Crap. I’m going crazy.

I’m now convinced that my proper place in life is to be a writer or a photographer.
At this stage in the game, I’m a new car and a new, younger girlfriend away to seal the quarter-life crisis deal.

No, the truth of the matter is that I’ve been faced with a lot of trying to talk to the gods, or God. Either way, they aren’t talking back. And, much like anyone talking long enough into the ether, I’m hearing voices and seeing images that make no sense.

I love words. I study them and examine them. “Nice” has the alternate meaning of definite, accurate, or specific; additionally, its traditional meaning is fastidious and careful. Hope is a really interesting word. It used to mean trust, like trust in another. Now the debate, well, the eternal debate has been what hope even means…is it an expectation? Is it a prayer? The word “Hope” stems from the Germanic verb, hop, that is, “leaping expectation.”

To me, it’s always been someone leaping for That Which Cannot Be Held.

I was reminded today, twice, in fact, that the word Crisis originally meant “decision”. Rather, not a decision per se but more of an act of coming to a decision. Krisis was the original greek word. Its prefix, krie means “to distinguish.” Note, by the way, that it’s a verb. The act of doing it is the important part.

The modern interpretation of a crisis is a mess, chaos. (Chaos, by the way, originally didn’t mean a mess or a disaster, but was the formless entity from which everything stems. Think about it. It all makes sense.)

Time froze on me. That’s a happy way to phrase it (and if I’ve learned anything the past year at law school, or the past three years as a mess, it’s that rationalization and justification gets you everywhere, unless, of course, you want to be able to look yourself in the mirror). Things can be spun off into infinity and set up their own orbit and universe. But sooner or later the price must be paid. The price must always be paid. Stars always fail, especially ones placed there by fragile gods.

The truth of the matter is that I froze on time. Atrophy, apathy, apprehension, aversion. One of those, all of those. They’re all me.

back to the crisis/decision/sifting/verb-ing of it all. I was reminded twice today that crisis and decision and chaos and order and definition are all tied in together. I was told twice that I’m learning things that I should have known by now.
Is the important part learning them or the timing? Both? Either?

Spend long enough looking into the ether and talking to the gods and they might start whispering back, is all I’m saying.

C.S. Lewis believed that one needs to become a god in order to speak to the Gods. He believed that truth was found in words, rather, in one word. But that the Gods wouldn’t even bother with us unless we found the word and we found our faces. Heinlein believed that through grokking one became a (G)od. He believed that “as it was in the beginning, is now, and forever shall be.” John the Apostle believed that in the beginning there was Logos (and, of course, forever shall be). And Miyamoto Musashi believed that one needed to “do nothing which is of no use.”

I believe they were all onto the same thing.

There is a point, at least for a guy, where he believes that he missed something important in past relationships. He does this thing, where he goes back to nearly all of them to figure it out. I remember when I broke up with my college/high school girlfriend, I re-examined them all and tried to start some old and dead ones back up again. I believe that every guy does this, and continues to do this well into adulthood. I think it’s our way of trying to get to the heart of the matter; our way of finding the logos.

Lesson that should be learned by men over time: Bringing the dead back has never worked for anyone. ever.
Lesson rarely learned by men in general: you are not the exception.

I’ve been flirting with the idea. rather, it’s been there. And it’s the easiest way to get over something. bringing the dead back isn’t productive, but there’s an argument that flirting with ghosts is better than dealing with corporeal truths and at least there’s an unspoken understanding between the ghosts and one’s self. Truth typically offers very little buffer with respect to understanding unique circumstances and Truth has never been fun to take tequila shots with. The ghosts ramble and talk about nostalgia and ‘what ifs’. Truth, on the other hand, speaks once and once only. Truth is one of few words. But, oh, those words!

So, it seems that I have grown in what seems to be the smallest respect, and I have raised no dead and have been dealing almost exclusively with truth for the past week. Nostalgic dreams and melodic ‘what ifs’ have been contained to myself. So it’s just me and the whispering ether.

But I think my ears are getting sharper. And while I may not understand any or much of it – I can still look at myself in the mirror.