autumn has come!

Autumn has come. “It came a few days ago,” Kevin said. But finally it actually feels like fall. Autumn is my favorite season. Pumpkin pies, hot steaming coffee in the cold, the way the leaves change colors and fall from their perches in the trees, the crisp coolness that fills your lungs and the football being tossed around. Nearly all my favorite memories come from autumn. Hot dogs, hay-rides, dressing warm and walking the windy streets. One of my high school friends, whom I’ve shared countless autumns with—“We’ve been friends eleven years,” he told me—came down to Cincinnati yesterday, and we went to Newport and saw the movie “Surrogates,” and we walked the cobblestone paths by the river and drank Venezuelan coffee, and when Sarah got back from work we went to Blockbuster and rented two ridiculous “horror” movies: “Teeth” (about a girl’s you-know-what that has teeth) and “The Gingerdead Man” which stars Gary Busey and is about, well, a vengeance-seeking gingerbread cookie (we stopped it halfway through because the acting and storyline was awful). We spent the night sitting around and talking about all kinds of things. The religious state of America, the biblical realities of sin and the need for repentance, false teachings such as legalism and antinomianism, and the status of Christians before God and whether or not addiction is sin.

It’s rained nearly non-stop for the last week, and it stormed awfully bad last night, but now that the sky is clear and crisp, Sarah and I decided to celebrate by carving a pumpkin! We bought it from Kroger and carved it on the front porch, and I dished out the seeds and cooked them salted in the oven. They’re delicious. We watched the Bengals vs. Steelers game on television, and she got really into it, leaping up and down and cursing and shrieking and screaming for every good play and bad play both. Here is a picture Sarah took of me scooping seeds from the pumpkin:

a conversation

Sarah and I sat on our front porch two nights ago. She asked me how I felt about one of my ex-girlfriends getting married within the next couple weeks. “I don’t know. It feels strange. I mean, I really liked her at one time, and when I lost her, it was hell. At this point I’m entirely over her. I don’t think about her anymore. But at the same time, seeing her getting married (and I’m happy for her) makes me realize how seemingly far I am from my own dream. I mean, I’ve never been one of those people who yearns for fame and fortune and all that. My dream is simple: to be a good husband and good father. She’s becoming a wife in the next couple weeks, and another of my ex-girlfriends is getting married on my sister’s birthday. Or two days after. I can’t remember. But knowing that they’re moving forward, and even though I’m happy for them, makes me realize how I haven’t been moving forward at all. Nothing is changing. I’m in the same place I was five years ago, except the essence of hope for my dream is dying.” She didn’t really say much, and I can’t blame her. So I said, “Let’s go watch a movie,” and we went inside and sat on the couch and turned on the television and haven’t talked about it since.

the lehman house [21]

Ams and her pumpkin seeds

Monday. I worked 9:30-1:00 and had a smoothie for lunch. Last night I dreamt Sarah and I were boyfriend and girlfriend. I ate lunch with Sarah G. from work and her friend Brittany C. Mandy K. and I went to Sitwell’s Café in Clifton and then to the porch, chatting for two hours. I don’t think I like her anymore, which is good, ‘cause she’s planning on high-tailing it to Venezuela to be a missionary. When Sarah got home we sat on the front porch and talked about our depressing, unfruitful lives. “Courtney’s getting married on the 2^nd, and all I can see is her moving forward while I move backwards.” We fixed rice for dinner and watched “Silent Hill” and when Ams got back we made a funny video where she was a cokehead stripper and I was her pimp. Chris and Tiz came over at Ams’ request to see it; they laughed a lot.

Tuesday. Jess Lynn called me last night, asked if I was lonely. “Yes, very much so.” She asked why, and I gave her a laundry list of reasons: losing friends, hopeless romanticism, Courtney’s upcoming wedding, and then she fell asleep on the phone. Mandy H., Jobst and I got dinner at Thai Taste in Western Hills where we talked a lot about fishing, of all things. Sarah spent the night at Keith’s. She’s more pathetic than I am.

Wednesday. I was working and in class till about 3:00. I had a late lunch with Sarah from work and Brittany, and then Julie B. and I went splashing through rain puddles as I walked her to her car. I napped till 5:30 and Sarah woke me up when she got home. Mandy H. came over to do laundry and hang out, and Gambill joined us, too. Mandy K. returned to Chicago. I was up into the early morning writing. When I finished I went out onto the porch and stretched my worn fingers and smoked a cigarette, a heavy mist, illumined by the streetlights, rolling in from the west.

Thursday. Mandy H. came over after classes, and we got Chipotle for dinner. A drunk and senile man came onto my front porch begging for a ride to Westwood. Our compassion got the best of us, and we agreed. After running around Cincinnati for an hour, and after him threatening us, we dropped him off at a bar in Warsaw. He spit up all over Mandy’s car. We got the hell outta there. Mandy was terrified. I hurried to the library to help two girls with their Greek homework, and I spent the evening studying 1 Corinthians and missing Sarah. She’s in Wilmington tonight and maybe tomorrow night, too.

Friday. Autumn’s settling in. The trees still look the same, but it’s been cold and rainy all week. I went to the library to help Kyle with Greek. He’s dating a girl named Vicki now. And he has three cracked ribs. “This is why I shouldn’t hang out with you: it hurts to laugh, and you make me laugh.” I went to the Hilltop and ordered a drink. Ally made it wrong, but it still tasted good. I went on a walk with Jessie and Mykaela, tried to hang out with some other people but they were busy, and when I got home I was overwhelmed with a wave of suffocating loneliness. I couldn’t stop thinking about Courtney getting married in a couple of days, her dreams coming to fruition, and I lie in bed on the verge of tears, fighting the urge to cut my arms with a razor. Those days are past, I can’t give in. Any mess up could send me spiraling out of control.

Saturday. A cat shit all over our chairs on the front porch. Dylan came down from Centerville. We went to Newport and browsed Barnes & Noble and saw the movie “Surrogates” at the AMC. We made chicken and bacon quesadillas back at Lehman. Sarah came over and we played The Office Trivia. We went to Blockbuster to get some awful movies—“Teeth” and “The Gingerdead Man”. A big storm came through. Dylan crawled onto one of our spare mattresses I pulled up from the basement, and I crawled into my own bed. Sarah sat on the bed beside me and scratched my head and we talked about antinomianism, legalism, persecution, postmillennialism, and repentance until 3 AM.

Sunday. Dylan headed home. Sarah and I cleaned the house and watched “Braveheart.” We ran to Kroger for more cleaning supplies and we bought a pumpkin. Ams joined us and we carved the pumpkin after the Steelers vs. Bengals game. I salted and baked the seeds. Sarah went to Keith’s. I headed to the Hilltop, and I sat with Jessie in the café and told her, “I’m really falling for Sarah, and it sucks.” Why does it suck? Because I can’t be with her. And why? Because she wants a guy who has something I can’t offer. Sarah called me in tears, said Keith broke up with her because she wouldn’t mess around with him. “If you won’t suck a dick, what’re you good for?” he snarled. Yeah, he has a high view of women. She came home, was really quiet and depressed all evening. I want to be the boy who changes her world but right now all I can do is be there for her, and in that way love her.

a revisitation

“Ships that pass in the night, and speak one another in passing, Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and silence.” – Henry Wordsworth Longfellow

The rhythm of relationships is the rhythm of life and death. Every relationship eventually shatters; and if not by choice, then by fate—and that fate is death. Everyone who lives will one day die and die alone. Even the best friendships, the ones that burned brightly in their heyday, fade and are smothered. Our friendships can be as beautiful as lilies in a world of dust and ash, but they will eventually wither into a handful of scarred, fibrous corpses, eventually becoming nothing but coal. Life’s that way. A cycle of birth, life, death. This cycle permeates everything, including relationships. Relationships are born, relationships flourish, and then—often when we do not expect it, and even when everything is blissfully wonderful—relationships die. Like all death, it can be slow and painful or quick and painless. It can happen with brutality or with serenity. But, ultimately, and this cannot be denied, relationships do, one way or another, end.

Theodore Reik said, “Romance fails us and so do friendships.” A friend and I went to a 24-hour diner in Covington, and over chocolate pie and coffee, our conversation turned, somehow or another, to the nature of relationships. We share different views on the subject. In some areas we totally agree, and perhaps I am too skeptical. Perhaps this is due to being abandoned countless times, to watching friendships dissolve outside my control, to seeing romantic relationships shatter and friendships crumble, refusing to withstand the tests of times and pressures. Two years ago, in lieu of this, I wrote in my journal, “I find the great fragility of interpersonal relationships so shocking. Over the past three years, I’ve witnessed countless times the shattering of relationships in all spheres. It is saddening how you can share the very essence of who-you-are—your hopes, dreams, fears, ambitions, strengths, weaknesses, insecurities—and then have that person just waltz out of your life. And it is equally saddening (if not more-so) how you can connect with a person so richly and wonderfully and so deeply, only for that connection to be severed in the twinkling of an eye.” Someone once said, in the same observation, “Time goes by so fast, and people go in and out of your life.” Sitting in the coffee shop a year ago, I told my boss, “I like to sit here and watch people come and go. It’s just like friendships: they come and they go.” Another person said, “In your life, you meet people. Some you never think about again. Some, you wonder what happened to them. There are some that you wonder if they ever think about you. And then there are some you wish you never had to think about again. But you do.” A girl who had been a best friend of mine a few years ago was recently married, and I just found out. News regarding old friends—former partakers of friendships that we declared would last forever—comes to me through the grapevine. And then there are those people I used to be friends with whom I think about all the time, people I don’t talk to anymore, people I don’t want to think about anymore because just the very thought itself aches.

There are people with whom I am now friends, and I would like to think these friendships will last forever, but I do not believe it. Why? Because history repeats itself. History is cyclical. I have enjoyed great and wonderful relationships just as I enjoy great and wonderful relationships now, and they flourished with great vibrance and beauty, and they all withered and became nothing but dried-up stalks in a sand-swept desert. It is naïve to believe that friendships will last forever, and let me tell you why: 1) history declares a different reality, 2) life is not kind to such things, and 3) all relationships will, eventually, end in death. It is ideal that friendships will grow and grow and grow, but this is unnatural. Plants grow, reach their full potential, and then die. Humans do the same. Everything in the universe follows this same pattern. Why are we to expect that it is different with relationships? We can cling to this ideal and proclaim it as fact, but to do that is to blind ourselves to the way things really work. As sad as it is, my “best friends” now will probably not be my “best friends” in twenty years.

When it comes to the dreary nature of relationships, we can bat our eyes at this (as I have done in the past) and naively believe that “this person” will always care for me, “that person” will never leave me, “these people” won’t hurt me. But if Leonardo da Vinci is right, and the universe is governed by mathematics, then the mathematics expose the great foolishness and absurd ignorance of these assumptions (that is, the assumption that a certain person will be different from “all the rest”). The best option, then, is to accept this as reality, to be aware of the potential (and unfortunate) future, to be cautious in our trust, and to enjoy our relationships as best we can, in the here-and-now, for tomorrow they may be gone.

the road is dark and slow

I am bored with life, and I really don’t have anything to look forward to. The road is often dark and slow, and we have no choice but to plod along amidst the shadows hoping for the breaking of light. At times there are sparks in the shadows along the road; tiny sparks, as if two pieces of flint were hurdled together for just a moment and then separated; and when we dig through the shadows the light is ephemeral and not to be found again. So we continue marching down that solemn road. For the past month, I have been falling asleep with dreams of high-tailing it out of Cincinnati (out of the continental united states, to be honest) and leaving everything behind to try and start over new in a place where no one knows my name. And this is that place:

the lehman house [20]

Jessie in my falsa shirt

Monday. I’m starting a new diet today: fruits, veggies, rice, whole grains, lean meats. It’s expensive. And hopefully I’ll be quitting smoking soon. I worked 9:30-1:00 with Nate, Rob, and Hannah. Lunch was an orange and a fruit tea smoothie. Mandy told Maggie, “Anthony was checking you out.” She asked who I was. “Blond boy. Works at the Hilltop.” Maggie said I smelled really good? Mandy told me, “She thinks she’s too fucked up to be in a relationship. Her last one ended pretty badly.” Well, at least we have something in common! I ate rice and veggies for dinner, and Sarah and I went to Kroger & Blockbuster and spent the evening watching movies.

Tuesday. Jessie and Bullard came over for dinner: grilled chicken, mashed potatoes, cream corn and wheat bread. Lots of good conversation. Jessie left for Bloc at 6:00, and Bullard and I hung out. Sarah got home around eight and we watched the season finale of “Big Brother.”

Wednesday. I worked 9:30-1:00 with Nate, Rob, and Matt, and spent the afternoon writing papers. Jessie came over, and we made chicken, corn, potatoes, and Mac & Cheese for dinner. We sat out on the front porch, and she had a daiquiri with two shots rum. Her and Justin V. are now completely done. He’s decided to return long-term to China or something like that. She left, and Hartman came over. He brought his bookah, and we sat out on the back porch with Sarah and smoked. Djarum Blacks are outlawed next week. We watched a movie—“Helter Skelter.” Sarah took Hartman back to his place. Mandy K. has been really lonely lately. I called her, and she cried, and I just wanted to give her a shoulder to cry on.

Thursday. I dreamt Courtney and I were friends, hanging out on a beach somewhere as a storm rolled in. Sarah and I did some grocery shopping and fixed steak for dinner. Mandy swung by for a bit. The boys from Block—Tamar and Tyree—came by, and we gave them cookies. Sarah and I chatted theology and biblical history, centered around repentance, for hours until 1 AM.

Friday. Sarah and I did a workout video together, part of this whole “Get In Shape” deal I started Monday. We wore ourselves out! We ran out to Aldi’s in Delhi, and then she went to Keith’s and I went to the Hilltop to see Gambill & Bethany. When Sarah returned from keith’s, we watched some TV together. Mandy K. called. She’ll be in Cincinnati tomorrow through Wednesday!

Saturday. My day was spent in Dayton with Mom & Dad before dinner in New Carlisle with Dad’s side of the family. Joel & Megan’s baby Cate will be a year (or two?) in November. Bailey’s in high school and Hannah just got her license. Time whips by, people get old. Alex M. has his license now and Eric’s a junior or senior in high school. Mandy K. came into town last night; my block of time with her is Monday. Jessie said, “She sure does sound excited to see you. Maybe she does like you!” No, I doubt it. When Sarah returned from a party in Hamilton we shared some beers and then went to bed.

Sunday. I woke to rain tapping on my windows. I made a cup of coffee, did some writing, and Mandy H. came over to do laundry and homework. I fixed us steak, taters, corn, and rolls for dinner. Mandy K. came over, a day early! We sat at the kitchen table and caught up and went to the Hilltop. Tomorrow we’re hanging out for the last time before she returns to Chicago. Oh: I’m apparently the only one from CCU whom she called to announce her trip. Does she like me? I’ll never know.

there is no time nor place

I was hoping to go to Kentucky this weekend to see my family and watch the Bengal’s opening game with them, but I just received news that I’ve been given a shift at work during the Bengal’s game, which means I won’t be able to see the game and, most importantly, that I won’t be able to see my family whom I haven’t seen for half a year. That pretty much blows. Hopefully I’ll be able to find someone to cover my shift? I sure do hope so. Though finding someone to cover a Sunday shift, especially when parties are going on everywhere, will be difficult.

My friend Mandy came over to the house yesterday to do laundry, and when Sarah jumped in the shower, we sat at the dining room table and talked about some things that I didn’t really want to think about. But then I ended up thinking about it for about half an hour before I went to sleep, and then even more today, and now I want to talk about it with someone but don’t really know who, though Mandy would be the obvious choice. Maybe I’ll talk to her later this week.

It is one of those things where if you keep it inside you, it could become unquenchable and then be nothing but a hindrance. Part of me hopes Mandy will slap me across the face and set me straight so my mind doesn’t keep wandering down these uncharted paths. I know that if anything actually happens, then things can get really weird really fast, and that’s not what I want at all. Absolutely not. I hate speaking so vaguely; but I don’t know who reads my blog, and I don’t want anyone to get suspicious (so in hindsight, best idea would have been not to even mention this; maybe I shouldn’t post this blog? Nah. I will.).