Weak

"Dark Paradise" sung by Lana Del Rey

— `phfina commentary:

Okay, you know what Jesus did?

Well, okay: 'said.'

Jesus said a lot of things, but, for the most part, he spoke in metaphor.

Why?

Because words aren't the thing. The thing is the thing, and words describe the thing, but aren't the thing at all.

But the thing is (geddit: 'the "thing" is'? geddit?), people forget that. They start thinking of the words, instead of the thing, and forget that the words are not the thing, the thing is the thing, and in forgetting, confuse words for the thing itself, so they only have words, and, get this: forget the thing, itself, entirely and in fact, now, we live in a world, in a universe, where the only relevant thing is the language that describe things, and we don't care about things anymore, we care about the words around them.

For example. Remember that time when ...

Yup, you're crying already, when she broke your heart, so badly, but she broke your heart. She is not now breaking your heart. Your heart, now, is free to love, or free to laugh, or free to cry.

But no, you bind your heart with those memories, which are descriptions, words, of something that happened in the past and will never happen again, unless you recreate it, and you always do, because all you have is words, memory, and that's all we are, spreaders of memes now, we, ourselves sell our hearts, souls, bodies to memes, so that ideas survive us and what's important, the idea, or this moment, that you're living, right now?

It's the idea, the word, the logos, the meme, that's important, because you're not living anymore, you're just an automaton drifting through the fog.

So.

With me?

So, Jesus was always saying, 'The Kingdom of Heaven is like ..." is like whatever, doesn't matter, because Jesus was taking just one aspect of the thing, Heaven, and saying, the faith of a mustard seed could move a mountain, and everybody stood around and said, 'yeah, sure, whatever, sounds good.' but never, ever, got it, because if they got it, they could move a mountain with a mustard seed of faith, but they didn't, Jesus did, because he had that Faith, and that Faith wasn't words, it was the thing, itself, because He directly experienced what the Kingdom of Heaven was, but all He could do for us was explain, in metaphor and parable what it was like, and then show people, you have 5 loaves and 2 fish and there's 5000 men, let's eat, and they all did, and they still crucified Him because they still never got it, even as they had the fish burps from eating their fill from 5 loaves and 2 fish and they still didn't get it.

And you still don't get it.

Some people get it. Because they have that faith, that ... whatever, whatever they set out to do, and they do it, and a man walked on the surface of the Moon and mountains have been leveled or tunneled through, and the desert has been made an oasis (that city in Kuwait, right?) (or Salmon Fishing in Yemen, right?) and people set up their homes in the middle of, or under, for that matter, the oceans, and you still don't get that these men and women are just like you but they believed they could do it, and you don't.

So, I have words.

That's what I have.

But I know that, see. So I'm going to say something.

I am weak.

That's the thing.

So now I'll use metaphor.

Here's the metaphor.

See that little girl? Her weapons were these: a sniper rifle and a needler.

What are these weapons? A sniper rifle, in the third round, will get you this: the first shot, an Elite will say, "Did a mosquito just bite me?" The second shot, the Elite will say: "You touch me again with that, I will kill you." The third shot, in the head, kills him.

Three shots to kill an Elite. Oh, don't miss: a sniper rifle's clip only has 4 shots.

There are 24 Elites in one wave in the third round.

The needler? Skirmishers laugh at it. It requires a full clip to take out an enemy, or if shielded (like an Elite), to take out just their shields.

And the covies are good dodgers. So you miss. A lot.

Those are my weapons. Weak weapons for a weak girl.

Here were the weapons for the other two players: rockets, and fuel rods. These launch shells so destructive they can take out 8, 9, 10 enemies with one shot. BOOM! They are dead and problem solved.

Strong weapons for strong boys.

Here's the thing. I have weak weapons so I have to work for each and every kill.

They had strong weapons, so they could just aim in a general area and laugh at the destruction they wrought. No skill necessary.

But if you live by the rockets ... you die by the rockets. You shell an Elite, who, because you are lazy, avoids a direct hit. You've just made him mad. He's coming after you.

So okay, your next shell doesn't miss, but guess what? An Elite, charging you, firing at you all the way, takes a shell in the chest, right next to you, who dies in the blast?

He does, yes, but so do you.

Over, and over, and over again.

I was down by 10,000 points that game against those rocket boys, but I had weak weapons, so I ran when I was shot at, and I never died.

Guess who won that game?

Those boys, they were strong, and they rested on their strength and confidence, and, in resting, fell to it.

Pride precedeth the fall.

But I am weak. I know I am weak. I acknowledge it. Freely. I am aware of what my abilities are: I suck at this game, this game called Halo, this game called life, but I use what I have: sniper and needler in Halo, and words in life, and I use them well, and in conflict, where strong people fall, to their own strength, over, and over, and over again, I walk away from fights, triumphant. Right. Victorious.

Whereas other people walk away, angry, selfish, bitter, self-delusionally, wondering: "What the hell just happened? Did that little cunt just walk all over me? I have more skilz than her, I'm a boy, I have the better sex than her. I have more money than her. I have ... all of that. How did she come out on top? How did I look like a fool who didn't know what he was saying in that meeting?"

I am weak. I acknowledge it. I embrace it, and my weakness is my strength.

Other people?

They are strong. Or they want to be. But they are afraid that maybe they aren't.

Actually they are strong, but you can't be strong if you hide things from others or yourself. You can't be strong if you don't know that you are weak.

So somebody lashes out at me, and hurts me, badly, because, yes, I allow it, and yes, they are strong, strong enough to see my weakness, and to bear down into it. Hard.

Like Traci. Like those girls on ffn who looked for understanding, but then found what they really wanted: somebody else to hurt. Me. Because if they can hurt somebody like me, so gifted in her words, as they are not, then that makes their hurting okay, because they hurt somebody else more, so they are now better than me.

But they aren't. But you aren't. You aren't better. You are hurting. And, in hurting, you've hurt somebody else, carefully, thoughtfully, sinisterly, deliberately hurt a delicate, fragile creature: me.

And now you have that deal with. Because now, hurting, you've corrupted yourself, and you see that. You see: 'wow, she sure is a sensitive cunt! All I said was ...' All you said was the exact words that you knew would hurt me, and what happened was that I didn't shrug or laugh it off, I lashed back, or I cried, or I went on a drinking binge, or I slit my wrists.

And you participated in helping me hurt myself, with your words.

So, you can deny that, as people are so good at doing: "I didn't mean that!" "I was only joking!" or "Man up, for God's sake and stop being such a whiny bitch!"

('Man' up?)

Or you can acknowledge that.

How do you acknowledge that?

"I'm sorry"?

No.

"I'm sorry." means all of the above, sugar-coated in sincerity.

Why?

Because "I'm sorry" demands an "It's okay" and in "It's okay" means every mean, little, belittling thing you said is now "okay" somehow because you said "I'm sorry" and you got your "It's okay."

You acknowledge that by acknowledging that. "Holy shit, I was a fucking bitch just then! I meant to hurt you, and I did. Oh, my God! I'm really like that."

And you know what? You're really like that.

Let me say that again: you are really like that.

You, your machinery, kicked into high gear, when you are hurting, and it said, let's hurt somebody really badly, right now, and you snap out those hurtful words, and you hurt somebody. And there are girls, and boys, in high school, right now, killing themselves because there are boys and girls, just like you that, when hurting, hurt others.

That's who you are.

You know why?

Because that's who you choose to be.

And not: "Oh, I choose to be a hurtful person."

No, like this: "I'm strong. I have to be strong. I can't hurt. I'm not allowed to hurt. I'm not weak. If I'm weak, then that means that all these bad things that I allowed to happen to me are because I chose to be weak, and not see them coming, and seeing them coming, not take steps to stop them from happening. Every time I start that fight with my sister she cries and I cry, but no, I start that fight, and now she's dead, or in the hospital with a stomach pump, but I chose to ignore my weakness, because I'm strong and have to be right, even at the expense of my sister's/friend's/classmate's/coworker's life, because it's either them or it's me, and I'm strong, so it's them."

Or: "I've seen my step-father looking at me. And I know, in the pit of my stomach, what that means, but no, mom left home for groceries, and I didn't insist on going, I didn't tell her I think daddy's going to rape me to her, so she left, happy as a clam, and as aware as one, and daddy raped me, and now I have that scar for my life, that I could have stopped. I could have, but now I'm going to scar mom for the rest of her life and every man I ever see for being daddy in my bedroom, and every woman in my life for not stopping what I could have if I had been honest with myself and got help before I needed it, too late."

My dad didn't rape me. But there are Dads raping their daughters, right now. And people just let it happen, because if they don't ...

Then they'd have to admit that something's wrong with him. SHOCKER! But worse, for them: they'd have to admit something is wrong in themselves for picking a man they now know something is not quite right with, but rather than listen to their heart, they do what is safe, they are careful, and turn a blind eye to the thing that hurts them and others, because we can't make waves, can we?

Here's something for you. Examine your histories. Who were the people written in the books? The people who played it safe and got by? Or the people who made waves?

Now.

Now you have a choice. You can get by, and, thereby hurt yourself, more and more and more, playing it safe, and hurt others, and in fact: everyone in your life that you encounter in big ways and in big (for those of you 'confused' about my last declaration, there is no small hurts, you fucking assholes).

Or you can acknowledge who you are being, right now, and right this instant. And choose. And choose to be that, AND make a difference.

"I am weak, and I won that game of firefight."

"I am black, and I have a dream."

"I am Desi, and I am Mahatma."

"I am a woman, and I am God's wire."

I am not MLKjr, Ghandi, nor Mother Teresa.

I am me.

And what can I do? And what can be done, that I am in the world.

Doesn't matter.

What matters, for you, right now, is that you are you, and what can be effected, what can be accomplished in the world because you now choose to be you, instead of using what you believe or what happened to you or what you have been telling yourself that you are, but really whispering deep down in your very core that you're really nothing and shit, ... no: what can you do, what can be done, and done, because you are you, now that you choose to be you, you in your strengths and in your weaknesses.

I am weak.

I acknowledge that.

And none can touch me. None can hurt me.

I am weak.

And I think, and I breathe, and I live, as no one else in this world can, nor ever will.

You? You are so full of your own shit, ... newsflash: just like me, and everybody else in the world, ... the one difference, the one difference between the wave-makers, the doers of this world, and the cannon fodder, the one difference between those two categories of people is that the former, acknowledge them as themselves and, with that, move the world, and the latter say, 'nothing's wrong! nothing's wrong!' and swim in their own shit, and eat it, too, every day, and serve it to whomever they can get to buy it, and call it 'Organic Mango Smoothie' and give you shit for not liking the shit they're serving.

You choose your side, every second. You choose the later by default. It's call the survival mode. But, newsflash: it's just as easy to join the winners' club. You know how I know? A genius and the common man? The mensa and the densa? The difference between the two is 1% more effort of brain power.

Is one percent all that hard? Is one percent effort worth it for you to rise out of the cesspool?

Here's one percent, for me, for you it'll be the same, even as you say it's different, but it's not, because I say so, and I'm writing this entry, so shut the fuck up with your opinion:

Give yourself a good, hard, honest look in the mirror, and acknowledge exactly who you are, and exactly who you aren't.

A child of God, who, with the faith of a mustard see, can say to the mountain, "go," and it will cast itself into the sea.

Have a nice day.