asphyxiation

The Power of Positive

Love is hard.  I imagine for most of us that goes without saying.  The main root of love’s suckiness must hinge on imperfection. 

Sadly, the perfect girl does not exist.  She is human: she farts, has pissy days, has different interests than you, and has desires that cannot be met. 

More regrettably is that I am not perfect.  I always imagine myself to look something like Brad Pitt.  Consequently, I absolutely abhor mirrors.

I have an amazing habit of thinking that whatever action I put forth is the most strategic, most logical, and definitely the most admirable. Any significant amount of time spent with a person inevitably brings about the awkward moment of said person realizing that my actions are not as venerable as I had previously conceived.

There are solutions to this unfortunate phenomenon.  Most of them involve denying reality and creating a new one.

Thankfully, technology has made this increasingly easier.  We carefully construct a persona that reflects everything desirable that could possibly be attached to our actual being. We post pictures that hide our love handles and unsymmetrical facial features, while tricking the human eye to believe that we have 20 inch biceps.

I sat down to write a goodbye song to sin.  This is what came out.

I guess it must be deduced that this is a sin that I readily indulge.  My sin is usually (ok, always) attached to an overestimation of myself.  God is big.  I get that.  But for some fucking reason I can’t convince myself that I am not bigger.  In the cosmos that occupies my mind, I am limitless.  In the above paragraphs I have already established that I think myself a force to be reckoned with. Yet I’m recently realizing that the scariest delusion I’ve created is the power and righteousness of my will.

I imagine that it is typical for a person to watch a superhero movie and sinfully fantasize, “I wish I could do that.” My fantasy is far more perverse and displaced.  I watch such a film and think, “I can do that,” as if I routinely fly across the globe, preventing evil and giving citizens a reason to live.

My pastor, Dr. Jeff Mooney, has pounded in our heads that there is a direct correlation between believe and action.  If this is true (and it certainly is) then there is only one conclusion: I think that I am God. 

The battle is not a new one.  It is the grasping of equality with God that caused Lucifer, Adam, Babel, and countless others to fall.  I think what disturbs me most about my disposition is that I am not usually pursuing equality; I am consistently under the impression that I have already attained it.

As one listens to this song, it may seem that I am overliteraturizing (English major- I’m allowed to make up words) this song- there’s really not that much there.  Well, I’m the author, ok, so I get to explain the intent of my writing!

The heart of the song is this: I’m an ugly, fragile, stuttering, underachieving 26-year-old who has essentially made every incorrect move in this 90-year chess game. Yet in my created reality I am able to imagine that my past, present and future choices are justifiable and sovereign. Our society is currently manufacturing multiple contexts in which self-made realities may flourish without question from the True world. Thanks to these contexts, my preconceptions have been constantly validated- so much so that when reality so rudely pokes its head in, I’m forced to respond with “righteous” anger. Much like the premise of The Matrix, I would rather be the god of my own universe than acknowledge and serve the true One.

I’d really like to stop.  Even more so, I’d like to remember that I’d like to stop.

Dream Tonight

I don’t have the strength to dream tonight

I don’t have the courage to tell you why

But I’d still like to sleep tonight

And it’d be real nice for my mind to be free

Close my eyes

There’s a present waiting for me

They dance, enclose and swirl around

Glares no child should know

Beaten for beauty and robbed for royalty

They were only helping you know

Be one of us now

Cuz I know what’s in a dream

I remember who is waiting for me

Predictions of my future

And pictures from my past

So I don’t have the strength to dream tonight

I don’t have the courage to tell you why

But I’d still like to sleep tonight

And it’d be real nice for my mind to be free

Jesus boy where are you?

Playgrounds drift away

Good riddance to an enemy

Infectious laugh enthrall

Hide it I won’t revisit

Black screen arrive

Cuz I know what’s in a dream

I remember who is waiting for me

The destruction of my future

And the demons from my past

So I don’t have the strength to dream tonight

I don’t have the courage to tell you why

But I’d still like to sleep tonight

And it’d be real nice for my mind to be free

Influence #1

As a child, I was plagued with nightmares.  I know that is quite unoriginal, but I think mine were different.  They were very dark.  And they were freakily real. 

You know those movies where the main character “wakes up” but is still in the dream- yeah that was the idea.  My nightmares didn’t take place in a far off land; they were IN my room. 

I can still vividly remember a dream when I was between four and five years old.  The devil ripped off the roof of my house and was in a tornado that threatened to… well, I guess I’m not sure what the point was and now that I’m writing it down it sounds pretty hokey, but I was 4 years old, alright!

When I was 6 I stupidly requested a bunk bed, in which I desired to sleep on top.  This meant at least 20 never-ending seconds would transpire between turning off the light and safety under the covers.  The ladder would often create the perfect opportunity for big foot, witches, and… I don’t know… the hunter from Bambi to take me down while I was unprepared for a fight.  Once under NFL covers, some giant would have the nerve to overtake my pulse and turn my heartbeat into ever-increasing footsteps. 

All of this can easily be seen as an imagination that was far too self-assured, but my first… ok, 18 years… of sleeping alone in a room were highly traumatic.

One memory haunts me still.  I had “waken up” to run to my parents room, when they appeared in my room.  The catch was, they had been turned to stone.  To add insult to stonery, they began to hover ominously about the room.  Again, it sounds pretty lame now, but for a 7 year old it was pretty intense.

Influence #2

An x-girlfriend of mine used to also have lifelike nightmares.  Although mine were derived from an out-of-work imagination, hers were an extension of her childhood.  For her, reminders of reality were plenty frightening.

Influence #3

Another x-girlfriend of mine claimed that she never dreamed. This concept led me to wonder, what might a mind fear remembering at night?

The Fusing

These concepts thrown together created the vibe of “Dream Tonight.” I wanted to put together images that ultimately led to my ultimate fear: a life that ends in destruction.  It made me think of so many people that must KNOW their future is cloaked in demise.  A person such as this quite possibly wants simply to free their mind of the truth that continues to haunt them.