It is not for us to decide who lives and who dies, who stays and who goes. Why should the pot say to the potter, "why did you make me like this?" I guess I never understood that question, I never understood the rhetoric. One thing I do understand: my mind is twisted now. There is nothing now to do but sit, and wilt, and wait for something to come into me and fix what I cannot undo. Fix this mess I have made myself to be. One solution leads to many problems, so that I may never be undone. What lies in the shadow of the statue?

But I am him. I am him who says "what about me? what about me was so wrong?" And there is One who says "yes, what about you?" And so I am shamed. And I am disgusted with myself. And I take out my knife and drive it deep. And still, "what about you?"

"There is no one righteous,
No, not even one."

You are all right, but only because I want you to be. I just want to sit here and keep crying about it, because then I really feel it. I lost my ability to feel the good and bask in it. So I am numb unless I am tortured. I am lost.

"There are two sides. One is Light, one is Dark."

Stick to the basics. Don't get caught up. Stand strong. Stop picking at the scar just to be sure it's still there. Have some hope. Every man dies, not every man really lives. This too shall pass. Stay focused. Find something to focus on. Breathe. Keep your head out of the clouds, keep your heart off the ground. Just breathe.

I suppose he was right when he told me that we need pain to get where we are going. But I can only suppose. I'm sure I won't know for sure until I get there or until I'm satisfied that I am so far from there that I can never reach there. But for now at least, my suppositions can get me through this night, and probably through the next, and before I know it I will have forgotten all about this night and probably about the next.

We are so fragile. Like a mist we are. I wonder what it feels like to die: to live one moment and not live the next. In that last live moment, what will I think of how I have conducted all the moments leading up to it? I believe in part, and I know in part, that I will look back on this night, and probably on the next, and feel either that I had wasted so much time thinking only of myself or that this night's pain lead me to all the moments connected by time and spirit to the final moment. Even still, it is of little consequence. What will be, will be.

I'll wake up in a fog. In a mist I'll find myself. A gentle wind softens my vision. I will be soaked in calm, steeped in slow breath, drenched in understanding. All this when what will be, has been.