It's a Wonderful Day

Had this convo earlier this morning. I think it explains itself.

Sunday, 2010 May 30 (13:44:01)
[10:05] mackenziedrake: Morning
[10:05] lj_divine: gm dear
[10:06] mackenziedrake: How are you doing?
[10:06] lj_divine: pretty good. how about you?
[10:06] lj_divine: thanks for the comments :)
[10:06] mackenziedrake: I'm wonderful.
[10:06] mackenziedrake: :) Yer welcome.
[10:07] lj_divine: wonderful?
[10:08] mackenziedrake: I talked with my sister this morning. While she was gone a couple nights ago, the neighbors got into such a knockdown/drag out fight that they knocked a hole in the livingroom wall big enough to walk through and one in the bedroom wall that knocked my computer off the desk it was on.
[10:08] mackenziedrake: it's wonderful I'm here and not there by comparison.
[10:08] lj_divine: WOW
[10:08] lj_divine: but your computer????
[10:08] mackenziedrake: yeah, I said that several times in the course of the conversation.
[10:09] lj_divine: what happened to the computer??
[10:09] lj_divine: are they going to replace it?
[10:10] mackenziedrake: My computer, it lives or dies. My sister apparently didn't check it out much. they have been staying at my nephew's and at a hotel since, as the manager hasn't got around to putting up even particle board over the holes yet.
[10:10] lj_divine: well!
[10:10] lj_divine: I would insist on a replacement paid for by the neighbors
[10:10] lj_divine: that is a bit much
[10:10] lj_divine: just.. wow
[10:10] mackenziedrake: I told her not to sweat checking it out -- they have hardly been in the place since.
[10:11] lj_divine: well
[10:11] mackenziedrake: and yeah, she's going to demand that the management take the price of the hotel room out of the rent
[10:12] mackenziedrake: and/or any other damages or theft. the woman living next store was beaten to the point the police found her on the floor bleeding and she won't say who did it. all lisa knows is that the guy's not on the lease.
[10:13] lj_divine: omg.. I hope she is okay
[10:13] mackenziedrake: the manager took the woman's three kids so they would have a place to stay. the woman's got them back now, and they are staying in the apartment.
[10:13] lj_divine: *dropped jaw*
[10:13] mackenziedrake: but lisa won't go back 'til there's a wall between the apartment again
[10:13] lj_divine: yeah I don't blame her
[10:14] lj_divine: oh they need to find that asshole and cut his balls off
[10:14] mackenziedrake: no shit. so she has no idea what might have been stolen, lost, broken or what.
[10:14] lj_divine: wow
[10:14] lj_divine: just wow
[10:14] mackenziedrake: that's what I said.
[10:15] mackenziedrake: so this is all in the context of her trying to get my paperwork to me.
[10:15] lj_divine: wow
[10:15] lj_divine: that is amazine
[10:15] lj_divine: glad you are doing wonderful with that news
[10:16] mackenziedrake: and now it turns out the papers she thought were in her purse, aren't. they may be there at my nephew's, they may be home. no telling.
[10:16] mackenziedrake: yeah, it's fugging incredible.
[10:16] lj_divine: *shakes head*
[10:16] mackenziedrake: *nod*
[10:17] mackenziedrake: so by comparison, given I'd likely have been in the apartment at the time otherwise, I'm wonderful this morning.
[10:18] lj_divine: i bet you are
[10:19] mackenziedrake: oh my.
[10:20] mackenziedrake: I really don't know what to say besides 'Oh my.'
[10:20] lj_divine: yeah
[10:21] mackenziedrake: I have to go to sleep, tho. I've only had about four hours' rest and I've got to get stuff done today, big time.

Uncle Says I'm Broken Enough

Well, it's all over but the benefits calculations. I'll get my first Social Security benefits check the first of July, thanks to a combination of mental and physical failings deemed severe enough together to make me unable to support myself by working. When I first found out, I was depressed for three or four days. Now, mind you, I'd been applying off and on for about two years, and this last bout was only being counted from December, but it hit me with that same old stunned-to-a-full-stop blow to the ego I felt back when what's wrong with me was called epilepsy and ended with my dropping out of high school. This time, though, it only lasted three or four days, during which I took a break from bathing and spent too much time eating ice cream in front of the computer while I found a way to remind myself I'm not a random collection of scattered thoughts and half-understood impulses struggling to make sense of a world that plays a very different game from the one I learned growing up. Somehow I missed the cues, or learned a good many false ones as well as a few that still hold true today.

Yet people like me, and I like them. I have friends, and the circles of acquaintance and soul kinship keep expanding even as the thought of the process boggles my mind. Some of them know about the voices that murmur and comment when I am tired and my eyes blink a moment too long. Some don't worry about it, some consider it a gift to have snatches of dream make themselves known in the middle of the day. I don't know. Even when I'm rested, I’m genuinely agnostic. Despite that, there are a world of people who need and ask for prayer and rituals to be done. So, agnostic and broken as I apparently am, I renewed my ordination in the Universal Life Church. Now I can do the stuff I do ad hoc legally. Funny, that.

I wonder if my coming clean about my agnosticism with Ryan has anything to do with this upwelling in religious curiosity, if not exactly fervor. Logically, of course, it's coincidental, but there is so much to be done in this world, and a lot of it is far beyond my physical or intellectual grasp. In such a case, what can I do but talk to the Being(s) that might not be there?

Your comments are, as always, welcome.

How did I get here?

There are days I look around at the apartment I share with two other gamers and wonder how I got here from where I was a year ago or, Eris forbid, three years ago. Some of my friends -- folks you may meet later -- think what I did had a touch of the sublime to it. After all, how many people willingly jump from a perfectly good dysfunctional housemate relationship into trying out the survivalist circuit for five months with nothing but a computer tower, some clothes and what I think I might need should the world suddenly go tits up?

Well, it depends on how desperate a person is. In my case, I was worn down and near dispair when I got a shot at joining an intentional community in Texas. That leg of the journey was the hairiest two weeks of my life, but with help from net friends I got out in one piece with the clothes and computer tower and set out for parts even more unknown. Long story short, there were a few times I thought I was going to die, a few where my soul -- if I have one -- was on the line, but to borrow a line from Hearts in Atlantis, I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Maybe that's sublime enough.