The winter of my discontent.

Two weeks ago I finished John Steinbeck's, The Winter of Our Discontent. That book has been sitting in my gut, a simmering head stew, since I finished it.

Ethan Allen Hawley, a man of scrupulous standards, decides one day to take advantage of a process set in motion by the honorable business-crooks of his town. In order to do so, he "temporarily [trades] a habit of conduct and attitude for comfort and dignity and a cushion of security." From store clerk to rich  respectable store owner, pushed along by the gentle tidewaters of 'the way things are', it is a descent into the steaming maw of the great amoral social machine.

"Sometimes a man seems to reverse himself so that you would say, 'He can't do that. It's out of character.' Maybe it's not. It could be just another angle, or it might be that the pressures above or below have changed his shape . . . . I think I believe that a man is changing all the time. But there are certain moments when the change becomes noticeable."

Lately I've been feeling like a stranger to myself. Have you ever felt that way? Like you are neither the person others think you are nor the person you yourself think you are? You've slowly slipped away from the "you" you knew and it wasn't a result of some conscious doing...but it may very well prove to be your undoing. Because it is a descent itself. A descent perhaps initiated by one terrible catastrophe or a cluster of calamitous events but perpetuated through endless exhausting recovery.

"Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared ... it's slow. It rots out your guts." Wormwood has found a pernicious hold on your soul and his shackles are malignantly sweeping out your insides. You have become your own doppelganger.  The sinister harbinger kind.

Dramatic? Maybe. INXS understands.

In a desperate attempt at finding the truth labeled 'ME' I have, instead, lost. I have neglected my duties to the inherently divine and fallen into the sinkhole of selfish thought. In the dark pre-dawn, comfortable in my morning bed, I have lethargically waited for someone to start my day. I'm not quite sure what it will take to exorcise my self-possessing double: resolution instead of diversion, a relentless trying, daunting tenacity, terrifying vulnerability. Above all else, the losing must come first. For, "he that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it" (Matt. 10:39).

Until I can fight my way back to a better me I will preoccupy myself by helping middle schoolers with math 3 times a week. Only for 20 minutes a day though, I don't want to make that much of a difference. In addition, to prove I didn't graduate Summa Cum Laude for nothing, I got a part-time job with the Sylvan Learning Center tutoring high schoolers...in math. And ACT prep. Yay for math! Am I right? Am I right or amIright or amIright? Right. Right. Right.

I'm also going to start recording songs again. Until then, enjoy these numbers I recorded this spring.

Baby Mine, Dumbo

Boats and Birds, Gregory and the Hawk