Autumnal

I am affected by the seasons.  Profoundly.  The trees change their leaves then shed them (or at least the deciduous do) as things get bleaker.  I just get...

Bleak.

As I have mentioned before, this is my first fall not going back to school.  One consequence of this is that this is my first autumn not spent amongst my immediate peers.  Another is that it is a season of special change, the sort of change I have never known.

Things are being pruned away.  My hope is that with time new buds will form which will blossom into sweeter, more robust fruit than I have ever produced, but when I am looking at the present rather than the hope of the future the outlook is not so bright.  I can taste the entropy of the universe on my tongue.

"Winter," as they say, "is coming."

I am eating more food for lunch today than many people eat in a week.  It's only a bowl full of taco with a bag of tortilla chips.  Leftovers.

The Teacher says, "This too is meaningless."

I get "tired" this time of year.  Often I choose not to let myself speak, because what comes out is dreary or, sometimes, vicious.  Sometimes it is both.

Back when Facebook wasn't a thing, when I was a teenager and Myspace existed in the public consciousness, I wrote a blog called "the Penumbra of a Bitter Winter."  It consisted of many of the same thoughts as you see here, though at more length.

I'd like to think I've learned lessons in wisdom, in tact.  Then, sometimes, I cast a blanket over a group of people with the word "idiot" on it, not thinking or caring that I have friends beneath that blanket.  I do it because I am bitter with the brokenness of the world, but that is no excuse, and I don't make it as one.  After moments like that, I call myself a fool and it seems the boulder I've been pushing slips my grasp and tumbles back down the hill.  This, too, makes me tired.

I want to be good.  I want to walk blameless in the sight of God and men.  All the quibbles over the word "man," all the tearing down and building up of language, of humanity—this, too, tires me.

And now what I want is to write down some song lyrics.

Cannot Keep You
Gungor

They tried to keep You in a tent
They could not keep You in a temple
Or any other idols to see and understand

We cannot keep You in a church
We cannot keep You in a Bible
Or it's just another idol to box You in

They could not keep You in their walls
We cannot keep You in ours either
For You are so much greater

Who is like the Lord?
The maker of the heavens
Who dwells with the poor?
He lifts them the ashes and seats them among princes
Who is like the Lord?

We've tried to keep you in our tents
We've tried to keep you in our temples
We've worshipped all our idols
We want all that to end
So we will find you in the streets
And we will find you in the prisons
And even in our Bibles
And churches

Who is like the Lord?
The Maker of the heavens
Who dwells with the poor?
He lifts them from the ashes and seats them among princes
Who is like the Lord?

We cannot contain
Cannot contain the glory of your name
We cannot contain
Cannot contain the glory of Your name

We cannot contain
Cannot contain the glory of your name

Who is like the Lord?
You took me from the ashes
And You healed me from my blindness
Who is like the Lord?


----

And I think I'll just leave it at that.

Words

Every morning I wake up before dawn to climb into a box made of metal and plastic and hurtle through what would be a seven-hour journey by foot in forty minutes so that I can spend the day cleaning machines covered in the coagulating, cement-corroding syrup which condenses from a mixture of soda and various alcoholic beverages.  I do this so that every Thursday an abstracted number will be added to the abstracted number "in my bank," said abstraction waiting there to be exchanged for physical goods necessary (or more often tertiary) to my survival and that of my spouse, who accompanies me on these daily adventures.  My spouse and I have aspirations for the abstraction building "in our bank," because this abstraction may serve to facilitate certain improvements to our quality of life, or more realistically the addition of more inscrutable objects by which we entertain ourselves or otherwise occupy our time.

When the determined time has finished, my spouse and I interact with a machine that manages an abstraction tangential to the one that will facilitate the exchange of goods.  Interaction with this machine permits us to remove our obligatory nominating placards and make a temporary exodus from the building where we toil, via the self-same plastic/metal box/machine that makes an otherwise prohibitive traversal trivial—barring the intrusion of Odocoileus Virginianus on the linear space maintained for box/machine travel, which could prove disastrous for the journey and perhaps the vitality of both occupants of our box.  We make such an exodus every day without fail, excepting the days we are arbitrarily given to rest from our toil.

On arriving back at the opulent shelter where our time is spent when not transported elsewhere by the miraculous fire-box, we exchange our (often soiled) work attire for more comfortable wear, and proceed to make use of smaller boxes crafted with the express purpose of connecting us to networks of other human beings through similar boxes, with the secondary effect of stunting our visual and auditory communication with the human beings who share the abode with us.

Which is what I'm doing now.

I'm also telling you about what I've been doing for the last couple weeks in nearly the most obscure way possible without losing everyone.  Though maybe I did lose everyone.

Anyway, that helped me survive a bit.  Don't have much else to say.  Later guys!

Jobness

I suspected having a job like the one I have now, working retail with two days off a week, and having only six hours of free time on the average day, would be soul-sucking.  Funny thing is usually work itself is fine.  It's getting up at five in the morning and going to bed at 9.  It's feeling like I don't have the time to do all the things I want to do.

Complain complain complain.  I know, I should just suck it up and work because that's what everyone else is doing.  Frankly, I'm lucky to have a job at all in this economy, considering my age and my education.  Especially, considering my experience.  People don't seem to want to hire someone who doesn't already have "ALL the experience."

More complaining.  Okay, I'm blessed to have a job, and I've been spoiled by the levels of free time I've had in my life up to now.  Now I have to learn to balance it all, and frankly that's gonna be rough.

Here we go, I guess?