THE CLOSET MYSTIC

update:

finished reading The Princess Bride. So early on into the book, I knew it had solidified itself as being one of my favorites of all time. Don’t know the last time I read something so incredibly unique, brilliant, and clever. William Goldman’s literary genius — and I view it as nothing short of just that — is so clear in this novel.

highly personal opinion that I know has no objective truth to it: it read to me almost the way books “should” be (though the very word “should,” I think, is hardly ever appropriate in the realm of the arts). it read the way I wished more books were! it was high fantasy, the dominance of goodness over evil, the victory of true love, harsh truths about life, endlessly funny, adorable, ridiculously entertaining in its writing style, so chock-full of twists and turns to keep the reader engaged, all wrapped into one.

that’s all! just wanted to update on that book.

Surety surety 

leads to obscurity

the intellect’s blinders

dimming the light of curiosity.

remain questioning

remain uncertain 

let the Sun in —

never pull that curtain.

haunted by this ghost of my past…

every time I travel

to the basement of my being

I find there a child

He’s chained and he’s weeping.

…

won’t somebody

please turn on the heat?

if I stay here much longer

I fear I’ll soon freeze

…

My spine is a ladder

I crawl down to the base

there are horrors and jewels

all down there to excavate 

…

I’ve lived all my life

with this venom in my veins

I’ve cried for the antidote

ne’er heard, all in vain.

…

these wails from Hades

are heard from Olympus

but none but Hermes 

can return still breathing 

…

so I knock on the door

beg for a sign,

I beg for a clue.

but those early childhood echoes are muffled.

and there’s not a damn thing I can do 

we haven’t stopped churning out mythologies. we’ve simply stopped viewing them as myth. we’ve simply reduced the instances in which our myths are labeled as religious. they hide in plain sight.

the thing is that fiction is true. fiction tells us of latent potentials within the psyche. all fiction is a blueprint and guidebook. our stories tell us what can become of us. our stories grant us options. will you be a hero or a villain? which is which?

ah, to be frank, I think the only true villains of any story are the extras. the villain is not the antagonist, because the villain is their own personal hero, don’t you see? all villains are heroes to someone. all heroes, even, are villains to another.

but the extras, the complacent ones, these are heroes to none. these are the lawful evils. a life of true villainy is a life of comfort, a life dedicated to no cause.

the backs of the deadweight masses make up the steps of the mountain that villains summit.

…

we have not stopped churning out mythologies. not one bit. every single person has their own personal myth. mythology is the epic tale of each and every one of our hearts.

do you not think that there are elements of mythology found in the far reaches of the intolerant right? do you not think that Trump, to them — a man they’ve never met — has reached mythic status within their own psyches? do you not think he is their own personal solar hero? do you not think that the “0.001%” or “deep state” is, to them, his beast to be slain? conversely, do you not think the far left sees the far right as the beast to be slain?

see this: mythology is everywhere, merely dressed in laymen’s clothing. mythology is in The Princess Bride. Westley, that solar hero representing the ultimate light of goodness and potency, holding powers threefold within himself — conquering Inigo, Fezzik, and Fizzini — who dies, resurrects, slays the tyrant king, and reunites with his consort, Buttercup, true love conquering all.

Why can they not be considered a modern Osiris and Isis? It’s all the same, only the names will change. In a postmodern society, where science has shattered superstitious shackles — perhaps presenting its own form of confinement in and of itself, too — the myths, too, experience a form of resurrection.

they live on, resurrecting even past their apparent death.

myth is alive everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.

I think this: to me, spiritual awakening is about recognizing that life is a storybook, life is a dream. gradually, we might identify with the hand holding the pen, rather than merely being written in by that unconscious force. integrating the unconscious is learning why the hand writes the way it does, then entering conversation with it. gradually, we co-create and help shape destiny through that marvelous creative force known as free will.

yes, if life is a dream, then spiritual awakening is about becoming a lucid dreamer. spiritual awakening is about recognizing that the impulses of the unconscious shape the formation of our manifest world. we look inside at the root, rather than outside at the branches.

this is why myth is so awfully important. this is why fiction is so awfully important. what are they but us studying our lines? what is reading a tale of heroism and bravery but rehearsal for the great play of life? we must give our spirits the choreography if we expect to be able to dance in step and time.

find your personal mythology and live it darlings

Tonight I rest, I rest, I rest my weary bones.

I’ve beaten myself to a pulp, a glorious pulp, the flame of youth burns bright, the perfect nexus point between the ambitions of adulthood and the vitality of post-adolescent primacy — 

But tonight, tonight, tonight do I rest my weary bones. 

When was the last time I simply let myself rest? Ah, something awoke in me, and I’ve found such great joy in work, in toil, satiating something deep inside of me, answering a lifelong question, grabbing that hooked scythe at the end of the interrogative, pointing it downward, and answering —

I’ve answered the question that is each day — each day, as the sun rises, we are asked: who will you be? what will you create? know that the photons I invest in thee today will always have echoes into your future — know that you can rewrite your past through rising like I do in the now. If actions speak louder than words, then I’ve answered that question by screaming my voice hoarse.

I’ve answered that question each day with ferocity channeled outward and inward. I am both clay and the hands that shape. The flames of the past seemed to have set me into ceramic, but the hammer of strife shattered me into a million pieces. Fascinatingly, they fell as puzzle pieces. They fell as building blocks. I saw opportunity. I saw the chance to rebuild and remake myself. I knew that each day was a puzzle piece set, I knew that each day was a nail driven into wood. I knew that my house would be built, the puzzle complete, through a long series of these steps. I saw the staircase extend into infinity, those limitless horizons, those upper echelons of the sky. Saturn, the lord of time, taught me that every day was a step taken either up or down, that the highest version of myself was both waiting for me at the top and created in my ascent.

And I began. I began. I climbed and I climbed. I’ve been climbing, I’ll continue to climb. 

But oh, how I forgot this key:

there are times to simply stop the climb and enjoy the view. why summit a mountain’s peak without taking the time to drink in the heights to which you’ve climbed? we all must step to the edge and take the majesty in, to extend our arms, to scream with glee, to whoop and to holler like fools. 

tonight, tonight, tonight — tonight do I rest my weary bones. 

how awfully strange it is

how foreign you feel in my mind’s eye

this was death both acute and chronic

a snapped neck and slowest suffocation

the last blip of a dying civilization 

final radio waves like stragglers 

across the vacuum of space,

an SOS heard far too late —

the subtlest instruments,

of time-traveling ears,

hearing ancient echoes,

that traveled lightyears —

from utmost familiarity,

to a stranger —

a face obscured 

by the fogs of time —

I just wanted everyone to know that I sharted a very small quantity on my way to class today.

it hasn’t necessarily been the nature of this blog to simply post life updates, but that is what i want to do right now.

today was my first day of university after graduating from my local junior college. i simply could not be happier. my heart feels full of joy.

that’s all. thanks

somehow, despite your indescribable beauty, your inner radiance makes the artwork that is your appearance pale in comparison–

but comparing your inner and outer beauty is like comparing infinities.

and yet, one of these infinities is without a doubt larger than the other. it is that of your heart. your outer beauty has a definite beginning and end point, for we are mortal, bound by time, by that beloved and terrible cycle of birth and of death. 

but your inner beauty… that is eternal, for I see the grandeur of the cosmos within you. I see that which came before us, I see that which will live on long after us, the majesty of creation held in your spirit. you are stardust. you glitter like the night sky before the fog of modern civilization estranged us from the heavens. you are reminiscent of a time better, possessed of a soul without light pollution, a time before. how grateful am I that this celestial collision came to be. what might be created in our wake?

your eyes… to me, they are the nexus point of these two, a bridge from the outer world to the vast universe of beauty contained within your heart.

looking into them is stargazing.

they are possessed of an irresistible pull and you draw me into orbit

my spirit a didgeridoo 

pagan winds blow to and through

my hallowed hollowed bones

I incorporate the incorporeal

through song