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| | "It's a long way to heaven, it's closer to Harrissburg
But that's still a long way from the place where we are
and if heaven exists it's a pair of train tracks
and the devil is the railroad car" - Ritter
I used to be dissappoionted at these lyrics and the rest. I breathed them today, and almost nothing else, while continuously rewording in them what I finally understood:
One, we are unhappy where we are; we want more; we discover an honest need to seek. Two, our best happiness comes from loving home, attending to our momentary and particular allies, devoting ourselves to our familiar and intimate holdings. The railways and journeys explain themselves carefully and perfectly once you understand this.
Maybe his meaning is uninteded, but this thought is something I can
only see in him, Hugo, and Tolstoi. You understand it best in their
political dealings--in how easily their characters could have associated
with either side. Their temperaments land them loosely, unimportantly on one side, which does little to influence who they are, because both seeds are the two parts of us, wickedly united.
The scene? Notions of far-aways forsake
our divine endowments--("possibly everything; actually nothing")--but still
we can't stay
here, like this. We are suspended, which can possibly teach us true and natural happiness.
We can't go; we can't stay; so Christ called us out. This thought fell onto the side of "very profound Christian thoughts"--the side on which "Let not your left hand know what your right hand doeth" and "Jesus saw him and loved him" lies-- which is very near to the "very stupid Christian thoughts" side--on which completely different doctrines sounding about the same effervesce pathetically.
On closer look, I never chose to be a "believer" or "disbeliever," but twenty years of life has revealed higher mysteries than those contradictions which usually excite and incapacitate me. I believe because of this, I just don't know what.
I wanted to ask Pastor Steven why his eyes were like that, tired and swollen; what it is he is bearing; and why he can't speak of it. I remember how he told me all I need to know: to care for those with less than me, to hold accountable those above me, and to love deeply those closest to me. He never said it, but from all men like himself I realized how wisdom, not love, protects us, but only wisdom can love correct, and not the other way. For living in this incompassionate world of benevolence, complex but not complicated, to which I am called, I wanted his prayer and time; I coveted the strength he didn't have; I wished, hoped, prayed, doubted, decided. But he is like me.
I guess digesting half of Anna Karenina in two days made me notice things. I really just want to avoid three hard days of economics studying, want to avoid thinking about the events nearing me I shouldn't think about too much, want Mike to bring back icing for the cake I made, snowball fights, raquetball, marriage and sex, the best kind of drunkenness, wall street journal and more important work after that, reading Middlemarch for fun and Locke to figure out he bullshits, chances to learn any period of history or any poem...
I learned to not write angry replies to letters to editor today. I learned how gold prices influence the futures-spread of two new firms. I also did three really stupid things, lied twice, and hurt at least two people.
There are thoughts so much more intimate I don't want to write, don't want to admit for more than a second, can't even say to my journal, and until I can say these I feel stupid at the end of any other writing. Because we can write ourselves into hell, but erasing doesn't bring heaven.
| | | Posted 12/9/2007 9:14 PM - 37 views - 1 comments
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