(but) what of this death i still dwell in?

part i. concentrate

have you ever been to a concentration camp?
i haven't.
but i saw some footage of auschwitz on tv the other night. it was foggy and getting dark outside, and there were unused train tracks and abandoned buildings and empty sidewalks and if you squinted with your mind you could see the people, all the people. i imagine if you are really there you must be able to feel them. to feel death pressing down on you from all around. but they're not there. how is it that we think we can feel the weight of the dead where they aren't? and how is it that we can't seem to feel it where they are?


part ii. just a little bit further

a girl i went to high school with was killed on the highway a few days ago.
it's hard to notice how close it really is until someone the same as you has to go. someone not old, or sick, or trying. what if i died tonight? i can't really perceive it. but it makes me curious about what things would be ceased. and the difference between those and the things that i never really began in the first place. y'know? the things you imagine would be ended if you ended, but that you then realize would merely be .. lost. because they were only in your imagination so far anyways.
lost possibilities are awfully tragic.


part iii. almost / not yet

"it's friday...but sunday's coming"
you may have heard of this. today at church my pastor played off one of his favorite stories/sermons. tony campolo has this tale about being the sixth of 7 speakers at a Good Friday service (at a mostly African-American pentecostal church), where the old preacher got up as number 7 and topped 'em all with one sentence: "it's friday...but sunday's coming." i would love to invite you into my time machine and visit the service this morning because it was pretty funny--jay likes interactive sermons, so he had all the cheesy white folks waving their hands around and shouting "keep it goin' brotha"s and "well, well"s as he strode around the aisles building up with this phrase.
to be quite honest, i've been living friday for far too many days now. if you know me, you've probably never or rarely seen me upset or down. i don't like to put that on people. and i know that's messed up. but i've kind of always somehow had to be the one there for other people to be able to be like that with. so after a while, as that person, you just keep your shit to yourself and turn off a piece of your heart i guess. i don't even think it happens on purpose. (this is all hindsight.) i also just tend to not let things get to me much. so i don't have that much junk to deal with anyways. each day has enough of its own and my life is in God's hands in the end. but lately, it's been the space between each day that gets me--the sleepless hour before sleep...where i try to resist but can't fight off the dread. where i know full well that the things i dread and despair are not even worth it, but somehow i've accidentally let the values of the world around me shape my thoughts and dreams...so that the way things ought to be and are becoming threaten these model homes of the mind.
do you know the feeling i mean? the feeling of lying in the dark at the end of a day of outrunning yourself, where all you want is a second wind in the escape that is unconsciousness, where your heart feels like it is being smothered by the expanding atmosphere that seems to've developed in your chest?
this is no place to live. and it's even worse when you know that, and you keep staying. sometimes you have to stay, for a time. but whether you mean to stay or not, you can only stay for so long.

every friday has its sunday.

he grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.

he had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
he was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised...
surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted...
by oppression and judgement he was taken away.
and who can speak of his descendants?
for he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was stricken.
he was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.
after the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.
therefore i will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors.
( from Isaiah 53 )