Proposal for Autobiographical Essay

Proposal: A spiritual journey using vignettes from my year of national youth ministry, written in the form of a day. Covering topics of Obedience, Depression, Faith, Love and Hope. Entitled: Caught in the NET of my own making; A spiritual journey.

We wake before dawn, beating even the newspapers to the front steps. Before I realized I was out of my bed, I had already showered, and was stepping out into the cold Indiana Air. I like Indiana, it’s more urban than some of the places I’ve been, where two cars on a road constitutes severe congestion and a traffic jam. But I’m not happy here… in fact, unbeknownst to me, I’m about to make a decision that will affect the rest of my life.

The chill air is nothing new, but touching my hair I realize it’s frozen. A cold brittleness that seems apt. I’ve been struggling with my team leaders. Though really its only one that leads and she astonishes me. Last week we were in St. Louis on our way here and she yelled “My authority comes from God.” Hoping to cow me into submission. I don’t cow. Earlier that night she approached a dialogue with me by these words “Lets talk about this [problem] so I can hear your concerns.” What she really meant became evident in her next breath. “We’ve already decided your punishment.” She didn’t want to hear my concerns, I knew that. She didn’t care. The authority structure on Net is defective. Pretenses about caring. They listen and have already decided. No one cares. They just like to feel as if they did.

Orange County Crucifix.

We didn’t have a retreat today. Instead we got to do spring cleaning on the church… a cavernous affair with stained glass streaming light upon the color treated cement floor. We divided into groups, cleaning pews, windows, confessionals, floors and various accoutrements. I decided to work the ladders cleaning the windows, as everyone else was scared of climbing them. I hate ladders. They wobble and I’m sure I’ll die falling off one; I’ve always had dreams of that. Javy and I would move the ladder around he’d clean the bottom of the windows, I’d clean the top, 2 to three stories higher than the slick cement below. The walls braced the ladder well, and I wasn’t too scared after the first few.

We were done, and I looked at the Crucifix hanging mid air above the altar, it was dusty, and I asked the overseer if we could clean it. She agreed, and we moved the tall ladder precariously through the aisle, a few times almost toppling over.

The corpus was a beautiful bronze casting, 2 times the size of a normal body, perhaps more, majestic, silent, beautiful. I almost cried as I cleaned it. I took care of the hands, as a medic would, I daubed the feet, with soft cotton, embracing them in my hands, and kissing the memorial wounds. I cleaned down one side and then up the other. I cleaned His chest, wondering what it would have felt like in real life, strong, proud, to the very end or clammy and suffocating, fragile as a real human. I cleaned the broken arch of His back, ripped by whips into swatches of hanging flesh. I cleaned his crown, getting pricked and stabbed by the intermeshed five inch thorns sharpened to conical points. My thin hands couldn’t even fit through to clean his hair, the thorns so dense, so painful.

I wish I would have been alone. I wish I could have poured torrents from my eyes. Been overcome by the sorrow and joy. I wish the bronze of my memory was in front of me now. I wish the Bronze was the clammy flesh.

A complex taste… (English 305 Paper #2 Lyric Essay -- Final)

A complex taste…

Life is never good. It always seems one of those stories people tell with this regret or that, this pain or that… it gets boring and you want to slap the speaker sometimes for even thinking about telling you all this, this all too common story that you’ve heard one thousand times or more, from every living being. Its one of those things you wish you could say, yeah I know, I’ve lived, wake up you freakin moron…

The great thing about wine is that it tastes better the more you drink. Sinatra and Dean alternatively croon through my speakers, as I sip a terrible Beaujolais Nouveau. It has too much bite, and a quite a bit of oxygen… so much that it fizzes slightly in my mouth. When I lived in Austin, this would be unacceptable… I’d complain to my coworkers in the wine department and they’d find me a nice bottle and ask why I was stupid enough to try Primeur… they wouldn’t even carry it at my store… and if they did… none of the wine guys would recommend it… they always had a knack for knowing just the right wine.

She’s it. Yes. She’s it.
The smile on my face is a welcomed traitor. I’m in the midst of a crippling state of depression and anxiety, where even breathing can be a chore… around my friends and co-workers my body seizes, and with it, the mucus lined tubes that transport life. I’m an asthmatic, and this, this, is very bad.
But for some reason her smile cures me, her voice soothes, and her touch pure ecstasy.

A good wine is one that is so good, you worry about drinking more, wondering if you’d fall out of the fantasy and awaken to a bitter biter that obfuscates itself with alcohol content. Its one that you remember hauntingly at dinnertime, when you find its perfect compliment, and realize you drank the last of it the night before, as you chatted with friends.

Keys... Door… Open. Keys… Desk. Door… Close. Automatic.
It’s the small things that you wonder how they happened, when you get up off the floor.
My knees are all I remember… the thud upon the thin carpet bought by her mom… the rocking back and forth on them, as on all fours I was overcome, breathing tears. The lack of pain in them… these knees; sometimes it feels like that’s where I belong, on my knees.

The perfect wine is your wine… no one else’s… its choosing Chianti with a white fish or a Riesling with steak… it fits your personality to a T and it makes your food soo much better. It transforms your food from a meal to an escape.

Americans eat food too fast, without much thought. Perhaps it has something to do with the grade school cafeterias we’re all accustomed to. To living life as if the details don’t matter… We’re always running from one meeting to the next, never having time to breath, and only occasionally having time to shower. My Tuesdays are like that… busy busy busy… from the time I wake until the time I escape I’m doing something… and dinner is one of the things I fit in… one of the after thoughts… one of the moments I have to take to make sure I don’t pass out in my next meeting.

Have you ever lived in time? Let it be your servant, not your punisher?

The gourmet grocery store I worked at has become part of my unicorn… People worked there not because they had to, but because they lived. The life of a foodie is different than the life of everyone else… it’s mystical. We walk differently and talk differently, as if our wildest dreams can come true… and with the sly grin that suggests they have… We walk into a kitchen with expectations of a great meal to come… we scrounge the cupboards and fridge for those forgotten pieces of manna hidden in the plains-clothes of a cucumber or chicken breast. We walk in and taste things never tasted, cook things not yet cooked and dream things never dreamed. We walk with hope.

the dead end job thing has been done before, and no one became rich, and no one felt terribly rewarded... I don't want to live like a drone... mindless... emotionless... I want to LIVE... something few have ever dared to do in the history of mankind... I want to tell the system to back off, stop trying to destroy my heart, stop trying to tame the life within me... stop trying to change me into your pawn for your safe consumption...
I want to live in a way few have dared. I want to BREATHE!

We even take a bad Beaujolais Nouveau and dream a perfect citrus marinade, for a delicious chicken served over angel hair pasta, spiked with strawberries and orange slices in a delicate and slight red wine sauce hinted with basil, rosemary and parsley…

Wine. (English 305 Paper #2 -- Last Minute Draft for Class)

Wine.
Life is never good. It always seems one of those stories people tell with this regret or that, this pain or that… it gets boring and you want to slap the speaker sometimes for even thinking about telling you this all, this all too common story that you’ve heard one thousand times or more from every living being. Its one of those things you wish you could say, yeah I know, I’ve lived, wake up you freakin moron…

The great thing about wine is that it tastes better the more you drink. Sinatra and Dean alternatively croon through my speakers, as I sip a terrible Beaujolais Nouveau. It has too much bite, and a quite a bit of oxygen… so much that it fizzes slightly in my mouth. When I lived in Austin, this would be unacceptable… I’d complain to my coworkers in the wine department and they’d find me a nice bottle and ask why I was stupid enough to try Primeur… they wouldn’t even carry it at my store… and if they did… none of the wine guys would recommend it… they always had a knack for knowing just the right wine.

When was the last time I was truly joyous… was it really before her? So long ago? What happened to that unencumbered love of life? I loved her with every ounce of my strength… I saw her and felt I had to be better, strove to be better. She was the perfect angel that was going to tear me out of the trite and painful game.

A good wine is one that is so good, you worry about drinking more, wondering if you’d fall out of the fantasy and awaken to a bitter biter that obfuscates itself with alcohol content. Its one that you remember hauntingly at dinnertime, when you find its perfect compliment, and realize you drank the last of it the night before as you chatted with friends.

Keys. Door. Open. Keys. Desk. Door. Close. Automatic.
It’s the small things that you wonder how they happened, when you get up off the floor.
My knees are all I remember… the thud upon the thin carpet bought by her mom… the rocking back and forth on them as on all fours I was overcome, breathing tears. The lack of pain in them… these knees; sometimes it feels like that’s where I belong, on my knees.

The perfect wine is your wine… no one else’s… its choosing Chianti with a white fish or a Riesling with steak… it fits your personality to a T and it makes your food soo much better. It transforms your food from a meal to an escape.

Americans eat food too fast, without much thought. Perhaps it has something to do with the grade school cafeterias we’re all accustomed to. To living life as if the details don’t matter… We’re always running from one meeting to the next, never having time to breath, and only occasionally having time to shower. My Tuesdays are like that… busy busy busy… from the time I wake until the time I escape I’m doing something… and dinner is one of the things I fit in… one of the after thoughts… one of the moments I have to take to make sure I don’t pass out in my next meeting.

Have you ever lived in time? Let it be your servant, not your punisher?

The gourmet grocery store I worked at has become part of my unicorn… People worked there not because they had to, but because they lived. The life of a foodie is different than the life of everyone else… it’s mystical. We walk differently and talk differently, as if our wildest dreams can come true… and with the sly grin that suggests they have… We walk into a kitchen with expectations of a great meal to come… we scrounge the cupboards and fridge for those forgotten pieces of manna hidden in the plains-clothes of a cucumber or chicken breast. We walk in and taste things never tasted, cook things not yet cooked and dream things never dreamed. We walk with hope.

I was an Atheist. I once met a few girls, they were cute and Catholic, one was a beautiful sassy blonde, tall enough to fit just right in a hug, the other was this spunky brunette who’s personality made you feel alive and as if you actually deserved the adulation of 10,000 more. They were Catholic with a capital C, and well, I was at least born Catholic…

We even take a bad Beaujolais Nouveau and dream a perfect citrus marinade for a delicious chicken served over angel hair pasta spiked with strawberries and orange slices in a delicate and slight red wine sauce hinted with basil, rosemary and parsley…