Random Embarrassing Fact #1

Additional Notes on How I Learned to Love the Lord

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about what I wrote earlier today. Mostly I’m not too satisfied with it. I feel like things could have been more lucid and more interesting. There was so much that I could have said that I did not end up saying. 

Faith or lack thereof is a challenging thing to express. There was a lot that just got lost or at least that’s my feeling. 

The story that I told myself as a Christian was that I was a reformed criminal that found redemption. Reformed criminal? I was a kid that did something dumb but in my mind, I might as well have been knocking over liquor stores or have been some kind of budding serial killer. I had a desire to convey to people what a wretched sinner I was if I ever got the chance. I look back on this and I’m both amused and disturbed. 

People give reasons for doing things. I don’t know that I buy too many of the standard answers given about why someone takes the dive for J.C. especially if it is couched in theologically “correct” language. People can say that they became conscious of their sinful nature and of their need for a savior but I often suspect there is a more interesting, more honest, more genuine reason. If someone tells me they believe simply because they like Jesus or it just kinda seems correct or just wants it to be true then I respect that a lot more than some bullshit they half remembered from a text book or a tract or something. Wow, this paragraph sucks. Moving on. 

My faith was nonsensical. It was utter bullshit. It basically revolved around feeling guilty for having sexual desires. I got really tired of hating myself for natural desires so I kinda just said fuck it and quit. Hating myself for liking the idea of sex made no sense. I wasted a bunch of time hating myself for a stupid reason when I should have been hating myself for being a Republican. 

The marriage between evangelical Christianity and conservative politics is an awful thing. It’s destructive. It baptizes ideas like peace through strength, low capital gains taxes, gutting the social safety net and other abominations that make the world a terrible fucking place to live. I can’t be part of that no matter how bitchin’ those praise songs are. 

It’s ultimately just not a very adult way of looking at the world. Adult is the wrong word. I just don’t think it’s a very honest way of looking at the world. 

Fuck

Fuck. 

When the boss on his shit again and I got a head full of commie propaganda on a Monday

When it’s one way and I need it to be another

God damn it, good looks don’t pay fuckin’ bills. 

Fuck. 

She whispers it in the dark

when she wants that love harder.

At the sky 

when you got nothin’ but the rain, your sweat, your bones and a raw deal. 

Gotta watch who hears you say that 

Not sacred 

but it’s something, ya know? You feel me? Am I talkin’ crazy? 

Fuck. 

We repeat the nonsense we hear. Find decent nonsense. 

Due to a mix-up that is too stupid to explain, my appointment never happened. 

I don’t like hearing Trump. 

I don’t like looking at the fat orange fucker either. 

Unknown

I’ve only been doing this thing for a week. Somehow it feels longer than that. 

I feel like an itch has been scratched. I feel like I ain’t got no itches to scratch today. None. Is that a sign of trouble? 

I guess boredom, shit. No. This isn’t boredom. I don’t know what this is. I swear I’ve been aware of a keener sense of myself lately. No matter how keen your sense gets, you still find that your sense isn’t all the way calibrated. There are uncharted waters within you. 

Maybe this is just being chill. Maybe this is how most people are. 

There is another state of being I sometimes find myself in though it is rare. This is the state of being unfuckwittable. I’ll try and describe that to you some other day because right now there is no fucking way I’m going to be able to do that justice. 

I can’t do most things justice. 

I wasn’t even going to try this today. I was just going to leave it but that seemed like a bad idea. 

I sit here at my desk. Daily Mix 3 playlist from Spotify is blaring and I keep hitting repeat on a particular song. I don’t know why. Not in Love by Crystal Castles. Sometimes I kinda nod my head to it and sometimes I low-key white boy dance to it. The words don’t really speak to me. I can’t really speak to the beat or the musical qualities of this composition because I’m laughably unqualified. 

I find myself thinking of ending montages in TV episodes. Ya know, shots of the characters with little or no dialogue in the closing minutes of the episode as some song plays. 

Yeah. That’s it. Drive safe. 

I sorta tried. Sorta. 

It’s so cheesy 

cheesy like the orange fingers 

on a dateless wonder

but if I call you brother 

I mean it 

desperately 

like a cardboard sign SOS 

spotted on a freeway off-ramp.

In the night 

when the breeze is gentle 

can I tell ya how terribly strange 

this all is to me? 

can I tell ya how scared I was 

trippin’ on shrooms and that it was your 

voice that brought me back? 

Will ya come to me in the midnight hour 

with the knots you can’t untie? Will ya? 

Been kind of a brutal weekend for me. 

Didn’t know that I was going to be dealing with a sick dog. All of that wrecked me. Think I got my cry quota done for the next week. 

I’m exhausted. I feel beat up. 

I’d take a hug or two.

That dog is hanging in though. She is this adorable thing but god damn, she’s tough. 

I think I’m way too up in my feelings right now. 

I’ll get back to you. 

I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in. 

I wish that line was mine. 

Thing is though. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t. 

Sometimes I wanna scream 

cuz I’m wise to the game. 

I know the game is rigged

but I ain’t wise to all the ways the game got put in me 

without my consent. 

I catch myself playin’. 

Hate myself for the size of my wages 

and the fact that my words ain’t commercial 

won’t pay my bills 

won’t free me from dreadin’ the first day of the week 

and from feelin’ all Shawshank on the last day of it.