Something floating in my brain

There are a lot of good ways to be bad and a lot of bad ways to be good. But, mostly, between my right shoulder blade and my spine, it feels like someone has stabbed me and it hurts to type. Funny thing is that lifting heavy stuff doesn't hurt that much. Anything hunched over with my hands close together kills like a mofo.

This week I will be focusing on concise posts, in order to give my body some rest. I still need to build an amplifier for somebody, but I did manage to complete a master CD after I determined that the magic studio elves don't come with my cheesy recording equipment. I still have one more to do, but it will be easy. It is funny how messed up something you love can get. All you want to do is run away from it. The disappointment when something doesn't turn out the way you wanted it to after so many long hours of work is just too much. I soldiered on, "glued" my fingers to the faders and tried my damnedest to keep everything dialed in. It sounds better , but not how I envisioned it. I either get brittle top end, or mud.

These are just some annoyances that I have had this past month. The major stuff is still in the air. My nephew had a second blood transfusion and seemed to benefit from it. The doctors are still stumped, though. My sister, the mother of this boy, is at that point where they will probably lose their home. It's funny how this major stuff just kind of goes all white and I just sit there, unflinching. I don't know what to think anymore. We're good people. Lots of bad stuff happens to good people. I don't question why anymore. It never seemed to be a question that had an answer, or got you anywhere for asking. Bad stuff will happen and there is no need to flog yourself over any of it. There is not a cosmic connection here. I am not denying God. I believe in God whole heartedly, but really, I have a hard time thinking that God would take time out of his schedule to make you suffer or whatever, when God has all this miracle stuff going on.

Think about it for a second. God has something bad happen then waits for the opportunity for you to send him the "Bat" signal for help or a miracle. Sounds like a canned blessing to me, or something Eddie Haskel would do to the Beaver, a trick or something worse: job security. Maybe that is exactly how it is. Maybe we are talking about a man, that according to some religions, created his own enemies--natural man. So, he puts his enemies on this planet, then messes with them, does some magic tricks, then some of those enemies figure that they are willing to go against their nature in order to see more abra cadabra and maybe even get to see the Vegas show when their shift on earth is over. Wow, did God rub his hands together thinking up all of this? This is a kid with an ant farm. I don't feel like it was fair boiling it down to that, but I certainly feel that any window dressing put on that is what would pass for a religion.

Okay, I am not knocking God, rather, what people have conceived him to be. I don't think that God has given my sister's family a trial. That is something popular to say around here in Utah, because it's like putting Christmas tree lights on the cross you bear: God is paying me special attention by giving me this challenge. Really? God flipped through his omnipresent Rolodex and determined that you were due for a lesson? Shit, if that is how it works, and we should be thankful, then the Jews must really have had a windfall in the Holocaust.

One thing I have learned is that I am never thankful for the opposition, rather, the strength that I am given and the opportunity for the challenge. I respect the opposition and try to understand what happens to me, good or bad, when enduring and overcoming it. The trials happen. Bad stuff happens. Maybe some of it is prevented by God, and sometimes it is allowed to happen. But, I have never felt like he creates it: It is self generating and has been ever since God took the universe and defined it, so to speak. What was before light and dark? Was Good and Evil one cell that divided in two? If, then, God exists only on one side of the cell, how is he whole? What is going on behind the scenes between God and Satan? What reward does a son of the morning receive for playing a necessary part in the script?

Lets face it, according to mainstream religions, evil is necessary, yet we are to shun it. So, why is it here in the first place and who put it there, who conceived of it? The being who took a mass of gray and sorted out the light from the dark is the conceiver, the creator, yet what do we see? So, being in a gray world, we are in a way deity separating the elements into dark and light--a collaborative effort as well as individual, yet on-going. It seems that the notion of simple Good and simple Evil was a device that made morality easier to swallow, a template, and I am fine with that. I can't imagine what it would be like to try to teach a three-year-old kid about gray areas. However, I kind of have a hard time with people that insist on carrying on the "Santa Claus" routine 24/7.

I know that I have trials. I know that bad stuff happens. I am suspect to whether my nephew's outcome is determined on whether I looked at a girl in a lustful manner, but I have been assured that is a truth by many people. I honestly am grateful for the blessings of doctors, who may have been blessed to be doctors by God. I am also open to any other blessings that God sees fit to bestow upon me. I am grateful for all my blessings. But, I will not be one to think that I have to be good in order to get the "present" I want for whatever screwed up Christmas that comes from trials like this. I am one to do good and be good, because that is how I choose to live my life.

I know that I will not always have an easy or happy ride, but it is the path where I see the ultimate rewards coming--good is it's own reward. I don't do it to get kickbacks or as a ransom. Anyone that does, needs to evaluate what morality they actually have, because some religions sure sound an awful lot like a credit card company in reverse--you may not get it now, but be good little girls and boys and you will get it after you die! Also, getting now, damn the consequences, is not so great either. Which leads us back to that big sea of gray: reality. Our perception is the only way to sail to a safe harbor. If living a fantasy of absolutes does it for you, fine, but it doesn't work for me. I don't suppose that living in the gray helps me much, either. So, I put on my kaleidoscope eyes and eat marshmallow pies. That seems to get me through.