hauntings, rainbows, and crossroads
that house was in shambles with broken windows and shoddy tarp flying like a banner in the wind. that house was battered and dirty and haunted. i find the decaying result of neglect painfully trite. i find natural disasters only natural. but the haunted is beautiful. it means there was once something worth the loss in that place. something worth the terror. when you look at it that way, everything else just seems empty.
the purest are the most abused in this world. the innocent take the brunt of the evil. the caring are left hurting and alone. the righteous are taunted and rejected. i was among them. and i braved the blows, valiantly. in these days i feel my heart callousing in the icy gale of the windy city. the dimmer switch is turning. the oxygen is replaced with apathy. i'm realizing my worst fear, day by day, and it's alarming. am i crossing over? am i becoming one of millions in this city, just another stoic face, just another frozen heart?
the train window harbored those nameless faces with an overlapping reflection of the opposing window like a corridor into a sunset. i wanted to run into that realm. i wondered if anyone in the street cared about anything beyond what they were having for dinner or the cosmo neatly tucked under their arm or their next trip to starbucks. i wanted to run. run through the smaller window in that big ugly picture and find some place sunny and silent, solace and quiet.
so i turned my gaze upward, which is what i do when this world is too much to survey. jutting into the sunset sky, the chimneys battled the steeples, vying for my attention. to which do i devote my salute? both harbor fire. one, nobly, warms dwellings and offers up the incense of the deed into the heavens. the other points to the heavens but beneath the proclamation, righteous indignation festers like an infected and burning wound within that place. flaring tempers and searing insults and consuming convictions rage beyond the confinement of those walls. no, give me the cozy fire of a comfortable home. i will not venture under a steeple again, except to pour gasoline upon the wayward uncontained flames and bring the hypocrisy to ashes.
i mean, the steeple preaches christ crucified while beneath that precious sign, people crucify each other. as i remember it, jesus popped in, got everyone drunk at cana, disregarded the rules of the old testament, cared for the disregarded, deranged and diseased of the world, then said "love god and each other, peace out."
and we can't even get that much right.
but while i'm on this random tangent, i have to say rainbows are perhaps the most ridiculous thing god has ever done. i mean who says, "hey, chill, i'm not going to ever destroy the world by flood again" while planning to burn it down thousands of years later? who -does- that? it's nearly taunting. i don't even mind that the gay kids stole the rainbow away, the rainbow is gay and they can have it. but tell the emo kids i want the star back. well anyway, not to be irreverent, but god did say he'd rather someone take a hot or cold stance, and that the lukewarm makes him want to vomit. so i'm going with cold on this one.
i guess i'm a woman of extremes. don't we know how dysfunctional extremes can be. still, i'd rather that than a life waiting for something to happen. it's just that in breaking out of the circle, you stand for a moment at the fork in the road that leads to dark and light, day and night, wrong and right. i feel i am faltering at the crossroad. god save me.
i am that haunted house. barren and deranged and soon nobody will venture near this. if they do, they may not come out alive. i already swallowed up one soul. i hear the screams every second. my basement is flooded by guilt and the draft is wet with shame. the winter weather is in vein freezing the window pains whether i am ready for this or not. run away, or i'll lock you in my attic. lock and laugh.
i'm losing myself, i'm losing my way, hanging on to what i know for certain (which isn't much) and fighting the urge for escape. facing my demons in the light is more terrifying than the unknown darkness of night. the hallucinations don't chase me down like my fears. my fears are becoming real while reality disappears.
the purest are the most abused in this world. the innocent take the brunt of the evil. the caring are left hurting and alone. the righteous are taunted and rejected. i was among them. and i braved the blows, valiantly. in these days i feel my heart callousing in the icy gale of the windy city. the dimmer switch is turning. the oxygen is replaced with apathy. i'm realizing my worst fear, day by day, and it's alarming. am i crossing over? am i becoming one of millions in this city, just another stoic face, just another frozen heart?
the train window harbored those nameless faces with an overlapping reflection of the opposing window like a corridor into a sunset. i wanted to run into that realm. i wondered if anyone in the street cared about anything beyond what they were having for dinner or the cosmo neatly tucked under their arm or their next trip to starbucks. i wanted to run. run through the smaller window in that big ugly picture and find some place sunny and silent, solace and quiet.
so i turned my gaze upward, which is what i do when this world is too much to survey. jutting into the sunset sky, the chimneys battled the steeples, vying for my attention. to which do i devote my salute? both harbor fire. one, nobly, warms dwellings and offers up the incense of the deed into the heavens. the other points to the heavens but beneath the proclamation, righteous indignation festers like an infected and burning wound within that place. flaring tempers and searing insults and consuming convictions rage beyond the confinement of those walls. no, give me the cozy fire of a comfortable home. i will not venture under a steeple again, except to pour gasoline upon the wayward uncontained flames and bring the hypocrisy to ashes.
i mean, the steeple preaches christ crucified while beneath that precious sign, people crucify each other. as i remember it, jesus popped in, got everyone drunk at cana, disregarded the rules of the old testament, cared for the disregarded, deranged and diseased of the world, then said "love god and each other, peace out."
and we can't even get that much right.
but while i'm on this random tangent, i have to say rainbows are perhaps the most ridiculous thing god has ever done. i mean who says, "hey, chill, i'm not going to ever destroy the world by flood again" while planning to burn it down thousands of years later? who -does- that? it's nearly taunting. i don't even mind that the gay kids stole the rainbow away, the rainbow is gay and they can have it. but tell the emo kids i want the star back. well anyway, not to be irreverent, but god did say he'd rather someone take a hot or cold stance, and that the lukewarm makes him want to vomit. so i'm going with cold on this one.
i guess i'm a woman of extremes. don't we know how dysfunctional extremes can be. still, i'd rather that than a life waiting for something to happen. it's just that in breaking out of the circle, you stand for a moment at the fork in the road that leads to dark and light, day and night, wrong and right. i feel i am faltering at the crossroad. god save me.
i am that haunted house. barren and deranged and soon nobody will venture near this. if they do, they may not come out alive. i already swallowed up one soul. i hear the screams every second. my basement is flooded by guilt and the draft is wet with shame. the winter weather is in vein freezing the window pains whether i am ready for this or not. run away, or i'll lock you in my attic. lock and laugh.
i'm losing myself, i'm losing my way, hanging on to what i know for certain (which isn't much) and fighting the urge for escape. facing my demons in the light is more terrifying than the unknown darkness of night. the hallucinations don't chase me down like my fears. my fears are becoming real while reality disappears.