(excerpted from an email to amanda)

just sounded like a line from a song i was meant to hear. or something. anyway.

Not much going on. Falun Gong. Went to church tonight. Nice service – the band really rocked. didn’t speak to anyone tho. that’s a habit of mine. i go into phases where i don’t seem to have the emotional energy to make friends. or extend myself to others around me. just go in thru the side door, sit down at an aisle seat and read beowulf till the service starts, sit thru the service and then leave, walking directly to the door and not looking to either the right or the left. in the zone. blinders on. tunnel vision. d coupland said: “You lose the ability to make new friends after you buy your first piece of expensive furniture.” could be could be. i don’t think i have that ability. i haven’t the foggiest idea how to enter a new social scene, befriend various people and actually life-mingle. all my friends have always been foisted on me by life circumstance. college, church, etc. hmm. My Confessions by Lance CK1.

so i’m lonely and worldweary. shoot me. please. there’s just this vague vision of my head of “The Day that Everything Comes Together.” That someday in the future where i end up belonging somewhere, on a path, accompanied by the people I expected to be there all along, at home. It’s what CS Lewis warned of in the Screwtape Letters of trying to “live” in the future – to neglect the present because your interests are securely tied to the fruition of some foggy goal. spending your entire life on a train waiting for that one perfect stop that never comes.

But how does one embrace the present? How does one decide to be content with what is, and write everything else off to faith? Is that which “is now” not satisfying because it’s lacking or because i’ve never fully consumed it?

DNIK EB