Why the World Needs Epic Heroes

This is a condensed version of the latest entry I wrote in the journal I dedicated to my sister years ago:

I don’t write much on here anymore. I once thought I had a purpose. At this moment I wish I could go back. My projector shines a picture on the wall. Brant took it. Where did we go so wrong? I had a red hat on backwards, but I can’t see my face, or my mom’s. They’re blurry. I feel as if that’s how detached I’ve become with my whole life. They shine nearly life-sized on the wall. Reaching out I touch only wall.

I wrote a story sophomore year for my english class. My teacher wrote “There are SO MANY ERRORS!” At the end she wrote “You have put together a mighty attempt, but I think you have tried to do too much, and as a consequence fail to do much of anything.”

This is the story of my life. I’m not a hero, just a guy with a heart who tries to do everything but commits to nothing.

I’m not ok with this.

Donald Justice wrote:

“This one was put in a jacket,
This one was sent home,
This one was given bread and meat
But would eat none,
And this one cried No No No No
All day long.

This one looked at the window
As though it were a wall,
This one saw things that were not there,
This one things that were,
And this one cried No No No No
All day long.

This one thought himself a bird,
This one a dog,
And this one thought himself a man,
An ordinary man,
And cried and cried No No No No
All day long.”

I want my life to have purpose, to allow me to use my creative juices, to not condemn me to loneliness forever, but I beleive that someday I could learn to be content, alone, if my life but has real purpose. The only way for this world to become truly better is if each person becomes a hero in their world, in their home, among their friends, in their interactions with complete strangers, etc.

I don’t know what many of my limits are. I know what my drinking limits are, and exceed them only when I’m in an existential low. I know what my computer skill limits are, and that’s why I need to change my line of work. I’m not comfortable doing the Navy’s equivalent of the Nerd Herd. I know that when I was younger I had the hardest time trying to learn a foreign language, but at that time I also had the hardest time in my english class. For a moment, I was afraid the resurfacing of that paper proved my inability to ever write a novel.  Then I remembered that I’m not that kid. I may be a late bloomer. I may be goofy. My head may always be either in the clouds or beneath the ground, but I have to try.

It may be that one day I won’t be able to spill my guts on a blog anymore. Time will only tell.

Born in Hell

A cloudy night greets me, alone, along this narrow street of blood-stained cobblestone, washed and eroded by wear and time and

pollution and disease. The agony of my soul looks deep into my heart and I plunge ahead, trying to outrun madness, oblivious to the

madness towards which my fleeing takes me. The foundationlessness of my birth stalked me down, caught up with me, transformed my

perception. Now I am either blind and helpless in the face of chaos, or have awakened to darkness and have become unsatisfiable. In

every way, I am the lesser man. My ability to control my memory or skills of concentration are pathetic at best. I am physically fit

and don’t shy from labor, but I am no champion. Music makes sense to me in that I can feel it and create it, but I am no virtuoso. All

I can retain and rely on is my heart, and that too falters. It falters because this world is not enough. Who in this world can remain

pure? Who in this world can remain healthy? Who in this world can become trully themselves without destroying themselves in the

process? Who in this world can look outside of their bubbles, become truly aware, either by being torn from normality by force, or by

deliberately stepping away from it, and not feel the pain of the world? My heart is a blade, my soul’s fire burns until its light

overwhelms the scars, yet my body is powerless. I am truly alone. I succomb to the shadow, I recede into my mind, and I get lost in

worlds where love is pure and tangible, where heroes still fight to protect innocence, beauty, and healthier worlds, I get lost in

books.

Sometimes books are not enough. It is not enough to project a defined fantasy world into the world of the living. Heroes in books find hope and resolve in who they serve. The most noble kings fight serving the land and way of life they have charge over. Noble giants swing their fury in service to their friendship to the heroes. I ask myself who I serve. You could say I serve the Navy, but the Navy is just a job. You could say I serve my family, but they are so far away. Or love, but Dawn too is so far away. You could say I serve the feeling of being alive, but sometimes I lay in bed, eyes too strained to read, fingers too numb to make music, body too bored to sleep, and I find myself in this limbo in which I am too aware of the universe, too unable to content myself with structures of belief that give people reassurance in this life. It is finally raining, the wind is finally tearing at my clothes and dragging the breath from my lungs. The sky is finally dark until lightning cackles and torches the sky. I step out onto my balcony to face the darkness that reflects the darkness I must face nearly every waking moment. Compounded on this is the truth that I reject this world in which a father would commit to rape and beat his own baby daughter. This world is not enough. We act as if there is some Hell for us to be saved from, but I know that this world is the real hell. There is nothing worse awaiting us at the end.

I am finally beginning to understand the story I want to tell in my epic fantasy novel. I’m finally begnning to slowly mold the peices and ideas that have come forth so far. They are completely unrecognisable to the fragments I created at first. They are still not nearly presentable, but the fact I am moving, however tortuously slow the pace may be, it gives me a single dot pitch of hope. I am determined to destroy the predictability of the epic fantasy journey. There will be much tragedy and chaos, for I will be writing a metaphor for our own world. But where I am powerless to change the world, I will conjur power through my words for pure and noble intent. I am no genius, so my ideas will be slow coming, but they will form. They have to.

Sometimes I feel like I am but the amount of a cup of water in a river. Sometimes I experience with rapture the sensation of flying straight to the sky, of feeling the electricity of momentary bliss, and I become heavy again and I rocket to the earth and am bashed against the rocks, and I flow back into the river. I try to become more, I try to drag myself onto land and howl at the moon with wolves or run across wilderland feilds with deer, but I am only water. I can only flow with the laws of my nature.

But I am not water. My body might be made of 70% water, but I am more! I will go the rest of my life trying to prove this means something.

A cloudy night greets me, alone, along this narrow street of blood-stained cobblestone, washed and eroded by wear and time and

pollution and disease. The agony of my soul looks deep into my heart and I plunge ahead, trying to outrun madness, oblivious to the

madness towards which my fleeing takes me. The foundationlessness of my birth stalked me down, caught up with me, transformed my

perception. Now I am either blind and helpless in the face of chaos, or have awakened to darkness and have become unsatisfiable. In

every way, I am the lesser man. My ability to control my memory or skills of concentration are pathetic at best. I am physically fit

and don’t shy from labor, but I am no champion. Music makes sense to me in that I can feel it and create it, but I am no virtuoso. All

I can retain and rely on is my heart, and that too falters. It falters because this world is not enough. Who in this world can remain

pure? Who in this world can remain healthy? Who in this world can become trully themselves without destroying themselves in the

process? Who in this world can look outside of their bubbles, become truly aware, either by being torn from normality by force, or by

deliberately stepping away from it, and not feel the pain of the world? My heart is a blade, my soul’s fire burns until its light

overwhelms the scars, yet my body is powerless. I am truly alone. I succomb to the shadow, I recede into my mind, and I get lost in

worlds where love is pure and tangible, where heroes still fight to protect innocence, beauty, and healthier worlds, I get lost in

books.

Sometimes books are not enough. It is not enough to project a defined fantasy world into the world of the living. Heroes in books find hope and resolve in who they serve. The most noble kings fight serving the land and way of life they have charge over. Noble giants swing their fury in service to their friendship to the heroes. I ask myself who I serve. You could say I serve the Navy, but the Navy is just a job. You could say I serve my family, but they are so far away. Or love, but Dawn too is so far away. You could say I serve the feeling of being alive, but sometimes I lay in bed, eyes too strained to read, fingers too numb to make music, body too bored to sleep, and I find myself in this limbo in which I am too aware of the universe, too unable to content myself with structures of belief that give people reassurance in this life. It is finally raining, the wind is finally tearing at my clothes and dragging the breath from my lungs. The sky is finally dark until lightning cackles and torches the sky. I step out onto my balcony to face the darkness that reflects the darkness I must face nearly every waking moment. Compounded on this is the truth that I reject this world in which a father would commit to rape and beat his own baby daughter. This world is not enough. We act as if there is some Hell for us to be saved from, but I know that this world is the real hell. There is nothing worse awaiting us at the end.

I am finally beginning to understand the story I want to tell in my epic fantasy novel. I’m finally begnning to slowly mold the peices and ideas that have come forth so far. They are completely unrecognisable to the fragments I created at first. They are still not nearly presentable, but the fact I am moving, however tortuously slow the pace may be, it gives me a single dot pitch of hope. I am determined to destroy the predictability of the epic fantasy journey. There will be much tragedy and chaos, for I will be writing a metaphor for our own world. But where I am powerless to change the world, I will conjur power through my words for pure and noble intent. I am no genius, so my ideas will be slow coming, but they will form. They have to.

Sometimes I feel like I am but the amount of a cup of water in a river. Sometimes I experience with rapture the sensation of flying straight to the sky, of feeling the electricity of momentary bliss, and I become heavy again and I rocket to the earth and am bashed against the rocks, and I flow back into the river. I try to become more, I try to drag myself onto land and howl at the moon with wolves or run across wilderland feilds with deer, but I am only water. I can only flow with the laws of my nature.

But I am not water. My body might be made of 70% water, but I am more! I will go the rest of my life trying to prove this means something.

Silence

If you stand at the very edge of the Pensacola beach, where water meets sand, in the darkest hour of the night, you’ll find yourself alone. The signs of the season will be evident. In the summer, the trash bins will be overflowing with empty beer bottles and the lights and sounds from open bars and resturants nearby will reach you easily. But if you look to your left, down the length of the beach, until you can’t see any further, you’ll find a distinct line where the brightness of the city ends and the dark oblivion of the ocean begins.

It just goes to show you that there are still some things in this world that can’t be filled and defined by mankind, regardless of the sure signs of progress.

Humanity has come a long way. We no longer sacrifice tens of thousands of people to our gods or wear the skins of our daughters in ceremonies because society has told us that sort of behavior is stupid. We still sometimes do radical things for religion. Why do people still throw their lives away for causes that seem unreasonable and sometimes even outright evil? The answer is simple. It is always easier to live for someone or something else than oneself. It is easier to live with purpose, even if that purpose isn’t right. Thanks to the idea of faith, it doesn’t have to be.

For the longest time, I had regret giving up the life I had in Tucson for the elusive idea of experience. Sophomore and junior years of high school gave me this window into a normal and happy life that I could have had if I so chose. I had rejected it with the image of my recently diceased adopted grandma in my mind’s eye and this vague notion that it was my destiny to travel a lonely road. Since then I’ve lived in the past, wishing for a second chance, until just recently. We pursue happiness and when we don’t find it on the road we’re on, we look back to a time when we might have had the possibility of finding it.

I remember looking out at the ocean, that night, not even two years ago. I was unable to tear my gaze from it. A storm was coming. My buddies were telling me that we needed to head back, but I just wanted to stand there and face that storm that lit up the inpenatrable darkness. I could relate to it. Here was this unfillable and wild void that stretched out as far as the eye could see and all the lights in the city succombed to it’s enormity. Just when I thought it would stay that way forever, this storm comes rumbling along with it’s cooling winds and sweet, salty smell and thunderous fire that lit up the oceanic depths. If a storm could succeed where manmade lights failed, could I succeed in lighting up the world?

Pensacola was also my first time to a club. I hadn’t the slightest idea how to dance. They might as well have given me a wack a mole machine and told me to use it to turn lead into gold. Looking at my more recent clubbing theatrics, I’ve decided nearly every part of life becomes more enjoyable and memorable if you don’t take it seriously, and that’s something I will probably live by from now on.

I’ve realized since then that I’m not really trying to rage against the dying of the light of the world, but of my own soul. My quest for heroism is merely an attempt to reconcile my own low self esteem. My heart so recklessly throws itself into action because living for someone else is much easier when you don’t see anything in yourself worth living for. When I sit alone in my room for too long, sometimes, it becomes unbearable that I am not actively engaging in life at that very moment for these very reasons. I become too serious alone in my limbo as I wait for my Godot. As soon as someone enters the stage of my life I become the man everyone knows and is fond of again. It is not a masquerade. It is the second side of my coin. The side of silence. Lock anyone in a dungeon for long enough and they’ll start talking to themselves. Happiness is only real if it is shared.

Now that I have finally come to this conclusion, where do I go next? Do I attempt to force myself out of the low self esteem I have acquired since my childhood, or do I simply don my hero costume and continue with my life? You would think the choice would be an easy one, but I have been traveling this road too long to know anything else. Perhaps I am approaching it all wrong. Perhaps I am merely searching for an environment in which I belong. Perhaps I’m searching for the things that made Lana Lang so perfect for Clark Kent in the middle of season eight of smallville. Even the Dark Knight has his Alfred. People want the peace of mind of being individuals among the sea of lives that constantly pass through this bottleneck of time so they alienate themselves. Then they don’t want to be alone, so they fit themselves into the first thing that comes their way. Is it too much to ask for the chance to spend my life with people who are like me?

None of these things lessen the truth that this world I was born into needs changing, saving, inspiring, and so I know what I must do.

My name is Josef Isaiah Green. my passions lie in making music, writing words, and going places. I devote my life to those things and also doing what I can for the ones I love. I am committed to showing love to the people I come in contact with in this life. If there is a just cause I can fight for, I will fight for it. Someday I’m going to save the world, and I’m going to have fun while I do.

But tonight I am alone, waiting.

If you stand at the very edge of the Pensacola beach, where water meets sand, in the darkest hour of the night, you’ll find yourself alone. The signs of the season will be evident. In the summer, the trash bins will be overflowing with empty beer bottles and the lights and sounds from open bars and resturants nearby will reach you easily. But if you look to your left, down the length of the beach, until you can’t see any further, you’ll find a distinct line where the brightness of the city ends and the dark oblivion of the ocean begins.

It just goes to show you that there are still some things in this world that can’t be filled and defined by mankind, regardless of the sure signs of progress.

Humanity has come a long way. We no longer sacrifice tens of thousands of people to our gods or wear the skins of our daughters in ceremonies because society has told us that sort of behavior is stupid. We still sometimes do radical things for religion. Why do people still throw their lives away for causes that seem unreasonable and sometimes even outright evil? The answer is simple. It is always easier to live for someone or something else than oneself. It is easier to live with purpose, even if that purpose isn’t right. Thanks to the idea of faith, it doesn’t have to be.

For the longest time, I had regret giving up the life I had in Tucson for the elusive idea of experience. Sophomore and junior years of high school gave me this window into a normal and happy life that I could have had if I so chose. I had rejected it with the image of my recently diceased adopted grandma in my mind’s eye and this vague notion that it was my destiny to travel a lonely road. Since then I’ve lived in the past, wishing for a second chance, until just recently. We pursue happiness and when we don’t find it on the road we’re on, we look back to a time when we might have had the possibility of finding it.

I remember looking out at the ocean, that night, not even two years ago. I was unable to tear my gaze from it. A storm was coming. My buddies were telling me that we needed to head back, but I just wanted to stand there and face that storm that lit up the inpenatrable darkness. I could relate to it. Here was this unfillable and wild void that stretched out as far as the eye could see and all the lights in the city succombed to it’s enormity. Just when I thought it would stay that way forever, this storm comes rumbling along with it’s cooling winds and sweet, salty smell and thunderous fire that lit up the oceanic depths. If a storm could succeed where manmade lights failed, could I succeed in lighting up the world?

Pensacola was also my first time to a club. I hadn’t the slightest idea how to dance. They might as well have given me a wack a mole machine and told me to use it to turn lead into gold. Looking at my more recent clubbing theatrics, I’ve decided nearly every part of life becomes more enjoyable and memorable if you don’t take it seriously, and that’s something I will probably live by from now on.

I’ve realized since then that I’m not really trying to rage against the dying of the light of the world, but of my own soul. My quest for heroism is merely an attempt to reconcile my own low self esteem. My heart so recklessly throws itself into action because living for someone else is much easier when you don’t see anything in yourself worth living for. When I sit alone in my room for too long, sometimes, it becomes unbearable that I am not actively engaging in life at that very moment for these very reasons. I become too serious alone in my limbo as I wait for my Godot. As soon as someone enters the stage of my life I become the man everyone knows and is fond of again. It is not a masquerade. It is the second side of my coin. The side of silence. Lock anyone in a dungeon for long enough and they’ll start talking to themselves. Happiness is only real if it is shared.

Now that I have finally come to this conclusion, where do I go next? Do I attempt to force myself out of the low self esteem I have acquired since my childhood, or do I simply don my hero costume and continue with my life? You would think the choice would be an easy one, but I have been traveling this road too long to know anything else. Perhaps I am approaching it all wrong. Perhaps I am merely searching for an environment in which I belong. Perhaps I’m searching for the things that made Lana Lang so perfect for Clark Kent in the middle of season eight of smallville. Even the Dark Knight has his Alfred. People want the peace of mind of being individuals among the sea of lives that constantly pass through this bottleneck of time so they alienate themselves. Then they don’t want to be alone, so they fit themselves into the first thing that comes their way. Is it too much to ask for the chance to spend my life with people who are like me?

None of these things lessen the truth that this world I was born into needs changing, saving, inspiring, and so I know what I must do.

My name is Josef Isaiah Green. my passions lie in making music, writing words, and going places. I devote my life to those things and also doing what I can for the ones I love. I am committed to showing love to the people I come in contact with in this life. If there is a just cause I can fight for, I will fight for it. Someday I’m going to save the world, and I’m going to have fun while I do.

But tonight I am alone, waiting.

Stockholm Syndrome

Silence hangs heavy, like storm clouds at the precise moment before they pull the stops and pour out upon a thirsty ground. She’s riding in the beat up truck her father owns that slowly chugs along, used to running off fumes and quiting just as soon as it reaches a main road. Her younger brother sits between her and her delusional father whose hands grip the steering wheel and whose eyes, while on the road, are focused only on the illusion that keeps him from falling apart as he teeters on the edge of insanity. They’re on their way to church. He breaks the silence with the only conversation he ever has with his children anymore. She predicts his every word- God knows he’s said it enough- each time as he tries to merely induce a response from her, even at the price of exposing his own selfish and helpless weaknesses.

“You will never understand how much I’ve sacrificed for you until you have children of your own…”

“It’s your fault for being born.”

“After everything I’ve done to raise you, you still wanted to leave me and live with your older brother.”

“You wanted to leave me…you wanted to go off with some older boy in a foreign country and be happy without me.”

At this point he’s crying and pounding his fist into the dashboard, stopping his truck in the middle of the road every once in a while while cars honk and speed past him.

“You can hate me all you want, but I will always be your father, I will always love you, and I’m not going to let you go to hell.”

“My daughter is a whore. You are emotionless. I don’t want to have to pay child support because I can’t hold down a job.”

“You need to go to the alter tonight and ask God for forgiveness…”

She says nothing. Her brother sits, silently, thoughts of relief flood his mind that he isn’t the one being yelled at by their father. She sits there too, the fire of defiance in her eyes, seeing the pathetic half-man behind his scathing words and yet hurt at the same time that her own dad continuously berates her, saying every word a father shouldn’t and nothing a father should. She doesn’t dare speak out in her defense, for the look in his eyes has gone beyond fear and reached into something sociopathic and something scary. Her father the creep who might react to her words in any way imaginable, except the right way.

They sputter into the parking lot of yet another church. They’ve probably attended every back alley, truckstop, one room, million member church on the move and in a bottle that exists in their corner of this so-called Bible belt. Bible belt. It would be funny if it wasn’t so absurd, how mechanistically the motions were the same at all places, and as well, in the dark corners of their lives they all hid their hells of drugs, incest, and lifelessness. No matter what a person does with their life, Jesus gives them a momentary good life once a week, where they can sit on their pedestals and judge eachother. Her mind wanders no further, for they have reached the front doors, where the ushers stand to welcome them to the House of the Lord.

The order is always the same. She opens up her hymnal to page 355 and sang about how God loved her so much and then to page 294 and sang about how grateful she was for everything God is doing in her life. By this time, older women are already looking at her. She feels their stares bore holes into her as she continues going through the motion of this cultural necessity. She looks over at her brother to make sure he is ok. She does this without thinking. Since she was four a fact of her life has been that she has to take care of her brother, raise him, protect him, be his mother away from mother.

The praise and worship has ended. Announcements have been made, with special references to the christian book store and souvenir shop and thanks to those who couldn’t make it today but were viewing their service live on channel eight. It was time to meet and greet. The thundering herd of women close in on their prey, approaching in smiles, telling her that she is such a beautiful girl and seems to have a very special part to play in God’s ineffable plan. They pick her up in their arms and squeeze her, punching through her insecurities and doubling them all at once. This continues for a moment until it is time for everyone to get settled into their pews and listen to the Word of the Lord as interpreted by another evangelical holy man who’s published books and sold audio CD’s that prove he is both evangelical and a holy man.

The man behind the podium starts the night off with scripture. The sound of pages crumpling and being turned, quickly- desperately- resonates like a wave around this modern colosseum. He starts out in normal conversation, using a real life story that may or may not have happened in his life as a modern day parable to rope his audience in and understand he’s just a human, like they are. Then he begins to build his thought up, and everyone starts to anticipate that tonight is going to be another life changing night, like all church nights. He begins to grip his podium as if he were Jesus Christ himself, gripping his cross as he is whipped beyond recognition, and the crowd begins to encourage him. He tells his audience that they are sinners that should hate everything about their humanity. They should pursue God in humble shame at all of their actions. Time for the big crescendo, the moment they’d all been waiting for. People are whooping and Amening and Standing up clapping their hands as if the words this man is saying had suddenly defined their life and saved them from their miserableness. An organ starts to play in the background and he’s now red in the face, whiping great beads of sweat from his eyes as he screams into his microphone and prances around stage. For the first time in months, fat men are trying to run and they make a holy beeline around the first pew but decide to merely try a holy double over to catch their breath.

Women and children are crying by the time they reach the inevitable alter call. Everyone seems to have a conscience for the first time all week and in a thundering herd, race to the alter to dedicate their lives to Christ, as they’d all done at least once a week for the past several years. Everyone except her and her brother. They exist as observers. The antics and theatrics are no longer meaningful. They want to go home, but their dad pushes them to the front. Everyone is taller than them and bumping into eachother and nearly stepping on them, drunk with the Spirit, or maybe just drunk. They try to back away from the frenzy but their father will have none of it. They need to be saved. They need Jesus.

The evangelist is walking through the crowd, laying his hand on each person’s head and they fall back, slain in the spirit, speaking in tongues, which is either endowed upon them by the holy spirit or just endowed upon them by their imagination’s ability to create jibberish. He’s throwing people left and right, heading her way, and not slowing down. When he reaches her he doesn’t lay his hand on her head. He puts both hands on her head and shakes her around a bit before throwing her to the ground. She hits the floor hard and looses consciousness. When she comes to she is running, crying, looking for the bathroom to be alone and to wait while the pain in her head subsides, but she doesn’t make it away from the alter before the women are grabbing her, squeezing her too tight and making her neck pop, never taking off their smiles. The evangelist pulls her and her brother to the front and in front of live cameras and everyone in the church, declares that God has a special plan for the two of them. He gives them books he’d written and audio Cd’s he’s sold, things that cost money, for free, because he was an honest God-fearing man and honest, God fearing men did things like that.

They’re back in the truck and her mascara is running down her face as she lies and tells her dad she felt something and as her brother lies and said he too felt something. They must have felt the warm and loving hand of God move within them and they will never be the same. He finally becomes silent, triumphant in his little world, thinking he’d won some epic battle. He saves his speech about how the World still needs to know about Jesus, as if there is still a corner in this solar system that hasn’t heard the story or who doesn’t know the Ten Commandments, or as if knowledge of an ancient story will save people from misery. He still hasn’t enrolled her into school that has started two weeks ago. Is it not our own actions that determine the extent of our misery or happiness, and is it not due to the actions of our parents whether we are born into misery or happiness? When she steps out of the truck to enter her mom’s house, she looks back only to make sure her brother exits the truck safely as well. She tries to forget the fact that her dad will be back, twice the next day and every day afterwards, to take them to church, since they need it so badly, since they’re so evil.

I am seven time zones away. I am writing about what happened to my young half brother and sister yesterday and what will happen again today and tomorrow.  I am writing this in hope that I can save them. I am writing this now and I will continue to write in hope that this world will one day wake up and stop accepting the ideas spoon fed it by imperfect generations before us. I am writing this in hope that people will stop wallowing in self pity and realize how much their wallowing hurts others. I am writing this in hope that one day, I will learn to write the perfect words, in just the right sequence that will change the world. They will not force us. They will stop degrading us. They will not control us. We will be victorious. We will stop being ashamed of ourselves and our actions. We will be free to be truly alive.

Half The Devil’s, Half My Own

Sometimes the Sun is too bright. I nearly always expect to wake up in darkness, with wind and rain knocking on my windows and crashing against the ground just beyond my walls. Trees should be buckling under the force of nature. My fortress should be creaking. These days I open my eyes and close them again as my pupils react to the shock of not being ready for the brightness or the clarity that comes with this continuous awareness which we call reality. I immediately have to brace myself to keep from trying to retreat back into my fortress of solitude. I feel like I am coming back from the grave, unwillingly, and must remind myself by an extra long, steamy shower of the passions I have associated with being alive. Perhaps this is the reason boredom is so devastating. I’ve spent half an hour letting the warm sting of water pep talk my body into committing to another day of being available to fight the good fight and rage against the dying of the light. When I am not doing something for long enough, the pep talk wears off.

Sometimes the sun is too bright. Sometimes my eyes see too clearly for this to be reality. There is too much uncertainty in the hearts of man, too much narrowness of our minds, and too much inconsiderateness in our actions for the world to be so clear and so bright and be real. If our minds and our perception are intended to be synchronous, perhaps it is that we place too much faith in this construct that we’ve built, and plugged into most of our lives to be in tune with our minds anymore. We seek spiritualism by purely physical means on free and simple terms and for many, such a culture is comfortable and enough. But not all worlds are simple and not not all worlds contain problems that will solve themselves with a little hard work and patience. In some worlds there is suffering that cannot be warded off by placebo miracles or justified by God’s higher purpose for a person’s life. Some suffering is unjustifyable no matter what excuse or sly invention the ego can muster. It is that the Sun is too bright in those worlds. There should be acts of nature that scar the surface of the Earth to match the scarring that occurs on the surface of hearts. Perhaps if there was, we wouldn’t be able to lie to ourselves anymore. We could each face our true selves and decide to either shed the selfish complexities we’ve acquired through life or go dig a hole in the ground and rot.

Sometimes the Sun is too bright. The pathetic truth is that the only legacy many families leave behind for their children is that they weren’t there for their children when they were children. Those children grow up and find it impossible to tear their bitter gazes from their pasts and end up continuing the cycle of not being there for their own children. Sometimes one or more parent is not even physically there. Sometimes both are there but damage their children’s psyche or abuse them physically. Sometimes it is merely that they don’t have time for their children, but whatever the reason, and whatever the parents thought was important instead of the children, those children enter adolescence as damaged goods. They enter the social paradigm of school as damaged goods and the next thing you know, they are trying to survive, or trying to be alive, killing themselves to live, hurting themselves to live, bleeding themselves to live, running away to live, crying and fighting and and doing drugs and reacting, etc, just to be alive and just to ease their pain. This can all be prevented, but it’s not, because we are followers, and we don’t realize we are our own people who may not even successfully fit into the worlds of earlier generations until it is too late, and then we forever live in the past, which festers into a selfish deformed perception that causes suffering on the next generations, because we are too busy bearing our scars to realize the new generations have scars too and they affect them as well.

Sometimes the Sun is too bright. There are storms in our minds, but not outside on this Summer morning as the world spins and the clocks tick and we expect ourselves to deal with the pain. We don’t know how, we just expect it to be dealt with. The alarm goes off and our consciousness plugs back into “reality” to go through the motions of another day that will just have been acted out because we are waiting. In high school everyone embraces cliques and fads and genres of music  and facial expressions to try to fit in, and try to define themselves. I was too much of an oddball. I stood out too much to even get caught up in the whole masquerade. I wasn’t geeky enough, I wasn’t goth at all, I stopped promoting Jesus after freshman year, I just coasted. What got me through it all was music; Marie Blount had started it and Tim and Helga Kolosick saw to it that I didn’t it give up. Aside from music, I was waiting. I joined the Navy and ever since then I’ve been waiting. I tried to make music at the chapel here in Italy, but all that place seemed to represent towards the end was confusion. They were all going through the motions, but it was less than a masquerade. It was chaos. My spirituality runs via music and love and words and reaches into and for something deeper, so I’ll continue waiting, but I’m not being a bum as I wait. Oh no, Sir, I’m planning! My gears are turning, I’m thinking thoughts and dreaming dreams and opening my battered heart again because that is my only weapon. You can only fight the pain of damaged hearts with love- not words, not some idea of a man holding punch and pie in the sky- real, tangible love.

This is the World I know. This World is half the Devil’s and half my own. There are more people spreading this legacy of inflicting pain on one another than spreading real love. In the Navy, I’m just passing through, but beneath this uniform, my heart wear’s it’s own colors. It is it’s own army of one. It loses many battles and it makes mistakes, for it is imperfect and faulty, but it remains true to it’s purpose and it pursues a means to acheive it’s purpose. It knows that helping one person at a time is not enough. The World is not enough. Heaven is not enough. I am restless and I am reckless and I am traveling an ill advised road towards an impossible goal, and I will travel this road until I win or until I die. My name is Josef Green and someday I’m going to change the world.

I, Tornado

Suddenly your life pauses. You were walking, talking, dancing, crying, and twirling that knife in your fingers until time itself loses it’s freedom and sits there bound and gagged at the feet you can’t look down to see. No insects chirp from the distant night. No warning siren of the last bird to fall asleep wakes you from this dream. “I’m coming,” pulses through your blood, tingles up your nose, shivers up your spine, sparks in every synapse, and you know you have no time to prepare for the moments that await you. You plunge into your mind for the simple sanctity of solitude but your uncertainty is penetrating and numbs you to the core. You look into the mirror to imagine what expression would best suite the occassion and giving up, you hope for the best. You feel the distant breaking of damns that reach you in a flash, but that is not him. Black holes tore at your dark clothes, at your milky skin, at your tell tale heart, until your mind had nothing to grasp, but neither the void, or the crumbling damns are you. It was the moment that you used that knive to cut those puppet strings, that first breath after a coma, time stood still.

You’re in your house, alone, with that feeling coming on, knowing something’s bound to happen but just not sure if that something will be pleasant. The universe pauses and there is no sound as this Titan’s heart comes crashing down upon the sands of the desert lands. There is a soung like a sonic boom as you cover your ears and squint your eyes in the doorway to your room. The whole Earth shudders with you. In Tokyo children rush to the windows of their school to get a closer look at something they would come to ponder the rest of their lives but never witness for themselves.

I want to go into your house, but it cannot contain me and I call out to you, the voice of the wind, but you dare not open your eyes to see, you dare not move and inch towards me.

From out of the darkness I do not shine, only howl.

I howl to the moon that is fixed in your mind. That solitary figure, resolute in it’s dark beauty, moving despite the pock- marked trail of pain across it’s face, is like you, but that is not you either. You are not the broken dam, or the darkened void, or the cold and savage moon.

I am fighting for your soul. I pull free your front door. Slowly, tenderly, I take a step inside and watch as the falls expand and break away. At the center, you are curled up, feeling helpless and jaded and worthless.

You wait for death to greet you but I do not send you away. I slowly lift you up and pull you close to me. The wind is making your hair dance as you rise above where your roof used to be. I squeeze you close until you move through me, until you are at my core, where everthing is calm.

“You are safe here, nothing can hurt you anymore.”

“Who are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why did you do this?”

“All things must become new.”

“I don’t deserve this.”

“The time for deceiving yourself is over. You are amazing. You are loved. You love the moon, but you did not know the Wind loves you. It’s going to be okay now. I’ll rebuild your house…”

Suddenly your life pauses. You were minding your own business, walking, talking, dancing, crying, and twirling that knife in your fingers until time itself lost it’s freedom and now sits there bound and gagged at the feet you can’t look down to see. No insects chirp from the distant night. No warning siren of the last bird to fall asleep wakes you from this dream. “I’m coming,” pulses through your blood, tingles up your nose, shivers down your spine, sparks in every synapse, and you know you have no time to prepare for the moments that are waiting for you. You plunge into your mind for the simple sanctity of solitude but your uncertainty is penetrating and numbs you to the core. You look into the mirror to imagine what expression would best suite the occassion and giving up, you hope for the best. You feel the distant breaking of dams that reach you in a flash, but regardless of how intimate these feel, they are not you. Black holes tore at your dark clothes, at your milky skin, at your tell tale heart, until your mind had nothing to grasp, but neither the void, or the crumbling dams are you. It was the moment that you used that knive to cut those puppet strings, that first breath after a coma, that time stood still.

You’re in your house, alone, with that feeling coming on, knowing something’s bound to happen but just not sure if that something will be pleasant. The universe pauses and there is no sound as this Titan’s heart comes from the sky, fingers first, crashing down upon the sands of your desert lands. There is a roar like thunder as you cover your ears and squint your eyes. You cower  in the doorway to your room. The whole Earth shudders with you. In Tokyo, children rush to the windows of their school to get a closer look at something they would come to ponder the rest of their lives but never witness for themselves.

I want to go into your house, but it cannot contain me and I call out to you, the voice of the wind, but you dare not open your eyes to see, you dare not move and inch towards me.

From out of the darkness I do not shine, only howl.

I howl to the moon that is fixed in your mind. That solitary figure, resolute in it’s dark beauty, moving despite the pockmarked trail of pain across it’s face, is like you, but that is not you either. You are not the broken dam, or the darkened void, or the cold and savage moon.

I am fighting for your soul. I pull free your front door. Slowly, tenderly, I take a step inside and watch as the walls expand and break away. At the center, you are curled up, feeling helpless and jaded and worthless beyond imagination.

You wait for death to greet you but I do not send you away. I slowly lift you up and pull you close to me. The wind is making your hair dance as you rise above where your roof used to be. Your eyes are squeezed shut but do not stop the flow of fear and pain that streams down your face in huge, salty drops. I try to whipe them away, but fail. I squeeze you close to me as your feet and arms dangle in mid-air, until you move through me, until you are at my core, where everthing is calm.

“You are safe here, nothing can hurt you anymore.”

A cow flies by, mooing.

“Who are you?”

<Pause>

“I don’t know.”

“Why did you do this?”

“All things must become new.“

“But I don’t deserve this.”

“The time for deceiving yourself is over. You are amazing. You are loved. You love the moon, but you did not know the Wind loves you. It’s going to be okay now. I’ll help you rebuild your house now…“

Revolution

If the world does not end in 2012, children will read about 2009 in

their history books and they will see a world under the thumbs of big

oil companies. They will see pictures of greasy faces, poly-saturated in

transfats and preserved with salt and silicon. They will watch

educational podcasts displaying people gaining weight while leveling up

their tree elves and eating flaming hot cheetos by the bag. They will be

told stories by their parents and grandparents and they will wonder why

someone didn’t face their problems when they had a chance, or why they

couldn’t see the future coming. They will sit, scared and facing the

whimper that will be the end of the human race, and wonder why everyone

was too caught up in their little lives and taking their world for

granted to make a stand. By the time they form this question in their

minds, they will have been brainwashed by old movies that will inspire

them to rise to the occasion, here, in their hour of need, and prevent

the destruction of the world, but reality will don on them and they will

realize we didn’t take charge and change anything because we didn’t

care. We wanted the world to end but were afraid of what others would

think about us if we said so. We wanted the stars to fall into the sea

and the moon to turn to blood and the Earth to open up and restart

everything. We wanted zombies to overrun the city and Aliens to lay

seige to our political leaders. We hoped in dying a good death that

would make Odin proud, going out with gunpowder and treason, against the

nazi zombie aliens. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about the highschool

drama or trying to get a raise at the job you only work at because you

need to put food on the table for the family you rushed into having

because you were lonely and wanted to be normal.

Tell me just why exactly you want to have kids again? You do understand

the world is running out of space, right? Sure, children are beautiful.

You’re creating life. You do know they will die one day. Are you

creating death as well? My sister wishes she’d never been born, and I

can’t say I don’t agree with her. I’m willing to declare that most

people that do have children shouldn’t. They aren’t responsible enough

to. The world they will be introducing them into will not be a happy

one. They might end up like me, or worse. I say the behavior of everyone

mating and having children is something that needs to change. There’s

plenty of things that need to be changed. There’s plenty of things that

have needed change and have been changed. I will discussed a few of

these now.

I’m talking about shape of the world changes. Everyone knows the world

is round and everyone knows that everyone used to know the Earth was

flat. I’m talking about the magnetic force of gravity holding down your

fancy cars and shoes and not the gravitational effect of God’s loving

will. I’m talking about the constant change in definition of morality.

People used to think people with dark skin had more sin than those with

more fair skin. Some mormons still do. By this thinking, Micheal Jackson

must have went from sinner to God’s right hand man. Way to go, Micheal,

you’ll never have to be reincarnated again.

I’m talking about God not being in control of our lives, but rather the

events that happen in our lives happening as a result of the actions and

consequences of everyone in the world. If there is a need for

spiritualism in our minds, modern church on the move, in a bottle and

out of a trucker diner is not cutting it. We don’t need to play

boardgames with God. If a person is honest with themselves and takes a

step back and as a result of thinking “They can’t all be right” tries to

research all prominent religions and ways of thought, they don’t say,

“Hmm, well I’m going to have to say Jesus is the one.” It makes no sense

why someone would pick any of them, zoroastionism, hinduism, church of

the flying spagetti Monster, Etc. The truth is, one size doesn’t fit

all. One time doesn’t even fit all. There was a time when people cared

about owning land. To own land meant you’re life meant something. Oklahoma

meant a lot to so many immigrants who were promised LAND! Free land!

As far as the eye can see. All over the world show how a family’s turf

wars can turn religious, until God becomes the flag bearer of their clan.

A decade ago if someone heard the word “globalization” they would think

it was a sign that the end was near. Isn’t globalization inevitable when

communication becomes so advanced and humans claim their identity as a

whole? Show me something true now and I’llshow you something constantly

changing.

The problem is, there are too many of us, bumping into eachother,

projecting our meanings in the world, projecting our perception on

eachother, learning our place in the world, trying to follow dreams,

giving up on those dreams and resorting to humble lives, and not

realizing we’re doing any of that. There are too many of us to live in

ignorance and to base our world off of archaic systems and schemas.

Why aren’t there Continental visionaries discussing change at pubs

anymore? There was a time where the devaluingcurrency was considered

blasphemous. Now the entire world believes in inflation and the value

of the American dollar has gone down in value 95 percent.

I’m talking about a reformation of an individual’s role in society, of

political structure, of mice and men. Most people who pride themselves

in their resourcefulness, go snorkling in the metaphoric ocean of

innovation. I’m talking about tearing the snorkle mask off and investing

in scuba gear. Only a minority of people talk about global warming like

it’s a big deal. The average person could care less because they have bills

to pay, and since oil companies have every reason to play it down, it’s

played down. The same people complaining about global warming are also

griping that we’re not only polluting the environment but also killing

off the wildlife. Gamers are complaining that their deer and whatnot aren’t

fun to hunt anymore, seeing as they’ve run out of space and are hanging out

in their backyards. The level of pride a dad must have in teaching his son

how to shoot a deer in his own backyard can’t be very high. I go to Rome and

see girls holding their newborns, crying and begging for money in the

street. We’ve reached a point where we don’t have any room for ourselves,

or anything else. Next thing you know, people will start building bubble

cities under the ocean and replacing trees with their aquatic counterpart,

whatever that is.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, “shift” is happening. We’ve set the pace of

progress and are experiencing the warning signs that soon our brains will

not be able to keep up with machine. Machines will not win by enslaving or

destroying us. They will win by making us try to turn into them. The world

will end the day we realize we can’t.

We welcome that day with blind zeal.

I’m talking about a reformation of the soul. It is very easy to relax to

the thought that the world is not going to end, not in my lifetime, and if

it does, I won’t be able to do anything about it and I won’t care afterwards.

Those are thoughts of a fool. It is true, there isn’t a large, visible group

of evil persons, actively trying to destroy all the rest of us apathetics, but

the truth that we have the capability of destroying ourselves is undeniable.

We can destroy ourselves out of ignorance or by just being stupid- it doesn’t even

have to be intentional. How much more of a worthy cause is it to try to be the

intentional positive force, to change the world into something less bent on the

path to destruction? How can anyone in their right mind be content with a dull

cow eyed complacency their whole lives, without going into the world and at

least asserting their own hearts? How can anyone give up on their dreams when

they know the alternative is merely a life of dull grayness?

Whether the world is going to end in 2012 or not, time ends for everyone at

some point. Don’t rush it. This is your time. Make it count.

If the world does not end in 2012, children will read about 2009 in
their history books and they will see a world under the thumbs of big
oil companies. They will see pictures of greasy faces, poly-saturated in
transfats and preserved with salt and silicon. They will watch
educational podcasts displaying people gaining weight while leveling up
their tree elves and eating flaming hot cheetos by the bag. They will be
told stories by their parents and grandparents and they will wonder why
someone didn’t face their problems when they had a chance, or why they
couldn’t see the future coming. They will sit, scared and facing the
whimper that will be the end of the human race, and wonder why everyone
was too caught up in their little lives and taking their world for
granted to make a stand. By the time they form this question in their
minds, they will have been brainwashed by old movies that will inspire
them to rise to the occasion, here, in their hour of need, and prevent
the destruction of the world, but reality will don on them and they will
realize we didn’t take charge and change anything because we didn’t
care. We wanted the world to end but were afraid of what others would
think about us if we said so. We wanted the stars to fall into the sea
and the moon to turn to blood and the Earth to open up and restart
everything. We wanted zombies to overrun the city and Aliens to lay
seige to our political leaders. We hoped in dying a good death that
would make Odin proud, going out with gunpowder and treason, against the
nazi zombie aliens. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about the highschool
drama or trying to get a raise at the job you only work at because you
need to put food on the table for the family you rushed into having
because you were lonely and wanted to be normal.
Tell me just why exactly you want to have kids again? You do understand
the world is running out of space, right? Sure, children are beautiful.
You’re creating life. You do know they will die one day. Are you
creating death as well? My sister wishes she’d never been born, and I
can’t say I don’t agree with her. I’m willing to declare that most
people that do have children shouldn’t. They aren’t responsible enough
to. The world they will be introducing them into will not be a happy
one. They might end up like me, or worse. I say the behavior of everyone
mating and having children is something that needs to change. There are
plenty of things that need to be changed. There are plenty of things that
have needed changing and have been changed. I will discuss a few of
these now.
I’m talking about shape of the world changes. Everyone knows the world
is round and everyone knows that everyone used to know the Earth was
flat. I’m talking about the magnetic force of gravity holding down your
fancy cars and shoes and not the gravitational effect of God’s loving
will. I’m talking about the constant change in definition of morality.
People used to think people with dark skin had more sin than those with
more fair skin. Some mormons still do. By this thinking, Micheal Jackson
must have went from sinner to God’s right hand man. Way to go, Micheal,
you’ll never have to be reincarnated again.
I’m talking about God not being in control of our lives, but rather the
events that happen in our lives happening as a result of the actions and
consequences of everyone in the world. If there is a need for
spiritualism in our minds, modern church on the move, in a bottle and
out of a trucker diner is not cutting it. We don’t need to play
boardgames with God. If a person is honest with themselves and takes a
step back and as a result of thinking “They can’t all be right” tries to
research all prominent religions and ways of thought, they don’t say,
“Hmm, well I’m going to have to say Jesus is the one.” It makes no sense
why someone would pick any of them, zoroastionism, hinduism, church of
the flying spagetti Monster, Etc. The truth is, one size doesn’t fit
all. One time doesn’t even fit all. There was a time when people cared
about owning land. To own land meant you’re life meant something. Oklahoma
meant a lot to so many immigrants who were promised LAND! Free land!
As far as the eye can see. Histories from all over the world show how a family’s turf
wars can turn religious, until God becomes the Blazing flag bearer of their clan.
A decade ago if someone heard the word “globalization” they would think
it was a sign that the end was near. Isn’t globalization inevitable when
communication becomes so advanced and humans claim their identity as a
whole? Show me something true now and I’ll show you something constantly
changing.
The problem is, there are too many of us, bumping into eachother,
projecting our meanings in the world, projecting our perception on
eachother, learning our place in the world, trying to follow dreams,
giving up on those dreams and resorting to humble lives, and not
realizing we’re doing any of that. There are too many of us to live in
ignorance and to base our world off of archaic systems and schemas.
Why aren’t there Continental visionaries discussing change at pubs
anymore? There was a time when the devaluing of currency was considered
blasphemous. Now the entire world believes in inflation and the value
of the American dollar has gone down in value 95 percent.
I’m talking about a reformation of an individual’s role in society, of
political structure, of mice and men. Most people who pride themselves
in their resourcefulness, go snorkling in the metaphoric ocean of
innovation. I’m talking about tearing the snorkle mask off and investing
in scuba gear. Only a minority of people talk about global warming like
it’s a big deal. The average person could care less because they have bills
to pay, and since oil companies have every reason to play it down, it’s
played down. The same people complaining about global warming are also
griping that we’re not only polluting the environment but also killing
off the wildlife. Gamers are complaining that their deer and whatnot aren’t
fun to hunt anymore, seeing as they’ve run out of space and are hanging out
in their backyards. The level of pride a dad must have in teaching his son
how to shoot a deer in his own backyard can’t be very high. I go to Rome and
see girls holding their newborns, crying and begging for money in the
street. We’ve reached a point where we don’t have any room for ourselves,
or anything else. Next thing you know, people will start building bubble
cities under the ocean and replacing trees with their aquatic counterpart,
whatever that is.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, “shift” is happening. We’ve set the pace of
progress and are experiencing the warning signs that soon our brains will
not be able to keep up with machine. Machines will not win by enslaving or
destroying us. They will win by making us try to turn into them. The world
will end the day we realize we can’t.
We welcome that day with blind zeal.
I’m talking about a reformation of the soul. It is very easy to relax to
the thought that the world is not going to end, not in my lifetime, and if
it does, I won’t be able to do anything about it and I won’t care afterwards.
Those are thoughts of a fool. It is true, there isn’t a large, visible group
of evil persons, actively trying to destroy all the rest of us apathetics, but
the truth that we have the capability of destroying ourselves is undeniable.
We can destroy ourselves out of ignorance or by just being stupid- it doesn’t even
have to be intentional. How much more of a worthy cause is it to try to be the
intentional positive force, to change the world into something less bent on the
path to destruction? How can anyone in their right mind be content with a dull
cow eyed complacency their whole lives, without going into the world and at
least asserting their own hearts? How can anyone give up on their dreams when
they know the alternative is merely a life of dull grayness?
Whether the world is going to end in 2012 or not, time ends for everyone at
some point. Don’t rush it. This is your time. Make it count.

Thou Shall Not Need

A few months back, I came up with this ineffable plan for my life. It was underdeveloped but had high hopes of becoming flawless. In my head, I saw myself overcoming impossible odds, saving my sister, and then basically settling down with a good girl for the rest of my life. I poured my heart and soul into this plan, and I felt it was the plan to define my life; to say I was stressed out would be an understatement but I rebelled against that fear until hope burned from eyes and made people believe in my crazy plan. Then, weeks had gone by and I was there trying to maintain a steady surge of this passionate hopefullness even though my stress turned to doubt. The girl that would be my wife wasn’t really my soulmate. She was going to settle down in one town and I wouldn’t be happy settling down now and she wouldn’t be happy with me away. Nevertheless, I closed my eyes and told myself it would all work out the way I had planned it. Game day came. My sister’s dad changed his mind; he wouldn’t allow me to file to be her legal guardian. The fact that I failed my sister and failed at half of this plan I had poured my heart and soul into destroyed me.

I failed my sister. For the past two years I have been the voice of reason in her life, and she would call me or write to me and many of those times she would be crying or trying not to. The fact that I had failed my sister forced me to realize that I couldn’t will good things to happen or will things to work out the way I want them to just because I wanted them to. I was a mess. I began to doubt everything that could be doubted. It’s already in my nature to doubt and to think too much, but I reverted to some adolescent who was just clumsily beginning to understand his role in the world. I became a blank slate.

A person’s needs change at various stages throughout their life. When I was a baby I need nurturing and when I am old I will either need a nurse or a grave. There are so many things we think we need, that we couldn’t imagine existing without, and I’m not talking about the wonderful pleasantries of living in modern America. I mean to say, in my case, I didn’t need to need. I didn’t want my reasons for love to be needy ones. I don’t want to marry or have a courtship with someone because I need to not feel alone. I don’t even want to have sex because I need it. The only thing I need right now is to have the satisfaction of knowing I need nothing more than the bare necessities. I don’t need some religion or some morality or some political structure or anything. I need food and water. I need to do what the Navy needs me to do. I need sleep.

I had received the blue screen of death in my life and I needed a reboot. Ok, electricity is here and my heart’s beating. Power on self test. My name is Josef Isaiah Green. I was born October 21 in Tucson Arizona. I find my passion in music and words. I am pursuing happiness and experience and a means to change the world and make my mark and make my time here meaningful and… Happiness is not real unless it is shared…and…It is good to have an open mind, but at the expence of an ungraspable self, one must become a lone wolf…and…

I managed to do all that while wallowing in self pity like a baby. You could consider these ideas trivial and common sense. All words are. It is the thoughts and actions and emotions they represent that form the hurricanes that make up our lives.

People need different things at different times. Django Reindhart is considered the greatest jazz guitarist of all time and played with only two fingers due to a house fire when he was in his early twenties, but when he came to America and was forced to play on an electric, his fans left him. Similarly, I play my violin at the chapel sometimes because it’s really the only chance I get to play these days, but when they tell me I need to play my cheap electric violin that I bought impulsively and then regretted after playing on it, I was really discouraged to return. Frank McCourt was right. Sometimes what people need is to be left alone.

I used to condemn all non-Christians to the fires of hell, when I was in elementary school. I thought I was helping them. Here comes Joe Green always trying to save the world somehow. Now when people think they’re helping by telling me that something I’ve done is not something moral or healthy people would do it goes in one ear and out of the other. I don’t need to base my life off of what normal or healthy or well-rounded or morally high or politically correct people do. Love and music is my religion. I decide my own noble morality. We are all blindly stumbling our way more or less towards nirvanna and it will always be easier to tell someone that something they did could be different.

I look at my life and wonder why some people are so afraid of leaving their mental prisons. The easy answer would be to point out that I didn’t call them prisons for nothing, but I think it isn’t that people are afraid so much as they can’t perceive things differently. Usually you’re only a blank slate once.

I guess I just looked too hard.

A few months back, I came up with this ineffable plan for my life. It was underdeveloped but had high hopes of becoming flawless. In my head, I saw myself overcoming impossible odds, saving my sister, and then basically settling down with a good girl for the rest of my life. I poured my heart and soul into this plan and I felt it was the plan to define my life. To say I was stressed out would be an understatement but I rebelled against that fear until hope burned from my eyes and made people believe in my crazy plan. Then, weeks had gone by and I was there trying to maintain a steady surge of this passionate hopefullness even though my stress turned to doubt. The girl that would be my wife wasn’t really my soulmate. She was going to settle down in one town and I wouldn’t be happy settling down now and she wouldn’t be happy with me away. Nevertheless, I closed my eyes and told myself it would all work out the way I had planned it. Game day came. My sister’s dad changed his mind; he wouldn’t allow me to file to be her legal guardian. The fact that I failed my sister and failed at half of this plan I had poured my heart and soul into destroyed me.

I failed my sister. For the past two years I have been the voice of reason in her life, and she would call me or write to me and many of those times she would be crying or trying not to. The fact that I had failed my sister forced me to realize that I couldn’t will good things to happen or will things to work out the way I want them to just because I wanted them to. I was a mess. I began to doubt everything that could be doubted. It’s already in my nature to doubt and to think too much, but I reverted to some adolescent who was just clumsily beginning to understand his role in the world. I became a blank slate.

A person’s needs change at various stages throughout their life. When I was a baby I need nurturing and when I am old I will either need a nurse or a grave. There are so many things we think we need, that we couldn’t imagine existing without and I’m not talking about the wonderful pleasantries of living in modern America. I mean to say, in my case, I didn’t need to need. I didn’t want my reasons for love to be needy ones. I don’t want to marry or have a courtship with someone because I need to not feel alone. I don’t even want to have sex because I think I need it. The only thing I need right now is to have the satisfaction of knowing I need nothing more than the bare necessities. I don’t need some religion or some morality or some political structure or anything. I need food and water. I need to do what the Navy needs me to do. I need sleep.

I had received the blue screen of death in my life and I needed a reboot. Ok, electricity is here and my heart’s beating. Power on self test. My name is Josef Isaiah Green. I was born October 21 in Tucson Arizona. I find my passion in music and words. I am pursuing happiness and experience and a means to change the world and make my mark and make my time here meaningful and… Happiness is not real unless it is shared…and…”It is good to have an open mind, but at the expence of an ungraspable self, one must become a lone wolf.”…and…

I managed to do all that while wallowing in self pity like a baby. You could consider these ideas trivial and common sense. All words are. It is the thoughts and actions and emotions they represent that form the hurricanes that make up our lives.

People need different things at different times. Django Reindhart, the father of gypsy jazz, is considered the greatest jazz guitarist of all time and played with only two fingers due to a house fire when he was in his early twenties, but when he came to America and was forced to play on an electric, his fans left him. Similarly, I play my violin at the chapel sometimes because it’s really the only chance I get to play these days, but when they tell me I need to play my cheap electric violin that I bought impulsively and then regretted after playing on it, I was really discouraged to return. Frank McCourt was right. Sometimes what people need is to be left alone.

I used to condemn all non-Christians to the fires of hell, when I was in elementary school. I thought I was helping them. Here comes Joe Green always trying to save the world somehow. Now when people think they’re helping by telling me that something I’ve done is not something moral or healthy people would do it goes in one ear and out of the other. I don’t need to base my life off of what normal or healthy or well-rounded or morally high or politically correct people do. Love and music is my religion. I decide my own noble morality. We are all blindly stumbling our way more or less towards nirvanna and it will always be easier to tell someone that something they did could be different. Hindsight is always 20/20, and it’s even better when it’s in someone else’s shoes.

I look at my life and wonder why some people are so afraid of leaving their mental prisons. The easy answer would be to point out that I didn’t call them prisons for nothing, but I think it isn’t that people are afraid so much as they can’t perceive things differently. Usually you’re only a blank slate once.

I guess I just looked too hard.

Redefine This

I’m dying. I’ve lived a good life. There’s nothing more that can be done. I’m ready to go.

These were the last thoughts of an old woman who lived her life with fiery compassion, endured the fires of hell, and started fires in the hearts of so many people she met. Her name is Marie Blount.

I was a baby when I met her. She was teaching Sunday school, telling us youngsters that the single and most powerful hope in this world is love. Her face became etched into my memory from day one. Then my parents would give me to her to hold during Service. Perhaps it was the fact that my dad was half black and she was the only black woman there. Then one day, the pastor brought us to their house. I don’t know the circumstances or the reasons for the visit. All I know is that my mom was taking me and running. All I know is that the church was protecting us. All I know is that our visit turned into a two year stay.

The next thing I knew, they were helping us leave the state. We were in Arkansas. We were in California. We were in Tennesse. We were on planes and I was crying because my ears hurt. We were in good Christian family houses and something would go wrong or they would prove that they weren’t good christians at all and we’d be on a plane again. We moved to Wichita Falls, Texas. I was five and we stayed there for a year. My mom met a native american at this nursing home.

My mom had been going on dates. She had been taking me with her on blind dates and rock concerts. I would throw my toys at men that she liked but I didn’t approve of. I was protecting her. Texas came and I wanted a dad. I was no longer throwing my toys. I hoped that Ronald McDonald would be my dad. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because he was always smiling while he sat on his bench, and he’d never leave that bench, come rain, shine, sleet, or snow. But he couldn’t say “I do” either.

Marie had helped us into our Apartment- the Elms Apartments where I would go outside and play in the mud, go inside and stack the couch cushions to jump off of, take cardboard boxes and make spaceships or wings for my superhero persona, The Brown Hawk.

My mom married him in a rush. She helped pay off the debt he had gotten himself into while chasing a girl who hadn’t wanted him to chase her. He quit the military because he couldn’t yell. They met at a nursing home, changing old people’s diapers.

They got married, and I was the only one who attended, their ring bearer, and I was better dressed in my shirt and tie and blue jacket. We started attending a new pentecostal church. He would drive me to school late, and when the teacher asked me why I would tell her that Jesus was more important than school anyways. I was five, delighted in my wind-breaker two peice, and Jesus was my life.

Marie didn’t approve of him. This guy was obviously a few fries short of a happy meal, but my mom was desperate, and I wanted a dad. That lonely christmas before meeting him, I’d helped her drag the christmas tree two or three miles to our apartments. I had closed my eyes when she bought my lazer gun while I sat there in the cart facing it. I looked, but deliberately showed my surprise anyways. It’s what you do.

First grade was over. The first day I had arrived I sat in class and just cried. Everyone just gave me funny looks but I didn’t care because I’d felt I had every right to cry. I was alone in a strange world, in a strange school and a strange state, and it was just too much to not cry. Story of my life, Stranger.

First grade was over, and on that day, we jumped in a Uhaul, took all the furniture in the apartment that hadn’t belonged to us, and drove to Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was so excited because I imagined meeting cowboys and indians firsthand. I was going to Huckleberry Finn my way to heaven.

The apartment called Marie because they hadn’t paid their final bill. I suppose we just took off without notifying the place we would be taking their furniture. Marie flew to Texas, paid, and waited for word of our whereabouts.

We were in an apartment in Jenks. I had taken my bicycle apart, trying to make a robot, and ended up using the inner tube of a tire to hit at the ants that were invading my room by the inch. Their invasion didn’t bother me, but it gave me something to do.

I had to worry about the ice on the stairs that Christmas. They’d tried to put me in an advanced Christian school in Jenks but the place was ran like the military and they would have to actually participate. Imagine that.

They didn’t have time for that. My mom was bedridden, pregnant with my sister, having me feed her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for nine months and her husband was either getting fired, quiting, or looking for work. It’s the story of his life.

Eventually, we contacted Art and Marie again, or they found us somehow. It was Inevitable.

We would never stay in the same house for more than a year. I would never stay in the same school for over a year. Sometimes it was a multiple of both per year. Art and Marie owned a motorhome. Art would drive. I would see it and start running blindly towards it while throwing tears everywhere. Marie would open the door and pop her smiling face out and give me a hug. They did this once a year. Not even christmas was comparable.

Five years have gone by. I’m ten years old, in a Pentacostal Summer Camp, and on the ride back from Mustang, Oklahoma, the Pastor of the one room church we’d been attending told me that my mom had gotten in a divorce with her husband. I was shocked. I had gotten used to the drama, and the fights, and the little lives of little minds. He had cheated on her with another guy and had this sick dog look in his eyes when we were at the hospital checking to see if he obtained any STD’s.

After that he became even more of a psycho for Jesus. That should be a group. Psycho for Jesus. They should be locked up for the terrorism they cause from inside a home, because now he’s got my brother and sister and here I am trying to save them. Hours before we celebrated the year 2000, we were in that one room church crying like babies, praying for Christ to take his holy saints to heaven in the Rapture we were sure was going to happen as soon as the ball dropped in Times Square. Nothing happened and thought, maybe next year.

I was saved. Art and Marie fought in the courts, showing that I was living in an unfit environment, and I was tired of fighting the roaches at night. It was like a horror movie.

For the next seven years, I had no contact with my mom or brother or sister. I was in Tucson, trying to become normal, though you wouldn’t believe that if you knew me back then.

Then Marie had heart surgery. She didn’t tell me she was having it until the week of. She didn’t want to worry me. The week before she told me, I’d had a dream that she was telling me goodbye, and she walked away and disappeared. I didn’t remember the dream until after the surgery. I cried like a baby.

She had a leaky valve. The doctors had agreed that they were going to replace the valve entirely. It was the heart hospital so they specialized in that sort of thing. In the middle of the operation, they decided they might be able to fix the valve itself. She was old and this operation would be slightly less risky. It didn’t take.

I could sit and wonder if she knew it wasn’t going to work. Perhaps that’s why she waited for two years to get this operation. That was two years she could have almost lost. Two years I would not have been ready for.

Next thing you know, she’s hooked up to machines that are doing everything for her. Breathing, hydrating, eating…She’s on so many meds that her eyes are usually open but hardly seeing. Art sits there in turmoil, holding his wife’s hand, knowing that she will be ok. They had spent so many years together. Finally, she’s responsive enough to write in scribble, and she writes “I want to go home.”

Art, the bull-headed, loving, old man he is, thinks nothing other than that she wants to get out of these tubes and go back to the house, but I know better. She’s thinking, “I’m too old for these games. I know there’s nothing that can be done. I’ve lived a happy life, I’m tired, and I’m ready to go.”

Her dad was a black preacher in a Baptist church in Michigan. Once when she was a girl, some white punks decided it would be funny to try to take her from her front yard and do god knows what. She fell to her knees and yelled at the top of her lungs as she fought them off. She made it hard enough on them that they decided it wasn’t funny anymore and left her.

Her older brother followed in her father’s footsteps. On both accounts, when each one was about to die, they didn’t tell Marie. Marie would have dreams about them and call but others would answer and say everything was fine. She ended up flying both times to see them, find them in the hospital, on their death beds and ask them, “Why didn’t you tell me?” They each answered, “I didn’t have to. Love did.”

Her entire life, she was a pillar of strength for others, and gave love and answers to so many. She went through so much and I don’t even know her story. I don’t know whether she was content her whole life or not. I know she was the reason I make music today.

I was a sophomore in highschool. Sophomore year started the day after she died. Doctors weren’t certain of the time of death because they had had machines and medicine pumping her to continue. They don’t know when her brain was finished. I ran away from home that year, i spent the night outside university highschool. Cody gave me his lunch money. The attendance showed I was at school and everyone made a fuss because they’d been looking for me, but I was in the middle of going crazy. Art’s nephew promised to do something about it. I sat in front of a shrink twice and smiled and told him all was well. That was the end of that. Nobody wants to be crazy. I’m always sure that I am in my unorthodox thinking and inferiority complex, but even I don’t want to actually be crazy.

Junior year in higschool, Art started showing signs of dementia. He got into two car accidents. The last day I lived in Tucson, we were on our way to Millie’s Pancake house when he decided to have a diabetic coma and we almost crashed going the wrong way in an intersection.

I had joined the navy. I was on the delayed entry program because I was only 17. I decided I needed to live with my mom again, to have a family to come back to when I was in the military. I wasn’t a nurse, which is what Art needed. I was cut off from the family. Art’s nephew has power issues. I swung by my old house a few weeks ago, three years later, and he was there. He answered the door and slammed it in my face. I left to go meet a friend at the mall and watch Year One.

I imagine there’s a war going on over the will. Over what’s being left behind. All I know, all I care about is that Marie did for me something greater than could ever be left behind. Love. Pure love, no strings attached. But there is a burden that comes with it.

She dedicated the latter part of her life to me. Surely I am doing the worst I could do with my life at the moment, trying to be alive any way possible, ending up drunk and alone in Rome. I should be ashamed of myself. Surely I need to change myself. I need to change the world. The world is not enough. Heaven is not enough. I need to give others hope. I need to go to people and go “BAM! Have hope!” or I need to be a source of unending love, regardless of how I feel or how lost I am. Everyone has their stories of hardship and pain and they get on with their lives. Why am I different? Do I think to much? Do I go overboard with taking nothing for granted? Am I just crazy? I’ll take D, all the above, and that’s my final answer, for now.

There are no answers, only surelies, Shirly.
And Aslan says “Get over here so I can breathe on you and make you strong.”
If only.

I don’t know who I am. One moment I’m sure I must be a monster, a retard, the ex a girl is glad she’s through with. The next moment I’m trying to drink my way to happiness. The next moment I’m looking for an evil thing in the world to rage against and save the world from. The next moment I’m a knight in shining armor, here to save the day, because anything less isn’t worth using up breath on. You only have one life. At the end of the road I want to be satisfied…with myself.

I’m redefining myself, and in a more positive way than I was redefining myself yesterday and the past few weeks.

Let’s see where this goes.

Urgency

Note to Self:
Don’t judge people based on the condition of the clothes they’re wearing. They could look like the poster Hobo from hoboland, but there’s a chance they might just be having a bad day. I now know this by personal experience.

Saturday morning finds me in Rome. It’s eight o’clock in the morning and all is well. Of the many thoughts going through my head at the time, that’s not one of them. My floundering powers of observation are telling me I’m sitting in a stairwell of a building that definitely is not my hostel, they’re telling me I have fresh puke stains on my shirt, they’re telling me I must have gone on a pub crawl because the shirt is halfway tucked between my jeans and my plaid boxers. At least seven hours of my life have been erased. For all I know, I’ve been sitting in this stairwell the entire time, or wandering around outside, bull-goose looney, or making sweet love to a super model. Well, my flawless reasoning tells me it couldn’t have been the last one on two accounts. First off, none of the girls I met last night who I can remember had any philosophic depth perception. They kept trying to dance and be alive for their week of Experience The World before they head back to school to finish up a major in management or start the careers that have nothing to do with music or words. Maybe I’m too picky. Second, there is nothing known to man that is sweet after drinking as much as I did. Well, Joe Green, did you accomplish what you came here for? What did you come here for? To have an intellectual conversation with a girl in a tourist trap while drunk? I champion impossible causes.

I could write a country song. It would be about my dog dying. It would be about how I lost my backpack and all it’s contents in Rome. It would be about stumbling around rome for a ridiculous amount of time, puking everywhere, getting ditched by the guys I was with, and don’t try to find deeper meaning. It’s not there. I looked. Don’t waste your time. The funny thing is, I was so impulsed to go on this suicide mission because I felt I was wasting my time. I waste a moment and I’m afraid I’m wasting my life. I was born with a perpetual midlife crisis. I could sit here today and ramble about truth and beauty and how many good things I want to do in the world, but I smell bad and I want to finish this note quick before taking a long, hopefully hot, shower. I will use soap.

Last night wasn’t about truth and beauty. Last night wasn’t about being alive or being single and lovin’ it. Last night was about trying to deal with desperation. It took me five minutes to remember the word desperation. My brain is still slow. But it won’t stop there. This desperation must be dealt with, so I’ll keep trying. Someday I’ll calm down and wonder why I was running so madly, hopefully.

I want to grab myself by the shoulders and ask myself, Joe, man, what are you trying to prove?

I wouldn’t exactly have an answer for myself.

I guess I’m looking for a place in this world where I can do the things I enjoy in the company of cool people who enjoy the same things and change people’s lives while doing it. That’s what I want in life. I don’t want that certain house in that certain place and those certain two cars and the certain picket fence. I don’t want to labor for 20 or 30 years doing something I hate, or grow to hate, so I can…be old. Why can’t I make the most of my youth?

I can’t change the world from this excuse of a hotel room. I can’t jam by myself. I can’t share memories if I’m lonely and alone. I can’t find myself if I make a life affecting commitment. I can’t get to know my family from millions of miles away. I don’t believe in long distance relationships.

So what can I do? I guess that’s what I’m doing. I’m doing the things I can to replace the things I can’t, and no matter how bad it gets, no matter how much I just want to tear my heart out and do a river dance on it while bagpipes bellow out the melody of “So kiss me, I’m shitfaced,” doing anything at all is better than sitting here wasting oxygen.

I guess that’s where I’m at in life.