Worms

As I look down into the dirt

I know the worms are there

Writhing and shitting

I know they are there messing things up slowly

Making their way to the surface but

Instead of getting dirty and digging them out

I shovel more soil on top and

Keep them in the dark

Teaching is a selfish profession

School teachers are probably good people mostly. They give up their chance at a striving world- crushing career to tie shoelaces and listen to whining children for what can be a lot of stress and not a lot of money. I however am in the profession for all the selfish gain I can get.

As a student there was one particular teacher who I looked up to like a hero; I was twelve and I admired his basketball skills; his jokes; his eminent coolness and his goatee (which in hindsight was a childish and immature reason for thinking someone was the best thing since plate glass). I did look up to him and he gave me advice which I ate like Weet- Bix on any given afternoon and which subsequently changed the course of my life.

When I was in university studying to be a primary school teacher and people would press me as to why I wanted to be a teacher I would cite the influence of this teacher and that I much like him wanted to influence lives for the better. However this is simply not true and now I realise that I just want children to look up to me in the same way that I did that teacher: I want the credit for changing lives. Since realising this and also that teaching is a bad way to get glory these days (the internet does a much better job than me) I have devised a list of ways a could satiate my glory- hungry personality:

1. Grow an insanely big beard. My friend had a huge one once upon a time and had admirers come from all over the pub to gawk and compliment; admittedly he hated it.
2. Learn CPR and hook up with that guy from Choke*. This way I can save his life everytime he decides to fake- die and we both win.
3. Decide once and for all to be an actual writer and commit to submitting articles or simply writing something with a little continuity and depth so I become published famous and interviewed.
4. Act crazy all the time. Crazy people get lots of attention and praise in modern day society just look at Richard Branson and the bird from Crystal Castles.
5. Become a social photographer (no justification required).

That is all.

*A book by Chuck Palahniuk; read it.

I hate the way you roll your eyes*

When I go out I can never escape the flaccid eye- roll; it may come from another or from myself but it permeates life in its disinterested boredom. Earnestness falls in its wake for fear of irrelevance or arrogance. When I am earnest I risk irrelevance or possibly arrogance and so I err on the side of irony. The eye- roll is aimed at anything possibly genuine but repeated; a dance; a smile; a joy at a song; a good night; being drunk (again); feeling that mystical connection that people say is friendship and the list goes on. The eye roll speaks of experience and a tired worn life broken by the savage pain of being a man; and as the world is perpetuated by the hyperweb and the expanding enveloping feeling of knowitallness and seenitbefority the eye- roll becomes more and more prevalent. I cannot risk irrelevance or arrogance in its face and the old maxim holds true: "if you can't beat 'em join 'em".

My love is destroyed by the possibility of nothing; a gaping swallowing hungry nothing devouring the world for the sake of insecurity. Really though I want to love something enough for me not to be afraid of letting everything else go. For some sort of consummation of my life so I no longer have to be rolled up in eyes.

If you are still reading this Sunset Rubdown's Dragonslayer is unreal; get it completely legitimately right now.

* This was said to me semi- recently; so I am not accusing you. The way you roll your eyes is probably quite endearing and sweet like the wife from Mad Men.

Community Investment

Oatley seems like a pretty solid community; I have only lived here for about half a year now but it has a family vibe and something sinister about it. I remember seeing the banners "Maintain the Rage" hanging over the main street of Oatley a couple of years ago in regards to the new Coles that was being planned.

Oatley didn't want a Coles because it probably was an indication of a few things. First it probably meant the reduction of custom to local businesses in the area. Second it also indicates a violation of the community ethics. Oatley is proud of its suburban village image that it has carved out for itself; the last old- fashioned bastion against corporately overrun neighbouring suburbs like Hurstville and Rockdale. Having a Coles in Oatley sets a frightening precedent; Coles represents a monolithic corporation shadowing the village setting and community atmosphere. Third it also meant the ungluing of community cohesiveness. Shopping at local businesses probably increases the level of cooperation and happiness within that local area so by Coles setting up their convenient practical supermarket people shop less locally and more corporately; thus disabling the potential for real community connections.

Despite 'the rage' Oatley still got a Coles and yet Oatley; the hallowed bastion of village atmosphere; remains. It makes me wonder about what real community investment looks like. Oatley is a fairly affluent suburb and people here probably don't want for very much apart from a trimmer backside and a 44 inch Plasma. For all the 'village atmosphere' that is here there really isn't any community investment or exciting opportunities for young people. I think the whole objection to Coles was more of a snobby status thing. So that people who lived here could say that they are still living inside the dream of pre- corporate Australia in some throwback era long forgotten in most of St George.

Making Money

I make great money. Really great money, actually I am sitting firmly in the middle class; I am earning enough to buy a house and pay off a mortgage and do everything that a regular person aspires to do. It is no good though, I don't really care about this money and it seems that all it serves to do is force me into new ways of laziness and apathy.

Let me explain:

While I was at uni I earned a pittance but I managed to find creative ways of living, slower ways of living. I shopped at op shops, had little to no phone credit and caught the train to places, slept where I could and drank lambrusco out of a paper bag. Now, I have too much money to bother with op shops and everything I want is within striking distance and I have no restraint in my spending or desire to spend. I can feel my addiction to spending money slowly arcing outside of my control and my wants growing larger as I grow older; furniture, photography, snowboarding, bodyboarding, magazines, the list goes on. As I shop I grow more and more numb to any sort of raw primacy and energy for life. I just want to grow my stuff, and somehow appease the gnawing restlessness inside of me.

I saw a preview for No Impact Man the other day and it is somewhat inspiring to know that there are others out there trying a different way of life. I am not so sure what it is that I want from life yet but just to consume and complain and work seems like a hoax. Also on this, I know I have an aversion to hard work, to giving all of myself to one single purpose for fear that I choose to live balls out for a lie but as I piss away the days halfheartedly thinking these ideas out I grow more and more discontent.

All I know is:

You need more stuff and I need more money.

This entry really took a sour turn, sorry.

The Lambs are Angry

Laserdisc was a completely missed technology. I remember being about eleven when my neighbours in Western Australia invited around to watch Spacejam on Laserdisc. It was amazing a huge optical disc that played (to me) exactly like a video. I remember at the time it seemed so futuristic but also incredibly unnecessary and already superseded like Blade Runner or the 80s imagining of Back to the Future.

Mr Oizo's Lambs Anger reminds me of Laserdisc. It sounds like the future but a retro analog future that has already been surpassed by electro mainstream pop. The album pops and bleeps in some kind of disco homage to dark 80s arcades and it seems as though in another reality music could have possibly gone this way; that Mr Oizo is the technical superior when it comes to French dance music but it is just too awkward to be truly popular.

The album cuts so close to awesome banality but just avoids it in every track. 'Cut Dick' is a great dance track carving a great beat and building a stairway into nowhere not for the rise and fall but simply the groove. 'Positif' sounds like it could be a trance winner with it's high driving electro brutality and 'vous etes des animal' (or whatever she says) but then Mr Oizo punctures the song with disco samples and an 80s drum machine and there isn't anywhere the song can belong but some alternate future where Laserdisc was the technology that won.

Don't take the obsolete technology comparison the wrong way: I love this album the same way I love polaroids 35mm film and holgas. It is satisfying; difficult and no one will understand the appeal.

Here is the clip for Positif; not my favourite track but it has some sweet beats:

Brilliance in its early stages

In some feeble effort to keep creativity going here are some ideas I have had over the last few days for different stories/ whatever the hell you could call them:

- A story about a James Dean style teacher; he wears a leather jacket; rides a motorbike; smokes and drinks on the job and swears in front of the children. Despite all this parents and teachers love him and kids want to be like him titled: 'Rebel with a Pseudo Cause'

- A comment on why people drive like douche bags with the music up really loud and my subsequent succumbing to their ranks. While at the same time exploring the bizarre reader/ author relationship in parentheses and thus confounding the original meaning of the piece.

- A low brow sitcom style prank in which I try to write a tribute for Michael Jackson but confuse his life with disgraced athlete Michael Johnson. I would still use Jackson's name but just animate with the corpse (Thriller reference) of Johnson's once formidable career.

- A review of Mr Oizo's Lambs Anger. Even though this is almost a year old now I just thought I wouldn't mind writing some stuff about it because it is an interesting record.

So over the next few days I may give a lame duck attempt at writing any one of these ideas out and hopefully I can keep this up and as school holidays begin in just over a week I really have no excuse.

Re- reading

One; this no comma thing is really starting to annoy me. I am going insane filling in all my comma spaces with semi-colons; they are pretentious and most of the time a dramatic break when all is needed is a brief breath.

Two; I just spent a good half hour rereading a lot of my old posts on this blog that stretch back all the way to 2006. The most shocking thing is that they are actually good. I am impressed with my own writing and thoughts which sounds conceited but I always viewed my own writing as some mixed up babbling and anyone who complimented me as someone who was seriously demented (sorry Marc).

I am surprised that I make some coherent arguments and some flowing (comma) musical prose. It is a bit ranty and a very self conscious but really (comma) can you expect anything less? In light of this rediscovery of sorts I am going to go back to the daily post and see writing- wise where it takes me. I need practice again even if this writing never goes anywhere and even if this poor keyboard doesn't have a working comma key (or working one (comma) four and seven keys; equally as frustrating)

La Bookshoppe

Everybody who has known me over the past few years has probably heard me rant and rave about opening a bookshop and while this has really never been a possibility (for monies- reasons) now it seems within my reach. Which is bone- tingling for me; for a number of reasons...

Of course one of the questions I have to ask is what kind of bookshop should it be? Here are two examples:

Above are photos of Shakespeare and Company in Paris; a bookshop I admire greatly for their hospitality and the way the place feels like the home of an old friend. When I visited we sat upstairs chatting with an American literature student who had been working on a cartoon before meeting some Italian girls and a Canadian who we ended up spending that night with walking around Paris taking in the crazy French.

The other bookshop was Massolit Books in Krakow Poland (my comma is still broken). This place was relaxed and homely with books on every subject and great coffee. It was tucked away out of the main centre of Krakow and felt somehow special; somehow like home. If I open a bookshop; that is how I want it to feel.

I am None

Bodyboarders used to be my heroes; as a kid growing up in south west WA nobody was cooler. However something happened and I saw that the bodyboarding mind was closed and the culture they had created seemed stagnant and; well crude.

Until last week; it had been years since I picked up a copy of Riptide or any bodyboarding mag at all but since I have had a renewed passion for the sport (thanks to my new NMD board; but no thanks to the agro pinheaded stick monkeys out at island on Saturday) I thought I would; and it surprised me.

I had long forsaken bodyboarding culture as a microcosm of us vs them mentality and a creative vacuum; oh how I was wrong. The current riptide issue is brimming with interesting ideas and raw passion.

Case in point: I am None. I never imagined to see a decent fashion label with solid fringe support from artists and photographers emerge from the bodyboarding scene. Yet they did and a bodyboarder is once again a hero of mine: Alex Bunting you are the man.

Captain Neckbeard

Recently I was having a conversation with Paul and we talked about our lame-o-ness in the beard growing / manliness department as both of us can only grow the lowly neckbeard. Paul remarked that he was "Captain Neckbeard" which made me wonder "what rank would I hold as a filthy neckbearded pirate?"

Obviously there would be no Captains who could only grow neckbeards unless they were in charge of a whole neckbeard pirate ship which would either be a savage set of red flag flying bloodthirsty psychos (angry at society and their fathers for their bad beard growing genes); or they would be the ugliest and most underconfident seamen to ever sail.

Either way; I think that on a pirate ship I would probably be "Hey You!" be it a neckbeard ship or not. I've never punched anyone square in the face before and I think that would be a prerequisite to getting some kind of reasonable respect. However I am looking to increase my pirate rep so watch your face.

With my shovel shaped hands (pt. two)

nightimes against my health
the whole ramshackle thing lies down my sleeve
spread out lazy and desperate
I am a poorly planned city versus all the other buildings
I throw my hands deep into the mud and it bubbles up to that bony part on my wrist
heaving it out up to my forearms and spreading it across the face of an innocent man
the waves never stop for my hand
these rainbows just seem to be following me everywhere
and I have no one who can wipe this muck off me; your hands are as dirty as mine.

Reveries of a solitary walker*

I heard somewhere off somebody that walking is a discipline and I thought it was true when I heard it but now I know it is even more true. I have tried to make a habit of walking at night for several reasons:

- it gives me time to think
- the sky at night with all the stars firing their lasers off is spellbinding
- so I don't end up on the Biggest Loser
- it makes me think that perhaps our world isn't as mean and nasty as the news and papers have us believe.
- perhaps I will make a new friend
- I can be an asshole and say things to complete strangers like: "beautiful night(?)" or "evening!"

The whole nightwalking thing also makes me wonder about how much I miss when I am inside. The world seems to sparkle at me when I walk and I don't go very far- maybe thirty or forty minutes- and yet I know that the outdoors is precious and special.

I wonder how someone like John Howard, who walks every morning, can emphasise all those buildings and numbers and business deals over the beauty of sunrise or the way the stars fall into the cracks of darkness. I enjoy the outside world far more than flashy, big television screens but I am a long way away from finding a rhythm to describe what God has done. My prayer is that my rhetoric rests in my heart and that the environment breaks through my ribs and out of my mouth.

If you have read this far: I like you, thankyou very much.

*This title is stolen from the book of the same name by Jean- Jaques Rousseau. Most of my ideas and much of my philosophy is based on his writing so you should check him out.

Community

There must be some point in which every thought you have ever had culminates into some overwhelming force that you can throw at people: this is how I imagine academics and authors: that they would just hurl massive oceans and powers at the general public for them to be hit like a cannonball into a crowd of people: the cannonball then opens up massive avenues in the crowd and the academic/ author strolls down waving and smiling: the people who have been hit with the cannonball all just lay around there wincing and say 'ow': I am one of those wincing at the whole author/ cannonball thing.

But seriously, what do you want? A nice house/ good family/ easy job (heck yes)/ no job? I don't know what I want, I just know it's the same thing that you want. I think I want a community to be a part of: a community that loves people, actually, really loves people and not what people can give them. So many 'communities' only grow out of a mutual need, for example, we all NEED to be real cool: right? right. So the whole idea of a scene (indie, electro, rock n' roll) fills that need but only by me leeching off you and you taking from me. I want a community that says: "I love you because for no good reason and you are really good at this and I will lift you up and put you above my own self even though I am incomplete and really need someone to tell me that I am okay just as much as you, but I love you so it doesn't matter".

I don't think that sort of selflessness can happen without Jesus. He is a pretty good guy like that I think Jesus just loves us for no reason except that he loves us. Maybe someone can disprove this to me but through all I have learned about Jesus and us humans it would seem he really would have no reason to care about us: but he does and he says crazy things that I hope to understand one day.

Nothing new, as usual

I'm pretty cynical about the whole thing. By the whole thing I guess I mean everything, the new Arcade Fire album, the last thing I wrote, your myspace profile, my sniffling nose, the idea of Christianity and the idea of life and friendship and working and all that stuff. But being cynical hasn't really gotten me anywhere at all. It has earned me a lot of awkward moments between people, I mean, who really likes that moment where someone says something sucks and the other thinks otherwise. Cynicism seems to sap us from being excited and sometimes being excited, even about the worst things is a great privilege.

The more and more cynical I get (I usually like to think the cleverer and cleverer I get) the less good the whole thing seems. By the whole thing I guess I mean everything, going out late at night, rain, sunny days, being able to work, hearing organs, my ipod; it is all so passe really. I think my spirit needs to be redeemed, so I can love again perhaps or just so I can enjoy the nothing that always happens a whole lot more than the everything. I just want to be simple and remember people and how special they are and love those in my life and those who pass me in the street or sit next to me on the train.

Being cynical will make you cool but it won't make you happy, it is almost like a ball and chain dragging you down and away from wondering. As you fall the list of things you can enjoy just decreases and decreases until nothing really means anything anymore except the most visceral of acts like sex and war and having a really high flying job and a huge television and all that really physical stuff. Stuff that is like an exclamation mark to everybody else; showing off and saying 'I get lots of sex' or 'I killed hundreds' or 'Have a look at the picture on this baby'. I think really that we want to impress people because we are lonely and we want them to say they love us and then know that we are good and worthwhile and important. And we do what the world says in advertisements because we all think that is what it takes for people to say that we are special and important, all the ads say that if we own this car we will have a feeling of power or a feeling of exclusivity. But companies discriminate; they want money and the poor don't have it and the poor suffer as being lesser humans and they probably feel like they can't be special or beautiful or important (but I don't know really because I am not poor).

Imagine if you were very rich and had a lot of friends and knew a lot of important people and then just chose to quit your very important job and go and wash homeless people in some warehouse in a forgotten part of town. Imagine how much of a demotion that would be, people would imagine you were crazy. You would probably lose of lot of your important friends and you might not be able to keep your large house, flashy car and Bang & Olufsen sound system. But I think that would change you inside, you would be telling these homeless people, these people worth nothing in dollar terms that they are more important than the men you danced with in the thousand floor buildings and more important than all those business deals and handshakes and contracts and clients and Italian furniture and feta cheese. I think these people, if they realised what you did for them would look at you with tears in their eyes and probably just hug you or collapse. I don't really know what they would do because I have never done it. But you might start loving things again like hearing a certain cracked voice sing a song or feeling the sun on your face or coming home to a bed that you have by grace. When we don't deserve anything everything is a gift and imagine if we lived Christmas everyday, that would be exciting.

I don't think this is a change or anything different for me. I still think I am being cynical of all the usual things like capitalism and materialism and the whole rat race. I am praying for something to change though; I am praying for the day when I can sit on a train of suits and shirts and somehow show them a love that they have not known. Not a denouncing, ugly, cynical young man who is disillusioned but a bright eyed, enthusiastic old man still closing his eyes and smiling into the blue skies and their ability to search out and illuminate the shadows.

Romance

I think being single would be difficult. Most of the time though I think being in a long term relationship is harder, I mean that is why most people aren't in them right? I don't really know if it is a question of 'the right person' but probably a question of romance. After five years I obviously am not the same person I was when I began dating Marianne but I am inescapably the same as well.

As a child I was terrified of the idea of having to be romantic. I imagined that the world was swarming with these suave, debonair men just sweeping women off their feet with roses, horses and piles and piles of clever, sophisticated words. "I don't even know how to be a man" I thought. I was scared to buy flowers and terrified of walking into a jewelry store lest I be arrested for being there. I realise now though that I had a really narrow picture of romance, and I probably still do. Romance stretches far beyond my capacity to do anything. Romance is me listening; it is me looking and admiring and having my breath taken away. True romantics are changed from the inside by the wonder of the whole world and then, as an act of gratitude, pour themselves out into their beloved. The more I sit in the silence and wonder of life asking God questions without answers the more patient and distant I become with every hard word and business deal. All the advertising, all the concrete in the world cannot blanket the gift we have been given.

I think G.K. Chesterton said that: "The world is in no need of wonders, what it needs is wonder". I love that. If you are reading this, stop. If you are still reading, stop. Go outside, lie down and cry at all the tragedy, laugh at all irony and sigh at all the beauty. If you had listened to what I said earlier though you would not have read this and the above part; you would already be breathing life and not wasting your time reading the musings of a confused child.

How to get more money in less time with less stress

Step one: The Realist / Wonder

I actually don't know the first thing about how to do anything with money. Except buy books; I am good at that. And if I did know anything about making money I think I would be out in the real world striding across concrete fumbling habitually with my ring and beaming my gaze across and through the horizon. Instead of the visceral world I would break upon the earth blazing in formulas and success- a beacon of truth of one sort or another. The numbers would fly through the air just waiting for that masterful hand to raid their providence. That masterful hand, of course, would be mine and I would not sit behind a computer after a day contemplating the futility of the rat race with good friends, great friends actually who, on a day overcast and ugly, all pretended that the sun was shining across a cloudless blue sky. With my money I could prove the unprovable: money = happiness. All good research only needs benefactors. I would be the Santa sack of the world: an endless, pouring, benevolent gesture capturing the imagination of a society obsessed with all my accomplishments.

Step two: The Emerging Megalomaniac

I know it sounds evil but so do you when you chime on and on about saving society from all its ills. I'm pretty sick of it really. Here is the point: you are so content and stuffed (see the Leunig cartoon of the same name for this reference) that you have nothing to bigger to do than place those contributing members of society below you in a hypocritical rave. All production adds value and morality unto society; whilst some production is misdirected Nietzsche's theory of eternal return sees that this fluff floats off and is forgotten as if it never existed. All other goodness of industry catapults down the snowy mountain picking up speed and weight and power and terrifying beauty until it imposes itself as a juggernaut against eternity itself. All this of course is the pathway of humanity so that if we are not unified underneath the glamour of purpose our forces become unstuck and like a snowball breaking against a cliff face we scatter the earth and fall white over the entire landscape. I believe that there exists a similar downfall: Babel, supposedly their cliff face was God.

Step three: What our forgetfulness breeds! (a lament)

When all falls at the feet of eternity in a great garbage heap of hopeless exhaustion we will finally see that all human endeavour was only for the purpose of not being bored. Our time is both short and neverending but we only count for one split second burning like a rocket through the hole of forever. Today you set the catapult in time against the rest of your soul's life outside of time. Our eyes burn with the fragility of this decaying, heaving, choking husk of life and then they tire out and grow dim and light becomes hard to see apart from where it is thrust against us in a haze of neon fantastic. The cities of our sprawling stacked atop one another weep and sweat at all of the misery they have seen. And if concrete could wail we would lose our ears to the din raining on us day and night. All of this, at our hands, we spent, we bred and we nurtured because we were bored. And now plunging our heads through the entirety of infinity we have so much time to think about all of the times we forgot to take time to plan for the time in which there would be no time but instead an endless supply of it (time, that is). I don't know about you but the thought of perpetually remembering how I wasted my life tearing down a planet in order to build a machine is a thought I cannot ignore.

Step four: Reducing Stress

While the principles of stress reduction run through all of the above principles in neat, discernible lines it is also necessary to allocate space specific to stress reduction techniques. The reduction of stress can only really be examined properly by first understanding what stress is and where it is birthed from. Stress is a culmination of mental, emotional and physical weights and may manifest itself in all three in any particular combination although increasingly today's society there tends to be an increasing emphasis on physical well being and emotional fitness over mental health. Consequently mental health in the Western world is losing grip (excuse the pun). Because of this phenomenon we will tackle some strategies for reducing mental stress and anxiety first.
Remember: it is all in your head. For mental stress nothing works better than an illusionary cure, also known as a placebo. Think of something that you can trust as really relieving stress and by simply believing that it works you will see your mental health climb like a monkey. Some ideas include: squishy, coloured stress balls, sleeping, insulting your boss in shrewd sarcastic ways, pirating music, buying things, sugar pills, heroin or cocaine (even crack cocaine will do although not if you are used to A- grade purity), exercising, biting your nails, screaming at your wife and children, combing your hair till it falls out, playing golf, blogging, crying in the dark, laughing loudly at unfunny jokes, wearing clothes, being naked, organising events for your company social that involve the harm of other employees (paintball etc.) or breathing correctly.

A spear, from inside directed outward and not the other way around

I stand in the middle of a large, flat plain. Hands by my side and eyes straight ahead. If you look closer though you will notice that tentacles rage out from inside me flailing in wild objection. That is the nature of my belief. Even my greatest composure cannot for all time betray the murder inside me and exiled on this plain my black arms cannot injure.

Before I arrived here I saw a crowd of one million men and women all suppressing themselves and going insane. Their evil nature overcame them and from the mass spewed ugly complacency and inurgency and all the things that constitute a wasting society. I fell to my knees and prayed, I said: "Lord, Lord, change me from inside and let me not strive with actions alone for I am futility and destitution wrapped up in skin and bones". And so I ran. Out of my home and my town into the land of nobody and of nothing all for nothing. I then felt that with all the running I will do in this lifetime that I will never get any closer than I have already; I will be no closer to the goal which is infinite and yet I will continue to move from my starting place. I am perpetually a beginner and confined to the realm of finitude acting upon the infinity that is weaving through my bones and bursting me outward at the seams.

We hear wonderful things when we listen. But that is hard to remember and even harder to do.

Fight! Fight! Win! Win! OR serve, serve, lose, lose

Just enrolled properly for uni and got my timetable and everything. How very exciting. Being my last year I am going to be swimming in education propaganda and probably drown because of it. My hope is that I can get out of education and into academia- hopefully philosophy or literature. It's not very interesting this whole thing but I am fairly tired and it can be so difficult trying to come up with something creative every day- particularly when you are feeling not so.

My humanities subject this semester is modernism which should prove to be interesting and Anthony Uhlmann is a good teacher. I could hijack the elective in some great protest of objective progress but I don't think they would tolerate that from a novice upstart. That sort of thing is more reserved for institutionalised intellectuals and raving madmen (Lyotard, Rorty, Foucault and Derrida). Besides we tried being unintentionally postmodern in our high school English when they asked us to write 'an essay' we literally wrote: 'an essay'. It was incredibly witty and clever at the time although we couldn't really express why.

I sat in church last night and thought about how I shouldn't be able to sit in church. How the church is a dynamic people and how we are the church. The guy up the front (it wasn't a church I attend on any regular basis) talked about how to respond to cults like Jehovah's Witnesses. It seemed very defensive to me and I just wondered what is it that we defend in Christianity? I don't think we really have to defend the Church or tradition or history, if anything, we should probably divest ourselves of history. Is it worth defending the influence of the Church today? I don't really think so. I mean Jesus had a tremendous influence although he did not pursue it. On the one hand I understand that the Church is defending freedom in the end. The freedom to believe and also defending a number of parts that culminate into the freedom that Jesus talked about. But on the other hand, freedom is never taken it only can be given (I think). A lot of people talk about how Jesus defeated sin on the cross and use a lot of war analogies but I think that it kind of strange that he died in order to do so.

I have never studied theology and I don't know anything about substitutionary atonement blah blah etc. but God did not take faithful people out of the world and grant them salvation instead he gave of himself in order to save all. I wish I saw the Church do the same thing. A lady the other day came into Word Bookstore unaware it was a Christian store and upon realising what it was shook her head at me and said how sad it was that religion and commerce cavorted in the same bed. I wanted to agree with her but I was powerless to do so.

Night time at home

I am hoping to throw away all my axes. I spent most of my teenage years building a beautiful, dazzling collection and grinding and grinding until they were sharp enough- for what?- for anything. The biggest problem is that I never had the guts to use them- like a nuclear superpower stocking weapons for that great war that would never happen we all imitate our surroundings. The political climate of fear flowed like a waterfall from on high and I would plan and plot my relationships. Plot against my friends and family that if ever that day would arise where nuclear (family) war would break out I would be prepared with an arsenal to rival the best.

How do I throw away such fear? For I am afraid, that much is true. Now I sit in silence at home throwing prayers skyward in a bid for two things: desire and love (and also patience). My whole being winces at the idea of more and more demands but I just need this much and then I will be set.

Oh, sweet Father, Father, Father. Now speak and I will listen.