Tuesday 18 December 2012

Navigations

Listening to The Breeders - Night of Joy + We're Gonna Rise

We have come to the point in the conversation where a resolution seems imminent. I see how these tangled problems and hypotheses could have a conclusion, but then I see that they all end in the same place. All these interactions and relationships of joy and necessity can find a common point of termination as this year fades into the coming year. I told my boss that I was moving on in January, I told my roommate that I was moving at the end of the month, I am currently finishing the final papers of my degree, I am tenuously considering moving closer to the Orthodox Church. How much of your life is wrapped up in those four things; how many of your relationships depend on them? There are a lot of things that carry through; I am moving in with some of my friends from Trinity and I still have the same family, but the fundamental character of much of my life is currently in flux. What are my navigations for the coming year?

Listening to Patrick Watson - Big Bird in a Small Cage + Where the Wild Things Are

Now I'm sitting in my friends' kitchen, in the middle of the night, eating chocolate, contemplating Pascal, and trying to think of ways to win someone. Trying desperately to remember what love is. Trying to remember if I feel love for anyone. Because sometimes, the way my heart beats, I forget. It sounds melancholic, but right now I'm writing up a playlist entitled "Melancholy" so it might be honesty. While I'm being honest, I'll reiterate (as I so often do) that I have a tremendous hope. While it would seem that I am tossed, with random uncertainty, on the ocean of life; in truth, I rest certainly in the hands of God, wherein lies all possibility; it is the world that tosses like a tempest around me. What a contradiction am I! And how can we ignore the soul when such inner contradiction is present?

Listening to Peter Bjorn & John - Up Against the Wall

So these creatures that we have become, that toss and turn in desperate uncertainty, can find no home (no rest).

 Wild Roots

Our wild yearning and our hands
feeling in the dust for supple earth
our shoulders borne with weights
our feet seem raw or wrecked with callous
from beating down to the South and West 

The wild horns that push from our skulls
the scales and fur that tear our clothes
the burning tears we try our
level best to ignore

If we could feel the sun
as it glares upon each violent turn 
if we could hear our hearts
hammering like nails into our chest
if we could feel our scales fall
 from eyes and see what really bides

Our features would deepen in
each appropriate line
our burdens would weigh no longer
on our straightening back
our feet would mend in gentle skin
and strong roots would form
grow down towards the water
we would be still then
above the flowing water