Wednesday, October 15, 2003

Shine on you crazy diamond

Mood: Good.
Music: Pink Floyd-Shine On You Crazy Diamond

A man's face sheens from the pixelation of a TV screen into my eyes. The man looks normal, middleaged, brown hair; resplendent eyes, warm face edged with light wrinkles. He stands in the limelight of a congregation of pertinent faces, all whose eyes gaze at him and away from him as if transfixed; they are all lost in what he is saying.

"Look what we are doing," he says, seething, low, like a big, empty drum. "Look what we're doing." Silence, the only thing focused on my TV screen is the man. Tears have begun to dot his face, and I wonder if it's sweat. Or if it's actually tears. His eyes have taken on that teary-eyed quality; and even though it's only a TV screen and its electrons I am seeing, I can see his eyes. They are scrunched, spherical icebags of pain. Not a hitting, woundal pain. But an emotional, stirring hurricane of pain. "Look what we're doing," he again says, louder, with more anguish.

He begins to walk off his main stage and approach the crowd. He approaches a young woman, stares her dead in the eye, like an infernal, enraged beast. "We are teaching our kids the ways of God," he says. "And look what we're doing," he repeats again. He walks over to another, a black woman holding on discreetly to a cross, her eyes closed shut, windows taking a beating from a wind. "It's for Jesus," the man begins again, shutting his eyes too, wrenching his head back, gathering his thoughts. "All I want is for Jesus to get what he went to do for his sacrifice. For him to be repaid."

I look at this man, on a TV screen, and realize that that's all he is to me. As moving as he seems to be, fanatical, I look upon him as someone professing that which he believes in and coveys out; and one who wanders in like a raven chewing bits and pieces and throwing it all about in skeletal shreds for others to feed from and crave. For this man, as far as can be seen, is basing his opinions on the concreteness of nothing. He places all his heart's beats and all his heart's loves in something, as far as he deep down would say, that isn't known to be real at all. He's placing faith and fallacy in belief.

And it is not as if he's alone. There's many like him, a whole organized religion like him. Even an approximate seventy-four percent of Americans behind his cause. A number, that over years, is falling. That is dying slowly. Just as Jesus, upon his cross, being crucifixed.

He returns to the front of his stage, reaches up into the air, his eyes closed again, seeping into his brain for words to articulate what he's trying to say. "Dying," he says, almost flinching his head, as if the word even hurt to say even though it came from his heart. "Jesus died for us," he says, still his eyes closed, still his head in tight, thinking wrinkles. "And will we not return what he did, will we not." He finally turns toward the crowd, and I thought it was like I could see his heart was on his head, beating into it, veins popping out. That was what I felt, that was what his words felt like, a poison eating away at the enamel of my brain. It wasn't a draining feeling, though. Only a feeling somewhat seeing how powerful faith can make a person.

"Blasphemy," he says, "is not like sinning;" he paused, for affect. "It is not showing reverence for God, it is insulting Him." This mention applied well to me.

I don't believe in God, nor do I believe there isn't a God. I stand in the middle, an apatheist. I see it as I can't believe in something until I see it physically, mentally, ficially. I believe in something because I as a person see it as right. So rather than standing in the roots of one side, I stand outside, festering my thoughts in indifference.

Upon telling my parents of this, I was immediately told I had been raised wrong. What bigots they sounded like. I feel that the most important justice any can give me is to understand and let me have my own interdictions and opinions. I feel this is the right of any single individual, and no exception should otherwise be made.

Often I have felt blasphemy is the main thing I would feel towards God if I knew him. I feel that life is rather pointless at times, and am oft to be cynical as such. I find it just too suiting that God would be forgiving in all places and claims. I also find that absolution, and the voyeur therein to be something that I don't want. When I shall die, I do not want to live eternally ever after in some ethereal populace. I would find it much like solitude by chains and prison. I do not want to exist after I die, to me this is totally abating the purpose of death. From my own eyes and drawings, I have seen that when something dies, it ceases to exist. At least on the mortal plane of existence. Whether it goes on to some beatific pricehood I do not know. But death means an end, and I see that it should do justice to this.

For this, I suppose, I am also bitter to believe in God himself. I see that there is only one way to live a life, but many interveneous ways to end it. I find that I am not going to worship some heavenly, narcissistic God. Rather, I shall live my life. And if I go to hell, so be it. But I much rather think in my thinking that I shall cease to exist in an overending way.

Whatever the case, I understand on some level why others so dearly live their lives in constant derivation of God. I mind other's opinions as they should mind mine. It is the humanly thing to do in the least.

Eventually, I see that religion won't be so ingrained in our society. That people—such as the man whom I began this with—shall be lesser in their existence. The number of Catholic Americans is falling. It is dying. And, as best put, without worshippers, a religion will crumble from its base. Without them, funding from churches ends. As with all things finite, Catholicism will die.

I plan to finally read the bible soon, to actually profess what I digress on a more higher level. If it shall convert me to God's dight I highly doubt. But at least I will have a higher understanding to base my opinions upon. And that itself is worth more than anything else I could want.

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