Sunday, November 2, 2008

Ramblings (3/10)

I stared at the single hair lying on the bathroom floor. It confused me, as no hair has ever done. Hair seems to have an almost mystical ability to be where it should not be. This particular hair was black... which is odd, because my hair is brown. It was also about eight inches long. My hair is significantly shorter than that.

The hair lay there, defiantly declaring its opposition to one of my cherished assumptions: the assumption that no woman had ever been in my bathroom, even briefly. It's not that the bathroom is utterly disgusting or anything like that. Water pools on the floor of my bathroom, and forces me to mop it (or engage in an activity greatly resembling mopping) at least once a day. This is due to an avaunt-guard design known as uphill drainage, where the drain is carefully placed a solid inch above the lowest point on the floor. I know that the drain was "carefully" placed thusly because the drain in Brandon's apartment is identical. I am not sure what end the workers had in mind when they laid the tile in this manner, but I'm sure it would make sense if they explained it.

It's not that I really dislike the idea of a woman using my bathroom, it's just that I like to know whenever someone enters my apartment. Supposedly there are two keys to said apartment. One of them is in my pocket, the other is currently in South Korea. This knowledge gives one a certain lonely security.

Perhaps lonely is the wrong word. I am not lonely. I find it difficult to feel loneliness, as if it was a talent that required either great skill or infinite practice. I feel starved, starved for eyes with a mind behind them and a mouth that can express that mind, specifically in English. I feel empty, like a pot that has been scrubbed until it shines, and is a shell by design and definition.

Until quite recently there was an electrifying spark, a drive of pure energy as I felt the omnipotent power of God feed directly into me. I tried to find the spark, to capture it, but it seemed to be the kind of thing that disappears when you look straight at it. In it's place a more familiar power came, a shallow and empty drive of unnatural energy that burns like the fire of a burning house, illuminating the faces of the frightened family gathered on the street. The light and warmth, such good friends during better times, consume their hope for the future, and memories of the past, but they can neither stop them nor shut them out.

And soon the house is turned to ashes, with the whitened panes of glass sticking up through the smouldering dust, broken and jagged. I try to find the spark again, to bask in it's warmth, but I am greeted only by the mindless smile of the raw fire, the internal drug that sells itself on the street corners of my mind.

Could be worse I suppose. I could know who's hair is that lays on the floor of my bathroom. I could find a person, and cling to them as the world around me rages. Surprisingly I have no desire to know, or to create such a knowledge. I know that nothing is more stable than it's foundation, so how could I both depend on such a person and support them?
In either case, my mind is full of the dull roar of emptiness, drowning out my please for an orderly return to sanity.

And at this point, I fall on my knees and cry to the Lord, saying that I've given all I have, and lost the rest to my foolishness."But I never asked you to give all you have" He says. "I asked you to give all I have."

I clean the floor, and dispose of the single strand of hair.
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1 comment:

Oriona said...

Hi. Yes I am an Adventist. Also attended SAU for 2 years. I am friends with a Lori Faust. As far as your dad I'm not sure unless his name is Robert (Bobby). Thanks for the note.