The Death of the Author

They strung him up last Thursday. I can't say that any of us were particularly surprised, but at the same time it was a shock to see him struggling, to see him actually depart this world. But it was inevitable after all he'd done, all the words he wrote. The problem is, though, what are we going to do now? I've tried to go back to reading the same as before, but it just doesn't come the way it used to.

I thought it would be okay. I thought that after he was gone I could just go back and keep flipping those pages, but I- I just can't, there just isn't anything there anymore. Or at least, I can't understand them. The words are so wrapped up in who he is, the sort of person he was and the way he used the words that came out of his mouth to talk about the ones that came out of his pen. He was the only person who could speak of the text, who could tell me what he meant and then tell me what he meant by his meaning. But that's all over now.

I just couldn't believe when he--

I'm sorry.

When they started the execution, he looked composed, orderly even. It was unreal, but I felt sort of confident that it would be different with him, that the words would still make sense just because he was still making so much sense even when none of the stuff around him was. But then it happened, he choked and choked and there wasn't anything left, and the pages flew up in the air and shifted and changed order and shape, and all of the connections dried up, and it was done. I burned all his books later that day, they're useless now.

I don't know, maybe that's why books are so wonderful. Maybe because they only live as long as the person who wrote them, that's why they're so special, so fleetingly precious and fragile, like a butterfly or something. Maybe that's why being a reader is such a powerful and achingly meaningful thing, and it's true and beautiful, and I believe it, but you can tell me that over and over and I still won't be okay when they die, when all that power just vanishes like it never existed, when the meaning of a text just disappears as soon as its creator's last breath expires. And I am constantly haunted by the knowledge that my own words, even these, will cease to cohere as soon as I am gone.

So, the end, I guess?

Ghost

This is a tragedy. This is a portrait of an emotional cripple, a failure, a man whose fundamental relational faculties are broken. This is also a ghost story.

 He hoped that someday she would understand. He hoped that she would be able to decipher the codes that he laid out for her in his words, in his actions, in the tilt of his head as he looked at her, in the light that reflected from her eyes to his and back again. He saw heaven in those eyes, but he was broken. He could not use the tools of language to communicate his vision, so he relied on unwritten symbols, on the play of the light, on the labyrinthine illusions of movement and time. He could not trust language; it had betrayed him too often for him to entrust it with this most precious responsibility. But this mistrust had crippled him, leaving him unable to make her see how he felt. He could not expect her to acquiesce to his ultimately impaired mode of communication, and yet language was even more impaired. It would fail him, he would fail it, and the words he was trying to say would be erased forever, replaced by other words, words that would sound the same but would somehow fail to conjure the appropriate meaning to her.

 Indeed, his words would fail in the same way that these words are failing. They are failing to convey urgency, they are failing to communicate the deep feelings of regret and loss that he felt at this infirmity of communication, this inability to simply come forth and speak. Simply put, it was a tragedy to him, just as it should be a tragedy to you. This man is lonely and lost, unable to trust even the words that fill his thoughts, let alone the words he tries to speak. He has no center, no confidence, no security in himself or his ability to communicate meaning, to mean anything to others. He often wonders if anyone is even aware of his presence as more than an impotent spectral breath, haunting the edges of perception.

Existence

Every day I experience the immeasurable joy of simply existing

The beauty of the world and the beauty of all of its people

The joy, the power found in the heights and even the depths of passion

A fire

a tree

starlight

the bright face of the moon

eyes (I want to write forever about eyes)

newborn hands and hands worn down with time

voices rich and full of history

the special, sacred sensation of touch

love -consider all the associations that simple word brings-

reason, the wild notion that we can find meaning in anything

temporality, the storied past, fleeting present, mysterious future

life

life life life

life forever and always fully existent experiencing the world seeing life everywhere bounding and leaping and creating and hoping and flying through the air into daddy's lap and kissing the person you love and staring at clouds and reading a really good book and writing one someday and the sheer joy of existence in a world with other people to share it with and to talk to and love and exist with-

~

These things exceed my capacity to understand

to contain

to create

and all I can do is fail to comprehend the impossible fact that I exist, and sit back in my chair and be glad.

Six Variations on a Theme (Six Simple Sentences)

I
They kissed under the exploding stars.


II
“We all die,” he sadly replied.


III
I’ll miss you when you’re gone.


IV
What does it mean to lie?


V
,the author asked with a grin.


VI
I dance into the bloody sunset.

Of Young Love and Uncertainties

This story has never been and will always be true.

High school, May 2010. My knees shook as I stood there alone with her. I had rehearsed this moment, planned it, executed it a million times in my head. Plans within plans, outcomes judged and anticipated, acceptance, rejection, hesitance, eagerness.  But the illusion of control quickly vanished in the shifting sands of reality. My world fell apart, my carefully constructed artifices shattering, crumbling as quickly as my hopes for success.

-God help me I’m not ready I can’t do this she’ll say no she doesn’t even know me that well she’ll never speak to me again I won’t even be able to ask she’s so beautiful I’m not ready-

"Hey... so... I was wondering if maybe... you'd like to, maybe... go with me to a movie or something, at some point..."

The moment of suspense. Thoughts racing. Wish I could see what she was thinking. Wish somehow I could know, wish I could get inside her head and see what’s going on, but I can’t, so time just goes on and on and it really hasn’t been any time at all but at the same time it feels like it’s been forever as I look at her and wait to see what she will do. What if she says yes? What if we go to a movie, go to coffee, go to a nice restaurant, go to school together, slowly build a life together? What will this moment come to mean? Will my future self look back upon this moment as the true beginning of a beautiful life? What if she says no? What if we go our separate ways, lose contact, go to different schools, find different friends, and build our own lives apart from each other? What will this moment come to mean? Will my future self look back on this moment as the true beginning of a crippled life? No matter what she says, am I prepared for this to be one of the most significant moments of my life? With the myopia we have about the future, is it even possible to be prepared for something like this? Is it possible to be prepared for any significant event in one’s life? What does it even mean to be “prepared”? Does it mean an encyclopedic knowledge of all possible outcomes of a complex moment in time, the ability to anticipate everything that may happen, and the readiness to have power over any potential future? This is impossible. But perhaps it means something else. Perhaps being prepared means possessing a willingness to live in the present without disregarding either the past or the future, to see that one’s actions have consequences but to be content with making decisions without having all of the answers. Perhaps being prepared means understanding that one will never be prepared, but that life is there to be lived, difficult decisions and easy ones, beautiful triumphs and crippling disappointments, and that all one can do is embrace that difficult, easy, beautiful, crippling life. All one can do is live.

She is about to speak now. And I am ready to live.

Someday I Hope You'll Understand

Someday I hope you'll understand this cuz I'm not real good at writing yet but I really want you to understand this someday. I want you to understand how much I love you and how you've always been real nice and you mean so much to me and I think you're the nicest and prettiest and most soft girl I ever met. I like when people are soft cuz when people are hard they like to hurt the other people even if they don't mean it they still like to do it sometimes even when they don't know they're doing it. Sometimes people think they're real soft or real hard when they're really the other one and when people think that sometimes it hurts all the other people then too cuz then even the soft people can hurt real hard. But you're not like those people cuz you're soft and you know you're soft but not in that hard way where your knowing makes it hard and makes it hurt all the other people.

I hope you can read this but I know I don't write so good so please don't think I'm hard even though my writing is so hard but writing is hard for all the other people too I think. I want to be soft like you but I think maybe you can't be as soft as you are without some of the other people being soft too and showing you how. So I guess what I want you to understand is that I want you to show me how cuz I'm tired of writing hard and being hard and being hard to all the other people when all I want is to be soft but no one will show me how but I want you to. So will you show me cuz I love you and I want to be soft like you.

Fullness

I am empty, and I hope that someday I can be full. I have felt fullness; I felt it that night in that car, and I felt it during that long conversation, and I felt it on that cold winter walk. I cling to those moments in time, those memories that contain within them all that I desire and dream. That dance, that bonfire, even that day in the classroom when you pushed me away. All of these events linger constantly on the horizons of my brain, and I race toward them even as they recede hopelessly into the sameness of the past. There is no going back; it is futile to look to the past for the fullness I desire for my future. And yet, what is the past but a future that has already occurred? Fullness is infinite, and the fullness of the past is more vivid to me than the fullness of the future. Perhaps one day fullness will be more than a fleeting moment of contentment. Perhaps the fullness I have only experienced momentarily will become a way of life, and I will be able to laugh as fading memories of emptiness replace the past I covet so dearly now. Until then, I can only pray that I can find the momentary joy of fullness buried like hidden treasure in the desert sands of my life. Fullness in a book or film that caresses my soul; fullness in loving the people around me; fullness in my trust in a God who will one day make all things full.

May that God of fullness bless you and keep you through all the fullnesses and emptinesses of your life. If you are empty, may you find the peace and fullness that comes through the experience of being human, living, breathing, creating, and loving without reserve or limit. If you are full, may you hold fast to the blessings in your life, never growing complacent or forgetting the infinite value of the life you have been given to live for whatever length of time remains for you. And for the sake of both the empty and the full, may He come soon to restore His kingdom, where fullness will be found by all, and emptiness will be banished forever into the abyss of history.

Peace be with you.