Behind and before the progress.

Robert Frost told us that he would traverse the road less traveled I wonder if he did. There is always a road though isn’t there? An autobahn speeding concentrated speed demons from one place to another, or a barren desert roads between Salt Lake City and well anywhere. No matter what we do we are always on some type of road even if we pull over to the side for a smoke break we are still on the road just not moving and before to long we stamp out the slow burning light of yesterdays progress and move ahead of smoke driven mechanisms.

And there in and of itself is the deep metaphysical purpose. There is a road and it looks little like the roads most traversed, we know it as little more then the pilgrims’ way. It is slow of progress and saturated in the ponderings of wiser men then we. This road leads nowhere we know but we do know it meanders down the deep pacific blue, and all suspect it will go somewhere wonderful.

Time and time and time again

Like I have said before being a writer really does seem to be about just showing up, I often feel that means I will have to show up a lot.

Lately I have actually been able to get quit a bit of writing done, I had been writing with out much of a purpose,but about two weeks ago I finally found one. It truly does give me so much more to work with than just a few ambiguous thoughts. The purpose has already been altered twice but it still exists in a very very simple form, and with that I have the motivation to continue working, and somehow the words to work with.

I always had the desire to take my writing and turn it into a book, but if I was to continue writing random essays every two to three months I would be working on my book for a very long time. I needed something a little more, something that would give the story purpose, not the book or the author. Once found that small measure of purpose has given me the ability to write quality stuff nearly everyday. Things are already beginning to shape up, even the random essays have purpose and are fitting into the greater purpose of the story, things have meaning.

It truly is an interesting thing, add a little sense of purpose to something and it becomes easier to do, you find yourself with motivation that you did not have before, and with the creative prowess to do it.

I guess it is something to think about when you begin to feel a little stuck.

writer in question

I take a smoke break, the slow burn on a steady inhale and ash emerges gradually, I can hear the light sizzle of paper and tobacco. I am alone for a moment before the deck overlooking Salt Lake City fills up with others taking a moment to drag. I sip my coffee; inhale once more through my nose the smoke fills my nostrils, I flick the cigarette, take another sip of coffee and step inside to return to my computer.

Writing isn’t an easy job, sometimes words flow with ease each one more perfect than the other building the story right. In these moments its is a beautiful job. When I press save, close my computer, and gather up my belongings I feel accomplished and fulfilled. However these days are rare, most the time I force myself to my computer, I explore the internet distracting myself from my endless rat tat tat on the keyboard where I produce a few empty words that seem to only take the story into a world entirely opposite where I hope it to go. I press save shut my computer gather up my belongings step outside and smoke and wonder why I bother to spend so much time in this futility. Half of writing seems to be simply showing up at my computer, sometimes words flow sometimes I drag them out. I never know, that’s why I show up.

There isn’t really a better place to write however than Salt Lake City in the winter, everything is caped in white and the mountains and snow capture pollution and lay it to rest in the valley. Inversions cast a grey screen over the city and everything becomes introspective. Sometimes the sun sneaks out of the grip of the clouds and lets out its rays and all the inversion reflects it back, but when you get a chance to look out at the valley from above everything is on introspective fire. The trees and buildings are all encased in a thick grey red. It makes you feel bad for smoking, but it makes being honest easier.

I was told once to be a writer it’s necessary to go beyond you and be more than honest. To be a writer you have to be honest, each character or essay is intertwining with a piece of who you are, it is impossible to separate the two. Writers however have a threshold of what they are willing to explore with a reader, it seems like so much honesty but its not. When really digging you reach a wall that is hard for writers to cross, behind that lies the major insecurities all the things that writers are not in contact with. To grow as a writer it’s necessary to give that up though. It’s a pilgrimage, and its hard and long to traverse this road. For it to be a worthwhile voyage it must be this way, an exploration into the deep and dark. Readers, characters, and writers must go places they do not want to go, they must travel through the dim to come out a new and changed hero. It’s the writer’s job to make this happen, to except the heavy burden, to go where they of all the rest are most afraid to go. Only than will the characters grow, and only than will the readers be able to except their responsibility to follow where the writer has gone.

Who knows though, I am not even sure if I am a writer. When do you become a writer? Do you need to have written a book before you can be called a “writer” or can someone like me who sits at my computer day after day slaying the dragon be called a writer? I sure hope so, I told my girlfriend I was a writer, that’s why I think she went out with me the first time.

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I take another smoke break, inhale slowly and listen for the crackle of burning paper and tobacco. It puts my mind at ease, trying to decide if I am a writer or not has put strange questions in my mind, most that have nothing to do with being a writer. Like if that joke about me being flabby wasn’t just a way for my girlfriend to trick me into going to the gym more often. I may never know, I did go to the gym today though.

I’m not just thinking about my girlfriend insinuating that I should go to the gym more, I’m also thinking about Fredrick Buechner, well not really Fredrick Buechner but something that he wrote once. I can’t remember the quote exactly, but it says something about not knowing what a self-authenticating religious experience is because without God somehow how destroying him how would doubt also be destroyed.

I think I understand what Fredrick is saying, but it makes me think of writers going places they don’t want to go in order to grow. I don’t want to be destroyed I want to grow but I am not sure I can pay the price of self-destruction.

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That’s the thing though isn’t it, going where you don’t want to go, enduring what you don’t think you can handle. Taking the step from honesty to insecurity and simply praying that your vulnerability was not in vain.

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I think that is what God wants, our vulnerability not our threshold honesty. How else could God reveal Himself to us in a way that would be real and without doubt? It seems He wants us to take that step; He will be our guide on this pilgrimage, and He will lead us where we don’t want to go, but in the end we will have grown. We will be the changed characters, the heroes we were meant to be.

rough draft

This is a chapter that I have been working on for awhile, its unedited and very rough around the edges, and that's why I am posting it. I want some feedback and your editing skills to be put to good use. Thanks for reading and replying, be nice though.
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A new relationship, that’s what it always seems to be about, some form of new relationship. Not the kind where a new person is met and a new relationship created but the kind where old relationships are made new. Everyone wants a chance to form a new one, all the ugly words, backstabbing and betrayal made right and new.

I dated this girl once, who I was totally in love with and she was my half world. I can’t say she was my world because in the end we ended and that’s not the signature of someone whose world revolves around someone else. I want a chance to say something, to go back and take back the arguing the fighting, but it wont happen. I mean I can go and apologize for the things I had said and done and she can do likewise but that does not recreate the relationship its kind of a whiteout that covers the bad words and ugly actions of the story, but if you were to pick at the whiteout then there underneath would be the ugly rhetoric of the story, a story cloned from another story cloned from another story.

And that’s the thing, the truth remains the same, and the relationship will never be the same it will always be compromised, changed, and mutated. No rewriting whiteout exists not for a page or reality.

The past regret is a fire, its overtaken everything engulfed the forest of existence and charred everything. It’s like Yellowstone, when Yellowstone was aflame everything was destroyed, and now people go back and act like it was never there. But it was. And its obvious, rocks and mountains are charred and maybe the greenery grew back but the consequences are still evident flames touched the mountains and their mark will never be removed. The fire of the past is the same, relationships are charred, but the difference between us and Yellowstone is that we melt and mutate. We aren’t gold or diamonds that are refined in fire we are flesh and blood even in our mind and where fire hits and flames arise flesh melts it mutates, and now from the fire emerges not a phoenix but a monster of sorts, a charred mutated you and I that when looked at through the mirror of our eyes will never look the same.

We have all come to live with the monsters though, because no one has ever escaped the flames of the past and all of us now live burned and charred. And we look out over the living corpses in the earth we see people; rude, naïve, compassionate, angry people whatever we see, we see something that looks like us and that’s what we live with. We have never seen anything else, charred mutation is what we know its what we accept its what we like, but is there more? How would we know? Would we see someone not charred as charred because of the perfection of their emotional flesh? Someone who has never regretted or needed the rewriting whiteout, would it be like seeing an alien?

All of this began long ago though; our own ugly stories are just filled verbatim with the same old rhetoric of a past relationship. It all began when someone flicked the cigarette into the brush or got drunk and lit off a bunch of fireworks in the emotional national park of our beginning, then the flames came. The park was burnt and sealed for remodeling and the drunks, who set the thing aflame kicked out, removed, and banned from entering ever again. But in this instance the drunks didn’t just escape with a mass of fines for burning down the original national park, they themselves were caught in the fire, pulled out and bandaged by a rescue crew but never the same the fire was to intense. Now they live with the original insecurities of the burns, they haven’t always been mutated but now when seeing themselves in each others eyes it is evident something changed. The beauty and perfection that defined their relationships in the beginning is gone burnt to a crisp back in the park.

“Adam,” she says “do you still love me?” Tears rolling down the grimacing face overwhelmed by the experience of this mutation.

We all wait hoping the characters will overcome the conflict now thrust into their lives, the fact they were drunk lighting off fireworks in a national parks means nothing now, all we hope is that these two can overcome. The story doesn’t end though it keeps being written and now unfolds in our lives; those of us born mutated and forever charred never knowing perfect, living with the consequence everyday.

The effects are devastating and inescapable. Its evident if your watching, you don’t need to be vigilant just human. We fight a war whether for freedom, nuclear weapons, or oil its all consequence of mutation. Humanity has fallen, has burnt up all the truth and what we experience today is the aftermath.

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What does God think of all of this? In the beginning of it all God creates this beautiful garden, alive with animals and all the vegetation imaginable. In this garden there is no fear or worry of what will come, no fear of past regrets because no decision has yet be made that will bare the fruits of negative consequences, there is just God and His creation. Alive in the glory of love Adam and his cherished Eve live. But one-day drunk on the intoxication of beauty the garden permeates; Adam and Eve set the whole thing aflame, that first and greatest national park. Forever with the scars they must leave this place never to see it again, to live and fight in the real world, something they have never seen.

What was God saying? Where was He when the cunning serpent seduced the innocent Eve? Was God Hiding? Was He afraid His beloved would choose the serpent over Him?

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My mind rages with these questions, where is God now? Why don’t I see Him when I think I need to most, why can’t I feel Him? Why am I not able to lay my head on Jesus like John the Apostle? To touch the wholes in His hands like Thomas, or hear Him whisper like Elijah?

It’s taken so long to begin to understand why I am unlike those before. Knowing that Jesus isn’t here the way He was before is not a comfort, because Jesus was not physically in the Old Testament yet Elijah heard God whisper on the mountain, and Moses spoke face to face with God like they were old time friends. I don’t believe I have less of God than these men and women of the Bible, but it does seem we have a different measure of God. That He has localized Himself differently, and now we get to experience Him in a different way, but one day in the end we will get a chance to see Him like Moses did, yet unveiled and free to rest our head on the chest of God, to finally hear the heartbeat that echoes throughout philosophy and the questions of man.


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Where was God when Eve was seduced by the serpent? I think He was watching, aware of the consequences and the fire that would soon be caused. He watched, heartbroken and ready to redeem Eve. To save what would soon be left of Her, to marry her the way Adam would now not be able to do. Not physically marry Eve but marry her and complete her, to save her from choice she had made. He would do this for Adam, for me, and for all the world.

God now begins the most elaborate wooing process in the History of mankind. He chooses a people; He works to ready them for the groom to end all grooms, the groom that would pay the ransom for the captured Eve. God waits at the alter for us, for the bride that is the world to walk to the alter escorted by the Spirit of God. He waits for us to arrive and say, “I do.”