Resilience

I refuse! I categorically reject this proposal of silence, these quiet forces that bend the marrow in my bones and stoop my shoulders before the darkness. I am no doll, I am no shell, I am no dilapidated slave before any of you. Let me be an instrument, if nothing else; but I will not be driftwood in the waters of the Universe. I will make waves, and if I feel no echo in the humid, dark places of the soul, I will swim until I find shore or until I dissolve in this ocean of existence.

Thus is my resistance. Better to fill our mouths with stinging seawater than be pushed by the riptide without fight.

Defeat

We, the few who set out determined to change the universe--

Is it not appropriate that it is the universe which has changed us?

Dismissing the hypothesis that suicides go to hell... (or: Thus I, To Life)

“Thank you for calling God,” a vaguely female voice sounded. “All
our seraphic operators are currently unavailable--”

“In heaven?” The suicide tightened the noose, checking the knot as
he cradled the phone with his chin.

“—please hold until we can take your call.”

Gounod's Ave Maria began playing to his disbelieving ears.

“I'm sorry, but do you understand?” He spoke almost calmly into the
receiver. “I am quite literally on a stool, noose around my neck--”

Click.

“Your call is important to us. Please hold until--”

“--ready to kill myself, needing only one word from our Risen Lord
to convince me not--”

“--for your further satisfaction as well as training purposes, your
call may be recorded--”

“I'll do it! I swear!”

“Ave Maria, gratia plena--”

That was it.

“You brought it on yourself!” he cried into the phone, reaching for
the rope that would trigger the pulley mechanism he'd rigged to trip
the stool. “You never listened—and now I'll pull this—and then I'll
make my complaint right to your ear, because I'll be right there
in--”

He paused.

Slowly, he put down the phone, which had found its way into the Mass
in B Minor.

He loosened the knot and gingerly stepped down from the stool.

Thought

Sometimes the greatest grace is knowing there may be no turning back.

Shadow Gift for Sully

In these dry and arid soils
few stand as you stand.

The rest of us
hold up our great, thatched instruments
and pray for coming song

(though no matter how subtle
or sun-scorched
we seem to
resolutely find sand
thicker than blood).

Yet you,
you bend to the driest ground
not to plant harps
or catch some celestial wind;
you feel the accurate,
accurate burning
and stoop to teach us
how to kiss the dust
and return,
lips shining with song.

Hyarg.

My ear hurts right now.

Ouch, ouch, ouch.

How wonderful, though--once you begin thinking about it--that despite the fact that I'm currently attempting to push together some willing words in order to make my presence known in the (slightly) immaterial spheres here, my only current thought's source is located in my left inner ear canal, where an obnoxious piece of wax has been pressing against my eardrum with an determination that makes me recall those pictures of people pressed against the Berlin Wall. How wonderful that, no matter how far the mind goes, the body is always calling it back.

Oh, spirits of Cartesian dualism, begone! I reject the idea that mind and body will be one day removed, I reject your initial hatred for the vessels, the instruments of this life! Didn't old René himself find the soul deep down in some niche of our cranium? If I am to live in this crass shell, I will not make my stay without it leaving an impression on me, and vice-versa. Let there be pain, let there be ecstasy, let there(oh, please, let there) be chocolate. My body is a cage and I am a willing prisoner, if only to be able to touch every inch of its golden entrapment. Not hedonism, no; symbiosis. Homeostasis between controller and controlled.

Okay, that really hurts. Peroxide now.

Some cages were meant to be broken.