Sometimes they tell it true.

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Everybody has regrets.  I have met none who believe they have not made mistakes, some greater, some lesser.  Some would change nothing, to include myself.  My error wasn't usually... in action, but in purpose, reason, direction.  More, I did the best I could with the understandings I had.  A pawn?  I reject that, save that we are all pawns in the bigger pictures, but very much self-selecting in the final analysis.  Terrible things, and yet wondrous, have I seen and done, been as a player, and known.  A visceral world with life, love, hate, and death as constant companions.

I always looked for more.  I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  I believed that there was better, or more perfect, or simply perfection itself.  The truth is what I was and was doing is probably as good as it gets.  What was missing was a belief that life, freedom, requires blood.  No, I suppose I knew that, believed it, had to believe it.  What was it that was missing?  An underlying belief that it was more than just us versus them, or merely our survival versus their will.  Perhaps it was merely that my belief was too shallow.  It was not grounded in my earlier life.  I had no anchors.  I do believe it was the correct belief.  I do not count surviving, personally or communally, at least now, as any type of sin or stain.  Or perhaps I just got so deep in the chaos that I lost my way.  I doubt if I will ever simply know until I am shown.  I would have had to go through this someday, I guess when I did, for the reasons I did, was satisfactory.  As I said though, I would change nothing.  What needed to be changed has been altered.

This song reminds me of what I began to believe when it all started going wrong, and before my health failed.  The line, "And I’m living in my own world, beyond all good and evil" was so real to me.  When it all became too much, it was all I had left.  It was then that I went Zen, looking for... something else.  Anything.  Nothing.  While my body broke later, my mind was coming undone even before that.  I say to go big or go home, and, in my day, I went horribly big.  I impressed and terrified my own.  I had no limits, and paid the price.  It was beautiful in a very dark way.


[lyrics]

It seems the song also discusses my salvation.  It was because I didn't stop with Zen.  I found emptiness to be just that.  I could not stop looking.  I suppose God took pity and allowed me the use of the gifts He had already gifted me, then gave me a break from life to... use those gifts.  I used them.  And then He gave the call.  Like the first crack of lightning on a very dark night, blinding, terrifying, powerful, that call came.  I resisted for some time anyway.  Trying to... figure out things myself I suppose.  And now I am more alive than ever, even nearly in the husk of corpse.  How odd.  I do believe there is hope for even those who think themselves damned.  Come home.  There are some that won't or can't come home, and a very few who shouldn't even try, but for most, the way is clear.

I am amazed at something else.  People know.  In spite of being celebrated for some of my more questionable natures at one time, it seems that drinking sweetwater and handing in my feral pride... it was noticed.  While being proper is a secular vice, and is weighed and weighted against "normal life", too there is a certain type of respect that comes with becoming all but a cleric.  Neither could I become one, of monk or priestly nature, for more than health or the hope of finding a wife yet.  Still, there is something there.  It is noticed.  For those who do prefer virtue, or value it higher than the options, I have found a new respect, trust.  Even strangers seem to regard me, strangely, with little suspicion.  Unless they are my nemesis, but it isn't fear of me, it's a different sort of fear now.  Actually I think the old fear was less.  That they understood.

Ah, and the way the song is sung... so like the echo chamber.  Almost a whisper.  I have lived in that accidental transcendental state for longer than some of the young ones have been alive now.  Of course, the title of this blog... is what it is for a reason.  And the description should make more sense now.  Just in case you ever wondered.

Echoes.  Always.  Whispered. 

Later or good night.