An Excerpt or Two from The Sun Also Rises

"Listen, Jake," he said, "are you really a Catholic?"
"Technically."
"What does that mean?"
"I dont know."

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"Nobody ever lives their life all the way up, except bullfighters."

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"That was morality; things that made you disgusted afterwards. No, that must be immorality."

Well?

Beads of sweat dripped down his nose and on to the barrel of the gun. The gun that pointed out into the arid landscape, as if it were a long, black finger eagerly searching for a victim. The man did not move from his perch. It may be that he could not have moved had he wanted to, but he didn't. He was born to be there in that crook of the hill with a bolt-action rifle pinned underneath his arm. He was the Death-Bringer. The Grim Reaper. The man always one trigger pull away from sending another man to oblivion.

Only this victim would not be a man.

I'm not sure if this deserves more development. If I feel the same about it tomorrow I'll write some more. Who knows?

The City isn't This One

There's a city out there built for me and me alone to call it home would be a luxury I can't afford to not foot the bill for this dream I feel rising inside my throat is clenched tighter than before I was blind as a lost man without a map in a city built for me a city as lost as me and all I can see are the green walls that reach to the sky with a barrel of a gun staring them down the deepest ditch you have ever seen.

Three Seconds

I think I have three seconds left to live. Three seconds. That’s not very long. Hardly long enough to do anything really. I can’t imagine what I could even get done in that amount of time. I mean, I couldn’t get much done anyway. Wings aren’t good for much except flying. Mine aren’t even good for that. That’s the reason for the whole “three seconds” thing. Though, by now it’s probably two seconds. Boy, I’m thinking fast. Like, these are a lot of thoughts for a mayfly to have in three seconds. Who am I kidding? I’d be amazed if any mayfly has ever had this many thoughts in a whole lifetime. One second now. A single solitary second. What even is that? I think they’ll be sad for me. I really do. They’ll say I died young. They’ll say I lived a good life. A good, three-second-long life. They’ll say that the way I fell really showed what a free spirit I had. My free spirit isn’t helping me defy gravity though. This is it, I guess. Me and my free spirit have a date with the pavement. I wonder what I should say last. What should my last thought be? What intellectually-stirring quote should I be known for? I want my name to be remembered. I guess I need a name. A good name. A name that sounds strong and bold and reminds people of my heroism. Like, Danny. Yes, that’s it. Call me Danny.

They don't have a name for this, but I do.

I guess that I should sleep.

Is all that I think

When she has nothing else to say to me

I guess I'll lie down

It's all I want

Whenever I open up my mouth

I guess I'll not leave

It seems so nice

To have the company of these earthen walls

I guess it's done

My sleep is nearly as deep

As I once was tall

Autumnal

The day was the sixth day of the month of September. The air was cooler than normal for that time of the cycle of the seasons. This was hardly a bad thing. Fall was calling out and announcing its arrival. "Are you prepared?" It asked the unprepared people who were still blissfully unaware of summer's approaching adieu.

The night was one for dreams of futures and falling leaves. No reminiscing here. No memories. Give no thought to your past days, weeks, or years. Find a love more stable than summer flings. There is nothing here that isn't here. No other thoughts to think. No other air to breathe. Only these leaves settling on you with their colored wings. Only the crisp wind and the smoke of fires sending up towers to the night sky.

The boy was not so much a boy, but hardly could be called a man. He was glad of his beard and its warm hugs. Still more glad of headphones singing of sycamore trees and colors that lacked. He felt carpets of crunching leaves beneath his feet. He wore red flannel for the warmth of the thing. He held a cup of tea for the steam rising from its top. He clutched the hand of a girl for the love that reached out to him through her fingers. It was all there, waiting to be noticed by him and impossible to ignore.

The tree was a home away from home with golden robes of leaves adorning its frame. They met there. The twigs with their brittle snaps. The couple with their flourishing love. The cup of tea and his flannel shirt and her warm sweater. This is where home met them with open arms. The sun would visit them on occasion, acting the part of a pleasant house-guest. 

The day was nearer to a dream than a surety. The night was mostly imaginations bubbling over into the stark depths of real life. It was still there, just out of limb's reach. Perhaps, if they just could bide their time. Maybe the day was nearer to fingers entwined together than fingers crossed. And maybe autumn longed for them as they longed for it.

Honey

Hey Honey,
This is only semi-public since I'm sure no one reads this anymore. I still hope you can understand from this just how important you are and how badly I need you.

I love you so much. I've loved you for three years and I think I know by now that I made the right decision. I just want to thank you. You're so sweet and loving and you've stuck with me patiently for all this time. You're the only thing that makes me feel like life has some stability and security. Because no matter what happens or what scares me, I always know that you will be there to squeeze me and smile and love me like no one else has ever loved me.

You're beautiful. And amazing. I wish I knew of a way to tell you this so that you'd believe it. You're my best friend. I hope to overwhelm your stubborn resistance with the sheer amount of "I love you"s that I can send your way.

When I met you, it was like a whirlwind of all these things that I never knew I loved in a girl, but I found it in you. The way you laugh. The way you run when we play basketball and you've just made a fat joke and I'm trying to be intimidating and you're not buying it at all but youre so sweet that you pretend to be worried anyway. I love the way you squeeze my arm during the scary parts of movies. I love the way you rest your head on my shoulder on the way home from church. I love the way you answer the phone when I call you at 6:30 AM on a day when you didn't have to wake up early but you still answer because you're awesome.

I don't really know how to put into words how much I love you and how you mean everything to me. I hope this semi-public proclamation of my love brings a smile to your face. If it's not enough to scare off your sadness, then I hope that the promise of our next hug is enough to remind you that you're loved. And that even when you don't understand it, you're worth every ounce of love I can muster for the rest of my life.

I love you, Darling.

-Your Nate

Don't Blink

Another week has passed far too quickly for my liking. Gone in a flash. Vacations used to feel like vast, wonderful, nearly unending periods of joy and goodness. Not so anymore. Now it feels like someone told me I have half an hour to spend in the prison yard instead of my cell and they call out a reminder every minute or two about how much longer I have before I have to go back into my cell again.

Sure, it's a depressing metaphor, but adulthood is depressing. Worse still, everyone likes to either A) Remind me that I have X amount of days until I go back to work, or B) tell me how good I have it and how unfair it is that I have this vacation, which is honestly more burdensome than work is.

When I work, I get to come home and have guilt-free free time. Not so on vacation. I feel so lazy. I feel like I'm wasting it too.

This past week I spent a lengthy amount of time living in the woods. Let me tell you, not all the fun that it's made out to be. You could call it a vacation. I call it an experiment. My foray into pure, unadulterated adulthood. It was...interesting.

I guess I learned a fair amount about who I am. I am indeed ready for adulthood. I'm ready to be responsible and in charge of a situation. This is gonna sound weird. I've been wondering for a few years now when I become a "man." It wasn't the beard that pushed me over the edge. Or the job. Or anything I've done. It was this week. I haven't told anyone this yet, because it feels weird to even say and it'll only bring mockery. I'll settle for telling the faceless internet.

Internet, this week I can honestly say I see myself as a man, not a boy. Don't know if it was the dirt beneath my fingernails or the satisfaction of putting up a tent or spending several days being the sole guardian of another human being. It did it. I'm a man.

There. Got that off my chest.

Now for thoughts I had during my first week of self-proclaimed manhood.

I started reading A Game of Thrones. (Holy Guacomole! Such a good book. I can't speak for the rest of the series, but I imagine they are similarly incredible.) It's the sort of book where not just the story is meant to be consumed, but the very sentences themselves. George R. R. Martin's writing is gorgeous. If anyone sort of skims through that book without properly taking in each sentence in turn, they're missing out.

And this brings me to my grand philosophical point. I'll be a sizzling bit of tire-hugging roadkill if that isn't a good metaphor for life. I want the kind of life worth savoring and I want the patience to savor it. I think it takes effort. Life is all too easy to skim through. We want these milestones, just like some people read books to get to the plot twists and resolution at the end. But it's too easy to miss out on the descriptive sentences in life. Yes, there's high school graduation and marriage and kids and retirement to look forward to in all of our lives. But ultimately? That's a pitiful thing if that's all that matters in the end. I don't want to remember my life like its my obituary. I don't want to be "He liked oranges, writing, and being an all around nuisance." I want to look back on my life and remember the time I belly flopped from ten feet in the air off a rope swing and couldn't breathe for a frightening length of time. I want to remember what it's like to run through a Walmart parking lot as the sky pours down on me. I want my life to not be about events, milestones, and responsibilities. I want to be a collection of laughter, tears, shouting, fears, and liveliness.

I don't know what life holds in store for me. I hardly know what I want from life. I don't know what to think or believe or feel. I know I'm me. I have to go find and be as near to what I love as I can manage. I recognize the folly there. I see how inherently dangerous it is. I know that living life with what you love isn't the safest route to take. 

But I no longer see the point in any other life.

My Troubled Head

Sometimes, I come face to face with a choice. Two directions. One me. I find myself torn between the two. I wish my life were a movie and I could split myself in both directions and see how both choices work out. I want to know what will happen.

But I don't. I have no clue. This is one of the more irritating things about life. No do-overs. No glimpses into the future. No nothing. I really want some sort of guidance. Some neon sign in the sky to point me on my way.

Sadly, those don't exist either. I'm stuck with my gut feelings and the best logic I can muster. I'm stuck in the present. Isn't that a weird place to be, when you think about it? I can't fall back into the comfortable, knowable past. I can only try to remember it. I can't peer into the future and figure out what adventures await me.

Maybe bothering with those things is just a waste of time.

If I'm stuck with the present, maybe it's useless to pretend it's the past or wish it could be the future. Right now, It's now and I'm me and this is a keyboard and life is OK  Not great. Certainly not stellar. But it's OK.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I always end up with a choice. And in trying to choose, I hope and pray that I don't make the wrong choice. But what if there isn't a wrong choice in this instance? What if both directions are perfectly acceptable, and merely different paths? What if I really can just choose what I want and not have to take into account the future? What if that scares me half to death?

I don't know what I want all that often. I don't know what's best. I think life isn't about finding the best possible choice. I think life is about making choices.

My first choice is to love my best friend more than any other thing.

My second choice is post these ramblings to the internet.

My third choice is to go to bed.

And then I choose to let that be all the decision-making for today and be OK with that choice.

The whole wide world isn't going anywhere until tomorrow at least.

They will see us waving from such great heights

Come down now

They'll say

Pressure.

There is an illustration so tired and over-used, I feel reluctant to mention it. The way a lump of coal is formed into a diamond with immense amounts of pressure is supposed to teach us something about ourselves. If we just sit through the pressures of life long enough, we may just find ourselves making the transformation from an ugly lump of coal into a beautiful diamond that is worth a lot of money and some poor bloke can spend half his life savings on in order to, ironically, add the pressures of marriage to his life.

OK, so, maybe that illustration fell off the proverbial rails at some point. Forgive me.

My problem with this whole business is that no one ever stops to ask the lump of coal how he feels about this. Maybe he doesn't particularly care for being a diamond. Maybe he doesn't think he's diamond material. I know, I know. Off the rails again.

I don't know where I'm taking this. You know the wise words, "Don't drink and drive"? Maybe we should add, "Don't blog and fume." Well, Folks, I'm fuming. If you could catch the steam coming out of my ears, you could power a locomotive.

I just feel pressure. Inner pressures dying to force their way out, as well as outward pressures all too eager to make their way in. Do you know the feeling in life when there's a million things for you to do and in the time it takes you to do one, four more pop up? And you're at a figurative dead-sprint just trying to make it through the week? And then the floor you're running on drops out beneath you? That's me.

Its at times like this that I find a surprising circumstance. I find a wonderful, merciful Savior who has saved me once and for all and continues to lead me day by day. I find My Lord, Jesus Christ. Even when all the earthly things and human people I depend on have stopped being sturdy leaning posts, I find a Heavenly Father who never wavers. In His Arms, I do not have a to-do list. Or a rule book to get me through life. In Him, I have a relationship of Love and Faith and Obedience.

I find that the pressures of life don't change me in and of themselves, but only in the sense that they send me hurrying to Him. In His Hands, I can handle the pressures of life. And by His Power, I will go through a transition that puts the coal-to-diamond one to shame.

"For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

     --Matthew 11:30--