On the Market

To what shall you give your soul? Who or what is worthy of it? And at what price shall it be given? If you say you are in control of your own soul, what will send you into despair? Find what it is that you cannot part with, and you have found something that has at least a part of you. Is it, or are they a worthy owner? How many worthy owners are there? And let's just say that there's just one (worthy owner). How would that effect your life? If there's more than one worthy owner, how do you know that it is worthy? Are you worthy? Can you be trusted with your soul? If there is only one worthy owner, than it matters if you're an atheist, because if you're not than anything less than all of you to God is a divided soul, also known as idolatry. Can this describe the human condition? We're all just a bunch of misplaced souls, divided, and lost in our idolatry? Where is salvation? And how shall my soul be one, and owned by God? The Calvinist says: "By God's decision". The Pelagian says: "By my decision" The American says: "I second Pelagius". The Catholic says: "What Augustine said" The atheist says:"Irrelevant, I am not lost" I could go on and on declaring what I think people would say in response to the question. As for me. I have what I think is an answer, but I'd rather try and keep in step with the mood of this post, and stick with the question. What do you think?

God

God, it doesn't seem to me should be someone, or something we should talk about with any sort of casualness. That sentiment was violated by the sentence, and continues to be violated as I write. I resent the way we talk about God, as writers, and the way that modern evangelicals talk about him. It seems that a lot of us have lost a true sense of awe or reverence. Sadly, this is the beginning of wisdom. How frivolous it is to talk about life without fear, awe, reverence of God. It may even be destructive. Just some thought I had.

Sometimes

   Sometimes things really are too good to be true. Sometimes you plan out an entire day of leisure; just reading and drinking coffee. And it turns out neither to be enlightening or fun, just makes you feel lazy and empty. It serves, however as a neat little metaphor for life. It's not when our dreams are fulfilled that we experience true joy, or when our plans are executed, but when a good thing unexpected happens, and it doesn't matter how "big" the thing that happens it is, it just matters that for that moment your life is something other than you thought it was, and you can no longer accept the notion that life is drudging routine, because something out of routine just happened. But you cannot sit around and make these events happen, nor can you plan for them, or manipulate events to ensure their happening. The only thing to do is to hope, plan, drudge through your routine, notice when it is broken, and then tell God about it. 

Too Good

They say that some things in life are just "too good to be true". Like a modestly dressed beauty queen, who likes foreign films, smoking pipes and reading Kierkegaard on a bench on the square. She is inevitably insane.
Nothing in life is as ideal as it seems in our wonderfully hopeful little imaginations. I suppose that perhaps the offset to all of that is that maybe death is not as bad it seems. Maybe dying is like getting a shot; way worse in our imaginations then in reality, before and after the shot. But then again, maybe not.
Anyway, I find it fascinating how we are led away from despair by our imaginations, nothing ever happens the way we plan it, or want it, or expect it, but we go on living as if our next plan will work, as if our next hope will be fulfilled. I find no reason to discourage this, this it seems that the alternative is soul suicide. But the remedy for soul suicide is not denial, but true belief, not wishful thinking, or resignation, cynicism, stoicism, or physical suicide, but true belief, belief that transcends human categories, and transforms both subject and object. I believe this.

Billie Jean

"Billie Jean is at my door"
"She's just a girl who says that I am the one"
"But the kid is not my son"

Anything here not look right? I thought that these were the lyrics to the Michael Jackson hit "BIllie Jean" As it turns out, not only is Michael not the child's father, Billie Jean is not his lover, nor is she at his door. I believe that Billie Jean is not at Michael's door. As for the rest of Michael's claims, I believe "Billie Jean", whose name has been changed to protect the innocent.

Leisure

I've been busy lately. I've been happy lately. Perhaps my busyness is just a distraction and so my lack of depression is mistaken for happiness. I do not think so. Even my leisure time is happy. Happiness is strangely addictive. I never thought I would like it. What I mean is that I hope I don't get so addicted to happiness that I continue this busy lifestyle to the detriment of real thought about life. But time to think about life is a luxury. Compared to what the masses of human beings are doing, it is truly a luxury to obsess and be depressed over existential questions, or the meaning of life while such questions answer themselves when every day's a battle to get meal. Plus, something I have discovered on this foray into busyness is that I very often feel an acute sense of accomplishment, something which rarely happened in my life of leisure. The real quandary here is my busy life is happier and therefore it feels more meaningful, but my life of leisure, a.k.a. my life of reading and talking to people, seemed more substantial, yet depressing, still more authentic. Do you, readers of this blog feel my pain? Identify? Have no idea what I'm talking about?

Scranton

Scranton, Pennsylvania is my home. Just saying the sentence makes me chuckle. Because, you know, Scranton is kind of a ridiculous town, with many frustrating quirks, which can be charming depending on how you look at it. One example is the overhead thingermabob hanging over Lackawanna Avenue, seemingly connecting the Steamtown Mall to some business that I am told used to be awesome, but now is a vacant dingy struggling indie band practice room. If you thought that Brooklyn had an overabundance of pizza joints, you are wrong. I went to Brooklyn a few months ago and walked around for an hour, or as my friend would say "minutes and minutes....and minutes", and did not find a pizza place not named "Papa John's". In Scranton, there is no such thing as "Papa Johns". It has been replaced by "Ellen Kay's Diner" which this morning gave me the biggest egg and cheese sandwich on a bagel I have ever seen, approximately 1,000,000 and a half nanometers in diameter. In Scranton, there has to be the most pizza joints per capita of any place anywhere, ever. Literally there is a pizza place on average on every other block, sometimes three on one block. And one of every two pizza joints in Scranton sport the famous "Old Forge Style Pizza", named after a quaint little town just south of Scranton apparently full of cheap Italian (not that Italians are cheap)restaurant owners who one day came upon the revelation that American cheese was much cheaper than mozzerella, and then packaged it as a "style". American cheese on pizza is like Budweiser on an open wound. It will do the job, but it shouldn't. In Scranton there are many, many pizza places.
In Scranton, everyone is in the mafia, whether they know it or not.
In Scranton, in the early weeks of July, you can find numerous little "legitimate" fireworks stands on the side of the road, and then you can hear them shooting into the summer evening every night of your life until November. You are then free to spend your evenings in peace until January, when fireworks warm the cool New Year's sky. And then you will have three months, but that's it, because the local Yankees start in April, and they win every game so fireworks happen all the time and often happen pre-game and even if they lose, because we the mafia have paid way too much for them to go to waste.
If it sounds like I am complaining, it is because I am. But that puts me right into the spirit of this city which I inexplicably love, and am irrevocably attached to, like an annoying girlfriend you keep around for the drama and free meals a la mozzerella cheese.