MyParagraphs

Some of my thoughts, which don't fit into MyLines for various reasons.

Scattered Clouds

The Counterpoint of to Be and Not to Be

It's interesting how sometimes you can be so close to God, clinging to him with all your essence, touching his feet in humility; and yet at the very same time you're millions of miles away, in a pitch black void where nothing is alive. Being the counterpoint of two greatest pillars of existence and non-existence is almost unbearable.

Learning from My Own Sins

At this point I really hope that I'm going through some kind of an educational process, which is going to end sooner or later, leaving me a better(?) man. But so many things speak to me that I'm just screwing up everything I dreamed about, everything worth living for. The tricky part is I may never learn the truth until it is too late.

March 2008

Life, in its artistic reality, is always multiplexed. There is no single purpose and consequence to anything, yet we strive to seek the truth, as if it were diminished to a single point.

Anyway, by now I'm mostly sure my spiritual "demise" bears a vital educational value. I feel as if God wants to give me understanding. I don't know if this journey is safe or not, or when it will end. It's just that somehow I feel like He showed me this way.

The thing I'm learning at the moment is what I took for granted for so long. I've always chosen Good over Evil. I never really tried to understand all the people who didn't care to choose. Sometimes I thought it's just that they don't see black and white, that if I show them, if I open their hearts to it, they'll choose Good that very instant.

Yet here I am. I see the ways of Good and Evil, my heart can help me in most difficult cases. And I am unsure. I'm asking stupid questions like "why?" and "what for?" There's no ground under my feet. I know I live in a world made of Love and Light, I know that choosing Evil is forsaking my own existence, I see what awaits me whatever road I choose. And yet I am unsure.

Somewhere in the depths of my heart, I still feel that God is holding me. I always knew I was free to make any choice, and always will be. I never questioned the possibility of me becoming Evil. Yet this complete indifference stroke so sudden... It really feels like He is showing me what many people are like. And I hope if He shows me a way out of here, back to Him, I'll be able to lead people out of their indifference.

To Fight vs. To Meet

Fight is a sad word on its own. Its etymology and use cases stir up some very hard questions in me.

Me and Myself

I've always thought, how cool it would be if there was a second me, if I could talk to an exact copy of myself. We would encourage each other, join our forces. At the same time, I'm also becoming increasingly aware, of how extremely similar I am to other people, in so many respects. Moreover, the last few months of my "education" allowed me to see through some long-standing barriers, which kept me alienated from others.

What I really have to do, is find myself in others. We're all so truly similar to each other, the only thing that keeps us separate is, as usual, the illusionary walls we keep creating in our minds and pulling over our own eyes.

The Weight of Choice

Sometimes I ask Him to help me choose Right over Wrong. And He always answers that the choice is always mine, no one will make it for me, no one will help me do it. Understanding and knowledge is one thing, they make you tell Good from Bad, but when it comes to choice, there's no knowledge or understanding, no secret recipe or technique, no route, no custom. You just have to do it on your own. That's what Freedom is all about. It means there are no seatbelts. You're free. Go anywhere. Choose whatever you choose.

Constraints Within and Without

A man with constrained thoughts and feelings is lot like a country with prisoned citizens. I often imagine countries without prisons and yet I can't find a way to live with unrestricted inner world.

It may be easier to love a man who is beating you to death, than an evil thought entering your heart. It sounds like a technical impossibility, to retain love without restricting your heart from becoming evil. And yet the restriction itself questions the non-oppressive nature of love.

Floating in Life

Back to the image of everything as pure energy. Everything is made of the same stuff. The whole world in all its concepts is a huge ocean of energy, present in shapes and structures which form reality in our minds, feelings in our hearts.

For now, I don't want to swim. I want to calm my self down, and just float. No thoughts, no actions, no visions, no feelings... No destination. Will I awake? Will I care if I slip into eternal oblivion? Will I care if everything disappears? I do not know the answers and I do not want to know.

Lack of Fear

First you face your fears. They flow through you, make you tremble like a leaf. But you survive and you grow. You get used to them. They cease being acute, you don't tremble anymore, you let them go. The fear of death. The fear of loosing something dear to you. Your things. Your family. The fear of sin. The fear of the unknown. The fear of the Almighty.

It becomes really scary when you have no fear left. When you start feeling that you can pull the trigger on anyone you loved, or push the button of the nuclear holocaust, without a slightest feeling of remorse. Love fades away with fear. There's just nothing left to touch. There's no sense in touching anything anyway.

... I never feared God. I just never understood how love can come with fear. Things like that start making sense now, but in vain.

Without fear and love, there is nothing to stand on anymore. No boundaries. No direction. No drive. Pure black void of nothing. There's still a faint gleam of hope in me that I will come back, but it almost feels like it will go out soon.

Purpose

I felt like I lost it when I went IntoTheDark. Ever since, I've been trying to regain it. By now the reality of its vanity, what my heart has always been trying to tell me, is taking shape in my conscience. There can be no purpose. Purpose is nothing but a vain illusion created by our minds. If anything, it's a pair of blinders, to make you feel comfortable when you might be going straight into an abyss.

World can not be created out of purpose. Nothing can. We are not born out of purpose, not in the real world. Purpose is a vain word of our imagination.

What then, what's there to live for? The driving force of existence is out of the reach of human mind. We know words like love, hatred, anger, emotions, happiness. Sometimes I call it Ikiru. We can't really describe it or understand it. We just float in it. It's an infinite ocean, a definition of power and life. I guess we can call it God. You can rejoice in it or you can oppose it, but you can't avoid it.

Holy Week for Hackers

• abstinence from GUI
  • one X11 terminal may be allowed
  • mouse should be avoided
  • abstinence from curses (as in ncurses) at will
• severe traffic shaping
• no instant messaging
• all monitors off but one in multi-headed setups
• set no rw-rw-rw- permissions
• etc.

A Life of Contradiction

It seems I've been pre-ordained with a life spent on the edge of contradiction. What is contradiction after all? I dare say there is no truth without it, as there is no law without trespassing. Questions outline truth. For what is truth but a line between different opinions? You can not prove anything in a universal way, but you can argue, and where argument lies, there is choice, and what is life but making choices?

Contradictions draw pathways of life, they are cracks in the desert, which get filled with water and make it habitable. Word is meaningless until it hits another word.

My life is a contradiction unto God. Where He asks to follow His will, I see room for "improvement". So my life became both a reward and a punishment for me; I am a contradiction to myself.

There are no winners or losers in arguments. It doesn't matter which sides you take. The wise see truth on both sides and obtain the gift of being able to agree. But there is no agreement in my soul. All it sees are edges and points, ways to invert truth to outline itself.

My thoughts can never calm myself, for they are in a constant turmoil against each other. Whatever I speak, I can disprove it and laugh at it at the very same moment. And there is no end to it, nor a way out of it. For if I stop questioning, I have nowhere to live. My habitation is in contradiction.

Idle Without, Active Within

Once you calm yourself down, once worldly worries grow cold on you, you start feeling a new motion, one which has always been there, covered with vanity of your thoughts and actions. You might not like what you feel there. It might be love and light, but it also might be hell fire. Most likely, you'll find a great struggle inside you. A whole world inside of you, ticking away like a huge clockwork. Only there's no certainty of what they clock shows.

If you've never felt the astonishing greatness of what's inside of you, you haven't had a good chance to influence it purposefully. You had consciousness and emotion, but most likely you tried to suppress them, and, to a certain extent, you were quite successful. But once you've shut those doors, there's no way back in sight. For we all know how we can behave when we feel love or anger or guilt - stiff-necked and cold. But once we silence our emotions, who's going to show us a way back to them when we need them.

But they're not gone from you. You've just pushed them to your inner depths. And when you dare to go there yourself, they'll meet you with a huge gush of wind, water and fire. There's nowhere to push them away to anymore. You can't quench them or ignore them altogether. You'll just let them through you and accept the treasures of pleasures and pains you've been keeping inside all this time.

A Parable About a Drug Addict

There was a heroin addict. He was already at a stage when he was numb to the real world. He didn't recognize any faces or places. In fact his mind wasn't functioning anymore. The only time the addict showed any activity was when he needed a new dose - his subconscious drive would make him do anything to get it.

There was no man in the world who could care for him except his old father. He also had a few siblings, but they mostly went around their own business. Yet his father never gave up on him. He lost count of how many times his son broke out of clinics, stolen money and valuables from his own house, even hit him without any reason. Yet the most hard thing to bear for the father was that his son didn't recognize him, nor tried to. The addict never looked people in their eyes, it was as if he refused to acknowledge their existence. For his father, this behaviour made all his effort to care for his son almost meaningless.

He knew that heroin was to be blamed, but he also knew that addicts don't have a single chance, unless they want to change their life. All the father hoped for is that some day something very deep in the son's heart would change, even just a tiny bit. Then his father would get all the best doctors again, and heal his son in no time, he was sure.

And then a horrible thing happened. The addict killed one of his own brothers. There was no reason or motive. Apparently, the addict was driven by his addiction. The father grieved. At first he wanted to kill the addict with his own hands. When the anger subsided, he thought he would just give up on him and forsake him. But the love for his son was still in his heart and it prevailed. Now the father had another son, his most beloved one. And he knew that this son loved him back with all his heart and mind, and that whatever he would ask of him this son would do it gladly. So he called him and asked him to take the blame for the murder of his brother. The son grieved, but he obeyed his father, and took the blame, and was put in jail, and the addict was set free.

Now the father still loved his addict son, but the thought of murder and of all the hurt the son brought to the family was unbearable. So he decided to give him much money and send him away, for good. But when he met the addict for the last time before sending him away, the addict lifted his head and looked his father in the eyes, and there were tears in his own eyes. And the father saw that although his son is still an addict, something has changed deep in his heart. And he rejoiced, and embraced his son, and let him stay in his house again, and called all the best doctors and healed him.

Stillness

There are times when the will to create and the need to consume leave the body, and the mind slows down to a halt. Physically, nothing changes, but physics loses all sense in such moments. It is then when we can get down to what's left of us when all that can be felt or known is gone. Is it hope, faith? Desire for oblivion? Nothing at all? Do we still see anything - without eyes and imagination?

It is a rare opportunity to look into yourself, feel the vibrations of your soul. What lives there? Love? Hurt? Anger? Is it empty at all? Is it by itself or is it part of something bigger, universal? Is it calm or disturbed?

By all means these moments can be called a disconnection from reality. And yet they leave their imprints in memory, and find their reflections in words. Whatever it is, vacuum, boundless ocean or a universe inside the universe, there is a world beyond the surface, a world within each of us. Deeper than feelings and emotions, deeper than thoughts and imagination.

Our mind and body are trained to ignore it somehow. Each time we want to go there, the way is barred by common sense and perception. And we learn not to want it. To discard it as inessential. And yet the more we distance our physical presence from there, the less meaning and color we see around us. For there lies the source of everything. The final truth, the way into eternity.

Human Judgement

Is someone who lost his leg guilty of it? Is someone born without a hand guilty of it? And yet we condemn them with all the assuredness in our hearts. For murderers and thieves are the same. They are but people without a leg or a hand inside of them. Who knows whether they lost it by accident, or whether they were born this way? Do you see through them clearly enough to judge them?

Living with sins is like living in poverty, or with disabilities. Whenever a murderer wants to kill you, don't see a murderer in him. See a one-legged man who runs to you for help, but stumbles and falls into your arms. Have compassion and you will see the truth.

Can a disabled person grow a hand if put in jail? Will it benefit us if we put him to death and don't have to support or see him anymore? Only through faith can we regain our limbs of body and soul, but who will judge someone for lack of faith. For as people live their whole lives disabled in body, the same way other people live their whole lives disabled in soul. And in our hearts we exalted ourselves in all kinds of reasons and excuses against them, to judge them, charge them and condemn them.

But if you look into ourselves, we'll see that we all have limbs missing inside of us. And in a world where a missing limb is treated by cutting another one, what hope do we have for being healed? Faith makes all possible, but in the land of the blind, don't blame someone for his poor eyesight.

Academy of Sin

While my journey across the black spots of human nature continues, I face a new challenge. Still daring to believe I'm on some track of trials and learning by mistake, I come to face one of the greater sins - losing faith.

Everything can be forgiven through faith. In my mind, I've been through all kinds of situations where utter despair should take over and bring a man to nothing. But it only takes you one step towards Him - and it's as if nothing's ever happened. Everything can be forgiven through faith.

And yet the act of losing faith leads to a whole new concept of no return. It brings you to a place where you're not just lost, but where your essence gave up on seeking a way out. I don't think I ever made a breath in my life without realising, however deep in me, what kind of life flows through all of us, and, more importantly, where it flows from. I've always been happily aware, able to see, hear and touch it.

Yet the excuse, or reason, whatever it might be called, for endeavoring on this perilous path is simple: I must understand faithless people.

Anyway, what is faith, and how does one lose it? In my life, I've had too many experiences to strike them all out. It's like a language of the heart: it takes time to learn it, or rather get used to it, and I'm far from done yet here, but you can't just go ahead and forget it. True, a few years in a concentration camp can truly change you world-view and political inclinations quite a bit. But it's a soul we are talking about, not a mind.

They say, everything earthly, in a way, can encourage us to forget Him. Sometimes I feel the temptations of the doubts, but I also feel that however black my soul is, it's immovably rooted in my faith, as a stone pillar. Can it be moved or crushed?

But, come to think of it, the true faith is not just knowing that He is there, but also believing in His will, accepting it as the right thing. That's something I've never been able to do, and this point might well be the start of my downfall.

I'm scared. At least in the comfort of an armchair, I can't imagine anything in the world I could be afraid of. Of course, fight-or-flight response can be easily invoked in me, but it won't shatter what's inside. In any situation, imaginable or not, I know I have invincible refuge, where pain or death of my body can do nothing to me. Losing faith questions that refuge, leaving me open and vulnerable to anything one can be afraid of. It's like going naked into a pit of deadly vipers.

Even if I survive without faith, whatever meaning the word survival takes there, what's the way back? Many people lose faith and regain it routinely throughout their lives, and yet they never truly lose it, they just become lost in it. They never stop searching. Yet the place where I must go has no concept of finding or regaining. There will be only one way out of there: the violation of my free will by Him, pulling me out of there. Yet I've taken so much advantage of my free will, why should He care?..

Since communications with my heart have been fuzzy for some time now, this whole idea may well be a clever trick just to rubberstamp whatever has become of me. Yet something tells me I'll come through, somehow. Whatever His will may be...

Sitting There...

Now just sit there, without any constraints or pressure, sipping from the glass of your freedom, and ask yourself, what you should do next. What? You know the answer already? You're a lucky guy then, harboring some real passion in your heart.

Chasing the evasive happiness, when you're sitting right in it, unable to smell or taste it, is one painful process. OK, there is no happiness to speak of and there is no happiness in pursuing one. No pressure, no compulsion, no drive. "Happy" doesn't cut it anymore. Unhappy is as happy as it gets. What's next?

Worlds are created and destroyed, and yet each human heartbeat is as complicated as a Big Bang. What's there to be amazed about?

God loves us, as we love little children. We love God, as little children love us. Must love move us into reckless action? There's nothing classically romantic in this pure all-embracing love. It doesn't make one stupid. Can you do something stupid when you're not?

I've been low on fuel for a while now. In a way, I left the highway long ago for the sake of lesser roads. They may have more bumps, but it's fine as long as you slow down a bit. And you get to see the scenery, which is absolutely magnificent. But then, questions arise. For one, you notice you have no destination. It was fine on the freeway, not much choice there anyway. But now it's actually starting to bother you. Destination is something it would be cool to have.

Ethic/aesthetic crisis? Lack of religion? Too much thinking? Too few duties? Too little to get busy about and forget all the important stuff? These questions are senseless here. Someone's going somewhere in an uncertainty of where that might be. I'm just certainty that I'm still. Time still flows, can do little about it. So I'm flowing with it. Is there a waterfall ahead or will I just reach and ocean and be done with it? No difference. Everything's eternal whichever way you look at it. But temporal, too. Time is the greatest illusion of all.

True Freedom

You can't really live if you fear death. You can't really love anything if you desire it or depend on it. Your motions, the motions of your soul, only become your own when they are free.

You can't really work unless you can live happily without it. You'll never really enjoy life if your happiness depends on being alive.

Do I love God? Do I need Him? Do I depend on Him? Do I desire Him? Through sin I search for answers to these questions. Yes, I love Him. My life, my existence depends on Him, but for some reason I feel that "being" is in a way external to "me". I'm not afraid of not "being". I don't need "being". I don't desire life, existence. Can there be love without existence? Maybe not. But my love is free. And He probably doesn't want any other kind. That's why we have free will. Without it, we can't have real love.

Open eyes see the futility of what we hold essential and the essence of what we discard as inessential. Creation and existence is an act of love. People see the act and ignore the love. Act is insignificant and futile. Love is essential and eternal.

Can there be love without two persons? Does God need us to love? Do we need Him to love? These are misleading questions. God is love. You can try to separate yourself from Him, but you'll either fail or cease to exist. While you exist, you're love and you are in God and God is in you.

Death is a scarecrow. We don't seem to ever learn that it can do nothing to us. We are free, whatever happens. The only one who can bind a human being is himself. Death, pain, hunger, desires, all delusions and illusions are just chains. We are the ones who choose to wear them. We are free to put them on and off at any time.

Why sin? There is no freedom without choice. There is no choice without life on both sides of it. Sin is a testament of love. We fall after rising and rise after falling.

Is Earth a special place in existence of a human soul? Imagine looking at a painting in a gallery. What are you thinking? Are you thinking about the painting you'll see next? Are you thinking about the painting you just saw? Are you worried that you'll move on eventually? Does it matter to you at all? There are people in the painting. Do you think they can harm you? Do you think you can influence them without the Painter? Do you like them? Hate them? Do they care? Do they know they're in a painting? Would they believe if you told them? Would the even hear you, notice you? Can they imagine their lives are but a moment, a still impression, without movement or time? Wouldn't they laugh at the idea of it?

Blind by choice, we close the thousand eyes that are inside each of us, and strain our two eyes to see what's not there. We close all the doors and windows of our hearts and wonder why we can't hear anything anymore. We put on thick gloves and ask why we don't feel anything when we reach out. We stuff our bellies and can't feel the sweetness of the words. Wonders of wonders.

Intentionally Human

Come to think about it, most of what we call "human" happens accidentally. People make errors, have compassion and anger. Can you force yourself to be more human? What makes us human after all?

I guess I've never felt fully human in my life. Naturally, we're all different, but in retrospect, it seems I have always lacked something. Precisely what, I couldn't say. Far from being religious or righteous, I've always been in close touch with the "eternal matters", which made me quite otherworldly right from the start. From time to time, more often lately, I think I'm learning how it is to be human. Definitely something you can't read in a book or grasp from observation. To have a chance to learn anything about it, you have to be born and to live a life. Probably more than once. Possibly, a lot more.

Having any knowledge or insights hinders this immersive education. The problem is, even if an infant's mind is a clean slate, something inside will always speak to you. And it's impossible to shut the voice, since it's nothing more but who I really am, whoever that may be. As a human being, you get stuck on questions that pierce through all forms, shapes and worlds, such as "why?".

The human world is a world of love. There's nothing else here, really. From Genesis to Apocalypse, from the Big Bang to the end of time, from parts of every quantum to something that is bigger than the whole universe, everything here is made of love. Does being human mean being able to love? Well, yes, but that's like saying being a seaman means being able to swim, or to drink water. Love is so much bigger, smaller, more complicated and simpler, than a dictionary or a language can tell.

Can a foreign soul learn love? Sometimes it seems there's nothing difficult about it, sometimes it feels like I've learned it a long time ago, and sometimes it seems that only real human beings can know love as it is, live in it without looking at it, flow through it, like there's nothing to it. Does a fish know it's in the water? The pain of a foreign soul in the ocean of love is being foreign. No matter what I try, I can't feel I'm welcome here. I can't seem to live as if there's nothing outside of this ocean. The pain of knowledge...

Is real happiness aware of itself? Can it be? People think they can be happy or unhappy. Lucky or unlucky. Yet they are all the happiest and luckiest beings in existence. For they are all eternally and forever the children of love. Whatever right and wrong they do, whatever pleasures and sufferings they go through, it cannot change the fact. Realisation that you're not one of them is a pretty sad thing. But being unintentionally human, in their in-bread love and kindness, and hospitality, they'll never take you for anyone but one of themselves.

Waking Up

It's wonderful how sometimes life makes us wake up. Whether it's love, pain, or even boredom that leads you to it, opening your eyes is always a great and rewarding venture. And yet the hideous truth is that for many of us being awake is so tiring, painful and just unbearable that we strive to fall back asleep as soon as possible.

Is it just natural - to be asleep? Are our lives nothing but lucid dreams of creatures in other worlds? Or maybe we are just idle time spans in some artificial intelligence system? The truth is, as always, it doesn't really matter. Existence is a concept infinite in all directions. The creature, whose dream you are, may well be itself a dream of another one. Our own dreams may constitute a universe of another being. And so on both ways, all the ways.

Yet there are things which transcend all kinds of existence. To define them is not an easy tasks. In fact what is a fixed definition except for a voluntary, self-induced boundary? But even without intelligent definitions, we feel the flows that permeate existence all the time. In a way, faith is nothing more than not trying to discard these feelings. And when you find the truths you can hold on to, everything else goes into background. For you can wake up and fall asleep a thousand times, but the truths will persist.

And yet, discovering something much bigger than life is a poor excuse for discarding the life itself as ultimately insignificant. For life is a manifestation, without which truth has no shape and form. But without some strong-armed guidance or extremely devoted faith, it becomes difficult to find your way in a world of dreams. When you fall asleep, do you have a clear purpose? Would it become easier if you were made aware that you're asleep? Would you pinch yourself to wake up - effectively committing a suicide? Is enjoyment found in itself, or should you travel far and away to come to it? In other words, can a nightmare bring forth sweet fruit? What is a pleasure in a dream, but a breeze blowing in your sail?..

Living with knowledge is like learning to walk all over again. Every step is feeble and meaningless, with no aim and purpose. And yet you must learn to walk fast to move on. Should you seek purpose of every step you make? Should you reach for the parent's hand that will lead you somewhere meaningful? For now, I'll just wobble around, hoping for the best.

Ebbing Away

(Just My Imagination)

There are many names for each and every condition people fall into. Upon speculation, I'd describe the one I'm in in many different ways. And yet, I'd just be describing symptoms.

An ironic mood of growing indifference has settled in my mind. This time I'm really loosing connection. How did this happen? How does this happen? My mind is like a hedgehog with question marks for prickles. But I'm numb to any prickling. Answers wouldn't make no sense or difference anyway. Questions are nothing but framing of this foggy road, light posts on this lost highway. I'm ghosting away.

Naturally, I'm still here, flesh and all. The usual sensations still make it through. I guess you could even pull me down to earth a little with powerful surges of pleasure and pain. But only for so long. On the brink of an ocean, at any given moment, you're never sure if you're moving towards the shore or into the open sea, especially if you've lost any ability to row. But, I think, no matter how much hungry for land you are, the ocean always seems to have an upper hand.

Spirited Away

It's sweet to let your mind indulge in pretending you know something you don't. I'm sipping the cocktail of knowing how it is to be a ghost. Still able to interact, and yet halfway through to the other side. How does it happen? Do I dissolve into thin air or do I leave the body? Poor body. I've never taken good care of it while I enjoyed staying in it, and now it feels kind of deserted.

People. Not that they draw too much of ghostly attention, but watching people sure brings up a lot. It's how completely stupid and vain things become monumentally great. The scale is mostly inverted, of course. Big stuff finds its way into history books, but nowhere else. It's the tiny things that make the biggest ripples. Watching people can stir up numb envy, mixed with warm and loving compassing, in a homeless soul of a ghost. Everything human is fleeting. The whole idea of humanity seems to be fleeting. And yet those tiny things change you forever.

Sometimes it's like watching a movie: you suddenly crave to be part of it, to cross the boundary of screen. But even though you know you can't, it doesn't make you impartial, does it? It's also like watching flowers. Flowers are fleeting, too. Take away this quality from them, and they'll become incomplete. Maybe it's my way of understanding the importance of mortality. Humanity will lose something precious if it becomes physically immortal. Some things are created to exist, others - to happen. Human things happen. つづく...

Grasping the Choice

I often think in terms of questions, when answers do not matter much. Indeed, the truth is often in the question, not in an answer to it. Question means choice, space for traveling, room for creation. You need to be able to question anything at all in order to have true freedom of choice. A step unquestioned is a choice lost. Routine and inertion tend to strip men from any ability to choose or recognition of their right to do so.

But where would you get if you only stared at choices without making any decisions? True freedom of choice comes with truly unlimited possibilities. It may seem every step we make narrows further choice, but what if we question past steps? Atonement, repentance are just two of the keywords that lead back to the unlimited.

So when you see someone walking a string of neverending questions, do not discard him as a clueless fool at once. Bear with him and he may unlock the heaviest doors for you.

Held

There's so much that holds one back. You can take a step away from the usual vices: lose interest in money, power, family, new world order, everything you would enumerate as dear to you, - and yet you'll only face new challenges. So much has been nailed in into the mind over the years, so much stuff holds you down like a horse in a harness.

Promises, expectations. I used to think of myself as a good person. Good people keep promises. Good people fill expectations. So much blood have been spilt just by keeping to your word. Can't cross a line? Promise it to someone, and in the agony of doubt it'll be easy to make the self-righteous choice and keep the promise against all laws and common sense. Expectations. Inertion. Do something good. Take responsibilities. Keep the course. Someone in the way? Run them over in the name of keeping up the good work. People expect it of you.

Everything "good" I do has become a reproach unto me. It helped me move forward to where I am, but now it holds me back. Outside of me, nothing changed. People benefit if I help them, in general. People get unhappy if I fail their expectations. But inside me, everything I do has become a guilty excuse, holding me back from trusting in Him even more. It seems it's quite easy to just stop doing things. But the self-righteousness, or whatever the "good" routine raises in a soul, fills the whole body with agony.

In a malign union with procrastination, my soul is slowly pulling through, without making any real progress. Fires of darkness all around, it's impossible to be sure about anything. Mistakes are made and felt, but turning around is not an option. Hewing a way forward, wishing for something unknown... Another leg of eternal adventure.

What If

Sometimes I wonder where would I be if I chose different ways at various points of my life. I imagine myself more active, less thoughtful. But actually, I'd probably have the same pain deep inside, only less clue about where it comes from and what to do about it. Life is an inconceivable union of fate and choice. In a way, I feel that anything that could be different about my life is inessential. And yet it's not as if fate has predetermined everything essential, but rather that it's a walk I've been meaning to take. The details don't matter. I can stroll in all the wrong directions (with a possibility of falling into a ditch and breaking my neck), but it's my walk, and I like my way wherever it takes me. So much for passive optimism.

Down, Down, Falling On

Contrary to my hazy wish to break my fall at some point, and maybe even make a couple of steps back, all my altimeters keep saying I'm not just continuing my rapid movement downwards, I'm also accelerating. It's pointless to discuss the morbid details here and now. I'm mostly clueless what happens next. The numbness I've developed over the past few months keeps me from getting scared or even too concerned about any consequences. The only good news I can come up with is that I'm still quite certain that killing myself now or at any time in the future would be stupid, not to mention common and unoriginal in our day and age. But I may well resume drinking, smoking and doing any of the things that get qualified as "slow suicide". In fact, some people say life itself is a slow suicide, and lately I keep stumbling over that feeling.

Hope and longing for something better are still breathing inside of me. But it would take a miracle to turn me back by now. Sure, I can reach for the remnants of all the friendships I have, parental love, "professional" help, medication; I'm sure it would help greatly, as well as I'm sure that would only postpone what I'm going through. It's a stupid path into nowhere, but it's mine and I'm walking it. Have I crossed the fine line between black and white? Well, it only takes a blink of an eye to change your mind and realise you've always been on the other side. Right now, each blink has a chance to open my eyes to either color, but it gets darker every day.

No, I haven't lost my faith yet, and I don't really feel like I'm close to it. Yes, sometimes it feels like I'm putting my big empty head into the jaw of Mr. Beast, whoever he might be. I still have no regrets though, only some burning pain deep inside. Has God forgotten about me? At this point, He might be tempted to, but I know He's still with me and He'll probably be by my side through everything if only the tiny candle of trust and hope keeps sparkling in me. Will He leave when it dies? I guess I'll have to live and see.

I really want to make some uncensored brain dumps to offload some of the heavy thoughts onto any kind of medium, but I don't have enough energy to do even a simple thing like that. Maybe later. Lately, most things have become "maybe later" or "maybe some day"...

Is it fun down here? No, not really. Interesting and enlightening, sometimes, but in a rather bad sense. Would I walk all this way again if I had a choice? That's a pretty big "if", but probably yes. It's one of those things you wouldn't be able to come up with a reason for in a million years - the only things worth living for.

In a whirlwind of world views and theories, it sometimes feels like my choices are all pre-ordained, but I'm still making them freely and taking full responsibility for them. Anyway, it's all a bit fucked up in a twisted way. See ya.

The Fortune of Being Clueless

It mostly seems, knowing what you do, having a plan, being certain and self-assured are all the right ways to go. You set the milestones, you go and reach them. You expect obstacles, you solve the problems or walk around them. You fall, you get up. You know your steps and destination. The free variables are all within some pre-determined ranges. Anything unexpected gets retrofitted into the big picture. Discoveries are all rationed out, without any chance to ruin or overthrow the context they are being made in. Humanity gets its added value, you get a few pages of history if you're lucky.

Fortunately or regrettably, purposefully or accidentally, I happen to be utterly clueless at the moment. Sometimes it's as ugly and painful as it gets. It may not be exactly what human body and soul are meant for, in all their perfection. But in a way, in all the passive stagnation, it feels more lively down here than it ever was up there. In a way, this is the kind of ultimate adventure, full of peril and pitfalls not only for a body, but indeed for a soul. A wrong step may cost you eternal damnation. A right step... well I don't make too many of them anyway. So if the only things worth doing are those you can't find clear reasons for, maybe the only way worth living is in complete cluelessness.

Perception

Human perception is known for its treacherousness. We get bored by kindness, numb to evil. We build illusions, destroy them, rejoice and suffer all the way through it. Stop worrying and you'll be accused of running from reality. Get busy and you're guilty of running from happiness. Live and let live. Kill and get killed. From birth to death we're in a whirlwind. Or is it a calm sea? Or is it whatever we want it to be? How many levels of wishes are there in a man? We wish for so much. And every time a dream comes true, there's so much to love and hate about it.

God is there to grant us every wish. But we're so good at being unhappy at just about everything. We are quick to count gifts as natural laws. A new gift? Let's get alarmed, study it, put it in our big book of "normal and expected". And keep on living. Nothing new should happen that cannot be made old and familiar the minute it happens.

The Truth in Speaking

The question is, how can I write something, attempting to profile myself truthfully, at the time when the truth is, I don't want to write anything. It's not even a technical issue. Even a simple, stupid thing like pouring a few lines of crap requires a quantum of ardor. Along the lines of an ancient piece of wisdom, everything turns to lie the moment I say it.

Is it a problem of expression? Social skills are certainly an important factor, one quite lacking, too. But I've never felt that was the problem. Any language succumbs to proper effort, but the more beautiful and clear the wording is, the less truth is in it, somehow. Maybe it's a problem of perspective? Speaking out always rehashes the topic in your mind, possibly changing your view the moment you're trying to describe it. But, however stupid that might sound, I never really change my views. In-born or acquired, they just grow and evolve, but never go away or contradict themselves.

Perhaps it's my ever-present itch to see both sides of things, challenging everything. But then, I mostly try to "run the blade", preferring questions to answers, border-lines to sides.

Anyway, the truth and essence of this paragraph is to auto-destruct the moment it is written. 3..2..1...

23話

In annual reckoning, the 23rd episode of my life ended a couple of days ago. It might have been the darkest, most painful and the ugliest time so far, but for all that, unbelievably and perversely the happiest, most peaceful and enlightening one, too. Yearly boundaries are not respected much by anything but calendars, so the past tense here is purely artificial. And yet even when nothing has changed, and nothing is expected to, we are tempted to look back and forward.

In a world of paradoxes, the same things seem to have changed so much and so little, depending on the way you look at them. Looking inside myself, I see all the same wishes, dreams, thoughts that I've had for so many years. And yet the whole picture has changed beyond recognition. It's as if the highlights and accents have shifted, or disappeared altogether.

Judging by both material and immaterial scales, the change is thoroughly bad. Nevertheless, I'm having no regrets, and treating it as something humanly necessary. Even if my path has led me into a swamp, even if my feet will never feel hard earth again, I'm certain I want to get through it, at any cost.

Looking a year ahead, I see a few things cleared up, which means a lot of new questions and much darker things. As a (not so) modest goal, I'll set just getting there in one piece.

Radical Ecumenism

Religious battles tend to be stupid most of the time. I mean, what do we call a parent in our languages? "Father" in English, "отец" in Russian, "お父さん" in Japanese. Do they love us more or less depending on the sound of it? In the East we tend to respect him, in the West - not so much. Does an American father love his "hard" child any less than a Japanese one loves his "humble" one? If you have a healthy doubt about any significant difference in the feelings parents have for their kids all over the world, then remember that God knows all languages and He knows our thoughts before we utter any words or make any movements. If a human heart loves a child the same through languages and cultures, does God care about what names we call Him or how exactly we choose to worship Him, to love Him?

If you leave your treacherous common sense behind, your heart will tell you that most religions are essentially the same in His eyes. Truly, the evil is not in the differences between them, but in our perception of the differences.

Now you may be tempted to say that some evil force gave Muslims all the oil and the power that comes with it. But God loves them, because they remember Him and they try not to sin as best they can. True, they make lots of bad choices, like most men. And no evil will be rewarded. But as long as there's a single Muslim, who loves God and prays as best he can, Islam will not be defeated. We cause Him much suffering by killing each other in His name, but He is always ready to forgive us the moment we undress our bloody hearts and turn them to Him. And He grants peace, love and understanding to everyone who searches them, even across some seemingly eternal disagreements.

Most atheists are more religious than they are, or hope to be. Pagans are trickier, but not all of them are outcasts from His love. Basically, if your heart does not seek evil and you're ready to receive something good, you're never lost. If He's welcome in you, even without all the religious chaff, then you're welcome in Him, and sooner or later you'll find each other.

So if your church encourages extra caution towards other faiths and confessions, just imagine you have this brother, who speaks to your father in a foreign language. If you're ready to hate him just because your father loves both of you the same, and because you don't understand a word he's saying, then maybe there are some puzzle pieces missing in your world view. It's not too big a deal, though.

Paper Cheating

During the last few days, I've indulged in making a few notes on paper (not e-paper) with a pen (not a stylus). The feeling is cool. Making words physically amount to more than a few tiny dots somewhere in the hard drive (or in a brain) is the big thing that's missing when you're typing away on a console. Anyway, being the lazy ##ck that I am, the ADC (analog-to-digital conversion) may take time. It's only a couple of small notes though, of the same old crap.

Just Another Take

It's hard to describe how it feels to watch your own life steadily fall apart, day by day, step by step. Perhaps it's like being the only astronaut in orbit, watching the Earth being consumed in a great nuclear world war.

Why would it be happening? Because you couldn't keep on living the way you were and you don't know any other way to live. Twisted and simple at the same time. There are many ways out of it: you can strain your will, you can ask your friends for help, you can go see a bunch of doctors.

Yet I'm putting my faith in... my faith. Recursively screwed... It's probably supposed to feel a lot better than it does now, that's what's kinda troubling me. Every moment it feels like I'm making huge, fatal, irreversible and unforgivable mistakes. The vague remnants of hope are not so much warming me up, but rather teasing me into insanity. And however wicked it gets, bad premonitions of something even worse ahead have enough arrogance to wander through my consciousness without any rest. They tend to come true, too.

So what is it that I hope to find, or rather believe I will find? The thing is, I never knew and I won't know until I stumble upon it. That should sound as stupid as it gets. Anyway, the more immediate question is what I'll lose before I get wherever I'm supposed to get. Friends? Skills? Sanity? Life? Faith itself? Presently, I don't really care much. I guess when your limb is being cut off you don't care much whether it's a hand or a leg. It just hurts.

There are bright sides to everything, naturally. It's just that sometimes they seem so dark...

Freedom of Choice: Reloaded

It's a scary business, true freedom of choice. No reason, no consequence. Nowhere to go, nowhere to come from. Nothing to gain or to lose.

When you have everything you need and you really don't want anything else, something stops ticking. The world starts fading out. The things that remain - the things within you - can appear to be quite ugly. That's paradise for sinners. When every desire is satisfied, all that's left to do is face yourself. Face the heat. Pain administered as prescribed. Cure unknown. Hope unguided. Destination misery.

it'll all pass, hopefully. Leaving scars and mutilations. Taking life, if necesssary.

For some reason, I don't want it to be the end of my existence. Or, rather, I don't care, but I hope it won't. Maybe I just hope I'm still a student.

Tar/Untar

Sometimes it's like someone with a bucket of tar takes his time, slowly, but thoroughly painting me all black. Layer after layer. I have to wonder: is it so that I look black, or perhaps so that I burn better. Is it my own hand that paints me. Is there any way to rinse the tar off, somehow.

Final Destination

Nobody questions the absolute reality beyond life. Whether it's Heavens and Hell, or just one big Nothing - everybody chooses what he wants to believe. But, whatever it is, there's always the question of actually reaching it.

What can be more fearful than being immortal, eternally unable to reach the ultimate reality? How long does it take to discover the illusory essence of life? How long to enjoy it, try everything you want to, many things you don't really want to? To grow into tired satisfaction, if you're lucky? How long before it gets so unbearable that no rebirth can quench the pain? Not through some misfortune, but through the best things life has to offer comes the greatest, most intolerable suffering of being alive.

So what if you wake up into another life? Same old Earth, or an alien spaceship - who cares. Future, past - isn't it all the same?

Indeed, the notion of mortality may be the only thing that makes happiness possible. 死の希望.

Differences in Views

The thought that finds it hard to settle in a reasonable mind is that things do not just seem to be different, depending on the point of view, they actually are different. Relativity permeates life deeper than any materialistic reason would care to acknowledge. An event can be a result of free choice for one, and unalterable fate for another simultaneously. It can be the most wonderful miracle for one and boring routine for another. And it really goes beyond perception.

The world is a multi-player system, where interactivity is a carefully crafted and rationed illusion. Ever dreamed of a personal universe? Well, you're living in it.

In a Hospital

In a hospital, pain is but a background. Rest is elevated to duty, unspoken friendship and camaraderie fill halls and rooms. Everyone's got a past and a future, and however bleak and unpromising either one looks, everyone joins in celebrating them. Every guest and visitor is a living evidence of human compassion and sympathy. Sometimes it even seems that all the physical pain is mending whatever inner wounds each patient has. Everyone has no other choice but to cling to the better part of what he is. Hospital is a serene praise to the good in the world, oddly expressed in the consequences of its brutalities.

Reality Reloaded

It almost seems as if the car that hit me did not put me into this hospital with a concussion, but rather into a deep coma with this reality being another stage of thought and consciousness. One roommate is a collective memory of young, pure, happy love, another is a sober look at the prospects of married, down-to-earth life, the third one represents my life wasted on computer games and movies. Even the accident itself tastes like a lucid rebirth into a new level of contemplative outlook on life, with strange, foreign hand pulling me up out of a pool of cold dirt into another fresh start.

The hospital staff and clientèle, naturally, are all but random memories, hopes and expectations, some praising human kindness and compassion, some looking up to strict, relentless discipline, some dwelling on the darker traits of the human condition.

Even the building itself is placed precisely in the heart of my native neighborhood, only I've never been here before. Just a couple of minutes away is my kindergarten, across the street is my home where I've spent most of the first 20-some years of my life. Summer is the season. The air has its tactile texture. God is still around and everywhere.

Cornered

Sometimes it's like being cornered. No place to run to or to hide in. No work, no entertainment could ever dilute the feeling. And yet it's never clear what you're running from. It's just moving on to you, in a persistent, unstoppable manner; gets under your skin and scratches against your bones. No death, no rebirth could take you away from it. It's part of your essence, something impossible to alienate from.

Yet in the darkest shadows of the feeling is concealed some sweetest things. Gulp after gulp, you're forced to drink it, but if you shudder away the terror of incomprehension, the substance proves to be neither hurtful, nor repulsive. It's burning to touch, but it seems almost tepid to your tongue. Dark as it may be, there's a cleansing aura about it. Evil it may seem, but there's something good in it.

The dark sea of despair and loneliness is full of lights of hope and compassion.

Life as a Reflective Playground

They say most living creatures have difficulties recognizing themselves in a mirror. Every newborn spends the first few months of his life, mapping his actions to perceptions, and different perceptions to each other. Without this process and the capacity to complete it, we wouldn't be able to recognize our own voice, to acknowledge responsibility for the conscious movements we make.

But, if life itself is completely a fruit of your own subconscious imagination, if your heart is the source of everything you see around you, what time can it take to recognize the fact? Is there a process to map all the hidden desires to all the visible outcomes, do we have the capacity to do so?

Surely, massive implications of this worldview shy us away, but they are also incredibly tempting and magnetic. To accept something like this changes everything. Concepts like mortality and loneliness lose all meaning. Space, time and boundaries are nothing but words. You and the Universe are in unity. You are the Universe. Even when you come to the question of the Creator, you can choose, whether to view Him as a sun shining on you, or as an everbright light in your world. Either way, there's no need to alienate yourself from Him.

It is your world. It has been created by the Creator. But the question of whether it was from within or from the outside is utterly meaningless. Pronouns get shifted and extended. "You" and "your" don't refer to a single human body anymore. It's somewhat like when you see someone hurting a child. You feel like it's a direct assault on you, even if it has nothing to do with you. You feel the hurt, a need to resist and to protect yourself through protecting the innocent.

And with the worldview, every visible, perceptible event is inside you, directly affecting and involving you. Caused by you and effecting you at the same time.

The Human Side of Real-life Underachievement

Here I venture to claim the degree of one's underachieving is proportional, if not equivalent to his degree of being human.

Little Beggar

Today, in an underground station, there was a little girl, cuddled in a corner, with "Help!", or something, written on a piece of cardboard in her hands. Not a rare sight, but deep is the wound it cut somewhere inside me. A storm of random, useless and mostly irrelevant thoughts burst into my mind, and this paragraph is a livid bit of evidence of my truly horrid indifference. So unbelievable and unnatural are the circumstances that put the child there, that whatever good was left in me got stunned into motionless, helpless paralysis, and anything I could imagine doing to actually "help" seemed almost like a next evil step in a chain of atrocities that we as mankind, humanity, or society - whatever euphemism we come up with to cover up our true nature - have put one of the shining innocent through. I now feel like I've just walked through a huge field of corpses, fresh after some massacre. Blood streamed into rivers, but no human body can sustain or experience the kind of wounds that its mutilated look and the thought of the seemingly invincible wickedness that lead to it, inflict upon the heart of a passer-by observer.

Help Wanted, Help Unsought

Sometimes I get suddenly mad when someone asks me for some simple help. What's the matter, I wonder? Maybe I just wish I had the kind of problems someone could help me with. I do nothing that would require any help. In fact, I do nothing. And everything. I go nowhere. And everywhere. I wish I was moving a sofa or something. Then I would call my friends to help me. But as it is now, I'll never really be able to return the favor of asking for help.

Yes, I could run from myself, and anyone could help me with that. In fact, I do, and they do. But every time i do, I get reminded that I can run a million miles and still be half a step from whatever I flee from. Who would help me outrun my own shadows?

Then again, I'm not quite truthful. I can ask God whatever I want, and get it then and there, like a badly spoiled child. Maybe I get mad at people since they are asking me instead of Him?

Or maybe the matter is that whatever I'm going through looks utterly boring and unimpressive on the outside. Occupying an armchair, staring blankly at the digital marvels of today, doesn't exactly look "busy". But frankly, it's not that much different on the inside. It sometimes feels like I'm an aquarium, absently watching the fish inside myself, hating it when they move me and cause ripples on the surface of the water.

Thoughtful slacking is sure no easy business. But then, being asked for help is one of the greatest revelations, opening up all kinds of opportunities. One day, I hope I'll be able to really ask someone for help. Until then, I guess I need to stop snapping back at whoever offers to be obliged.

Guilt and Love

Guilt and love, that's what I'm filled with. What am I doing? I want others to be happy. I want to have faith and to love God like I love people. I can ask God to make everyone happy, and He probably will, but only in my world. On the other side of the thick, impenetrable illusion called life, there are real people, souls that may be miserable and suffering. You can say this life is about me. You may be right, but I can't accept this. I've always felt that I came here to get through to others and help them.

Here, in a quiet room, a human cry a million miles away, in a totally different world, can not be heard, but it still cuts so deep inside me, I feel like crying out myself. Illusions can be changed and fixed in a blink of an eye, but what about what's behind them. When every man in the world has a smile on his face, the misery behind it all cries ever louder.

Is it all my excuse for choosing to be miserable? Will I ever be forgiven, the way I am, the ways I'm going to be?

Mind and Action

A 'perfect' mind cannot arrive at action. All mind driven action in the world is the lush result of error and mistake, deception and miscomprehension.

A perfect action is always heart driven. It will always seem stupid, irrational, and annoying to a perfect mind.

Thus it is utterly futile to exercise thought in an attempt to decide what to do. You'll either miscalculate and do something ostensibly wrong, or make all the right conclusions and stay literally motionless.

Yet the wisdom is, in a desire for action, to suppress all these resonating brainwaves and listen to your heart.

And when you're done, don't look back, for the magic of a perfect action is often in the moment.

Shot

Is it a dream, a vision, or a wish, a sincere desire? It has been coming to me for so many years... I'm walking down a street, standing at a bus stop, or just sitting somewhere. And then... somebody shoots me in the back. The caliber and muzzle velocity are enough so that the bullet comes all the way through and out, ripping a piece of flesh away. But I don't die, or even fall right away. In fact, the weapon is always fully automatic, and within a second I already see several chunks of my body torn out and flying forward just before me.

I'm in slow-mo. Every hit delivers the intended damage and pain. Every hit is surely lethal. And every hit brings so much peace and satisfaction. It frees my weary soul of my body, and it feels like the weight of the world is suddenly gone off my shoulders.

I stagger, make a few useless movements forward, and fall on the ground. The sweetest, irresistable rest awaits me. Even if it'll only last for a few moments before it's time to pay my dues, even then, I was ready to forfeit the rest of my life just for that - a fleeting moment of truly careless rest.

I guess my soul doesn't always feel quite at home in this body and world.

Cigarette Burns

Sometimes, we drop words as if we're putting out a cigarette butt. We think there's an ashtray, but in fact, we're pushing the red-hot light right into someone's soul. it only takes a fraction of a second to leave a burn mark forever.

Just one word can do that. It will hurt for days, and never really fully heal. Even long forgotten, it will be longingly reminded of by the scar tissue. And we, the smokers, won't even notice how much pain we've caused by one clumsy movement.

Army of God

A non-violent state doesn't need to abolish the military. On the contrary, the army should be expanded, but most importantly - radically upgraded. The idea is old as time. Kill no one. Hurt no one. An army with true heroes. No age limits. Everybody's welcome. Draft - maybe. But only volunteers can be admitted into action.

The general combat scenario: relatively large numbers of troops, obviously unarmed, with no or minimum equipment, dressed in highly visible, but very simple clothing, deploy right into the heat of an ongoing conflict.

Primary mission and doctrine - stopping wars at the cost of own lives. Getting no one killed except oneselves.

Rigourous training. Pushing both physical and intellectual boundaries. But the main emphasis is always on the spiritual. And for all the hardships of the preparations, life is always to be sacrificed at the smallest opportunity, where it has a tiniest chance to make a difference.

Shields and bullets don't save people. Innocent blood of unarmed, resolved soldiers does.

Will it put an end to all wars? Most probably not, but it can shift most of the heat from civilians to the non-violent military, volunteering to offer their lives without any hard feelings for the enemy.

After all, the military is always about sacrificng your own life. What most people can't take about serving - is having to take other lives. In a non-violent army you don't have to.

Intra-state law enforcement should convert to NV, too, naturally.

Would I want to go into combat on the NV side? I think I've always been ready, and still am, to do that. But I also think I have a path to go. So I don't seek death. And yet by no means NV self-sacrifice is suicidal or death-seeking in the least. So if I find myself in the heat, I'll probably keep asking Him to spare me and hoping I will get through in a miraculous way. And if I don't - well, it's always great to meet Him, probably even if you haven't been all that good down here.

Anchor

Lately, I've been floating in dreams about settling down somewhere in the Japanese countryside, taking up quiet occupations, like a school teacer (not that quiet, huh), even starting a family. Am I thinking of running away? I've always felt that simple life could bring me happiness. And yet I've always thought that I can only be happy when everyone is. By now I think it may work the other way, too: when I'm happy, everyone will be.

But then, as a veteran of the hidden battlefields of human soul, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to leave all the blood and fire behind. A foreign country can change me, but the ultimate reconciliation can not depends on location alone.

Nor do I sense that my path is anywhere near an end like that. It seems to be more fitting that I die a violent death with that idyllic wish wandering through my mind and on my lips, instead of a natural one, living it.

Do I deserve it? No, but He would grant any wish anyway. But it also feels that I've had my fair share of human happiness in a past life. So maybe this one is to try the true taste of failure, pain, despair...

However hideous the workings of my heart are, there's no running away from them. We don't need a mirror to face ourselves. It always happens, sooner or later. Life is the mirror itself.

Back to the dream, though. I can lamost hear the summer cicades. And the rays of harmony, permeating everything.

New

New. Something new. Anything new. Just for a second, just to take the mind off whatever it's gnawing on. Just to ease the burning within. Anything new. Anything fresh. It's so evasive. Melts right away. Contaminated at first sight. Shelf life: zero. Anything new. And it gets harder to pass something old as new. And since everything is old, it's only a matter of time, of cognitive training, of touches and glances, when you run out of places where you can have a sip of fresh air. Oh, you, the immortal! A cursed race. All doors are closing on you and you're damned to eternal suffocation. You'll eat your own flesh, pluck your eyes and your heart out, and you'll still live, live, live. Darkness is one of your parents. Void - one of destinations. Dream - the prison without a watchman to make you feel alive. You're left to make your own news and read them, pretending they come from elsewhere, from somewhere there is life and laughter, where death can bring eternal peace and birth is not a sarcastic farce...

The Usual Wanderings

One one hand, there's always the way of a hero. Becoming a monk, as close to God as possible, but also mighty, prosperous, and self-conceited. Learning everything worth to know; discovering, inventing. Drawing dreams and living them. Saving humanity while standing in the shadows. Giving up life for something truly high and wonderful, and meeting death with a happy smile on your face. Living a life that shines every second. It would probably make Him happy.

And yet, there's a catch. There's something wrong about a perfect life. There's something wrong with perfection.

So hard to describe... Good without evil is as life without death. Cold, unnatural, inhumane. Irrational and senseless.

In sin we are Children of God. In sin we depart from Him, to be His Children, separate from Him, loved by Him, coveted by Him. Without sin, nothing is. Nothing to receive His light and marvel at His eminence. The breadth of the whole white world is sin.

Born to be human, you are free to go whichever way you choose. Follow the light, or the dark, or stay in between and watch both in bewilderment. You'll get pieces of happiness and pieces of misery, and will know the human ways. Love and hate, kill and give birth, wallow in blood and myrrh. Lose faith and regain it. That's what it means to live. Open your hand and close it. That's the proof, you're alive. Not a fist or an open palm, but the act of opening and closing it.

Sin and repent. Let Him forgive you, and punish you, lead you and cherish you. Let Him do whatever you want.

Just don't be dead to Him. Or be dead, but come alive. For there's no worse sight than a dead child.