1.13.2013

Civil Wars

Every man wants to become something, but we seem to give enough of ourselves away so that we are spoiled from becoming anything.

A man sat in a room with a eye for receiving spiritual answers to some questions. While an illumineer satisfied the mans appetite, the inquisitor's son wandered down a ill-lit street. The man with the questions didn't know his son had even left the room.

A man sat at a table with many others, sharing pitchers of sunset colored beer. A time ago, he would have called it a mistake. Now, his ex-wife and kids are the mistake.

A man phones an old friend after cashing a paycheck. That morning he thumbed through a brochure that romanticized a film career. Tonight, he'll be higher than the space needle, having philosophical conversations he won't remember.

The grumblings of a disquieted spirit turn into a roar as night matures. All day I've been bothered by my own inconsistencies. I know that we often give little pieces of ourselves away to things that mean to do us no good. We tend to fantasize about being something great. A great artist, lover, spiritual guide, or fighter. Except, little distractions and lustful's become addictions that, like drugs, impair some part of us needful to achieve that great goal we're after. Perhaps we're not hypocrites, perhaps we're not slime balls, perhaps most would pass us off as merely humans. (No doubt to quiet their own civil wars). But these little contradictions can be our greatest hindrances to be what we mean to be in life, and thus cannot be tolerated. Though I've fallen once, or a thousand times, that mountain still lies ahead of me, and by God I am somewhere on it. Frankly, I don't much care how far from the bottom I've gotten, only how far from the top I am. This idea turns my midnight roar into more of a hoarse battle cry. Whatever I've got to put foot over foot or hand over hand so that I do not become a nothing man.

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