A self-plagiarized post where I preach about deserts and God

I'm lazy and not up for telling jokes. Here's something I wrote two Christmases ago--I was way more of pretentious little shit than than I am now, if that's even possible. So it's over the top--I sound like a new-age street preacher in it, throwing around the royal "we" like I'm an anointed representative of the human condition. But that said, I still like it.

This year was like a desert. When I think back on it, I can feel heat and the smell of coffee bubbling and there’s a taste in my mouth that’s metallic like blood. It was a full year that felt more like a fight than a progression. I can’t tell exactly what I fought; the same things we all fight, ideas of failure or permanence.

I started off afraid that I wasn’t the person I had convinced myself I could be. The worst thing about pursuing success is that success is a vapor. It’s a fog that passes over us and for a moment it’s nice and you’re alive and happy. Maybe some people are born with the knowledge that it can never be sustained. The rest of us must learn it. I fought that.

The year was a desert in the sense that I let things stay just as far away from me as they always had been. With the joys of my future far in the future and the victories of my past far in the past, I was left in a wide open space. The air was clear and dry. I didn't let myself think about things that weren’t here right now. Right now there was just me and this tremendous stillness in the universe.

I asked questions, to myself, to God. That was like bleeding. There are many things we know are true but we can barely understand how they are truth. We can know that we are one of six billion, or that we all die, but when we challenge ourselves to feel what that means, it crushes. Then, when the ideas we build our lives out of fall apart, we go to that place where we either hear the voices of the angels or that immutable silence.

This dry fall, in my dorm room, I challenged that silence to say something. I was willing to wait.

By October, I stood in front of my window, looked down at the brown grass and watched dark clouds gather.

“Please just rain,” I said to no one.

The drops were slow at first, but they fell faster until sheets of rain drew white lines down the parking lot.

Needing rain is a weakness and weaknesses are a good thing to have. Don’t ever let anyone tell you anything different. Getting knocked on your ass is the best thing that can happen to you when on your ass is where you belong.

The smell of coffee is because I drank a lot of coffee this semester. Things can be simple, too.

I learned about simplicity. It’s a good thing to sit and think about what you like, but then also think of why you like it, and then exactly what that means. I once read an ad that said nothing says more about you than your watch. We shouldn’t wear watches then.

I learned my three favorite things are fire, hot water, and bare wood. I’m happy I figured it out, but I’m even happier that I know it makes me sound like a pompous prick. There’s a danger in taking ourselves too seriously, but there’s a danger in absolutely everything else too. So pick your poison.

Once it started raining, I didn’t want it to stop. I wanted to grab onto it and hold it there. Luckily, we don’t get to do that. We have to let things be moments. Allow yourself the grace to let something be exactly what it is. Ideals can paralyze. Without grace, we couldn’t walk.

Next year, remember that to walk you have to let yourself begin to fall for that split second. By grace, the rain will fall and ruin your desert. A noise will interrupt your silence. A peace will settle into your fight, and by grace you’ll always be realizing how wrong you had once been.

And now a sad picture to go with my profundity.



p.s. my dad shit a solid gold brick when he read this he thought it was so good. Are you calling my father a liar?