i fell asleep when you needed a friend - aka O Ye Midnight Fount of Which i Do Dream

i had seen him despondent a few times as of late but sometimes the answer that love gives is the hardest one to take.

why do we we sleep when he cries? i bet that there are the noble few that slumber from exhaustion, my guess is that he knows not to take them to the garden at midnight. if you have been busting ass in the fields a bloody midnight romp around the wine press isn't your idea of a joke. no, if you are genuinely tired you get to stay in bed and sleep but if your shoulder gets tapped to come into the moonlight you are there for a reason. so then, why? when needed most did they - do we - sleep?

there are many answers to the question. i think there are times when it is easier to shut our eyes to something than admit that it is happening. it is hard to accept the role as observer or supporting cast so instead we opt to not play the game. to fall asleep is as self centered as Cephas declaring he would never deny and would fight to the death to prevent the will of the One. Our natural inclination is to grab the wheel (be the centre) and if we can't to drop out completely. also, think about the overwhelming sadness of the situation. in most of the midnight hours i've needed to participate in they are emotionally draining scenarios. i think they may have gone with the intent of staying awake. we try to sit in the moonlight. with muffled prayers, we wake up an hour later realizing our last prayer was spoken to the first dream we saw.

i wonder if they missed the sense of urgency, they couldn't have, no - they could have - we miss it every day.

then there is the flip side. He knew. He knew they would fall asleep, granted he gave them their rounds for falling aslumber but the idea is that you get to look upon a couple of your closest mates in a state of comfort when you are in complete agony and you get to breath a sigh of relief and say thanks to your Dad because they don't have to go through it. right before you jostle them out of their dreams about that girl they saw down by the shoreline or that amazing miracle they saw you do a couple of days ago or their dreams of the future - right before then Your eyes fall on them, asleep, at peace, not in pain, not suffering, not drowning, not dirty, free, unabused - and then you round them up and with a hidden smile berate them a little. i can dig it. you were a hidden smile kinda guy, for as much as you smiled outside i know you smiled on the inside too, even for as much as you hurt on the outside. i want to smile on the inside too even as much as i hurt sometimes.

so we fall asleep for a hundred different reasons. and when that winepress gets almost full we can get our pillows ready, cause he's gonna tap a few shoulders to join him in the garden. and ya know i am gonna fight to stay awake and the nights i do i'll be happy i took to my cup because apparently awake was my cup that night. but just as much as awake is sometimes my cup, sometimes love gets drowned in a pool of tears and sleeping it off is the only cup we have. and for that we shouldn't be ashamed, except maybe a little red in the face when He comes and asks what her name was and if she is so pretty maybe we should do more than dream about her.

so yup - i fell asleep when you needed a friend - you picked a bastard lot to hang around with - you knew me, you loved me, you love me, you smiled and i love you too.

Surely life is more than learning to live with your

it is 9 o'clock on a thursday and i am taking my first break of the day so i don't feel too bad about writing at work. something about penning on company time today ain't settling well so the least i can do is keep it to the time they give me for myself. - i hate that sentence - even if it is only on the principles of the affront of logic that time provides and the idea that my company gives me any of it. but alas, i am going to try and let it go for now.

yesterday, as i read an interview given by Bill Mallonee to Paste Magazine, it struck me how cathartic the creative process is for some people. As it is for me. while i truly think there are times that i can write or create for a purpose other than my own healing or understanding, very rarely is it so. even when i was writing papers for school i would toil under the assumption that at the end i would have a greater grasp of the concept once i had written and edited the work. and hopefully a better understanding of myself.

fascinatingly enough, whether creating for catharsis or not, healing can come through art. i recall going to the dallas art museum when the Renoir expo came through, it was great. i have seen some van goghs, some classics, i have been around the modernists, brilliance, and unknowns. all worthwhile - i got something from each of them and i hope in some small way, i hope that through my observation of their work or through my reading of their book or viewing of their ballet they experienced some amount of healing. i don't know if that's what happened but i can dream.

i know it's a weird thought that i would give something to an artist a thousand miles away or long since dead but think of healing. it is something miraculous. it doesn't know about time or distance. healing doesn't play by the rules of physics or chemistry, i mean it can when it wants to but it doesn't have to. so maybe when someone hangs their heart out there in a painting or sculpture or photograph and we take it in and breath a sigh of relief because our picture of the world has grown - maybe with that deeper breath a little bit of healing has become part of the healing that happened in the heart of the creator.

i often think of Van Gogh. i think we are kindred spirits, i know big boots to fill. i don't say it to claim genius or even to claim dementia, and not even really to claim brokenness. i just know when i look into the greens, blues and yellows i know the man. and there's the riddle. with cats like me and van gogh we need people like us, we need folks who are a little crazy, we need a little competition, a little deep end, some danger, a little death, a whole lotta life, a whole lotta grace, we need a whole lot of blood so when we can't find it right away we do the best we can. he painted pictures - i write. why dig so deep and go to those strange places with weird colours and lines that turn into landscapes - mainly because we need someone to talk to, we need healing. and when you can't find it outward you go inward and when you can't find it inward you go outward. art is the symbiosis of the two. out and in combined.

so as it is with all artists - we cast our lines. again and again and again. glory, hope, repetition. it comes down to witch line gets the strike, will it be the one where we run off and allow our mind to tangent and we dismember an earlobe, employ a shotgun, paint a masterpiece, stay in bed, or be run of the mill normal? which line do we cast more of? we control what we do, but as we with paint brushes, pens and cameras know glory is, more often than not, found if the line cast most often is the line with common thread. however, this is not to say that the simple things are not beautiful or full of glory - what i am saying is that those whose souls are predispositioned with a desire for something other than finding pleasure in simplicity will often find difficulty in finding glory there, but these same people often want to find pleasure in the simple things in the most desirable ways. think of the most poignant paintings by van gogh or books by dostoyevsky - they are about the common life but these were not common men, they were brilliant, tormented artists, but they found their grace and healing in telling the common story. not living the common story but telling it.

so here is the catharsis of art and its beauty. i think van gogh made his paintings for so many groups of people - for everyone and for himself - for no one, every critical interpretation coupled be applied. briefly, for the common man, he sees the labour in the fields of farmers or still lives of flowers or of unique colours and shapes - the common man is elevated because of his experience of van gogh. the artist experiences van gogh and knows the struggle of the artist, the torment of his disease and the rot of his brain. the potential of his life ended by the gravity of genius and the onslaught of what may have been a cruel ironic death via lead poisoning - artists marvel at a grand story like this - elevation. van gogh paints for himself, carrying his mind from place to place, holding himself steady, trusting the brush and the paint, the colour and shape - catharsis - van gogh is elevated. and if we want to be very critical we could art for art sake it and talk about how the paintings elevated the medium of painting itself. the point is art has meaning and for me the meaning is cathartic.

i write to heal myself. if others get lucky and patch things together through what i write that is wonderful but that's not the purpose, while i certainly could purpose myself to that end, very rarely do i set out to write for something, or to create something beautiful. i hang it out there, i take the shot. over and over and over. if my voice is recognized by someone other than myself that is fantastic but i don't plan on it, i don't expect to make a living at this, although i may, who knows, other idiots have been luckier. i figure writing in the blog is a bit like talking to myself, i always have an open audience, and a willing party to reply. i push it pulls, like talking in the mirror except instead of seeing myself i - well i suppose i see myself - i hear myself - but not me, pieces of me, packaged up into something i can interact with.

part two. what happens if nothing is exposed. if it is only me it is only a journal. which doesn't get it done. same as van gogh or beethoven or sellers. a journal doesn't get the cathartic aspect, it is too enclosed, not exposed enough, there has to be exposure, people have to feed it. there has to be interaction. if it gives nothing it can take nothing and thus can give nothing. so if no one gets the chance to read my healing may not be as complete as it could be so i hang it out there to the wind, allow what may. same with painting ala Van Gogh. if he bottled them up and hid them away there wouldn't be anything given to him from other's through them, the medium becomes the doorway. it is all very confusing in words but not in mind. think of it, how it operates, how you pass yourself to the artist through the work and it will make more sense.

art is the symbiosis of the artist, the observer, and the medium - all separate yet all at once becoming one. we are all the artist, the observer, and the medium to some degree or another. a farmer and his corn is just as vital as mozart and his harpsichord. you and yours counts and i want you to know that. you are vital! if you are gone a little bit goes away and the tapestry will change. it is altered forever and, this is very important so follow closely, whether our contributions are judged minor or major they are still made and thus if they are gone things are different and thus infinitely so.

take heart all you beggars, as we have the same heart. artists, drunkards, crazies, and children, old people and the lame - we all may be different but we all still matter. it seems fleeting, this brief moment of clarity, like i am watching myself flying through a dream. i know it will end. i will return to earth in all its reds and greys. gone will be the thousand yellows van gogh used to paint the day, but they will be here. always when i need them, hopefully healing me and hopefully healing you.

as quickly as i am there i am gone.

i open to find only hurricanes blow

i sometimes wonder if the dust will ever really settle. i know it won't but i like to wonder; the whole world has its' struggles and its' joys. we are all barely getting by and at the same time we seem to be surrounded by the over abundance of it all. sometimes the answer that love gives is the hardest one to take. i am ashamed by the things i have done yet i have talked to those who aren't, it makes me wonder if they know what it's like to be a sinner or if they know what it's like to be forgiven? i often find myself torn between the two, sometimes the sparks from the alters of heaven or hell finding me long enough to set me on fire to make me an agent for one or the other to at least get something done.

Unfortunately, i think i have probably done more harm than good but i don't know how to judge the competition fairly, that's probably why i'm not the judge and why i'm not content not to judge. i don't know what's in the hearts of other men and women, i barely know what's in my own. i often think that's the trick of the Gospel; we really can't know when we answer that final curtain call that heaven will be waiting for us, we trust it is. in fact, the deeper i dig there is less and less i know for sure. quite literally, depending on how much thought has gone on in the day, i am trusting that i exist enough to drink water and need to continue living.

some days are easier than others, just as much as there are good days for farming and there are not. and while the problems of the brain may not seem as real or as urgent as real a problems as global poverty or AIDS or any other mass humanitarian crisis i can assure you that in the midnight hour the things of the heart and brain can be just as bleak as any epidemic. i think it comes down to duration. i come out of bad thought episodes in a day or two, crippling poverty is rarely escaped. however, it seems as though people who's hearts are conditioned for hope more readily trust. teach a heart to trust in the One and have that be their sustenance and there will be an expectation that breeds near compliance on the part of the One. and it's not forced servitude, it's Love.

So it is with hope we face the darkness that the One is conditioning our hearts to be hearts of hope and trust. i must hurt often enough so that i may understand healing, if i never hurt i can never be healed, and if every time i hurt my first inclination is to grab the reins and steer my way out of trouble then from what have i been rescued? i have never been saved. so i do not sin that grace may increase, i sin because i need to be saved. i am pain because i need healing. i am blind so i need to see.

i know all of this, i have known it for a time, in fact i think it only gets deeper, the longer we get around grace the more we realize we need it. the more i know i don't know anything but i love it completely. i think what i am loving today though is how beautiful the puzzle fits together, i have a couple of people to thank for this. first, to the REV, you are right sir there ain't no suenos in Texas, thanks for being there for me. secondly, to the Koehns, ya'll are mud in my eyes when i need it the most. how do you tell two people that every time they do something you swear you never saw before.

and to the bus driver who smiled at me this morning, or maybe we smiled at each other,i hope it meant to you what you meant to me today, i wouldn't have made it today if not for you. i still have a little bit left but it will make it. i latched on and i haven't forgotten. it may have been small and between two sheets of glass and 40 mph but that was more human than most of what i got today and most of what i gave today.