“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I’ve ever known.”
-Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters.

Amalgam. Collaboration. Combination. Hybrid. Fusion.

Adulteration. Debasement. Phony. Counterfeit. Pretender.

Is this all we get for our lives? I am nothing but a reflection of what I aspire to be. I am one of a generation of conceit, complaints, and irresponsibility. I ask for the government to be my nanny, father, mother, brother, sister, friend, and hero. I have no thoughts for my own. They are invalids, vegetables, corpses, hand-me-downs. They are nothing.
Is this all we get for our lives? I am everything I never wanted to be. I am the archetype for the entire human race. For everything I want to change. The prototype, the patriarch, the voice of my generation. The role model, the end all be all.
Is this all we get for our lives? In my endless dreams, I have endless wealth. My wallet is a bottomless pit, and it is all I can do to stop myself from crying: just think of all that I can buy. Give me a brand name, a stamp of approval. Let me fit in. Dull my senses. Alcohol, sex, the Internet. It’s not lazy, we’re Americans. I’m not drunk, I just drink socially. I am justified because; I am right because.
Is this all we get for our lives? Languages rot; our thoughts decay into nothing because we do not think. We do not know. Push repeat. Tick tock. Cynicism, greed, and laziness. Want ethic versus work ethic. Welcome to the neighborhood. I pledge allegiance to America myself. My Self, My God.

We are lost. I am lost.

I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am I am

Is this all we get for our lives? I know that I am part of the problem. I am disgusted with myself. I proudly proclaim that I am guilty by association. But is this all we get?

We are lost. I am lost.

And yet I have a newfound sense of clarity. A momentary lapse into reason. I know that the chaos will end. The endless waves of sound, sight, and feeling will one day give way to peace. Monotone, monochrome, and bleak, the world will pass away into Technicolor, beauty, and hope. I know this. The shadow proves the sunshine. The night is darkest before dawn.
I know that “after the fire, a still small voice.”

We are lost. I am lost.

I want to be lost in a sense of elation. Lost in hope. Lost in love. Lost in freedom. Lost in humor. Lost in knowledge. Lost in thought. Lost in prayer. Lost in worship. Lost in song. Lost in peace. Lost in individualism. Lost in fellowship. Hiding, I am protected inside the wounds of sacrifice. Drowning, I die to myself so that I may be reborn, greater than before.
This is what I have been given for my life. And I will lose myself in it. I will not waste a second.
This is the art of losing myself.


selah.

the pursuit of happiness

my eyes widen and I saw the finish line before me.
a feeling of elation swept over me
as I revel in
the memories of grandeur
and my countless accomplishments.

and as I cross life's finish line
and all its finality and joyous release,
a horrible question crept into my skull.

what was the point?

(showbread - "what to ask yourself before you die")

on top of bruised foundations

We're a nation full of dumbbells
Pulling nightshifts at the gym
We're a nation full of bookworm girls
Dumbing down to fall in love with them

We're a nation full of suspects
Whistling Dixie at the scene
We're a nation full of bad detectives
Selling clues to everyone we meet

We're a nation full of envy
Insecure and losing sleep
We're a nation full of jealous boyfriends
Driven by facts and history

We're a nation full of ivy
It's wall-to-wall-to-wall, all green
We're a nation full of sound byte blood cells
Bound in knots and swelling down the stream

We wrap bibles up in blankets
Just in case we're watched in sleep
But it's the slingshots underneath our pillows
That keep us calm and rested and relieved

'Cause we're a nation built on eggshells
Bandages and appleseeds
Attractive homes on top of bruised foundations
That come apart gradually
Before they're leveled completely

(Kevin Devine - "Whistlin' Dixie")

cotton crush

there's a microphone
picking every word up
and it will shut itself off
when it's sure that it's heard enough.

The quiet can scrape
All the calm from your bones.
But maybe it should.
Maybe we need to be hollowed.
To get up and grow,
And stop fucking around,
To kick off our braces and start straightening out.

Let's sift through the static
To find a simpler sound.
A simpler sound than the shit that's clouding our heads now.

(Kevin Devine - "Cotton Crush")

brinksmanship

"
      While I’m writing this, my mother calls to say my grandfather’s had a series of strokes. He’s unable to swallow, and his lungs are filling with fluid. A friend, maybe my best friend, calls to say he has lung cancer. My grandfather’s five hours away. My friend’s across town. Me, I have work to do.
      The waitress used to say, “What will you be doing when you’re old men?”
      I used to tell her, “I’ll worry about that when I get there.”
      If I get there.
      I’m writing this right on deadline.
      My brother-in-law used to call this behavior “brinksmanship,” the tendency to leave things until the last moment, to imbue them with more drama and stress and appear the hero by racing the clock.
      “Where I was born,” Georgia O’Keefe used to say, “and were and how I lived is unimportant.”
      She said, “It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of any interest.”

      I’m sorry if this all seems a little rushed and desperate.
      It is.

"

chuck palahniuk, stranger than fiction

a hole in fabric of my sanity

"Madness is entirely relative and perhaps comes and goes in frequent or infrequent bouts. Madness grows like a bubble, trapping the infected inside so that the uninfected can watch it all happen. This is madness. Or is madness the doorway through which we enter into freedom? Freedom might not specifically entail the game of “don’t get burned” or destroying one’s dinner on purpose, but such a flagrant disregard for creature comforts and our ideas of order help us to let go of that which does not matter in order to make more room for that which truly does. Certainly embracing pain and recklessness so thoroughly or the destruction of one’s money and material possessions isn’t at all necessary, but it does work to eliminate the fear of pain and poverty. Eventually, that which truly matters might be all that is in our minds before our lives bring us to the point where that which truly matters is literally all that we have, creating a convenient segue from madness into wisdom."
-Josh Dies