Just to prove I haven’t been slacking off, here are a bunch of pretentious things I wrote on Facebook last month and this month.
Not all of the following Facebook posts (here in chronological order, not reverse chronological order) are about God, Christ, the Spirit, and whatnot. Some are about my love-hate relationship with technology. Some are about my love-hate relationship with love. Others are just, like, “Cool World Series, bro.” I selected the posts to re-post here based on whim. Multiple posts in a single date are separated by a trio of asterisks.
There’s also a picture of a pizza.
Enjoy. And thanks for reading.
– Will
Oct. 5
COMING TO YOU LIVE ON FULL-BLAST A FIREHOSE OF OTHER PEOPLE’S THOUGHTS AND INFORMATION STRAIGHT TO YOUR FACE FOREVER YEAH TECHNOLOGY
***
To call myself “imperfect” would be a whitewash.
Oct. 9
Feeling trapped? I’m happy to report that you’re locked in a box! So you’re not imagining things after all. But wait, there’s more good news! The box is locked from both the inside and the outside—and both keys must be turned at the same time! That means you’re not entirely to blame for your predicament. Also, the world outside may have tried numerous times to free you, but you weren’t turning your key at the time, so the world might not be a jerk after all. See? All kinds of good news. Buck up there, Gimpy. You’ll be outta there before you can say Houdini.
Oct. 10
Off to the graces.
Oct. 11
A symphony in a blink.
***
Madly, sanely.
Oct. 13
Love your loved ones, right now, actively, spontaneously, out of the blue, for no reason, go insane and break the mold and tell them you love them, or I’ll sick Mega Jesus on your candy ass.
Oct. 14
There are some lessons, some experiences that actually diminish a person. Knowledge isn’t everything. Innocence can be a powerful asset.
Oct. 15
Toying with this idea, what do you think: When people fight about religion or politics, it ain’t about religion or politics. It’s about picking the liveliest possible battleground for a fight and sounding the war horn there. It could have been about cats vs. dogs, or the wrong way you break eggs for an omelette. So when someone steps to you about your religion or your politics, just know it ain’t about what you think it is. It’s about people looking for a fight. Reasoning about the alleged topic is a waste of time because it doesn’t address the real issue. What’s going on is someone is consciously or subconsciously looking to see how you’ll react. Will you react like an ass or will you react with grace? Me, I’mma try and stop reacting like an ass.
Oct. 16
Strive to think and get smarter, but have the humility to understand you’re tangentially exactly as dumb as a rock, cosmically speaking, lest you judge people by their IQ instead of what matters.
Oct. 17
There’ll be plenty time for perfect when you’re dead. For now how’s about good enough, but don’t skimp on the passion. Lay it on thick, surrender to all available bliss, work your knuckles bloody, take five, shake it off, be boring as a plank, and laugh at perfection. Sound good? Enough?
Oct. 18
Petrified trees,
Rock forest in the desert,
Smells like dust,
Nothing move but the buzzards.
Rain came down,
Not a noise, no thunder.
Sky breath, silent
Tears, living water.
Then stood alive two trees
In the desert.
Branches stretched out
And grew together.
***
Ask not what you can do for your country; ask what you can do for the suffering soul sitting two empty seats away.
Oct. 19
God called me Saturday night to ask me for some help
On a sermon He was writing. I said, “Okay, what the hell.”
And when the piece was passable, He thanked me for the lesson.
The last advice I gave to God was always keep ’em guessin’.
– Some lyrics I wrote a long, long time ago.
***
Woke up with an instantaneous revelation about the fundamental nature of the universe: It’s not where it is. Neat, huh?
Oct. 20
Having an ongoing out-of-body experience.
***
You know that weird, freaky dude you see around? He’s an emissary from a whole world of people just like him, who entrust him with the message of their kind.
Oct. 22
Life is happening.
***
“I heard the ocean is broken. Replacement parts are such a bitch to come by, too. Where the hell am I gonna find a Pacific dealership in Minnesota? Then there’s that whole Atlantic-Indian merger everyone’s in a tizzy about. You’d think grownups could just be happy with having any water at all, but here I am standing in the Arctic with outdated insurance and a planet full of ungratefuls all whining for a new iOcean. Yeah yeah, I’ll save your ass just like I did in Y2K when you had yourself a worldwide crying breakdown over a couple digits for like six months.” – God
Oct. 23
Hey yo, we got any severely depressed people in the house? Okay, step one? Get offline. Step two, stop giving a damn what I think or what Joe Schmoe thinks. We’re just a bunch of judgmental idiots. You’re fine. Even if you’re a complete screw-up, you’re fine. You’re looking at a full-time screw-up, I’m fine. Step three, go find yourself some hugs. Dead serious. Touch is life. Go.
***
Cool World Series, bro.
Oct. 24
Problem with online people is y’all evaporate if lightning strikes a power exchange, or I drop this device in the lake. Poof.
***
It’s all for one and one for all, or we all eat each other alive. Those are your two options.
***
Eh yo, I feel I need to say this. I got a lot of people connected up here, so if you think this is about you, you’re wrong. It’s just a public service announcement for the good of humanity. Don’t cheat on your significant other. That’s the announcement. Don’t even get close to it. Don’t flirt, don’t test the waters, just turn around and walk. Social media is a million open doors to infidelity, which is why I’m posting this here. Everybody’s human and I ain’t judging anyone, but this should serve as a reminder. Know that I do not condone infidelity. If you put any stock in my posts, know that’s where I stand. Be strong.
***
I first started smoking because I thought it would bring me closer to other humans. My point? Being close to others is so important to me that I’d die for it.
Oct. 25
This breath is sacred. This one too. This one just smells like Cheetos. This one is sacred…
***
I found all the answers once. Then I tripped over the vacuum cleaner cord, landed face first in the catbox, cursed God, made a crappy business decision, burned eleven bridges, ate some contaminated Schwann’s ice cream, sneezed on the first lady of the United States, farted during a pianissimo reverie at Orchestra Hall, punched the wrong dude, lost my keys, blew three hundred bucks on a buggy phone, passed up five opportunities to score big on penny stocks, got evicted from a dog house, drank myself into oblivion, went frolicking in a field of endangered flowers, and guessed wrong on Jeopardy. Pride goeth.
Oct. 26
Good morning, gentle person. Tread slowly, deliberately, each boot leaving deep, distinct prints in the freshly laid tar of the new day. Let all who follow know the steadiness of your step.
***
“Come As You Are Together Right Now Ye Faithful Over Me.” – Olde tyme John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Frederick Oakeley Christmas carol
***
When we’re used to Fear Gear, it can be a trick to remember to switch into Gratitude Gear when gifts fall upon us. If we’re not prepared and on the look-out for good things, we utterly fail to experience those good things in our minds and hearts. Good fortune always comes back around to us, but unless we actively and consciously participate in good fortune, it only grazes us and does not really touch us. To live well, we can be mentally and emotionally agile, we can meet good fortune halfway, we can participate in the blessings of harvest moments. When those moments inevitably pass, we can meet lack and challenge squarely, eye to eye. We can slow dance with darkness, easy in the knowledge that we performed our full duty by showering in pure light while it shone. And so goes the cycle. Each hour of the clock’s rotation has its essential character. When we engage that character–be it sad, cold, warm, transcendent, or hilarious–on its own terms and on its own turf, we are filled with strength and power. Those are my pretentious new age thoughts of the moment.
***
Fail big, go down hard, learn it once. Go lukewarm, split the difference, learn jack squat.
Oct. 27
Go hard, fall hard, break your face, pray to God, repeat.
***
Bring it on, God. This man you created spars with deities for breakfast and thrusts giant steel phalluses into the clouds. You think you can break me with your miserable pounding. Ain’t no one taught you to twist a punch on contact? Oh yeah, that’s right: You ain’t got no daddy. My bad. Didn’t mean to bring up a sore subject. Go on then, toss a mountain at me, I got my army of jackhammers. Testosterone tells you what. Adrenaline bursts craters in your cute planet. Hey God, wanna know how to make me laugh? Tell me your plans.
Oct. 28
What disappointment can feel like.
In Lakota ceremonial traditions, maybe Native American tradition in general, the coyote is the trickster. He comes and pulls the stakes from your sweat lodge, causing it to collapse in the middle of your sacred ceremony. He sabotages your very serious reaching, your aching heart, your well orchestrated social event. You are to view these minor misfortunes and setbacks with good humor, sardonically cursing the coyote under your breath with a smirk, surrendering to his relentless assault on decency. He knows what he does, but feels not for our hearts. Joke’s on everyone.
The coyote has come and gone. He tipped the lantern and set fire to my hay barn. I cared about that barn. I find it hard to laugh. Absurd! My work, my commitment, the days and nights of loving labor, gone in a moment. There was nothing I could do to prevent it; deus ex machina in the form of a feral dog. I cannot abide this. Not just yet. I’m not done mourning. I shall never laugh again, I declare, though for fact I know that’s untrue. It just seems a sacrilege to even entertain the thought of smiling.
We’re supposed to just be cool about it all. Everybody assume the lotus position and sing a song of silliness. Tee hee hee, my chest is a fallen boulder. Ha ha ha, poison is boiling my blood. Oh, coyote, you’re such a card. Good one.
***
Sometimes you gotta rant that pain away. It’s good to dance with your hurt, your anger. It’s just gonna keep nagging if you don’t give in anyway. That’s how I handle those moments anyway. I even shake a fist at God and mess with his head. I taunt him and try and slap him around with some big talk. He can take it. Sometimes you gotta play the big dumb gorilla with the God-sized ego. It’s part of what makes us so amazing as humans. We feel, we experience, we blast off to extremities. Ask Shakespeare, he knows what he’s talking about. We’re not these perfect, new-age scions of virtue and piety. We’re down and dirty at times. When we git into it like that, it comes through us and moves on and we move on and the world moves on and we brace for that next rocket ship into the unknown. Of course, it really helps to have a friend who knows how to take it when you rant. I consider it a service of the highest order when a wise friend listens to my arrogant, ignorant, contradictory chest thumping. I need that. We all need that.
Oct. 29
I am deeply, madly, hopelessly in love with my rage. Aaaaaand that is the title of my upcoming multi-platinum album of death metal ballads.
***
I realized I’m a full-blown dementia case and none of this is real. It’s the only possible explanation for all the backwards talking. I have achieved awareness.
***
I don’t like night anymore. I’m only going to allow the sun from now on. Concordantly, neither will clouds be further permitted. Thank you for your cooperation.
***
The beast can’t be killed, only mastered. Attack, wrestle, subdue, encage, study, know, befriend the beast. Gain its trust, train it, dominate it. Ride it home.
***
Back on the grind. It’s a good grind.
***
Saw it coming. Didn’t duck. This is why I’m awesome.
***
“Will, what is the craft of writing?”
It’s when the new World Trade Center is almost complete and the crane comes with the spire, and you have to guide the spire into place. The spire rises, rises, and you stand on the tip of thousands of feet of steel and watch and wait and hope everything is going well inside the cab of the crane and with the thousands of feet of scaffolding, and you’re just happy there’s no hurricane. The spire swings toward you, slowly, slowly, so that it doesn’t sway, and you pray for all the calculus to add up. And then the spire is close enough to handle with your hands, and you join in with the other workers in your hard hats and harnesses attached by thin cables to smudged gray industrial steel in placing the spire onto the bolts. You tighten the nuts. You turn around and wave at the world.
Oct. 30
“I’mma git my food and pass on these sexy genes no matter who it hurts, and best nobody smell like competition or it’s claws in ya face.” – Everyone, ever.
***
What in the hell am I doing? That’s the question I ask myself as I wake up suddenly waist-deep in sludge holding a bunch of carrots by the tops in my left hand high above my head proudly and an Unholy Bible cradled in the crook of my right elbow like the Statue of Confusion. And how long have I been standing here? And why are tourists climbing up my colon? That seem right to you? I feel like Boomer over here, for you Battlestar Galactica freaks. The rest of you, just imagine a guy who lived his whole life thinking it was his, but then fell asleep and discovered reality inside a black hole crammed full of yellow roses on fire, white flames licking the skin of someone whose scent was just on the tip of my tongue. I can’t recall. I can’t seem to. Recall.
Oct. 31
Your magic decoder ring is laughing at you.
***
Good change and bad change feel exactly the same. They’re both inconvenient. They’re both disruptive. They affect your life permanently. Sometimes they’re messy, sometimes they cause serious damage to the order of things. They both sometimes hurt like hell. And we almost always violently reject them both with equal certainty of our correctness. Because we don’t realize until it’s too late that good change feels exactly like bad change. Or we just suck at identifying one from the other.
***
Expect a miracle.
Nov. 1
“Sometimes you’re busy as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs; other times, you’re busy as a rocking chair in a roomful of cats.” – Buddha’s Ass
***
I am not owed what I love.
***
Sometimes I’m eyes above water; most times, I’m eyes below, and unseeing.
***
Can we all ease up on each other? We’re just as much of an idiot and a jerk as the one we’re pointing fingers at and doling out morality advice to. Some of us hide it better, is all.
Nov. 2
I’m telling you, man. My life’s been way more manageable ever since the Jesus stormed the gates. I don’t even care if my religion is all completely made up. It’s not even relevant. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Please, folks, do what works for you, no matter how stupid you think it is. If you find wearing a lampshade on your head gives you the strength to carry on and move through the storm, then superglue that thing to your head and don’t look back.
Nov. 4
Another day, another miracle. Puke on that, cynics.
***
Crossing eyes, dotting tees,
Tending to exigencies,
Two by two and three by three,
Raking rows and planting trees.
Nov. 6
I am smack dab in the middle of the target and I’m quivering, shot from the bow from the Man quivering arrows countless.
***
“You’re okay. I’ve got your back. Screw those jerks, they can’t hurt you, they’re small and you are magnificent. I love you, brother. You’re safe. You are a good person. Don’t be afraid, my friend. Be filled with gentle light. I’m here for you. You need my help and I need yours.” Say that type of stuff to people, sincerely and right to their face, if you want to save countless lives.
The more we say and do these things, the more we prove our commitment, the safer we all feel, so we can live on and face the biggest, baddest, meanest, most unbelievably terrifying Enemies with peace in our hearts and maybe even a laugh. Nothing can hurt us if we hold strong like a mountain.
Nov. 7
Big-ass fence around the fortress, plenty of bridges. Or whatever.
***
Lot of grandparents dying in my Facebook feed here. Everybody love each other a hundred years too early.
***
Why should I care about my immediate surroundings and the warmblooded human beings in my physical presence when I can just log on to Facebook and communicate with you good people? It’s not like the people around me don’t also have Facebook, so I don’t have to worry about abandoning them. And really, who can afford to decorate the way they like? It’s easier just to go online and look at all the pretty things I can’t build myself in two second flat. I really don’t see any further use for the real world. As long as the basics are taken care of–food, clothing, shelter, and plenty of fiber optic cables with the infrastructure to keep the signal flowing–the rest of the world can just go away. I haven’t experienced true boredom in years; the Internet takes care of that for me the moment I feel it coming on. Even love is available purely online, especially if words are your love language. So really, go ahead and pick up that device. I’ll pick up mine, you’ll pick up yours, they’ll pick up theirs, and we’ll all meet in Imagination Land and just move in and stay forever.
Nov. 8
If you want to deal with a feeling, maybe the first step is to admit you’re having a feeling. Call me crazy.
***
According to my calendar, it’s been 73 days and no alcohol for me. That’s not a brag. Please don’t congratulate me. I normally don’t even like counting days. It’s not important. I’m just posting this to show you it’s possible to quit, if you think drinking is hurting your life in any way. How did I quit? Well I didn’t. God just took it away from me. Yeah, yeah. Some of you might say, “Will, give yourself some credit. The power of the mind is amazing, and you should be proud of your accomplishment.” My reply to that would be that pride and giving myself credit never did jack squat for me. It only set me up for a fall. Pride goeth, yadda yadda. It’s true. And I’m not trying to play the uber humble, holier-than-thou jackass here either. Just saying I can’t do anything without God, is all. Any atheists out there, more power to you. If you find a way to make life work, please go for it, and you certainly don’t need my or anyone else’s permission to walk your own path. My certainty in a God figure doesn’t require others to be compliant or to mirror my method. Just letting you know what works for me, and you can plagiarize it if you want. I’m grateful to be clean and sober. Don’t get me wrong, my life isn’t perfect or anything just because I got religion. I’ve still got challenges, and let’s get real, some of my recent “success” is due to mere luck and staying alive long enough to run into some of it. And yes, my age (33) is better suited to recognizing good luck and taking advantage of it than my earlier ages. Not discounting choice here entirely. Just saying God’s got my back and I ain’t saying no. Good luck to you if you need it.
Nov. 9
Easy come, easy go. So maaaybe difficult come, difficult go? Sooo…only get what you can’t get; that way it’ll never leave. Buuut…you can’t have what you can’t get, sooo… Welcome to life, here’s your complimentary whoopie cushion, go have a seat repeatedly and wait until your number is called never.
***
One thing I know for sure: When the big meteor hits, I don’t want to be in my bath towel. What if I’m running down the street in said bath towel and the ladies see my dangly bits? Bad dream turns to nightmare. Better not chance it. Time to switch to pants. Pants: For When the Big Meteor Hits™
Nov. 10
When you screw up, don’t punish yourself. The consequences are there to do the punishing for you, so you don’t even have to worry about that part. Just feel through the frustration, not around it, and treat yourself really well, and celebrate some victories, the first and best of which is that you’re alive and kicking despite the fact that life is often extremely difficult.
***
Target acquired. Sights dead center. I am as still as a mountain. My breath is as the ocean tides: older than old, fresher than fresh, rhythmically reliable and anchored to a planet.
***
FIGHT THE POWER:
Nov. 11
I sought certainty in bunny rabbit clouds, protested when it all changed shape, cried when it disappeared, and there ain’t no moral to the story, you’re gonna love and lose, gonna laugh and cry, and Buddha can suck it because after all his living, all his seeking, all his peace, he don’t know squat about life and he’s missing out. Sweet sorrow, come. Rapid rage betray me. Sudden placidity lay your hands upon my skin.
The Cynic Testifies 