Gabrielle: "Killed another mosquito in my house today."
Donald: "Excellent. Show them what is what. (Death is what.)"
Donald: "Excellent. Show them what is what. (Death is what.)"
June 8, 2011
June 7, 2011
prayer journals
my old prayer journals are embarrassing to me now, neat shelves of notebooks filled with earnest cursive. they are like unanswered love letters.
sometime in my mid-teens i turned from silent prayers to written ones. it was easier to corral my thoughts on paper, as opposed to thinking them wordlessly into the air. easier to imagine them going somewhere. like a letter, popped into your mailbox. you don't see the receiver reading it, but you know they will. silent prayers began to seem absurd to me, like whispering thoughts into a mailbox and hoping someone hears, like speaking into a dead cellular phone.
i didn't think god ignored my thought prayers, but it was a lot easier to imagine him reading the written ones. also easier to track seeming answers to listed prayers, yes no maybe....i had a record of what i'd asked for, like a christmas list i could check off. did or did not receive. received rain check, gift card, card with money instead.
i don't read them now. they sit, abandoned ledgers of my faith. some of the entries are businesslike, bullet pointed. thank you for rain, for the passed test, please send more. sometimes the entries are long, pages and pages of feverish theological pondering, agonized recordings of painful occurrences. the drama of church camp.
the last of them all contains only twenty to thirty pages of writing. mania consumed my mind and changed the meaning of religion to me forever. i could never distinguish after that between god's suggestions and mania's. both came from somewhere else, it seemed, my brain a receiver and not an originator, though i know the mania, at least, was mine.
i was afraid to crack my bible open and look for messages after that. was it a higher power highlighting passages that seemed relevant, or merely mental illness? better to just walk away.
i've read the last journal a few time or two in the time that's passed since then. it's a trip. scribblings that go more and more frantic and uncontained. finally they exploded, pushing me out of my prayerful pages and into a new reality, godless and cold.
i live here now, and i'm not keen on returning to that other world. it's insulated, and reassuring. someone wanted me there, and i had a purpose. but i didn't notice until long afterward when the suggestions turned from rational to unbalanced, my insulated world shot through with lightnings of madness. i will never go back.
sometime in my mid-teens i turned from silent prayers to written ones. it was easier to corral my thoughts on paper, as opposed to thinking them wordlessly into the air. easier to imagine them going somewhere. like a letter, popped into your mailbox. you don't see the receiver reading it, but you know they will. silent prayers began to seem absurd to me, like whispering thoughts into a mailbox and hoping someone hears, like speaking into a dead cellular phone.
i didn't think god ignored my thought prayers, but it was a lot easier to imagine him reading the written ones. also easier to track seeming answers to listed prayers, yes no maybe....i had a record of what i'd asked for, like a christmas list i could check off. did or did not receive. received rain check, gift card, card with money instead.
i don't read them now. they sit, abandoned ledgers of my faith. some of the entries are businesslike, bullet pointed. thank you for rain, for the passed test, please send more. sometimes the entries are long, pages and pages of feverish theological pondering, agonized recordings of painful occurrences. the drama of church camp.
the last of them all contains only twenty to thirty pages of writing. mania consumed my mind and changed the meaning of religion to me forever. i could never distinguish after that between god's suggestions and mania's. both came from somewhere else, it seemed, my brain a receiver and not an originator, though i know the mania, at least, was mine.
i was afraid to crack my bible open and look for messages after that. was it a higher power highlighting passages that seemed relevant, or merely mental illness? better to just walk away.
i've read the last journal a few time or two in the time that's passed since then. it's a trip. scribblings that go more and more frantic and uncontained. finally they exploded, pushing me out of my prayerful pages and into a new reality, godless and cold.
i live here now, and i'm not keen on returning to that other world. it's insulated, and reassuring. someone wanted me there, and i had a purpose. but i didn't notice until long afterward when the suggestions turned from rational to unbalanced, my insulated world shot through with lightnings of madness. i will never go back.
June 5, 2011
Quote of the Day
"Define 'gotcha question.' Can words have retroactive definitions? Because the current working definition would seem to be, 'Any question to which Sarah Palin flubs the answer.'"
~ Dan Savage
~ Dan Savage
June 4, 2011
Quote of the Day
"RI Dept of Vital Records sent me a “Certificate of Live Birth” rather than a “Birth Certificate”. Now worried I might be from Kenya."
~ Aaron M.
~ Aaron M.
March 1, 2011
February 7, 2011
Quote of the Day
"So I was watching The X-Files earlier and this guy kept repeating, 'We are not who we are.' I'm sure Ke$ha would disagree."
~ Lizzy
~ Lizzy
January 3, 2011
Quote of the Day
"My goal in life is to have a fairly lengthy Wikipedia page by the time I'm forty."
~ Michael
~ Michael
January 2, 2011
Quote of the Day
"D'you wanna play Advanced Tic-Tac-Toe?......It's where I get three moves and get to go first every time."
~ Donald
~ Donald
January 1, 2011
Quote of the Day
"Yankees don't know about eating black eyed peas on New Year's for good luck. This is why they always start the year with such shitty weather and can't even grow strawberries until June."
~ Bill
~ Bill
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