harps//strings

Unsuspectingly rearing its head. What is it? Why is it? And how do we find it? In this life we live, we are bombarded by reasons to hate the world and our neighbors. We’re forced to groove with music we don’t even like because it’s the loudest noise in the room. A traffic jam where you didn’t exit soon enough and now you’re stuck. And that accident that got you stuck in the first place? Yeah, we’re invested now and that’s the thing we look forward to. No matter how gruesome or traumatic it will be, we want to see it. We are almost excited for it because it’s the freedom from tension. The payoff and the reward. It is the divorce settlement.

I wonder if we ever woke up thinking that the shit hitting the fan is the thing we’re most excited for. That terrible thing we’re looking forward to is our end goal. A damned feedback loop of damage that is both the anticipation and the release. We’ve eaten of agony and confusion for so long, maybe that’s all we know.

So where’s joy? On the surface of positivity? Blissfully unaware and in the background, numb and empty. ‘Happiness’ can be found that way, sure, but would we ever dare question if it’s real? No, lest our glass house crumbles around us, leaving behind the ache that was always there. An ache that was transparent from the very beginning. We won’t be fooling anyone except for maybe our own reflections. Certainly not with our words, for how empty they would be, as we have thrown empathy aside in the process. Failing to insert ourselves into the reality of the current chaos removes us from the possibility of its redemption. What need of progress when there’s perfection? What need of healing when wounds don’t exist. But they do.

Are we brave enough to ask?

Oh, elusive joy. Living with depressive terror or on the shores of denial were never options were they? I sometimes wonder if we were ever meant to survive any of this. Maybe we weren’t, but in us is a rebellion. A fuck you to the things out for our heads, those demons killing us by a thousand cuts. But we won’t let it and we won’t give in. Ours is the eternal that hold scars as a testimony to battles won. Maybe our joy comes from our anger and our fight. The daring to imagine us safe and the belief that we can eventually get there. With gritted teeth and a smile, we fight back those that would have us disappear. Our true happiness is seeing the accident and saying it won’t happen ever again, our words full and heavy. Full and heavy enough to feed a hungry heart. Larger than we ever dared to dream, and more fierce that we ever dared to hope. Joy is our burial and our resurrection. Our questions and our zeal. Our radiant rhythm to dance with our mortal bodies with the immortal God. Our meantime and our moving on. Our ability to see pain and our ability to speak into it.

It is our both our disbelief and our resolve. It is more than our reasons why. And it is THE reason why.
So can we wake up to death and life? Can we dwell in the shadow and the hill? Can we eat and drink?

Joy, can you call us out to walk on water and can you pull us up when we inevitably sink?
Joy, can you ever be as small as we want you to be?
Can you ever be bigger than we need to you be?

Help us breath forever in.