Just a bout with diary-a

I haven’t been updating here much. I’ve been trying to work out some ideas for the manuscript of The Book in my free time, as well as fomenting a bunch of trouble at church, all of which is probably going to go nowhere except to get me in a deeper state of perturbation.

I haven’t cracked my Bible in a week and a half.

I’m currently self-medicating my allergies with shots of Southern Comfort. SoCo does nothing for the sinus cavities, I don’t think, but it does kill brain cells, which might fool my head into thinking it’s fine. Everything’s good up here, man, don’t worry.

My mother still hasn’t landed a job and hasn’t paid her mortgage. This morning on the phone she suggested that maybe I should move down there and take her house. She says she’d move to New York with her sister, whom she always fought with violently. It sounds pretty stupid. I wish I could do it. I’d like to be closer to my siblings. We’re still in Delaware for two reasons: (1) Jessica won’t leave her mother, and (2) God won’t release me from our church. I’m sort of hoping the bouncers of the church (the deacons) will wallop me good and toss me out in the gravel, so I can be free.

But even if they did, I still have friendships here that are valuable. That’s noteworthy because I couldn’t have said that three years ago.

I jogged five miles yesterday morning, and three miles before church today. I’m trying to get back into a healthy lifestyle and stop being such a voluminous dick.

I met with Jerm for lunch yesterday in Salisbury and we had a nice talk. It cannot be disputed that some hearts are being stirred in God’s mellifluous, hidden way. A lot of men are tired of being so sedated and suppressed, and that goes for Christians, non-Christians, Everyman. Something good is about to happen in the church, and I’ve got a feeling it’s going to piss some folks off.

It needs to, maybe. The whole church experience in America is so out of order and out of touch with the needs of men, it’s a circus. A damned circus, really, and I don’t know how much of it can be salvaged. For me the choice is, Am I going to keep dipping in the same safe, stagnant tidal pool I’ve always known, or am I going to jump into the frightening, dangerous white water and let the current carry me where it wills?

Yesterday Jessica ordered the following books for me. I’m so uninspired lately that I took them off an acquaintance’s reading list.

Matches, by Alan Kaufman
The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
Farewell, My Lovely, by Raymond Chandler
The Fall, by Albert Camus
On Writing, by Stephen King

Any blog post that uses the words “voluminous” and “mellifluous” is just too prolix. Lord, I’m ashamed of myself.