The Mountaineer

There's a hill before my feet that stretches up and and trickles down
And every step I try to make takes me over and around;
I've been circling this slope for what must be several years
On my left a cliff falls far while on the right it rises sheer.
This path is less a path than a place where winter coughed
And made an interruption in the blasted wall of rock;
Trees cling here stubbornly as the stone thrusts them all away,
I dare not look for help there as the wind descends to play.
Trees crash and rocks fall and the mountainside, it moves;
Lights flash and I gasp as the land itself behooves
To shake me off or tear me down, or perhaps it's just the trees,
And I but happened to be there when the earth warred with the leaves.
In the end my grip is naught though strong it might have been
Had there been anything on this hill to wedge within my hand;
So down I went and when I woke I discovered to my dismay
That though the dream had taken night I walked the mountain by day.

Advancing

There's a whisper in the fallen eaves
While by the wayside someone grieves;
There's a high keening in the air
But all who hear are unaware
Of just what crawls beneath the earth
And who felt the deepening dearth
Of understanding beneath the skin,
Behind the eyes the wars begin;
They're all fought on nameless fronts
From sightless eyes and needless wants,
For crystal clear the past descends
And future floats on foggy winds
While present bound we all remain
And wonder why our tears reclaim
Our eyes in sheets of salt so thick
As if they wished a wall of brick
Would spring before our vision far
All revelation hence to mar
Before we stumble forward to see
Just what our path is like to be.

All's Fair In Love and War

I hate that statement. Now hate is a very strong emotion for such a statement, and it comes from the overthinking I do. You see, Love and War are two words that encompass a wide range of emotions, actions, reasons, and events, and so by some definitions they happen everywhere, all the time, to one extent or another. Thus the idea of things being "fair" when done under their umbrella seems to be just a very cheap way of justifying the means to whatever end.

But I am not writing about this statement, nor about Love or War in and of themselves. I wish to follow some stray thoughts about being in love with life, and being at war with life. In the end it probably comes down to pessimism and optimism, but I would prefer to follow this trail of thoughts down into the gulch and back up, rather than jump the gorge in a single leap. Life is more interesting that way, it seems.

Allow me to clarify that when I say life, I do not say the world. As a Christian, I most certainly am at war with the world, and I have been commanded not to love the things of this world, as I am not of the world, etc, etc. In this context the world refers to the realm of sin. God is not saying you can't love your new puppy, or the sunset, or the taste of watermelon. He created those things! But that is a blog for another time. Here, I am talking about life, as in, living on this planet, going about our daily activities. It is not my intention to argue anything, but rather explore the phenomenon that seems to exist, in that Christians can be both in love with life, and at war with life. Perhaps one is better than the other. Perhaps both can exist simultaneously.

If I were to place myself under one of these ideas, I would have to say that I am at war with life. I strain against it every day. I am a malcontent. I am not at war in spite of the fact that I am a Christian, I am at war because I am a Christian. Had I nothing better in site than life itself, I would have no reason to push against it, but because I catch glimpses of what could be and will be in the perfect life awaiting me when this one is long gone, I struggle here. Sometimes I am in love with life, for brief moments, but the overall tone of my life is one at war.

Now, there is evidence that I have seen with my own eyes of Christians who are the opposite of this. They are in love with life. They are filled with joy. Certainly at moments they must be at war, but the overall tone here is love. They look for and see the beauty in everything and are excited by it. They are often content. I look at these people and wonder why I cannot be more like them? The Bible says we are to be filled with joy and content. These people seem to be at peace, while I am stuck in the midst of battle.

I had always assumed the latter was better, but I had no way of getting there myself. After further thought I begin to think a mixture would be the better way. After all, I do not look at life with the intent of dissension or violence. My war is the striving to survive while I wait for what is better. But still, I find myself thinking, joy in waiting is more Biblical. What a wretch I am.

Eventually I condensed these thoughts down into two points of view. The person in love with life approaches in love. An optimist. The person at war approaches in war. A pessimist. But even this seemed wrong to me. Yes, I am definitely the person at war, but I do not consider myself a pessimist. My friends count me as the optimist! But I do not look at life in love. I look at it through calculating eyes, weighing and measuring everything in order to find its exact value. If something is not worth wailing about, I take the optimistic approach, but I do not do it out of love. I do it because a strategy says there is benefit in doing it this way. I am not trying to conquer life, or any such nonsense. Merely survive it. Guerrilla warfare.

I apologize for the disjointed rendering of these thoughts. I regret that I cannot speak more on the subject of being in love with life. I have little experience there. Perhaps someone who knows themselves to come from that direction will answer these thoughts with some of their own. I would be very interested in reading them.

Which is better? Is one better? And how do we get there? Go away and think! I must go look to my weapons, for the life around me appears to be mutating. And we don't want that now do we?

While the World Slept, the Sky Split Open

I took my contacts out over the sink and didn't bother to turn the hallway light on because light or no, I could not see. My room was the next door, and the floor was clear. But my room was not dark. Night had fallen many hours ago and the window blinds still stood open, unnoticed. I saw flashing lights. They lit up the room.

There had been storms that day. Was it... I felt for my glasses and put them on, peering through the window. Lightning burst across the sky, some here, some there, only a few seconds of darkness to break the brilliance. I rushed back through the dark house to the front door and flew out to the porch, mouth hanging open in eager expectation. What met me was a stunning silence. There was no thunder, only the play of lights in the sky. Occasionally there were streaks, the rest of the time the light was hidden behind clouds that dispersed it over my entire field of vision for a brief moment. I attempted to capture a few bursts in photos, then sat down to simply enjoy it.

It was 1 AM.

I should have been asleep by now, but the night was mesmerizing. As I sat I became aware of sounds: the light breeze stirring the wind chimes, a chorus of crickets in the grass down below, the last wheels of a train clicking by in the distance, a single cow lowing. Though I strained my ears for thunder I heard nothing, and still the lightning danced, and never seemed to tire. The clouds changed as I mapped them. The wind blew them east, but the lightning remained steady. Two storms, it seemed, one to the left and one to the right. Occasionally a many streaked bolt would jump into the dark space between the two.

I thought of the beauty of the sky and was sad for a moment. Most people were asleep by now, or locked safely in their houses behind curtained windows. They were missing this brilliant fireworks display. Certainly they had seen sunsets and sunrises and majestic thunderclouds in all their slow, steady pace, but had they seen this? The lightning came and went only for a moment, but there was moment after moment after moment! Most people value the beauty of the night sky in stars, and count a cloudy night a waste. But would this display be half so brilliant at noon?! Here in the darkness the clouds gave the bolts a landscape to run over. The sky housed ever-changing mountains that gave the light something to hide behind and spill over.

And then the beauty combined. I had thought I could have only the lightning or the stars, but here suddenly was both! The wind had blown the last wisps of cloud from one half of the sky and countless stars replaced them, far too many to be seen over this populated area. But though the clouds moved, the lightning remained steady, and the presence of both overwhelmed me. My camera had had a difficult enough time with lightning; it could not capture stars. I felt sad again, for all the sleeping people in the houses around me, clueless to what was happening outside. I could not capture it for them. They were missing it. But in the midst of my sadness I realized something else, and the realization chased everything else from my mind.

Even as God made the sun shine in the day, and burst in the morning and fade blazing in the evening, and even as He made all the clouds of the blue sky tower and curl over that wide canvas, even as He made the stars a trillion bright, He also made these nights. Though only one or even no one would witness it, He made the lightning storm come forth. We humans tend to put our effort into what shows, but He saved this powerful, flashing, ever-changing masterpiece for the hidden hour! How blessed are we to have a God who delights in beauty, whether seen at midday or hidden in the dark of night! I felt a great sense of gratitude, as if I had been given a backstage pass to a concert of my favorite musician, or been granted access to watch an author pen a best-selling novel. Somehow, I was here, privileged to see this display. Glad was I to have been awake so long that night. I had a box seat alone with God for His masterpiece of a production. And the storm still went on. I departed long before it was over, because I felt peace.

Our God never sleeps.

Something Else

Ever winding withering, and thoughts that fade to gray,
Dreams that sprang before the sun but slowly crept away,
Houses built inside our heads of memories in stone
That shatter when they reach the top and find they are alone,
Footsteps wind around the paths that lead us far abroad,
Flowers bend and shake their heads between the wailing nods,
Crisper clouds that gather here are cracking as we speak,
They'll fall to earth so fast and dear, upon the waves that reek,
Deserts groan while they elapse the time that there hangs thick
The walls are built of solitude and laid with stone and brick,
The smallest breath of weakest life might send them tumbling down,
For how are they to stand alive at the first of all the sounds?

Going Back, Briefly

The idea of home is a funny thing. For me, having lived in so many different places, home has become a very transient term. Wherever I plan on sleeping that night is "home," whether it be my house, my parents' house, a hotel room, or just a tent. I have often confused friends by saying "home" and meaning the temporary place where we were staying that weekend. I have not been one to indulge nostalgia, and I tend to be of the mind that says "look ahead, not behind." Once you have left a place you have left it, and it is gone. You aren't going back, so there is no reason to look back. Of course, this is not true all the time. There are places that my family has returned to frequently, certain relatives houses or vacation spots. But I have never lived in any of those places as a permanent (or semi-permanent) resident. They too have been places of transition and when a particular stay is over there is little reason to look back.

Currently I am staying in one of these places: a house on the beach that my grandparents own. We are only here for a few days, and I enjoy the time I have here until the time comes to leave. When I do leave there will be no farewell, for it is a familiar place that seems to travel with me, and one I will always return to eventually. Despite this familiarity, however, it is never quite home as some would term home. I think that many people's idea of home could more accurately be described as a feeling of origin. Their home is what produced them, insofar as someone may be a product of a place. During my brief life I have passed so many places into the deep storage in the back of my mind that no geographical position of origin remained in my conscious thought. I have never felt homesick for a particular location. I have missed places, certainly, but only as one misses the warmth of summer in January, or as one misses a pet they had to leave behind for a time while they went on vacation. I have very rarely been stirred to leave my present surroundings by any memory of a dwelling from my past. My motion has been launched by prospects, by looking forward rather than any incentive that came from looking behind.

A curious thing happens to me then, when I return to the old places. This occurs only rarely, and it must be a product of my unconscious where all of the memories of those times are stored only to be dredged up when I draw near their locals. I have no draw to these places, no inner urging to return to them even if I am on their borders, but the moment I cross that border, something strange happens. A sense of home, long forgotten, suddenly surfaces. I know, suddenly, that I belonged here once, even if I do not any more. It's as if I can see ghosts of myself moving along in old habits, but I am so far removed from them that I cannot feel anything for them except a strange wonderment. When I leave that place I feel no misgivings, no longing to stay or tears at the thought of going, and once I am away from it I forget it quickly. But while I am there I love it.

Perhaps a description of such a place would help me explain this to you. By driving a for bit over hour inland from this beach house you may come into the heart of the Lowcountry. South Carolina has three regions recognized by the inhabitants, mainly the Upstate and the Lowcountry and to a smaller extent the regions between the two, sometimes known as the sand hills. I have had the privilege of living in all three. The Upstate is up from the rest in the sense that it is in the north of South Carolina and also that it is a little bit higher in altitude than the rest. Here there are hills and forests of varying trees and the land moves a bit more as it goes up to reach the mountains. The sand hills are the transition space between the two and contain a bit of each in the terrain of the Upstate and the flora of the Lowcountry to some extent. The Lowcountry is the southern part of the state; it is mostly flat and stretches to include much of the coast. It is the Lowcountry of South Carolina that I would consider my location of most basic origin.

I do not say this because I was born there; I was born in a very different part of South Carolina. But the Lowcountry is where I had my first memories, particularly that place a bit over an hour inland from the coast here. This place does not have much to recommend it to outsiders. Here the roads are straight and flat. They are bordered by trees or fields. If there are trees then they are usually pine, standing straight and tall and planted in straight lines. If you can see over the underbrush then you can sometimes see straight through an entire stand of them. If there are fields then they are planted with corn or cotton, or perhaps other grains. Here and there you will see a house. Every road is like this. The interstate is far away and where it does cut through this area it is shielded from the distance of this place by more tall stands of pine trees, and there is not way to get from it them without going down the road for a ways. Not all of the trees here are pine, of course. Every now and then you might spot a live oak all hung with spanish moss whose seed found a way inland from the coast, and very occasionally a palmetto or two. Cypress trees grow in the lower areas where water leaks.

The roads to not lead much of anywhere, but they do not lead nowhere. There are small towns scattered about, tiny places with half the buildings boarded up and the rest simply living their quiet unchanging lives as they have since they were built. Some towns are no more than a few buildings at an intersection, or a place where the railroad passes by. If you stop and exit your vehicle you will find that the grass does not grow up and out of so much as over the ground, overlapping itself in little many-bladed tendrils until it has covered a sufficient amount of sand to turn it a very dusty gray-green. Here you could go barefoot in the summer if you didn't mind the prickliness of the grass and could manage to avoid the countless fire-ant hills. Sandspurs grow well in this region, though they grow in greater numbers near the coast. Things move slowly here. This place is not the sleepy laziness of the "country" as it is the timelessness of a place far removed from anything. It is the place I inexplicably love whenever I return to it, however briefly.

This area is not without its charms of course. In the spring wisteria drapes the trees and azaleas bloom in people's yards. The roads might be traveled for miles without going anywhere, which in my eyes is a wonderful thing. The fields are open and wide, the stands of pine trees are large, and for a moment you might wonder if this land does not go on forever. But eventually you will drive out of it, you will reach the sand hills or the coast and you will begin to wonder if the place exists at all. I was there, once, and I was comforted by the thought that it was once home. I cherished it and I loved it, but now that I am gone I do not miss it much. Even as I write this I begin to forget it. But that place does exist and should I go back there again I will instantly feel the same. I can forget it for a time, but never completely. It follows me too. Why else would the sight of a pine cone bring such joy? But it is not necessary joy. It comes and it goes, sitting only in the corners of my eyes while they fasten on the places I have never been, the roads I have never taken. The places of the past are well forgotten, not lost, but set out of sight until they are needed.

For Those Who Would Not Know Me

I would write of that which I cannot see.

I would express the fears within me, the groans that wrack my physical frame, though the pain exists on some other plane. I would express the noises that haunt me through night and day, but the cacophony of the world around me is too great! If I walk through life with my head down you must not feel concern, nor need to comfort, for my torment does not spring from that which may be comforted. It comes from a dark area, where all is in shadow until it may be revealed by the light at the end of days. Until then it is a void, meaningless, a shapeless beast that I must love and despise and never find, for though I seek it endlessly I cannot lay a finger there! Where does this bottomless portal lead, where is its end? I cannot even find its beginning.

I would write like this forever, but I know that it is wearisome to read of nothing and so far nothing is all I have written. It is easy to describe a thing, but how does one write of an empty space? How does one describe a shadow save that it is without detail and mirrors that which forms it? That is it, then, the thing I seek. It is elusive and shifts from time to time, and though I chased it forever I fear I would never catch it. Such a chase is exhausting. Could I pour my entire self into the hole perhaps I would finally find rest, but as I live my resources are chained to other things as well. There are people to be smiled at, paths to be trod, and time to keep. Emotions must be constantly pampered to as each occasion requires I feel sympathy, grief, joy, excitement, wonder, interest, concern. All of this energy could be spent in pursuit of the shadow, but instead I must spend it on what amounts to dust to me, because I am told that is right. And as the two worlds stretch farther apart they also draw closer together and my mind becomes more muddled.

Certain things in one begin to mirror the other, and I reach out desperately and cling to them as if they are what is real and solid and therefore all that may be held onto. Yet at these times I am most distraught, for as the other world draws near I begin to think that I might see things, feelings become more intense, and I am so close, so near to understanding that I pour energy eagerly in that direction, flailing inside my head, so to speak. But for all my efforts I can never fully grasp it, and so I return to this life exhausted, with my resources completely drained, though there may be no visible reason for my weariness. At these times I want nothing more than nothing, for if I had nothing then when I collapse in the grass and stare at the sky for hours, nothing would be lost. But life insists on thrusting much into my arms, so I have no choice but to keep walking, to go here and there and divvy out what is left of me in measured amounts, a rationing of emotion that requires my attention even as my thoughts wander back to what was lost.

And just what was lost? you ask. Just what are the questions that need answering, the questions that are searched for? I cannot tell you that, for they are a part of the shadow. I have uncovered a few of the questions over the years, but no answers yet. I have still not found my footing in this other plane and I fear that I will not do so until the end. So if you see me walking with my head down, or with a dazed look in my eyes, if I speak to you in distraction, do not worry yourself over me. I am afflicted, yes, but this affliction will last for the duration of my life here and only at the end will there be release. How often does this happen? you ask. I could not tell you. Some days not at all, while other days I am consumed, usually without warning, though with experience I may see it better. So do not be concerned, for there is nothing your concern may accomplish. This is my unknown fate, and were it any less of an emptiness there would be less of me.