Lonely America
Each of us is our own Jesus. We die each night as we sleep, and forgive our sins with the sunrise. A savior from another time cannot heal the chasms that open within us, and so we turn to our own personal messiahs, graven images of pop culture, icons of celluloid and technicolor, saints on government currency. Each of us has our own cross to bear, and we throw our childhoods away finding ways to bury them deep inside ourselves so that no one will ever know that something just might not be okay.
There are no children anymore. Culture has killed the children, murdered them with fashion and fitting in. And so, like the stomachs of too-early teen mothers, we grow too fast, develop too soon, and the stretch marks are plainly visible on our souls. We are all too thin, trying to spread our underdeveloped selves over an adult-sized piece of life before we have reached any semblance of maturity. For maturity not earned correctly is forced, a mask just as surely as any of the put-on faces seen in today's malls, high schools, churches, concerts, bars...lonely America trying to hide from itself in a mirror.
If we wish to speed our way to our final transformation, we must quietly receive the truth of our mortality. Silence is the key to the immortality of the next kingdom. Running, jumping, screaming, fighting, cursing, crying; all is as standing still in the face of the next kingdom; only by remaining motionless and opening ourselves to the possibility of silence and a cessation of motion may we move forward at last.
Each one of us rots away life in our paper shells, waiting for the absolution of our true awakening. We look through each other as the sun shines through our cellophane skin. As the great meat factories of America keep churning, as the suburban baby machines fulfill their preprogrammed destinies, the rest of us lonesouls and disconnected lives rush headlong to embrace our final transformation back into the dust from whence we came.
Ashes to ashes, men to memories.
There are no children anymore. Culture has killed the children, murdered them with fashion and fitting in. And so, like the stomachs of too-early teen mothers, we grow too fast, develop too soon, and the stretch marks are plainly visible on our souls. We are all too thin, trying to spread our underdeveloped selves over an adult-sized piece of life before we have reached any semblance of maturity. For maturity not earned correctly is forced, a mask just as surely as any of the put-on faces seen in today's malls, high schools, churches, concerts, bars...lonely America trying to hide from itself in a mirror.
If we wish to speed our way to our final transformation, we must quietly receive the truth of our mortality. Silence is the key to the immortality of the next kingdom. Running, jumping, screaming, fighting, cursing, crying; all is as standing still in the face of the next kingdom; only by remaining motionless and opening ourselves to the possibility of silence and a cessation of motion may we move forward at last.
Each one of us rots away life in our paper shells, waiting for the absolution of our true awakening. We look through each other as the sun shines through our cellophane skin. As the great meat factories of America keep churning, as the suburban baby machines fulfill their preprogrammed destinies, the rest of us lonesouls and disconnected lives rush headlong to embrace our final transformation back into the dust from whence we came.
Ashes to ashes, men to memories.