ooofff

there are so many forces arrayed against human happiness--I wonder if I will leave this place alive. so many people are crumpling. the light in their eyes dies and they are just flesh walking around. the harsh winter bores right through their souls and consumes them--heartless they tread the earth neither seeing nor knowing until their bodies stop.

it's like we are in a fight with great violence for the survival of ourselves, our souls, and we are reeling and blinded and if that is not enough, all around us those who have succumbed to the disaster have become agents of its brutality. they reach out with cold eyes and decaying limbs and teach cruelty to the next generation.

it's a good thing I have a balcony. I think I'm renaming naming my (relatively) new room from the Stronghold of Solitude to the Stronghold of Refuge. it has an attached balcony (half of which is something of a bog) which has recently become the place to sit, drink beer, bundle up against the cold and hurt communally. disappointment, loneliness, emptiness, the silence of God, the cruelty of people--strike right at the will to live. you feel yourself getting bitter, harsh, apathetic, like the very people who wound you and use you and look you in the face afterwards and expect nothing from life but cynical laughter and whatever can be had by manipulation, trickery and power.

so, we've been taking refuge on the balcony, hunched against the frigid wee hours of the morning, waiting for the sunrise. it's a sacred place, set aside with no other purpose than communing. symbolically, it gives us a place in the harsh elements but removed above them--a safe place but not a hiding place, a strategic vantage point but not a retreat. gather, regroup, commit, tend to the wounded, never give up. without committment, without community, we will not make it out of here alive.

yeah, i like my balcony.