autumn son

if you keep telling lies
the thing is you end up believing them
and one day you wake up and
discover even your unhappiness is a mask
you can no longer take off
and your smile is a muffled cry
for help
you've forgotten how to decipher

next year i will find out that sometimes
when we don't talk
it's not because you are angry
but because you are trying
very hard to love someone
who makes you sad

but in the meantime
it seems i've run away
from home again
and the songs on the radio
don't make me feel a thing
all my emotions are papier mâché
as falling leaves disintegrate into
compost heaps



dead air excavates a blank line
that dutifully conveys the sound
of you not saying anything to me
i'm doing call collect
long distance again
and i've run out of things to say
there is static where
your offer to come rescue me
should be
no kidnappers to pin this one on
i'm afraid
just me

realer than real

... but besides those feelings, there's also a different kind of thing, underneath. something more rare, more real, more lasting

---

0. The Opposite of Loneliness - Marina Keegan
1. On Seeing The 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning - Haruki Murakami
8. How to Be Polite - Paul Ford
3. Shipping Out - David Foster Wallace
3. Right and wrong as a clue to the meaning of the universe - C.S. Lewis
9. The Therapist - Jeffery Deaver
4. The Results are Visible - Taffy Faukner
4. Weights and Measures - Jodi Picoult
9. Ode with a Lament - Pablo Neruda
7. On Keeping a Notebook - Joan Didion
5. That Crafty Feeling - Zadie Smith
6. The Nature of Fun - David Foster Wallace
7. Suicide Hotline - Shinji Moon
6. The Depressed Person - David Foster Wallace
9. Another Dog's Death - John Updike
8. Joy - Zadie Smith
2. Mayakovsky - Frank O'Hara
9. Good Old Neon - David Foster Wallace
6. How to Email with an Old Friend After Falling Out of Touch - Paul Ford

His job is to heal / Don't Burn Out

The first thing I want you to do is pray. Pray every way you know how, for everyone you know. Pray especially for rulers and their governments to rule well so we can be quietly about our business of living simply, in humble contemplation. This is the way our Savior God wants us to live. 

- 1 Timothy 2:1-3

---

“God has spoken to me many times that my job is to love and His job is to heal.” 

- Heidi Baker

---

Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality. 

- Romans 12:11-13

---

'Keep yourselves fueled.' Really needed to hear that this week.

飽きました

I suppose one way to make a heart tender is to let it feel this way

---

“Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; And rend your heart and not your garments." Now return to the LORD your God, For He is gracious and compassionate, Slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness And relenting of evil. 

- Joel 2:12 - 13 

rookie mistake

was i kind today?
...
I sure was trying to be


(I genuinely don't know)

---

finding it genuinely hard to relate to freshers
'Oh what course?'
'Ah is that hard?'
'Oh what hall?'
'Ah I see...'
'That's pretty far isn't it'
'Ahhh...'


and I wonder if it's because I'm not trying hard enough, or if maybe I'm just too old
or maybe a bit of both

why is it - so hard to be interested all of a sudden? am i maybe asking the wrong questions - or maybe not asking for the right reasons

---

The skin of the knuckles of Mrs. Tagus is drawn tight and dry, and when she unfists the fist to let me comfort the hand I feel the skin crinkle like paper. Me: unfortunately also skin like paper. I look at our two hands. If my late Sandra were here with us this night I would say, to her only, things concerning oldness, coldness, trouble with stairs, paper-dry skin with brown sprinkles and yellowed nails, how it seems to Labov we get old like animals. We get claws, the shape of our face is the shape of our skull, our lips retreat back from big teeth like we're baring to snarl. Sharp, snarling, old: who should wonder if nobody cares if I hurt, except another snarler?

- David Foster Wallace, Say Never