chapter eleven

"as harold took a bite of bavarian sugar cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be ok. sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank god for bavarian sugar cookies. and, fortunately, when there aren't any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten danish, soft-spoken secrets, and fender stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. and we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. they are here to save our lives. i know the idea seems strange, but i also know that it just so happens to be true. and, so it was, a wristwatch saved harold crick."
- kay eiffel in stranger than fiction.

i have chosen my side and burned the bridge down.

- bitter

rehash

what is it that makes people tick. what is it that makes them smile. what is it that makes them cry. what is it that makes them flare.

it is the stories they tell themselves. you see, somehow it does not matter what the circumstances, the intentions, the tone, the words or actions. like a movie being played in all replete, the audience shall interpret the minutes and frames as they deem fit. one person's vomit is another's treasure.

sometimes we wished that things would be better. at times we wonder why. and for the most part attempting to make the sense of the world with anything that rhymes with our reason. it does not matter does it? because we are the stories we tell ourselves.

- bitter

code name: raven

if only life would play out like a movie or a novel. where every event, emotion and character is slowly but surely being played out in its parts in fluency. not missing the fact that every good movie and story alike, lurks the melodrama, characterisation and many other favourable ingredients.

regrettably, life does not work that way. unlike a movie or story where there will always be the next minute, the next page no matter how great an adversity. where it always plays out: the plot unfolds and 'life' just goes on again. our life in fact is rather the antithesis. it is this life that allows for great jubilation and the very same life that creates despondency of such magnitude capable of self-destruction. it is this life that at times we wished would end this moment (spare me the agony) and the same which at times hope the days will constantly replay itself.

mine does not differ from most others. i have my good and bad days. days where things just falls in place and days where murphy's law must have been in full effect. i have things i can never have or experience enough of and things that i never want to be in the slightest association to. i have my fair share of friends and fiends. though not a movie where i can watch it play through nor a book with its deft words and quaint ending, i love my life; everything in it.

i love my life and for that reason it can never be important.


john 12

25in the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. but if you let it go, reckless in your love, you'll have it forever, real and eternal.

- bitter

privy

romans 12

1-2so here's what I want you to do, God helping you: take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. instead, fix your attention on God. you'll be changed from the inside out. readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.


i have no doubt that many of us out there knows what it means not to conform. we all have been there and done that. at at least one point in out lives we all have been conscientiously making that effort not to seem like all the others out there by going against the school rules, authority at home, our speech (creating new words), our behaviour and appearance. at that stage of our lives; we think hard, almost every waking hour or even dream about how to stand out, be different, not conform to our culture, our system, their thinking and norms.

come now putting things to perspective - you have not conformed to the world but what about your leaders, your friends, the bigger body of people you belong to? so is the above mentioned 'worldly' or bad? no, not in the least. the point is not in our conformity to subjects or values or system, it is about our fixation on Christ. you know so well what is required of you by your leaders, you could even predict your friends answer or response before you even ask him or her that question. you have such an understanding of how your culture around you works but what about God? you are so ready to pick up your friends call, eager to ask them out, anxious to impress them, guilty when you fall short of their expectations of you but what about Him? more emotions and effort engaged or at the very least the same level of enthusiasm you have for your peers?

do you know at first thought what God requires of you in every situation? is your relationship with Him on such a level that you are so lost and crippled when you don't have the weekly sermons, your leaders to remind you what is right and wrong or even when you do not read His word for a day. are you so in tuned with Him that in every "what do i do?" moments you are able to listen and respond to what he requires of you to do?

we clothe ourselves with work, ministry, work, ministry and more work. layers upon layers, one after another even before we have the time to take of the previous clothes and have a nice bath to scrub and wash off all the grime and dirt that wears us down. so used to that comfort that we feel guilty standing just as we are before Him, empty with nothing to offer. so we work but it gets suffocating, it gets warm and as we get closer to the finish line, we lose our focus on the prize; we get uncomfortable, upset and worried about many things (and the unfortunate give up). the point i say again is not conforming to them, wearing the same shoes or attire or running the same way to the the finish. He never said for you to finish the race in winter clothes nor with nothing at all. the point is to finish for Him, with Him and in Him.

to respond not conform.


luke 10

41-42"martha, martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."

- bitter

thirteen scores ago

i still remember a particular observation a friend made about me.

"you are a very extreme person."

i stood there puzzled for a brief moment before clarifying what she meant. she then went on to explain that she observed me to be a person engaged in extreme polarities. i would be either very obsessed or apparently apathetic towards any other matter that did not manage to catch my interest.

perhaps many people see me this way. but nonetheless, i can not see myself so obsessed or fanatical regarding the many issues and things in my life. yes, there will be important, emotional, time consuming, relational or even life threatening issues but such devotion to matters will always give them to have permission to bother, control or even dictate our life, mindset and emotions. true that most of these things we get involved in always begins with the greater good or benefit in mind but mostly and surely it always ends up as a burden or becomes our life itself.

me, obsessed yes.
apathetic, no but rather calm, collected and rather objective regarding every other thing that i am not obsessed about.

vibes, vibes, vibes...

- bitter

thirteen more sunset

i borrow these words from the pages of the abolition of man by cs lewis -

in a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. we make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. we laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. we castrate and bid the geldings to be fruitful.

and with all that said it still stands firm half a century later. in fact that few statements has become clearer with passing time. education has lost its intended purpose. rather it has become a tool to train the young with knowledge and information rather than the inoculation of values and beliefs. science has become the magical word to silence values. you see, the case is a rather simple one. to take away these universal desired qualities out of the equation results in a stasis. a state whereby no decisions, judgment or choice can have a say. they just hold no value.

the extremities aside, lets look at something more conceivable. the modern tendency to throw aside traditional values with rationality. and without their chest, men fail to realise that these values have nothing of the negative implications society has placed on traditional or ancient these days. and us the 'trained' ones often take any of these values at whim molding it to our intellectual reason to create a whole new system of our own 'reasoning'. men with no chests.

and i repeat cs lewis's words again -

in a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. we make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. we laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. we castrate and bid the geldings to be fruitful.

we take away the values which defines right and wrong, the human element and expect integrity. rather we become man with no chests, lacking the torso to connect mind and heart. maybe and likely the final chapter of this story would end like the last chapter of the abolition of man, the abolition of man.


- bitter

masticated

well i have been talking much less these months. i do not know why but i guess less is better.

sometimes we talk too much. way too much.


upcoming;

marathon.
month long break.
new stuff.
new toys.

- bitter