My Library

Sometimes I lose myself in the smell. It's a warm rich scent that curls and hangs lazily on the nostrils while filling the lungs. It's made of hot fresh ground coffee, cigar smoke, the moldly smell of binding glue on a worn book, and a dash of strong old spice cologne. Nostalgia at its finest. This smell is one I've never experienced in the world but it tangles the crevices of my mind like a warm syrup, sticky and thick. This smell is the metaphor of intellectual adventerousness. It explores the limits of the mind, existence, the metaphysical, and the not so metaphysical. It is where nations rise, where heroes are born, and where martyrs die. It is unbiased and uncaring in it's existence which only allows for greater triumphs or disapointments.

Often times in the late night hours I can see myself in a musty old velvet chair, surrounded by a bookcases stacked full of wonderous literature. There is a comfortable fire in a cozy little fireplace going. A soft rug at the foot of the chair and a small table to the side with worn rings where numerous glasses of warm brandy and wine have rested. I see an aged verision of myself, wrinkled and tired from the passing of time. Wisdom is etched into every sagging curve and grey hair. This is my happy place. The world and all its freedom are layed open before my fingertips. No world, no idea, no sorrow, no joy, and no experience escapes me. I will have my library. I will have my peace. I will.

For now though, perhaps not as zealous as I should; I embark in the struggle. There is beauty in struggle. Something completely fascinating and satisfying of dealing with a difficult task and enduring it. All to often I lose sight of this within the moment of tension. When things feel too hard, too difficult, too frustrating, I often falter. Never long enough to fail completely, but enough to make it more difficult than it ever needed to be. I spent many hours in a cold living room in Iowa circling, pacing, avoiding, and even hiding from the struggle. To the point where it found and crushed me. Perhaps......perhaps if I, like I so often have done, threw myself head first, carelessly, indifferent to the pain, into the struggle.....the work; I could have succeeded. Rather, I failed, maybe not completely, or to anyone else, but to myself it will always be.

I now try to embrace that struggle, so at the end of the day, I can wipe away the sweat, the blood, the tears, and the memories; and look at what I have done with my own two hands with satisfaction. This is my joy. That despite the suffering, despite the hardships, that I like God, can create and destroy. It may not be worlds or universes, but with a pen or a hammer and armed with an idea, I too am God. I too, become a force to be reckoned with.

If this makes me an intellectual snob, an elitest, or an idealist than so be it. If I am the jackass on the rowboat of life that must rock back and forth to draw a smile across my cracked lips.....well than so be it. I will be that jackass. Don't pity me though, condemn me, damn me, praise me, love me, hate me, fear me, torment me, ignore me, but please don't pity. For I am who I am. No more, no less, and all that other stuff that you say is shit. I find my joy, I fight my sorrows, and I put my pants on one leg at a time like everyone else. God knows the intentions of my heart (for I do believe in a Creator and that he is my literal Father in Heaven) and I will only answer to him.

So for now, today, tomorrow, next month, and 10 years from now; I will pull myself by my bootstraps. I will walk out into the world and say to hell with it. I will flip off the sun and curse the night. I will pursue knowledge and chase the unknowable. I will be burned by the light of reason and be healed by the aloe of faith. I will trip on the clumsy nature of man and soar with the dreams of Icarus. I will argue with fate and fight anarchy. I will be damned and I will be saved. Most of all I will be Jason and I will live for my quiet library.

As I put out my cigar and throw away the ashes. As I gulp the last of my luke warm brandy and dose the dying embers of the fire. As I close the cover on this book and reverently shut the door to my green pastures....I urge you to find your own. bid you goodluck, and bid you adieu with a friendly wave.

Jason Clark

Is God Dead?

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him--you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as htrough an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the grave diggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murders of all murderers? What was th eholiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us--for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, an dit broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars--and yet they have done it themselves."
It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?" (Nietzsche, The Gay Science, pg 181-182)

Is God dead as the madman would cry? Have we murdered him with our neglegence and insolence? Perhaps there is some truth to his words. We as a society have become to caught up in the logic and rhetoric of existence. Once where magic and faith blossomed mankinds existence, science has grounded and broken it's wings. This was never more immanent then in the stories of Christ and the Pharisees. The Pharisees would question what faith had manifested to them based on the rules of the Mosiac law. Choosing not to see Christ as it's fulfilment but rather a radical who broke the rules. What else could the Roman's use to justify the crucifixition if not for his social presence. The "uprising" against the order that had been established. We all know how the story ends, whether or not you believe it, is not really the question. The result could speak loads as a metaphorical answer to the madman's decleration. Christ rose 3 days a later and left. No longer manifesting miracles for all to see was God's will, still, if one looked with faith, little evidences of his existence could be found scattered across the dark ages.
Perhaps now the metaphor has been completed. Rather than having killed God, we have shut our eyes and our hearts to what is plainly laid to see. Faith is such a simple act and science has killed it. As Kierkegaard declares: Faith begins where thought ends.

Let the record spin

Do you think you could understand? Do you have that one song, that song that no matter how many times you run the lyrics through your mind, or hum quietly to yourself while trudging to your car, the one that you scream the lyrics to in the dark parking lot over looking the lake, how even when your heart is breaking from pain mends it back together, or when your heart is bursting with joy only adds to it. I found that song. It is in the soundtrack of my life. I'm just that lucky.