Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Religious Puberty

my freshman year was my second helping if you will, my reborn christian mental relapse, forget about the opiate of the masses, i was on crack baby, and NOTHING was about to thrust me out of the sanctum sanctorum of my belief!

some dude at this high school, from my recollection, saw i was emotionally saddened, and talked with me a bit, and brought up christ and all that jazz. best time to get converts, when theyre needing something, anything, to make sense out of life (talk about oxymorons). i ended up pretty much skipping school that entire day, yet still on school grounds mind you, just talking with this guy near the cafeteria by the lunchroom on a grassy gnoll, jesus' sniper rifle at the ready, and walla, BANG! i became born again.

i was feeling it, i knew in my gut that this was truth, i truly believed!

alas, that only lasted for about six months, somehow, i kept my beliefs to myself, the only person that knew about what i was reading was my little brother. even then i remember him saying "why read that bullshit, you should read this (dragonlance series)".

my zeal started to wane, i started asking myself questions i couldnt answer, nothing made sense, im fucking 14 years old and believing in some really wacked out shit, i need to research this! what the hell am i really believing in!!? why was i believing it??!

my mom had some old books in a box, one was martin bubers "i and thou", jewish mysticism, i read that and my mind was blown apart with the loss of ego, the gnostic traditions. then i started to read bertrand russell's history of philosophy, earlier pre-socratic philosophy, some books on the greek & norse myths, philosophy of religion, emil cioran's history of decay, the nag hammadi texts that were transcribed into english(some of which i gleaned from elaine pagels adam eve & the serpent and the gnostic gospels), basically anything my hungry eyes and voracious mind could handle.

enter the doubter by age 17, high school was ending, and i figured hell, why not join the military.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Little Book of Blunders

three years from the bird incident or so, i was thinking two, but im pretty confident it was three, either way, on with the fucking blog.

heading home from school, across the street from the junior high, two old men are passing out little orange books, and being that i am and have always been a bookworm, it was literal gold, a free book!

i had to have been about 12 at the time.

i dove right into the book, and had no clue what the hell i was reading, i didnt ask mom about the book, just kept it to myself, to this day i have no idea why. maybe i thought the free book was some sort of hidden knowledge, what the fuck, i was a kid and hungry for knowledge.

another year passes, and we move out west to arizona, by now, the orange new testament book has been thrown away, i didnt get what the hell it was saying, and it looked like a cheap rip off of some myths i had read, so fuck it.

my passing interest in whatever i read had weened to a wee blotch on my soon to be muddled mind.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

first encounter

from what i recall it all started with the knock on the door, some man was at the door talking with my mom, it was saturday morning.

let me lay in a few more details to flesh this shit out.

it was EARLY saturday morning, my little brother and i were watching the thunderbirds show ("Fab!") and my little sister was asleep in her bed still, mom was making bacon and eggs. we also had the bird out of its cage, flying about, being as free as a caged bird can be, in a house, an even bigger cage for that little winged bastard.

KNOCK KNOCK, mom turns off the stove and opens the door, and this guy is behind the screen door, and i remember my mom holding onto it

"have you heard about your lord and savior" the man asked mom
"i dont have time for this, please leave"

the guy then tried opening the door and my mom is yelling "Leave!", and hes pulling on the screen door, then WHOOSH the fucking bird flies out of the house, my little brother and i start after it, hoping to save it from the cruel world that it was taken from in the first place.

"Leave! Get ouf of here!" mom is fucking livid, red as a beet, then she pushes the guy off the porch and starts after him...

to imagine, several years later i would actually believe in that same shit, but thats for another post