I stumble in a whirlpool of menial things, my mind stretching far from the here and now, crafting ideals and hopes for puddles beyond my residence, how can I not trust He understands my story? How can I not trust He's mulled for centuries how to unravel my tale and deliver my potential. How can I deny Him the opportunity of instigating and witnessing so great a story unfold?

How can I deny the author the pleasure of allowing a character to fulfill her course and contribute to his novel as only she was meant to? How can I dare try to write something better?