Pilgrim Talk

O thou that settest out upon The Path, false is the Phantom that thou seekest. When thou hast it thou shalt know all bitterness, thy teeth fixed in the Sodom-Apple. Thus hast thou been lured along That Path, whose terror else had driven thee far away. O thou that stridest upon the middle of The Path, no phantoms mock thee. For the stride's sake thou stridest. Thus art thou lured along That Path, whose fascination else had driven thee far away. O thou that drawest toward the End of The Path, effort is no more. Faster and faster dost thou fall; thy weariness is changed into Ineffable Rest. For there is not Thou upon That Path: thou hast become The Way.


--Aleister Crowley

Love

This morning I looked back and wondered what brought me through some of the bad times of the last three and a half years. Some of it was absolutely terrible, and I find myself pinching myself because things have changed.

I remember now, coming out of the monastery. It was early winter, and a desolate time. My two best friends came from college to visit me. They slept in my bed. I slept on the floor, and then one of us exchanged places at around six in the morning. I remember, one of them got sick on Kentucky Fried Chicken, and remember us eating a mince, not a mincemeat pie.

That was a time when I was enfolded by love. Love was very strong in the midst of darkness. The last few years and all of my life are filled with times. Love sustains me. Love upholds us.

What Matters

After so many days something should be written. And we are in the midst of Christmas. So much has happened, and so much more will be happening. I feel like I ought to write to writers, or write about writing. It's the holidays, and I've a chance to rest for the first time in a while, so I've been slow on the end of calling up Reflections and working on just how we want to publish this novel.

What is on my mind as I prepare to be a writer who has his works on paper where people can read them? As I enter this world? I'd be a fool not to consider what I am doing this for, or to whom I am writing. I think of this everyday. There are some people who write and write just to explore their feelings. They are their own audience and it is rather like talking to hear yourself talk. I do talk to hear myself talk. And I sculpt for the pleasure it gives me. Those things are mine. But writing is to be shared.

I think for everything I write, I scribble in the hope that it does someone good, someone I don't know. That is a matter of faith. My family will never read a thing I write. Or they won't understand it. My friends are no different from any other writer's friends. Most of them will never read me either. It must be that I am writing to someone I cannot see. Someone I trust is there.

I was riding the bus out of downtown, thinking of this the other day and stringing together events for a story. I thought, "That is it. Everything I tell is more or less true. In a way there isn't a thing I haven't written that has happened either to me or around me." But when I am telling a tale, I am never in it. It must be that to make an event relevant, at least as far as I am concerned, it must cease to be relevant only to me. And to a large degree removing myself from it, turning it into fiction, makes it true. And makes it matter.

Has It Really Been A Year?

I can hardly believe it, but we have been here a year now. I want to thank you. Friends, hard core readers, the folks who stop by now and again, inspirations. A year later, much to my surprise, the broomstick is still flying. I owe it to you, and I thank you. This year has been so full of adventures, twists and turns and you all have been there for me in them. May all of your Christmases be white-- unless you live in Australia-- and may all of us have more joy, more surprise, and more happiness than we've had in the year before!

Hell yeah, bitch!

Over

Often what ought to be the day of rejoicing becomes the day of... what next? I know what's next. So many things are next. I am open to so much, but now, after I have come through all the things involved in going back so to school, and after I've come through this whole year blessed, I can only lay in bed and sleep.

In a few weeks, new challenges will be beging. But that is not today, and all the old things are gone. At last, this uphill and often joyous struggle is over.

Wednesday Night

Frema,
thank you for your card and your love. Mom loved the card. No, just joking. Sooooo joking. I have to call you, but as happens, I've lost your number. I swear I'm not slighting you!

The end of the semester has something to do with this: this exhaustion bordering on madness. I feel a little mad. In both senses of the word. Today, only a few hours ago, I was at the height of study, enraptured, triumphant. Now, I am tired, chomping at the bit for tomorrow night when my first semester ends. I have come through so much, thank God, but I'm feeling insane more than anything else. I've gained so much but I have lost a lot too.

One my ex-best friends.... Yes, one of them, there are too many to count now, is getting married. I heard this third hand. Who would marry the bitch? i wondered. But the world is full of bitches and they're all slipping rings on each others fingers. This morning I awoke from a dream about another son-of-a-bitch who had been my friend, who had loved me and I had loved and the dream was so vivid. Well, he has found a bitch to love him as well.

Now that all the real issues are put aside. Now that everyday isn't a struggle and I don't have to be afraid of the very real issues I have been afraid of, my heart is free to turn to knitpicking worries, to questions of why when all these dreadful people can find someone to spend their whole lives with-- exclusively-- I cannot even find someone I'd want to spend the day with. The people I loved most are gone from me, and, what's more, I know I don't really want them to return. All this day faces and memories have haunted me, what I gave up and what I lost to move to a place that is better than where I was before.

So many are gone, but none have come to replace them.

Grace Dances

"I will adorn and I will be adorned."
"Amen."
"I will be united and I will unite."
"Amen."
"I have no house and i have houses."
"Amen."
"I have no temple and I have temples."
"Amen."
"I am a lamp to you who see me."
"Amen."
"I am a mirror to you who perceive me."
"Amen."
"I am a door to you who knock on me."
"Amen."
"I am a way to you, you passerby."
"Amen."

Fourth Night, Fourth Light

It is the fourth night of Hannukah. It is also Shabos. By five-thirty, when the sun is going down, the little altar is full of going light. What does it mean? As the semester ends and I look back on everything I've come through, and all that I know I will face in the year to come? So many thoughts in my head. So many feelings. The surprise at seeing Adam Rector again. Surprise! Surprise! From my driver's ed class, all grown up and sporty, and it turns out he is the son of one my classmates. The surprise that after years of being broke I have money and a bank account and at least for a little while won't have to worry about poverty. So many changes, so many things we have spiraled through. We, yes, I was never alone. Today at Mass I look around. This is what I always wanted. God has given me what I always wanted. Could it really have been a year ago I wasn't part of Saint James's, that I was turning my back on a part of my life that I didn't want, that didn't want me.

As the candles burn this is all on my mind. This, and so much more.

What do these nights mean as the wax melts down?

Light increasing, my God, light increasing.

Dreams and Writing

I need to keep a book of my dreamings. Now the first snows have fallen, the light is lessened. Advent approaches with all the festivals of light. Final Harvest and the Days of the Dead have ended. Soon the time of new birth will come. We are in the dark time, the quiet time, the belly of the year.

I dream and meditate on people who do not come to mind every day. At least not to the front of my mind. When often I say there is no one worth thinking of back in high school that isn't true. The fact is I could never go to a high school reunion because all the people I would want to see would never come. But of late I have it in mind to write a book that I could dedicate to those people. A Delores Smythe, a Matthew Crabtree or Andy Dyko. Stephen Donnelly. I write their names here so that I know for sure there is some place where they are recorded in the Internet world. I would dedicate something to them because they made those years good for me when everyone else was senseless.