I've been waiting

i think i need to hear Someone or someone
say something that i've been needing to hear
and i don't know what it is, exactly
but i figure i'll know when i hear it.

*warning: truckload of depression ahead*

I suppose putting God first is far more than regularly going for church and cell
and serving.
and refraining from spewing vulgarities
and being a good boy.
I could be the whitewashed tomb that Paul accused the pharisees of being.
But i've come to realize, time and time again, and painfully
that i am but naught
the difference now is that i can't seem to move on from there
i can't. i just can't.
i cannot hear, i cannot see
but i can feel that something is wrong.
i want to run away and i want to be chased after
I want to be wanted, and I want to want
i want to be accepted unconditionally, and at the same time i feel like disowning myself, if i could
i want to sing and dance, but there's no music in the background.
i really want someone around right now.
but really, there's nobody. there really isn't.
i'd like to sit down with someone and say no more than nothing, for an hour
and know that even if it was an hour more of silence, he or she would still be there
i wish somebody could see the look in my eyes, because i think it shows
or hear the emptiness of my words
i think i am hollow.
and there is
nobody

as of now

but I suppose God will come
He always does
He always will

i just wish i could go to Him

5 minutes ago, i said
"if anyone says the words i'm longing to hear,
i'll be his or her best friend"
i remember my best friend leaving 7 years ago
and now he's different, and so am I
against all my promises, and all my guarantees, we have changed
and again and again, we change
maybe it would be nice if we made a 360 degree change
and find ourselves back to where we once were
but i suppose we will not.

so i'll have to strap on my smile
and rehearse my laughter
because i suppose it would be wrong
to burden my friends when they have done nothing.
they have done nothing.

time machine

i think it's time to say goodbye to old friends who could have been friends

i wish i could undo whatever i've done that has ended this way

part of me wants to say 'ha! look here, i've made it'

and part of me wishes i could just say hi in a vacuum

but maybe one day we will meet and laugh

and smile and let the past be

the past

By the way if you haven't noticed, the lines get shorter and shorter. makes me think of some stupid finance graph thingy.

i wonder what it means

to live for others

to think others better than yourself

it makes me think that you retain some notion of your self;

that life does not have to pass by in a blur

that time does not have to be a tyrant

i miss getting goosebumps from hearing 1 riff

i want to feel the sea again, and the oblivion to the breakers and surf

I want to pray, for hours on end, and the foot of my bed

i used to do these things, but now i can't

living is for others now, and my name is just 3 words

i wish i could make all this go away, or just go away myself

but i can't

because i cannot be selfish

i cannot have a day to myself

and i'm afraid i may

lose sight of what truly matters.

after this, i am going to tell wawa that i love her

Came across this. please read it. and maybe someday something will happen and all this will stop.

"Yes, I Gas Dogs and Cats for a Living. I'm an Animal Control officer in a very small town in central North Carolina. I'm in my mid thirties, and have been working for the town in different positions since high school.

There is not much work here, and working for the county provides good pay and benefits for a person like me without a higher education. I'm the person you all write about how horrible I am.

I'm the one that gasses the dogs and cats and makes them suffer. I'm the one that pulls their dead corpses out smelling of Carbon Monoxide and throws them into green plastic bags. But I'm also the one that hates my job and hates what I have to do.

First off, all you people out there that judge me, don't. God is judging me, and I know I'm going to Hell. Yes, I'm going to hell. I wont lie, it's despicable, cold, cruel and I feel like a serial killer. I'm not all to blame, if the law would mandate spay and neuter, lots of these dogs and cats wouldn't be here for me to gas. I'm the devil, I know it, but I want you people to see that there is another side to me the devil Gas Chamber man.

The shelter usually gasses on Friday morning.

Friday's are the day that most people look forward to, this is the day that I hate, and wish that time will stand still on Thursday night. Thursday night, late, after nobody's around, my friend and I go through a fast food line, and buy 50 dollars worth of cheeseburgers and fries, and chicken. I'm not allowed to feed the dogs on Thursday, for I'm told that they will make a mess in the gas chamber, and why waste the food.

So, Thursday night, with the lights still closed, I go into the saddest room that anyone can every imagine, and let all the doomed dogs out out their cages.

I have never been bit, and in all my years doing this, the dogs have never fought over the food. My buddy and I, open each wrapper of cheeseburger and chicken sandwich, and feed them to the skinny, starving dogs.

They swallow the food so fast, that I don't believe they even taste it. There tails are wagging, and some don't even go for the food, they roll on their backs wanting a scratch on their bellys. They start running, jumping and kissing me and my buddy. They go back to their food, and come back to us. All their eyes are on us with such trust and hope, and their tails wag so fast, that I have come out with black and blues on my thighs.. They devour the food, then it's time for them to devour some love and peace. My buddy and I sit down on the dirty, pee stained concrete floor, and we let the dogs jump on us. They lick us, they put their butts in the air to play, and they play with each other. Some lick each other, but most are glued on me and my buddy.

I look into the eyes of each dog. I give each dog a name.

They will not die without a name.

I give each dog 5 minutes of unconditional love and touch.

I talk to them, and tell them that I'm so sorry that tomorrow they will die a gruesome, long, torturous death at the hands of me in the gas chamber.

Some tilt their heads to try to understand.

I tell them, that they will be in a better place, and I beg them not to hate me.

I tell them that I know I'm going to hell, but they will all be playing with all the dogs and cats in heaven.

After about 30 minutes, I take each dog individually, into their feces filled concrete jail cell, and pet them and scratch them under their chins. Some give me their paw, and I just want to die. I just want to die. I close the jail cell on each dog, and ask them to forgive me. As my buddy and I are walking out, we watch as every dog is smiling at us and them don't even move their heads. They will sleep, with a full belly, and a false sense of security.

As we walk out of the doomed dog room, my buddy and I go to the cat room.

We take our box, and put the very friendly kittens and pregnant cats in our box. The shelter doesn't keep tabs on the cats, like they do the dogs.

As I hand pick which cats are going to make it out, I feel like I'm playing God, deciding whose going to live and die.

We take the cats into my truck, and put them on blankets in the back.

Usually, as soon as we start to drive away, there are purring cats sitting on our necks or rubbing against us.

My buddy and I take our one way two hour trip to a county that is very wealthy and they use injection to kill animals.

We go to exclusive neighborhoods, and let one or two cats out at a time.

They don't want to run, they want to stay with us. We shoo them away, which makes me feel sad.

I tell them that these rich people will adopt them, and if worse comes to worse and they do get put down, they will be put down with a painless needle being cradled by a loving veterinarian. After the last cat is free, we drive back to our town.

It's about 5 in the morning now, about two hours until I have to gas my best friends.

I go home, take a shower, take my 4 anti-anxiety pills and drive to work.. I don't eat, I can't eat. It's now time, to put these animals in the gas chamber. I put my ear plugs in, and when I go to the collect the dogs, the dogs are so excited to see me, that they jump up to kiss me and think they are going to play.

I put them in the rolling cage and take them to the gas chamber. They know. They just know. They can smell the death.. They can smell the fear. They start whimpering, the second I put them in the box. The boss tells me to squeeze in as many as I can to save on gas. He watches. He knows I hate him, he knows I hate my job. I do as I'm told. He watches until all the dogs, and cats (thrown in together) are fighting and screaming. The sounds is very muffled to me because of my ear plugs. He walks out, I turn the gas on, and walk out.

I walk out as fast as I can. I walk into the bathroom, and I take a pin and draw blood from my hand. Why? The pain and blood takes my brain off of what I just did.

In 40 minutes, I have to go back and unload the dead animals. I pray that none survived, which happens when I overstuff the chamber. I pull them out with thick gloves, and the smell of carbon monoxide makes me sick. So does the vomit and blood, and all the bowel movements. I pull them out, put them in plastic bags.

They are in heaven now, I tell myself. I then start cleaning up the mess, the mess, that YOU PEOPLE are creating by not spay or neutering your animals. The mess that YOU PEOPLE are creating by not demanding that a vet come in and do this humanely. You ARE THE TAXPAYERS, DEMAND that this practice STOP!

So, don't call me the monster, the devil, the gasser, call the politicians, the shelter directors, and the county people the devil. Heck, call the governor, tell him to make it stop.

As usual, I will take sleeping pills tonight to drown out the screams I heard in the past, before I discovered the ear plugs. I will jump and twitch in my sleep, and I believe I'm starting to hallucinate.

This is my life. Don't judge me. Believe me, I judge myself enough."

All of my life

In every season

You are still God

I have a reason to sing

I have a reason to worship

i wander

came back from a dive trip and i got to see stuff that i never saw before, even in the rather hopeless Tioman (yes, i think that once paradise island is sadly quite a gone case, thanks to pollution, commercialism, and basically the idiotic human race)

so now i'm wondering what about me gets so happy seeing a turtle. I saw 2. there's definitely a lot of other stuff that would look way cooler than a turtle (like the nurse shark i saw) but it's really something bout turtles that just gets me. i managed to touch 1 too! yeah i'm part of the idiotic human race, not supposed to molest any turtles. but anyway, i stroked it's shell and rubbed it's foot and it didn't even give a crap about me. i think that's what i like so much about them. the way they go about their stuff, looking for food, despite the fact that there are monsters 5 times the size of them (monsters = us divers), despite the fact that their environment is pretty much like shit, they still seem to be in their own world, oblivious to what's going on around them.

talk about a good analogy for faith huh

now i'm thinking it's kinda sad.

i see other divers who have been doing it for years and decades, and i guess they're probably in love with the sea.

with the denizens of the sea, with the wonder and mystery of the sea, but despite all these they probably might never realise any truth about the Creator of the sea.

and i daresay if they knew there was a Creator who single-handedly designed all the wonderful intricacies, the myriad of colours and menagerie of mysteries that are contained underwater

i daresay they'd fall at His feet, and worship Him, without even hearing about the love Jesus.

for old times' sake

'I had been working on a play called Polaroids that year. It was the story of one man's life from birth to death, each scene delivered through a monologue with other actors silently acting out parts behind the narrator as he walks the audience through his life journey. In the scene I had written a few nights before, I had the man fighting with his wife. They were experiencing unbearable tension after losing a son in a car accident the year before. I knew in my heart they were not going to make it, that Polaroids would include a painful divorce that showed the ugliness of separation. But I changed my mind. After talking with Paul I couldn't do it. I wondered what it would look like to have the couple stick it out. I got up and turned on my computer. I had the lead character in my play walk into the bedroom where his wife was sleeping. I had him kneel down by her and whisper some lines:


What great gravity is this that drew my soul toward yours?

What great force, that though I went falsely, went kicking, went disguising myself to earn your love, also disguised, to earn your keeping, your resting, your staying, your will fleshed into mine, rasped by a slowly revealed truth, the barter of my soul, the soul that I fear, the soul that I loathe, the soul that: if you will love, I will love. I will redeem you, if you will redeem me? Is this our purpose, you and I together to pacify each other, to lead each other toward the lie that we are good, that we are noble, that we need not redemption, save the one that you and I invented of our own clay?

I am not scared of you, my love, I am scared of me.

I went looking, I wrote out a list, I drew an image, I bled a poem of you. You were clever, but I was smarter, perhaps the only one smarter, the only one able to lead you. You see, love, I did not love you, I loved me. And you were only a tool that i used to fix myself, to fool myself, to redeem myself. And though I have taught you to lay your lily hand in mine, I walk alone, for I cannot talk to you, lest you talk it back to me, lest I believe that I am not worthy, not deserving, not redeemed.

I want desperately for you to be my friend. But you are not my friend; you have slid up warmly to the man I wanted to be, the man I pretended to be, and I was your Jesus and, you were mine. Should i show you who I am, we may crumble.

I am not scared of you, my love, I am scared of me.

I want to be known and loved anyway. Can you do this? I trust by your easy breathing that you are human like me, that you are fallen like me, that you are lonely, like me. My love, do I know you? What is this great gravity that pulls us so painfully toward each other? Why do we not connect? Will we be forever in fleshing this out? And how will we with words, narrow words, come into the knowing of each other? Is this God's way of meriting grace, of teaching us of the labyrinth of His love for us, teaching us, in degrees, that which He is sacrificing to join ourselves to Him? Or better yet, has He formed our being fractional so that we might conclude one great hope, plodding and sighing and breathing into one another in such a great push that we might break through into the known and being loved, only to cave into a greater perdition and fall down at His throne still begging for our acceptance? Begging for our completion?

We were fools to believe that we would redeem each other.

Were I some sleeping Adam, to wake and find you resting at my rib, to share these things that God has done, to walk you through the garden, to counsel your timid steps, your bewildered eye, your heart so slow to love, so careful to love, so sheepish that I stepped up my aim and became a man. Is this what God intended? That though He made you from my rib, it is you who is making me, humbling me, destroying me, and in so doing revealing Him.

Will we be in ashes before we are one?

What great gravity is this that drew my heart toward yours? What great force collapsed my orbit, my lonesome state? What is this that wants in me the want in you? Don't we go at each other with yielded eyes, with cumbered hands and feet, with clunky tongues? This deed is unattainable! We cannot know each other!

I am quitting this thing, but not what you think. I am not going away.

I will give you this, my love, and I will not bargain or barter any longer. I will love you, as sure as He has loved me. I will discover what I can discover and though you remain a mystery, save God's own knowledge, what I disclose of you I will keep in the warmest chamber of my heart, the very chamber where God has stowed Himself in me. And I will do this to my death, and to death it may bring me.

I will love you like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, demanding your love, trading for your love, gaming for your love. I will simply love. I am giving myself to you, and tomorrow I will do it again. I suppose the clock itself will wear thin its time before I am ended at this altar of dying and dying again.

God risked Himself on me. I will risk myself on you. And together, we will learn to love, and perhaps then, and only then, understand this gravity that drew Him, unto us.