welcome to the story.

And it was on that day that I realized something was amiss. I have had previous inklings of such things, but it was at that point that I understood that hope was dying. Somewhere between confession and repentance there lay a huge gap among my thoughts and my actions. Surely my heart was connected to my body. But again and again, the quantitative exploits of my flesh proved my heart true of what it truly was. Surely I would say that my heart is to behave and to live rightly. Only those words are never proven true. There is nothing like a good Protestant who would be a great Catholic if he could only conjure up enough contrition to gain his penance. For as a Protestant, penance � which we have come to call �forgiveness� so as not to be confused with Pope Gregory�s dynasty, comes so easily. Once and for all. Forgiveness without remorse and so we carry on. Oh to be a devout Catholic. If only to gain salvation from my self, speaking nothing of the salvation from this world or that which pertains to the upward. The modern mind is quite amazing as I�ve come to appreciate it. It so easily holds contradictory truths in reconciliatory harmony. Saint we think we are. Sinner we believe we are. Holy and devout. And altogether void of spiritual fabric. Joy to the rut of ruts. Stuck at the pinnacle of sainthood, thus ensuring our complacency. All the while continuing our trapped existence while we parade as plastic clowns. The poor insect which gets entangled in the spider web. Knowing that death is near. Knowing that she is coming. Coming to feast on the fear which leads to death. So it wriggles and squirms. Fidgets and flips. And then finally flops. Death has come before the poor thing has even died. Exhausted from the fight. There will be no tomorrow today. Unless . . . death would die. I, the metaphoric insect would lay still . . . and wait . . . for the web to disintegrate . . . for a loosening of sorts. But who has time to wait these days? Have I spoken yet of contradictory truths? I cut grass for the first time in over five years. It was April 27th. Not counting this past year and half, which has found for me some semblance of continuity, I had rested my head on eight different pillows in these recent years. From the time I left home until now, I had not cut any grass. And today I cut again since my head was in a somewhat permanent place. Although in a sense, I rest my head in the same place every night. Part of it . . . the metaphysical part continues to wander long after the tangible goes horizontal. I have been prone to stay awake for hours at a time. I have been prone to fall asleep immediately. Between the two there is no middle ground. And therefore, I despise the two. The smell of gas on my fingers quickly alerts me back to the present where I have recently been tending to drift out of. These �driftings�, if you would like to call them that, have been plaguing me all the more often as of late. Fits of something. And I honestly am not sure of what yet. Longings for yesterday and tomorrow while I resent today. These fits are not unlike most obsessions. You know the kind that overcome people with desire for a boat, a new car, a new job. A new woman. A woman. Most everyone walks around with these incurable fixations for things they do not have. I simply join in as a brother in the lineage of all those who want but do not have. A man consumed by lust, although not of the sexual kind. Although I am quite sure there will be a briefing upon that topic at a later date in the not to distant future. For a proper understanding of lust, and at times the sexual kind, will cure all the world�s infirmities with one sweeping motion. The sickle strikes below the belt. But not today. Instead I lust for . . . life. Perhaps that is it. However, like I said, I�m not quite sure of what it is that I�m driven to define. The spring/summer breeze blows hard through the backyard and causes the door to crack against the invisible pressure. I eat a banana that yesterday was not bruised but is only one day later. There are two ways of defining my disease. One, the scientific. And two, the poetic. Again in the vein of contradictory truths, I find both paths unsatisfactory. The dishwasher which has been lulling in the background for what seems like forever, finally churns to a silent stop. The disaster about it stopping is that it means that I am going to have to dry the dishes by hand. The automatic drying feature hasn�t worked since the day it left Sears. American made. American appliances. American products. Made in America. American woman. This is what I need. Maybe �she� is but another disease. I know my problem. I know what is corrupt. I even know how to go about it. And yet I can not find in myself the ability to do it. The willingness is there. At least to the amount that I am cognizant of. But I am still unable to feel it. The healing would naturally have to be felt since the spirit is what it is in need of healing and it is the spirit that drives the emotion. Am I supposed to feel the change? Am I really willing to change? What a twisted patchwork of a substance I am. The mosaic of me is all and not one, all and not divided, all and nothing. How did my fall begin? It begins like this . . . . I learned how to read. It sounds simple. It even sounds normal. After all, we all learn how to read. Simply and normally. So how is my fall . . . tied to my dying hope . . . which is tied to my learning how to read? This could be one of the more difficult things to explain. But you do need an understanding of this in order to fully immerse yourself in the genesis of my story. In the beginning God created . . . yada yada yada . . . Rufus Michaela Jackson was born (that�s me) . . . I die . . . and someone else takes my place at the great table of perpetual thought. [As an extremely brief side note, I feel that I have the unfortunate privilege of having a middle and last name that are exponentially better than my first.] Where was I . . .? Indeed, I was explaining the connection between reading and my downward spiral. Don�t get me wrong reading is something that is, at least for me, like coming into a state of euphoria. I imagine it is the same feeling that some existential yoga instructor attempts to have, possibly even reaching. (I don�t know if you can actually reach a state of euphoria through yoga, but I�m sure for some people who take the art form as a discipline and way of life, can quite surely reach this state if they so desire. I however, have no information or research to make a valid claim in either direction. So I do want to be upfront about my assertion and at least be honest in the narrating of my narrative.) When I get done reading a book, I swear to you, I think it�s the best book I�ve ever read. It does not matter if its crap and it does not matter if its golden genius. I think every book that I get finished reading, for some reason at that time, causes me to believe that it�s the greatest book ever. Now quite obviously I�m not talking about books that are indeed genuine crap. Like any number of the self-help books that you can find on the New York Times Bestseller List. Or their spiritual cousins, the cookie cutter crap that Christians put out at an alarmingly fast pace. And I really don�t mean that as a downgrade on Christians. Maybe I do. I don�t know. I just know self-help books and Christian literature, both fiction and non-fiction, for the most part wreaks of dog . . . substitute any degrading word pertaining to dogs that you want here. But seriously, every flipping book that I have read has made me feel. I know that sounds weird, sappy, and/or sad. But its true. They stir something in me. They are in a way, part of what makes me tick. Great literature does that for me. I swear I can finish reading a book and feel like I�m on top of the world. I really think if you caught me in the middle of a good chapter, or in that moment when I read the last line of a book, that I would take a bullet for the most vile of people. Whoever that may be. For someone who has never had that experience reading, you�re probably thinking what a nut job I am. And you�re right. But for those of you who have had that experience of . . . something spiritual as you find yourself wrapped up in a story . . . well then . . . you just know what I�m talking about. I say all of that to say that when I read a book, it influences me. It shapes me. It defines me for that time period. So how does all this relate to the crumbling wall of my hope you ask again? And its what I started off to articulate in those previous paragraphs, but obviously fell short of since I�m having to start a new paragraph without addressing the original question. Which I do sincerely apologize to you for. New paragraph . . . answer begins . . . Have you ever read The Catcher in the Rye? What about The Perks of Being a Wallflower? Or You Shall Know Our Velocity? These are the last three books I�ve read. Great books. Even excellent books. Again . . . all three were the best book that I had ever read at one point in time. Currently, The Catcher in the Rye is my favorite since I just got finished with it less than an hour ago. And I don�t know if its because what I read preceding these novels was some of that Christian cookie cutter crap I was telling you about. I think it�s a combination of the two. That I don�t find anything satisfactory in a narrative that is deceiving in its perception of reality (i.e. the Christian literary interpretations of reality) or the one that writes of the world as it is (i.e. the books I aforementioned).