Empty Sky

During my excommunication, I’ve been combing the sky, looking for god, and all I’ve found are clouds. The sky is a unique thing, insofar as the emptier it gets, the heavier it gets. The burden of all of that loneliness increases exponentially the more it is understood. As you further grasp the nature of your involuntary solitude, the notion of anything metaphysical will begin to offend your palate. The concept of god(s) will turn your stomach. There are sickly intellectuals who will convolute logic around itself to baffle away the loneliness. They would have you believe that god is a mathematician and heaven is an algorithm. In my estimation, god is a cruel joke and an insult to our human dignity.

What’s Left

What’s left is abused, burnt, and broken. It is a network of scars. What’s left exhibits the tempering effects of violence and neglect. It has been paying attention, listening, learning and enduring. It’s a forgotten friend who commiserates and damns. It limps and accuses. It loves and hates. What’s left breathes the same air that we do. Indifferently, it reflects our unflattering traits, but reveals their subtle, humanizing beauty. What’s left is the filter and an empty bottle.

Need Is a Value Judgment

Need is a value judgment. “What is” simply is. It harbors no lack of being, no necessity. “What is” has no need. It is. It just is. Need is a projection of nothing onto something. Need is your attitude towards something. It is a perceived lack, not an existent lack. It is a byproduct of your existence. Need is your vision of the world, and what you believe it should be.

The Philosopher

The thought-junkie slid the needle in with confidence, like it was supposed to be there. Smooth and practiced, it dove under the skin, squarely into the vein, and began leaking sophisticated, abstract information into his blood. The high was stunning and abrupt. It was vertigo and a tidal wave of hard logic. He knew so much about nothing at all. There was never enough. There was always more to know, more to vivisect. There were always holes to be knocked out, patched, and knocked out again. His mind was a dead nerve, killed by over-stimulation. As his tolerance and dosages increased, he became less a beast, and more feeble and useless. All that was magical became logical. Solid answers backpedaled, not breaking eye contact but stepping further away. The more you take, the more you need. There is no end to the hunger for fact. Almost everything made sense.

Empty, Unemployed, and Homeless

Sometimes you won’t know what to do with your hands. Life’s full of awkward moments when you’re not perfectly what you are, and your hands will be without purpose. They’ll be empty, unemployed, and homeless. In those moments you’ll look for a place to put them, and fail. It can happen in any kind of moment, though I’ve discovered that it happens most often for me in moments of joy. It might be that I’m just not very good at joy in general. It might be that it’s an alien thing for me, but most of the occasions when I didn’t know what to do with my hands were those times. Most other times my hands know exactly who they are, where to go, and just what to do.