False(B)logic

I decided not to go to bed tonight. Instead I’m staying up to watch the sunrise. I also don’t know why. Last night I played in the sprinklers in the park across the street. Tonight I’m not sleeping. I don’t know what I’ll end up doing tomorrow night.

Staying up gives me a lot of time. Time with which I only have myself for company. Distractions can only fill up so much time. Then? Then you are left staring into the abyss that is your soul? Did I like what I saw? I don’t even know if I recognized it. Nietzche once said “We are always in our own company”. A fact that many of us, myself included, often try to ignore.

It seems it is harder to be the person you wish you were and easier to be the person you are… A friend of mine was right after all. Am I content though? Should I be? I do not feel content. If there is any word to describe me at this point it is confused.

I am 25 years old, half way to 26. It does not seem so old does it? Yet, I feel old. Not in my bones, or in my mind. I am healthy in both of those respects. No, I feel old in my soul. As if a great weight has been placed upon it and is slowly extinquishing a flame that perhaps should have gone out a long time ago.

I do not want to be the clown forever. I do not want to be the guy passed over. I do not want to be the “harmless” one. Yet, it seems this is what I am. And I don’t know why. Everytime I try to be the person I once was, the person, who alone was content, who could and did spite the world, who was an island. I fail. It seems that person is no longer me. I guess my friend was right, but, then why do I feel so cheated? Why is it that those who are worthy, those who still have some shreds of their decency about them, torn cloaks of forgotten honor draped around them are the ones left out in the cold? While the other is getting everything he wants without ever being worth it?

Perhaps I have missed something along the way. When I was younger, as most youth I was frustrated. Frustrated and angry at the injustice that seemed to surround me. What could I do though? I begged and prayed for a cause that was clear. I hoped that I could see the world in black and white. In the end I only saw the shades of grey that are so common to us all. I read the books where the youth troubled about his place in the world discovers a great evil. There is no equivication on his part he embarks on his journey. And through it all he knows the rightness of his actions and these sustain him through the many ordeals that face him. At the end of his road he meets this evil, his monster, this terrible dragon. He conquers the monster and slays his dragon. Is that possible today? There are no more dragons and if there were it would not matter, for none of us have the ability to slay them. Someone said “That for evil to triumph, good men only need to nothing.” I think he was wrong. Evil triumphs regardless. The best anyone could hope for is to be lost before It does.

Is this pessimism? Are the shades that cover my eyes painted in such dark colors that I can no longer see the sunlight streaming through? Mayhaps. Perhaps not. Which is the problem, I lie on the cusp of the rest of my life and I still feel like that little boy, who I once was. Lost. I have no Dragon to slay, no journey to make, no friends and comrades to share it with. So what do I have? A friend was right about that too it seems…

So where am I? I am here. It is not much but it is what I have, and despite all that seems wrong in this world I am grateful for it. Unasked, we come into this world, and unbidden we leave it. Is that enough to build a life upon? Is it the firm foundation we hope it is? Again I do not know. I will make my way through it though hoping to take the best from it, avoid the worst and perhaps to share it with those who wish to do so with me. For now that is enough. For now that makes my flame flicker a little higher, to dance more merrily against the winds that buffet it and the wieghts that strain to stamp it out. Which in the end, I think is a good thing.

I think the last time I played in the sprinklers I was perhaps 6 or 7 years old. It had been too long.

P.S. All that hope about Alycia and I fell through, it’s over and for good this time. Things were going down the same road as they had before. I told her I wouldn’t do that again and so I ended it. Life moves on, and who needs women when you have a sprinkler system?

This is a funny story, or it would be if I wasn’t the butt of the entire thing. Two months ago, no three, three months ago I stopped by the local Masonic Lodge. For some odd reason, which I cannot now recall, I was interested in becoming one. I think my reasoning had something to do with conquering the world but I can’t be sure. Anyway, I apparently show up a few minutes too late to get the free meal and the application… Instead I get to stand out in the hall and talk to this old man with a funny hat, a staff, and an apron. Oh and some necklace or other. I was content to just get the application, they call it a petition, but this old guy, Steph, he keeps talking to me. I figure he’s just a lonely old guy with nothing to do and no one to do it with. I humor him for a while. Apparantly he wasn’t interested in small talk and introductions! I ended up listening to him talk about the Free Masons, the United States, and half a dozen other topics for over 45 minutes?! My patience at it’s end I finally say I have a meeting, or a study session (I made it up on the spot, I had to get out of there!) He asked for my phone number and where I worked. I gave them (much to my regret later). I probably would have given him my first-born if it guaranteed I’d be able to leave.

A couple weeks pass and I forget about it. Then the calls begin. Not a few calls. No, it was every other day and he left these five to 8 minute mesages. In all fairness the Masons should pay for my phone bill for the last two months. The gist of it all was that he has my petition and needs to know a time to give it to me. I get a hold of him and tell him that if he’d bring it by Borders the people there would make sure I got it. My luck being what it is he showed up while I was on the clock. He stumbles on over to me (I told you, Steph was old) and hands me a closed envelope. I thank him and tell him I’ll bring it to the next lodge meeting. Remember I am at work, on the clock, being paid to help customers, I’m wearing the badge and everything! None of that seems to bother Steph, he begins again to wax poetic about the Masons, he might of mentioned one or two new things but most of it I had already heard during our first encounter. It took me twenty odd minutes to get him out the door. I should have known then that the Mason’s were desperate, I mean really desperate. But, no, I blindly went along. Filled the application out and waited for the first Thursday of the upcoming month.

It rolls around and I show up at the lodge or temple, whatever it is they call it. Nothing but ancient men re-telling the glory days of the Spanish American War, WWI and WWII

So I back out, and look at the mess I’ve gotten myself into

Over ripened fruit hangs there from the vine. Chilled by an early frost it’s heaven to the small flies and bugs that hover over it. One last taste of summer before the fall