Why Do The Heathen Rage?

I'm kind of happy after my meeting with my professor. I don't feel like such a tool now that I have better instructions about what I'm doing. I am, of course, still such a tool. But it's nice to not feel like it. Plus, he gave me fifty dollars for teaching the class. I'd been expecting less than twenty. I guess he understood how much it must suck to look like a tool in front of your peers. Hazardous duty pay or somesuch.

In a little while I have a history club get together. I don't really want to go to that one either. I don't know why I'm so down on going out lately. I just don't feel like it very much. I want to stay home and read books and tell the world to bugger off. Sure, that's my attitude in general, and has been for years, but it's particularly potent right now. I'm just generally unwilling to deal with the outside world. I'm in full Gollum-mode, at present; fully satisfied in the company of only my own twisted countenance.

But I am looking forward to going to Cedar Point on Saturday. I want it to be long-sleeves weather. I want it not to rain. I want the wind to be present, but gentle enough not to shut down the rides.

I'm really enjoying the coming of Autumn. Yesterday, on the dogs' and my walk, it struck me suddenly that I'd been stepping on quite a lot of leaves. They weren't really quite brown or yellow or orange yet, but everything was beginning to look slightly less green. The sky was even that peculiarly Ohio-in-October shade of grey.

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of active love recently, and all of the many ways I fail at it. I've been thinking about how I put my pride above everyone else's well-being. I know that everyone does that. And I feel it would be sort of narcissistic to claim myself a graver sinner than anyone. But I've been examining my own life of late, and I can see how depraved I've become. I need to turn over a new leaf, but I don't have the motivation just yet.

A rebirth requires first a dying to self. I can see in my thoughts a semblance of this dying to self. My aversion to others; my obsessive psychological battery of myself; my self-loathing; my need to get away; all of it makes sense in the light of dying to self. But I know that I'm not that spiritually advanced yet. I'm glad if I've put a foot on the path, even if it's only a tentative step. All that remains is to take another step, and another, and it's never so difficult to continue as it is to begin.

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you may be swept off to." - Bilbo Baggins.

posted by Sarie @ 4:44 PM >Comments: 0