can't i be smarter i mean wiser can't i be a better person or a better carmelite person what is a carmelite why did i end up one and a mildly sorry one at that. everyone else seems to get it. i didn't get it. did i. and contemplation meditation solitude silence. there's this tradition. here's this moment. god. what's my part. better not to ask. too busy putting one foot in front of the other. too busy protecting something. merton says

Free by nature, in the image of God, I was nevertheless the prisoner of my own violence and my own selfishness, in the image of the world into which I was born. That world was the picture of Hell, full of men like myself, loving God and yet hating him; born to love Him, living instead in fear and hopeless self-contradictory hungers.

a quiet boy who plays well by himself. a born something. we're all a born something or other aren't we. and still we're free enough to set it all spinning. carmelites were no refuge for me. once an angry guy who was leaving said i stayed a carmelite because i was running away from life. i didn't think so then. don't think so now. nowhere to run. but it's like i'm waking up every day and finding myself here and so i say "alright, we'll do this today. this is who i have become." and all of these days make up a life. when all of my friends were leaving the carmelites i stayed because it felt more right than leaving. still does. i have been known for some patience. am the fella on the streetcorner watching. i like to watch. but i ain't burning up the road. and there's this adolescent turbulence which should have been settled long ago. i guess. why. well. we call it adolescent, but it's awareness of the limits of one body in time and space and ain't that adult enough for most. mature enough. we know there's never some perfect point, some moment beyond which everything is wonderful while we live. that point is... call it god... up ahead or right now or always. and we call it love. right? all the best minds and largest spirits agree. love is the point. merton again

True love leads a man to fulfillment, not by drawing things to himself but by forcing him to transcend himself and to become something greater than himself....[and later]....true love is therefore closely associated with three fundamentally human strivings: with creative work, with sacrifice, and with contemplation. Where these three are present there is reliable evidence of spiritual life, at least in some inchoate form. There is reliable evidence of love. And the most important of the three is sacrifice.

gotta think about that one.

at the end of the movie of my life, let tom waits sing as the credits roll. something kind of low and mumbly maybe, but he can shout from time to time. pretty, not too absurd.

Blind or crippled
Sharp or dull
I'm reading the Bible
by a 40 watt bulb