TheUnexpected2nd's Xanga

An Entry from the Not-Quite Underground

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 02:03:53 GMT

Sometimes I come here when I feel like there's no where else to go, a sort of an escape I guess, or maybe the final wall down a dead end street. Writing here is maybe me shouting in the dark or maybe its me banging my hands against the wall and denying its staying power. I came back here tonight and noticed that I still had Amy listed as one of my chief interests. Its been two months, as of last week, since she broke up with me. That fact still leaves me feeling lost. Some times people feel like they have things all together. Those times don't happen to me very often. Tonight it hits me harder then usual how untogether I am. I guess its okay. But a lot of times I think I'm kind of grown up or something, then I look inside myself, or hear a song, or see a picture, and my heart tugs and my emotions are a shambles and its just like those highschool days and I know I'll never grow up. Right now my mind is telling me to make an analogy to Luke Skywalker, but I'm pretty sure that isn't called for. Nothing makes sense. God makes sense. God is in charge. God has an awesome, beautiful plan. God just sighs at our bumbles and smiles when we ask Him why. He knows. He has it all together. But I'm too small to see the dots or the lines connecting them. Why am I happening? Why is Life happening to me? Living is so much like dying, hate feels so much like love, crying is similar to laughter, fear is a lot like hope. Everything is balanced on such thin lines. Shades of gray, everywhere. And then, suddenly, they turn shockingly black and white, and I find myself on the wrong side of the line. Reacting and reacting, never getting away from anything, turning the whole world into some sort of a merry-go-round. Everything comes back. History repeats itself, except always on a larger scale. The same things happen. And then God raises His hand, and something different, new, and amazing happens. And then, the world regroups, like ants in an anthill, and goes on, like nothing ever happened. Sometimes even we forget that anything happened. But it DID happen, and it WILL happen. And that, is why we hold onto the lighter shades of gray in the years of mundanity, so that when the flashes of brilliance, the seconds of beauty, happen, we are the right side of the line.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 01:40:55 GMT

The little boy sits on the street corner. So patient, such wide eyes innocently accusing the world of being beautiful. Falsely. Or maybe that very urgent belief verifies itself. Maybe the crumpled child waiting fruitlessly in the gutter is more then a scar on the marred face of the ruthless ages, more then a symbol of Sin's united filth. Maybe it is a challenge to that filth.

The girl cries from her third story apartment. Sobbing because she is thirteen, and sobbing because she has a right to do so. Our useless priveledges are our most useful, because they are with us forever, who would dare deny us a right that does nothing? And yet it does something. Maybe in our vain struggle we defy vanity and retain personhood. The bruises on her arms are not fair, the blood is not right. The sun still shines, and somewhere someone says "Today is glorious!" and believes their own presumption. Are they liars, or thieves of another man's right to die in a world devoid of laughter, or are they gods and kings, building small cities, setting up little lamps, defying the undefiable and creating reality from the pretend?

The man is twenty two and he is running. He does not cry, because tears suggest a limit, no matter how great, to pain, and his has none. His empty eyes plead for the pain to rip his chest apart, but in vast cruelty, his body refuses to let him down. His running means nothing, it has no goal but to obtain the fullness of emptiness. But despite himself, he gets somewhere, and in that somewhere the sun is shining. He discovers that what he lost is not unretrievable, and he breathes. Some say he is a fool, but maybe he has discovered the only thing a man can do.

Maybe. Or maybe not

Writing in the Sand

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 17:50:29 GMT

The sand shifts softly
I am staring at the waves
Amazed, afraid in their silence
The moon speaks, so calmly
Ocean answers, desperately, returning to her feet
And I watch the romance of the Night

You don't notice, but I see
Your eyes reflected brightly in the sky
My star fades, til he's next to yours
Urgency steadies my hand
And for the thousandth time
I write your name in the sand

Bleeding to be alive, reality, relevance
Forcing my demons back into their box
They cackle, waiting, so patient
Almost snap, but your smile says I can breathe
The sea crashes around your name
Your star says these miles disappear

And I stoop again, tracing three letters
The beach, the waves, the sky,
Reveal these lines, scored deeply inside
All of a reflection of this little, frail truth
Beautiful in its smallness, inside of me
Beating all for you

The dream

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 21:38:10 GMT

He jerks awake with a start, the sight of the cold white ceiling stealing the smile from his lips. The frantic feeling. He's still holding the pencil in his clenching fist, grabs for his phone, irrationaly, eternally expectant, eternally disappointed. "Relax, Buddy, stay calm, breathe." He leaps from his perch on the top bunk, sighing sharply at the pain in his ankles. Such a long fall. His textbooks fall with him, in a clattering shower around him. The roomie glances up from his laptop with a slightly raised eyebrow, then re-immerses himself in his happy little world. The textbooks remind him of guilt. "Studying," he smirks disdainfully at himself in the mirror over his sink as he randomly runs his razor over the left side of his face. She can't call him, why does he always dream that she will, that she'll be there. "Its against The Rules. Damn The Rules, isn't there such a thing as liberation?" He glances sideways as he gallops down the stairs, someone has stepped on the cup of beer (or urine, he could never be quite sure which it was) sitting in the stairwell next to the 4th floor door. It has splashed on the wall. He sprints through the door to the outside world, the fading sunlight slanting off car roofs into his eyes in tired defiance of something. He slows to a walk. People everywhere. He feels so small again, they each have their worlds just like his, their world shaking fears, problems, all consuming triumphs (he wanted one of those, hadn't had one in a while),shallow jokes, empty smiles. "Do any of them matter, do I?" Had he woken up at all, or was this all just another dream, a fake, squawking, eternal farce of a dream plastered across his minds eye, stealing everything by giving him hope. Would this dream eternally rob him of her? He grimaces at the possibility. To hell with philosophising, how does it help him, or anyone, and yet, how can he stop and just breathe? Is that better, is their way better, are the zombies around him free? And he sighs slowly, dispairingly, because he doesn't know. And yet, it is not dispair, for he knows something. He knows that he loves her.

The End

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:04:43 GMT

Grayson walked out of the shop trying to lick the ice cream out of his beard, hold onto his dissolving cone, keep Charlie from chasing pigeons into Ol' Bart's Antique Shop, and steal licks from his cone. He was very happy. Then he looked up and was deeply tired, and horrified. Deeply tired because Karl was in the middle of the street, and horrified because so was a bright yellow taxi cab. Dropping the cone, releasing Charlie's hand, and for a moment even forgetting the delectable desert in his facial hair, he dove into the road. Hitting Karl at the knees he flipped him over and out of the cab's way. There was a sickening crunching noise, and a flopping flapping like an ostrich on the rail road tracks. Karl thought this whole thing very convenient. Charlie thought it was hillarious when the flock of pigeons crashed through the antique shop. And as Grayson lay, bleeding the last part of himself out onto the street, he smiled up at the sky. It was good, how could it not be? This was chocolate ice cream in his moustache!

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 20:07:54 GMT

The phone that Grayson was holding that was not his, began to ring.

"Yo."

"Is he dead?"

"Oh very."

"Any complications."

"Nup."

"Good. Meet you tomorrow."

"Aight."

Grayson hung up and chuckled over his shoulder at the owner of the phone that he was holding. He was far behind and looked depressed.

A little boy was standing on the sidewalk crying.

A fat man in a business suit was puffing along, waving a breifcase officiously to himself and muttering under his breathe in squeaky undertones.

An old woman with funny glasses was shouting grufly at a girl with blonde streaks in her hair who had been spitting on passersby with glee in her heart.

Grayson slowed down and stared at the little boy. He stopped next to him and continued to stare. "Hello, my name is Grayson and I am lost, can you help me, you look very wise."

The little boy stopped crying. "My name is Charles Wilhelm Garfunkle the Third. But I'm actually really just Charlie. I'm not lost, but my Mommy is."

"Well, men like ourselves, who are either lost, or have mommy's lost, have only one thing they can properly do."

"Wats that Missder Grayson?"

"Buy Ice cream. Pastries would be good too, but there's not a pastry store around, so Ice Cream works."

"FINE!"

"Fine."

The two little boys, one with and one without a beard, held hands and walked across the street into Buffy's Ice Cream Shack.

Karl, the man who was chasing the crazy man in the yellow bathrobe, no longer knew where he was. He was a total nervous wreck, without a plan, which was a first for him. But then again, today had been a day of many firsts. Crowned by this guy who had been where the guy they were supposed to knock off had been supposed to be. The Man in the Yellow Bathrobe. He was scary, plus he'd stolen Karl's phone, somehow, somewhere back there in the confusion after Ratchet died. Karl had never in all his life hated anyone like he hated the Man in the Yellow Bathrobe, and he had never in all his life been so unable to do anything about it.

The Time

Wed, 16 May 2007 00:56:52 GMT

Grayson was wearing a yellow bathrobe and sprinting through the city like a gazelle. He was running away. Away from the man behind him it is true, but also from himself, from the dark cloud that he saw dogging his footsteps, and from the fear that was gripping his very soul, tying it in nauseating knots of confusion. He did not fear the man behind him, he did not fear repurcusions or confusion, he did not fear slipping on a banana peel and randomly dying on the sidewalk (though he did think of it). He was not afraid of men or death. But he was very afraid. Afraid only, of himself.

The Beginning

Thu, 03 May 2007 19:36:44 GMT

It took about 3 hundredths of a second for the terror of seeing a dead body in his bathroom to morph into relief that it was not Grayson and then return to cold stark terror in Richard's mind. He hesitated between screaming, throwing things, and calling the police, and then he called Grayson. "Hey, yeah, this is Grayson's phone, and, well, Grayson is actually, is actually not heere right now, yeah, so preetty much, yeah." Richard sat down suddenly and heavily. There was a small splatter of blood on the shower curtain, which was lying in the tub, but there was no visible wound on the corpse, which lay face upward. It was a handsome face, with good nature and arrogance warring for dominance, but there was a look of astonishment stamped clearly on the features. He had been a strong man, but he was now very dead. As Richard ran from the house, he called Trevor.

Escalation

Wed, 02 May 2007 15:17:49 GMT

Richard recieved a text from Grayson at 2:37 PM while he was in Dr. Matthews's Communications class. "Hv sml prblm wld lke yr hlp."

Richard disliked texts, they were ridiculous and took too long to write. As a matter of principle he never replied to any of Grayson's messages.

Grayson was walking out through the Entrance when he sent the message, two minutes later his phone was smashed by a fall on the sidewalk.

At 3:47 PM Richard walked calmly into their room, singing a quiet song under his breath. He heard the water running and called to Grayson.

When there was no response, he walked over and peered into the bathroom. There he discovered The Man in the Bathroom.

steps

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 15:25:09 GMT

The day had begun for Grayson just like any other day, strecthing with eyes tightly closed, smiling at the sun on his face, then opening them suddenly, screaming at the clock and dashing about, grabbing irrelevant articles of clothing and singing irrelevant song. It had begun with Grayson thinking his everyday thoughts, far from thoughts of The Man in the Bathroom. Grayson was scattered, friendly, insightful, lanky, seemingly harmless, somewhat absurd, and totally responsible for The Man in the Bathroom.