The Santa Anna winds are back, reflecting the turmult in my mind and soul. I feel like I am facing so many different questions, those posed by the material we're reading for classes as well as those brought about by life, I don't know where to start or which to face first. I tried to write in an actual journal last night and could get nowhere (too much of an exhibitionist now I suppose). There were simply too many questions with no answers or with half thought out conjectures that might one day lead to conclusions if worked on enough. It is tempting to say "I'm tired of questions. I want answers, something solid and sure. I want rest." But that is not for this life, not for the intellectual life, not for the life of a soldier, not the life of anyone who truly wants to know.
So, it's back out into the wind, the rough and tumble of it all...

and a little more...

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
-Henry Brooks Adams, historian (1838-1918)

I feel myself at a crossroads, gazing down at my feet, wondering where I am to go. I stand here in the river-road of Time, directionless and impatient, knowing my end but unsure of the route. I want to remain steady and still, to wait to be shown clearly my next step. But the flow of Time drags and catches at my ankles, urging me forward, always forward, never to be still, never to rest. The tides rise and fall around me, presenting new ways and means on the twisting and swirling eddies, and I struggle against them and myself to hold my place. Indeed my own passions and desires seek to betray me to the interminable flow. How very, very easy it would be to simply throw myself into this river, to allow myself to be swept away by its floods. To be carried along whither so ever it would, coming to whatever strange new land the river runs through. I don't know what to do. Would it be wrong to let go? Or is that determination subject to the context of surrounding events?

I think too much...

written a few days ago...

I've decided that I miss the luxury of having internet access right down the hall. Perhaps I can blame my lack of writing on that... On the other hand, I am doing more than I was a year ago, am actually engaged in the process of living we all go on so often about, with all its pains and glories however small. Real life happens outside one's head. Or is it one's reaction to what happens outside one's self? In either case, nothing (or moderatly little) real happens without being in the outside.

It's windy out today. Great gusts of a warm rampant wind play across the valley, the dropped and forgotten playthings of the storm that passed through last night. The leaves from the sycamore trees are being tosses helter skelter across the soggy lawns, danced across patios under fallen umbrellas and down sidewalks to be unceremoniously trod upon by the passing student. The sky is moody, bright blue in patches, white clouds - fluff and nothings really - in others, then dark and sullen at being herded against the mountains by the winds, only to be broken up and sent flying by the same wind (or perhaps a relative).

The sound of the wind cause my memory to belie the heat and stuffiness of the small crowded room. I am no longer here, but in a dark and sleeping house. It is mid-winter and bitterly cold. The moonlight is bright enough to make the thick shadow of the house a looming blackness on the piled snow. I feel so very small looking out the breath-fogged window at the white uneven fields, streaching out into inky nothing beyond the end of sight. The wind blows, rising and falling, whistling around corners, driving against walls and drifts, shaking and bending the dead dried stems of the grasses that grew up at the edge of the porch low to the ground. The tones of its the moaning send shivers down my arms and I can all too easily imagine the cries and wailings of those lost on the empty plains before me. But now I have exchanged the cold piercing wind for one hot and rough and the sounds of quietude and rest in a sleeping house for the rattle and grating of conversation, trying to worry objections into oblivion.

And now the wind has gone and all is still. Neither leaf nor petal is ruffled. The very silence of it would weigh were it not that I too am still.

Why pain?
Because pain draws us closer to God.

Why pain?
Because pain strips us of our reliances on things other than Himself.

Why pain?
Because pain makes us face our hollowness, acknowledge it and our own helplessness to do anything about it.

Why pain?
Because pain, when accepted, allows us to see beauty, which is simple and pure and all too easily missed.

Sad songs chasing their tails
running in and out of my mind
playing on and on
never quite out of hearing.


sequel

I sit out o' nights
beneath the star filled sky
remembering soft voices
and now faded thoughts.
The shining splendor seems,
in the chill air and cool light,
familiar and strangely warm,
they seem to know my self.
Quietude brushes by
gently carried on windy wings
bringing further recollection of other
evenings, thoughts, conversations
and a rest never fully mine.

So much to write and so little time....'tis very unfortunate. But perhaps I can catch up a bit...


I am at my favorite coffee shop for what was supposed to be an open mic night that has turned into something radically else. There are a bunch of belly dancers wandering around, mucisians are setting up... Now the music has started and there are three or four little girls up on the stage dancing in their own fashion, moved in what ever way the music wants them to... The rhythm is intoxicating, pulsing with each beat of my heart, flowing through my body. I want to learn...

Sorry about the extra step now necessary for commenting. I discovered I was being hit with comment spam and want to avoid it...

Random collection of scribbling that I managed to pin onto scraps of handy paper...

The other day I had a chance to talk with an old friend whom I have not really been able to speak to for a while. And as we spoke of ships and shoes and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings I was reminded that life is not lived out on the fringe of things. Lingering on dark rooftops almost entombed by the dark branches above, accompanied only by the dying light of one's cigarette, surrounded by the sounds of enjoyment drifting up from below is not living, as romantic and aloof and appealing as the setting might be. Not that the setting is of itself wrong, the context is just not right. It occurs to me that life is very much like music - what is good is very often determined by the context...

~ ~ ~

Memory is such an odd thing. With little to no warning your are overwhelmed with image after image, layer upon layer of sights, sounds, emotions. I was sitting in the commons reviewing the day's assignments and at the sound of an apparently unrelated note I was hurled back to another warm midmorning, sitting with a newly dear friend in the near empty commons talking of life and its lessons. To chill evenings, watching the upperclassmen pouring in after seminar waiting for friends to filter out of the mix, anticipating the coming discussion of the evening's excitement or follies...

I've been feeling teribly neglectful of various duties incumbant upon me recently. So I thought I'd try to make some headway on at least one of them...

My oldest cousin (three years my senior) is married now. He and his new wife are honeymooning in Hawaii, land of our ancestors. I've been to a few weddings in the past couple of years, but this one sank in the deepest. All manner of reflections roiled and simmered in my mind all week-end. "My generation is coming up, our parents are moving into the background. " More prominant was "I knew him when he had long purple hair in highschool... and now he is married!" Less prominant, but none the less still consciously there was "I am not ready for this at all...I think."

*sigh*

In any case, it was the best and most worthwhile all nighter I have ever pulled...