This will be the death of me.

I am sick of getting to know someone.  Meeting them, greeting them, and really taking the time to get to know them.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, surely.  Because SOMEHOW, the question comes up. 

It starts out innocent. Maybe you asked what they're interested in. Invariably, the answer is somehow(in my fucking case) "JESUS!!!!"

"Oh, cool. So you're pretty active in Church and stuff?"(me trying to keep it flowing)

"Yep, absolutely.  How do you feel about that?" (Phase one: Attack)

"What, being active?" (Phase two: attempted dodge.)

"No, Church, and God and Jesus." (Phase three: FUBAR)

"Oh, I'm not religious myself."(Phase fail: fuck my life)

"Oh." (Phase five: extricate and evacuate)

Dude, so I don't get it. I don't know what to do? Lie? I do that too much as it is.  And to be honest, when I'm meeting people is when I'm lying the least.  And besides! This girl was way pretty, very witty, and of the most enjoyable disposition.  I'm not going to lie to someone like this.

But no.

I'm honest, get burnt, and am left feeling like I need to write on FML.

Shit.

*Disclaimer: For serious, this isn't me hating religion, Jesus, or Christians. Don't be ignorant. It's me hating the prejudice against those that aren't you. It's killin me, smalls.

the clearing

The ambition of a boy is equivocal. Its surety races in its rising and setting, but the whims that propel it are unbeknownst to anyone who is not an equivocal boy of ambition.

He ascended up tired rungs of the old iron-wood ladder, and, upon reaching the flat precipice, caught sight of two tilers. Not yet having caught their sight, the boy waited, wishing that their stolid gaze would shift direction and lie into him.  In this way, he would not have the terrible duty of bandying forth a greeting; he was dirty, his aunt told him, and you do not deserve things if you are dirty. But he hated bathing time, so he left her.

The boy waited, then descended the ladder, then rested the legs.  He looked up to the sun and turned about, now facing the south and east.  The old man who had passed through the town the previous sowing season had done that, halting in his far travel and depositing his lips on the ground.  The old man muttered “devil curses,” but he later seemed pleased with his quiet efforts. 

The boy hiked his trousers above his caps and did the aforementioned pattern while replacing the mutterings with the silent prayer he learned. His aunt’s church said that when you prayed, you sometimes got something. The boy wanted the attention of the workers. So then, he prayed. So then, the boy’s ears heard something.

A mocking bird had settled next to him while he was quiet, and she began to warble at him.  When he turned about and faced it, the bird took wing to the north and west.  The boy got up to give chase.  Mocking bird eggs were lucky unless you sold him, but the boy had been meaning to find a stowaway to keep lucky things for some time; these would be the christening items!  He chased her to the nearby tree-line in a jutting fashion, the bird landing once it put distance betwixt her pursuer and then leaving once the boy approached. 

With the pine trees enveloping him, the boy looked back at the workers, but they had left anyways.  He moved on into the forest, coming into a clearing that began to bend and burn.

WHILE MOST teenagers will be securely circumscribed into the “Hi, I’m a no-good, jerk-faced, mean little dog” phase for some of their high school career, it seems that a grand majority of them go through and experience an “enlightened” stage.  The problem? Some of them don’t seem to be growing out of it.  ((and the world is suffering for it))

Before proceeding, the quotations around “enlightened” point to an alternative meaning that needs to be explained.  I’m not speaking of an existential nirvana, not of a harrowing brush with death, and not of the dire need to lose surplus pounds.  No, this condition shares nothing with the typical definitions:

Enlightened(the new-age variant): Lacking the confidence and/or moral fiber to judge, review, and critique the world, people, and situations around you, thereby rendering you   1. Complacent 2. Stagnant 3. Dumb

EXAMPLE: His views are pretty old-school, but you can’t blame him for how he was raised. Don’t get upset by it or try to change him.

Wrong.   You see, in the above example, the speaker is attempting to disguise a disgusting apathy and lack of care with the word “respect.”  What the world seems to have forgotten is that respect DOES NOT MEAN bowing down, subverting yourself in an attempt to bend over backwards out of fear that someone will call you hateful.  Respect is something earned and deserved, not manifested within yourself the strip away your soul for another,

To further illustrate why this sucks, consider this.

48 years ago, four black students right here in North Carolina were displeased with the racial inequalities of the time.  Feeling the need to do something about it, they started a sit-in at a lunch counter in Greensboro.  History remembers this because it was a defining moment in the civil rights movement.  But think for a moment: did these brave and righteous crusaders think too much about, “Well, maybe society is right. Maybe we should be forced to stand and eat!” They did no such thing.  I strongly believe that these students did what they knew to be right, forgetting whatever social stigmas might be placed upon them. 

Society cannot progress if we remain too scared to challenge the old rules, challenge our fellow brothers, and challenge ourselves to do what is right.  Wrong will always prevail over good so long as the good do nothing.  For the love of life, do SOMETHING.

Shortcuts

Why should I spend anymore time in a world that's gonna end pretty soon?

RNA, Nerve Degradation, carcinogens, and a world at war. It would be silly for me to handle even one facet of the decline of humanity. I could talk about the environment, morality, the loss of basic human fucking virtue...but it'd be static again. It's all I hear anymore, and it's all our baby brothers and sisters have ever heard. The old books might show a way out, but no one can speak the language anymore...and even if they happen to learn it, it's for a damned AP credit so that they can go to their first choice institution of higher degradation.

Why do we go to college? 

To go to work?

Why do we go to work?

To get money?

Why do we get money?

So we can be happy?

Why do we want happy?

Because it makes us happy?

The ends NEVER justify the means if, when considering your next action, you declare those very same aforementioned words. If you have to say that to validate your course, your plan, your scheme, then stop.

Stop.

Sit down, and stop cheating. Stop living, stop learning, stop burning, stop breathing!

Stop if you have to invalidate yourself to validate your goal.

Your life has always been worth living, but what's really worth living anymore?

Answer that and get back to me. I don't need deep, I need true. True and blue, cause that's how I want to live my life.

Struggle; it's what's for dinner

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: Michael, the Embarrassment. 

I know nothing. I am consistently upset by all that I do not know. I do not know how to build a house. My grandfather did! He built his own house. What a man! 

I can not say anything to that effect. 

He built a house. I dunno, like, eighty years ago. A HOUSE! I just cannot get over this. A house is such an involved project: wood working, carpentry, flooring, HVAC, roofing, painting, porch making, garage making, electrical work, plumbing....he did it all. If there was something that he did not know, why, he surrounded himself with people of similar talents.

"So, what you're saying Michael, is that he was only friends with people in a handy-man's guild?"

No! He was not judging his friends off of silly criterions like a man's ability to skin a deer, he simply took those talents for granted.

Nowadays, building a house is a big deal. I mean, fuck, look at me: I'm hyping it up like it is the greatest thing ever. But think; it used to be taken for granted.

What happens when you take things for granted? 

You lose them. Forever.

Put me in my grandfather's house, and I will be an embarrassment to its prestige.  I could not fix a leak, I could not solder capacitors onto the breakers. If I were at its helm, that house would fall.

Don't take people for granted. Don't take the people you love for granted. Because all of that pride, all of that ebullience, all of that love...it goes downhill in a hurry. Your only slim chance at getting back is chasing it down, following that motherfucker into the depths of depravity, pulling it out of the muck with your teeth, stripping the rust off with your nails, and worshiping it because you worked your heart until it begged to stop...so that you could even THINK of earning it. 

Love is the greatest gift.  You don't deserve it. I especially don't. But just because the house doesn't work out, doesn't mean you need to burn it down.  Take a breather and let a guy catch up.

Love,

-Michael Lawrence Schramm

Stars

Live through this and you won't look

back.

Tanka

A gift of burden,

she donated to

teach me a lesson.

But all that I learned, is

to run away from her death.