"For we must never forget what is the most repellent and inexplicable trait in our Enemy; He really loves the hairless bipeds He has created and always gives back to them with His right hand what He has taken away with His left." ~ from The Screwtape Letters

"You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts." ~ from The Screwtape Letters

"A woman means by Unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others; a man means not giving trouble to others." ~ from The Screwtape Letters

"We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies i a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased." ~ from The Weight of Glory

Screwtape reveals a powerful tool for distraction: "What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call 'Christianity And'. You know--Chrisianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian coloring. Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing. The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart--an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship. The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change. And since they need change, the Enemy (being a hedonist at heart) has made change pleasurable to them, just as He has made eating pleasurable. But since he does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has balance the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gives them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme. He gives them in His church a spiritual year; they change from a fast to a feast, but it is the same feast as before." ~ from The Screwtape Letters

"The pleasure of novelty is by its very nature more subject than any other to the law of diminishing returns." ~ from The Screwtape Letters

"...it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction...This is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies. It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go--let it die away--go on throught that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow--and you wil lfind you are living in a world of new thrills all the time...It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy." ~ from Mere Christianity

"Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied...You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption 'My time is my own'. Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to his employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which he allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright." ~ from The Screwtape Letters



'Oh, of course. I'm wrong. Everything I say or do is wrong, according to you.'
'But of course!' said the Spirit, shining with love and mirth so that my eyes were dazzled. 'That's what we all find when we reach this country. We've all been wrong! That's the great joke. There's no need to go on pretending one was right! After that we begin living.' ~ from The Great Divorce

"And there was never any place For someone like me to be Totally happy I'm running out of clock and that Ain't a shock Some things never do change Never do change..." - Something Corporate

I never asked you to earn me. I want only that you should need me. Your path is not one of merit. Bring the recurring desires of your mind to me, every time they emerge. They cannot shock me, for I willed them! Bring me your confusion, your fear, your craving, your anxiety, your inability to love the world, your hesitation to serve, your jealousy, all the deficiencies that defy your spiritual disciplines. ~Sri Sathya Sai Baba



I start to feel like I can't maintain the facade any longer, that I may just start to show through. And I wish I knew what was wrong. Maybe something about how stupid my whole life is. I don't know. Why does the rest of the world put up with the hypocrisy, the need to put a happy face on sorrow, the need to keep on keeping on?...

I don't know the answer, I know only that I can't. I don't want any more vicissitudes, I don't want any more of this try, try again stuff. I just want out. I've had it. I am so tired. I am twenty and I am already exhausted...

In a strange way, I had fallen in love with my depression. Dr. Sterling was right about that. I loved it because I thought it was all I had. I thought depression was the part of my character that made me worthwhile. I thought so little of myself, felt that I had such scant offerings to give to the world, that the one thing that justified my existence at all was my agony...

I have studiously tried to avoid ever using the word 'madness' to describe my condition. Now and again, the word slips out, but I hate it. 'Madness' is too glamorous a term to convey what happens to most people who are losing their minds. That word is too exciting, too literary, too interesting in its connotations, to convey the boredom, the slowness, the dreariness, the dampness of depression...

I'm the girl who is lost in space, the girl who is disappearing always, forever fading away and receding farther and farther into the background. Just like the Cheshire cat, someday I will suddenly leave, but the artificial warmth of my smile, that phony, clownish curve, the kind you see on miserably sad people and villains in Disney movies, will remain behind as an ironic remnant. I am the girl you see in the photograph from some party someplace or some picnic in the park, the one who is in fact soon to be gone. When you look at the picture again, I want to assure you, I will no longer be there. I will be erased from history, like a traitor in the Soviet Union. Because with every day that goes by, I feel myself becoming more and more invisible...

That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key...

Occasionally I wished I could walk through a picture window and have the sharp broken shards slash me to ribbons, so I could finally look like I felt.
~Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation



"Good morning, Eeyore," said Pooh. "Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it is a good morning, which I doubt," said he. "Why, what's the matter?" "Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can't all, and some of us don't. That's all there is to it." "Can't all what?" said Pooh, rubbing his nose. "Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush."
A. A. Milne From book Winnie the Pooh

They say you need to pray, if you want to go to heaven. But they don't tell you what to say when your whole life has gone to Hell.-Brand New

The closer I get to feeling the further that I'm feelin' from alright.-Something Corporate

"In depression...faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no rememdy will come, not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul." -William Styron

Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. Chief Joseph, on his surrender to Gen. Howard, October 5, 187

"One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or of the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it." — F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tender Is the Night)

And you do come out of it, that's true. After a year, after five. But you don't come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine...you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life." — Julian Barnes (Flaubert's Parrot)



Sometimes it hurts more to smile in front of everyone than to cry all alone. The darkness that surrounds us cannot hurt us. It is the darkness in our own hearts that we should fear. Darkness never really goes away, once you've seen it. Just when I thought my life was coming together, I realized it was just starting to fall apart.

i want to bestow upon my readers some excerpts from Ms. Dillard's book. This is from the chapter "The Present". Sit back and enjoy...


"I sip my coffee. I look at the mountain, which is still doing its tricks, as you look at a still-beautiful face belonging to a person who was once your lover in another country years ago: with fond nostalgia, and recognition, but no real feeling save a secret astonishment that you are now strangers. Thanks. For the memories. It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recongnize as separating us from our creator--our very self-consciousness--is also the thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution, cutting us off at both ends..."

"...No, the point is that not only does time fly and do we die, but that in these reckless conditions we live at all, and are vouchsafed, for the duration of certain inexplicable moments, to know it.
Stephen Graham startled me by describing this same gift in his antique and elegant book, The Gentle Art of Tramping. He wrote, "And as you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged on the shingly beach of a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens." That great door opens on the present, illuminates it as with a multitude of flashing torches..."

"...Conciousness itself does not hinder living in the present. In face, it is only to a heightened awareness that the great door to the present opens at all. Even a certain amount of interior verbalization is helpful to enforce the memory of whatever it is that is taking place..."

"...Self-conciousness, however, does hinder the experience of the present. It is the one instrument that unplugs all the rest. So long as I lose myself in a tree, say, I can scent its leafy breath or estimate its board feet of lumber, I can draw its fruits or boil tea on its branches, and the tree stays tree. But the second I become aware of myself at any of these activities--looking over my own shoulder, as it were--the tree vanishes, uprooted from the spot and flung out of sight as if it had never grown. And time, which had flowed down into the tree bearing new revelations like floating leaves at every moment, ceases. It dams, stills, stagnates..."

"...Michael Goldman wrote in a poem, "When the Muse comes She doesn't tell you to write; / She says get up for a minute, I've got something to show you, stand here..."

"...Our layered consciousness is a tiered track for an unmatched assortment of concentrically wound reels. Each one plays out for all of life its dazzle and blur of translucent shadow-pictures; each one hums at every moment its own secret melody in its own unique key. We tune in and out. But moments are not lost. Time out of mind is time nonetheless, cumulative, informing the present. From even the deepest slumber you wake with a jolt--older, closer to death, and wiser, grateful for breath..."

"...Thomas Merton wrote, in a light passage in one of his Gethsemane journals: "Suggested emendation in the Lord's Prayer: Take out 'Thy Kingdom come' and subsitute 'Give us time!'" But time is the one thing we have been given, and we have been given to time. Time gives us a whirl. We keep waking from a dream we can't recall, looking around in suprise, and lapsing back, for years on end..."

"...I want to come at the subject of the present by showing how consciouness dashes and ambles around the labyrinthine tracks of the mind, returning again and again, however briefly, to the senses: "If there were but one erect and solid standing tree in the woods, all creatures would go to rub against it and make sure of their footing." But so long as I stay in my thoughts my foot slides under trees; I fall, or I dance..."

"...Trees are tough. They last, taproot and bark, and we soften at their feet. "For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding." We can't take the lightning, the scourge of high places and rare airs. But we can take the light, the reflected light that shines up the valleys on creeks. Trees stir memories; live waters heal them. The creek is the mediator, benevolent, impartial, subsuming my shabbiest evils and dissolving them, transforming them into live moles, and shiners, and sycamore leaves. It is a place even my faithlessness hasn't offended; it still flashes for me, now and tomorrow, that intricate, innocent face. It waters an undeserving world, saturating cells with lodes of light..."

"...You don't run down the present, pursue it with baited hooks and nets. You wait for it, empty-handed, and you are filled...Here is the word from a subatomic physicist: "Everything that has already happened is particles, everything in the future is waves." Let me twist his meaning. Here it comes,. The particles are broken; the waves are translucent, laving, roiling with beauty like sharks. The present is the wave that explodes over my head, flinging the air with particles at the height of its breathless unroll; it is the live water and light that bears from undisclosed sources the freshest news, renewed and renewing, world without end."

Dear Lyn,


Watch out for them briars...they'll getcha!






COOL LYRICS:
if the earth should open up
and drag me down to hell
i wouldnt care as long as you were by my side.
eternal flames and damnation doesnt sound so bad.
we could rost weenies every night.
--bottlewink.

i smoked my last cigarette two days ago, so ya'll wish me luck. :)

1: Grab the book nearest to you. turn to page 18, find line 4. write down here what it says: "Unfortunately, nature is very much a now-you-see-it, now-you-dont affair."

2: stretch your left arm out as far as you can. what do you touch first?: a modem

3: what is the last thing you watched on TV?: fox news

4: WITHOUT LOOKING: 9:08

5: now look at the clock, what is the actual time?: 9:12

6: with the exception of the computer, what can you hear?: tv

7: when did you last step outside? what were you doing?: getting my phone out of my car about 20 minutes ago

8: before you came to this website, what did you look at?: my gmail

9: what are you wearing?: khaki dress pants, 3/4 sleeve white shirt, socks

10: did you dream last night? what about?: not that i remember

11: when did you last laugh? why?: 10 minutes ago, mark sent me a funny text

12: what is on the walls of the room you are in?: decorations from home interiors

13: seen anything weird lately?: yeah, mark gave me some kind of hickey on my upper lip--it turned purple and was kinda swollen

14: what do you think of this quiz?: whatever

15: what is the last film you saw?: Busted! (a film by the aclu about how to assert your rights when dealing with mean police officers...esp. if youre doing something illegal)

16: if you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first?: a lexus lx470 or bmw 325i

17: tell me something about you that I don't know: they offered to skip me a grade when i was younger

18: if you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?: litter/pollution needs to stop <-----hell yeah, good idea haylie

19: do you like to dance?: yes, esp. after a few drinks

20: George Bush: would never have been elected if he ran naked.

21: Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?: Mark Thomas III, assuming i marry mark...otherwise noah ethan or ethan embry (yes, after the actor i am hopelessly in love with)

22: Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?: jersey or olivia...cant decide on a middle name yet

22: would you ever consider living abroad?:yes yes yes.

23. what are you about to do? chill with vicki

so lets see...i bought a book the other day, called Feel This Book by Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo...and it was freaking hilarious. i had it read in less than 24 hours--i could hardly put it down! i definitely recommend it to anyone who reads my journal, i think you'd all appreciate it.

ive been working for a full week straight, because i am taking all next week off. mark and i are going to bristol this weekend for nopi, and then we have all next week off for a vacation. his birthday is next friday, so i still have to plan something special. i got him some razzles candy, because hes been wanting some for forever, got him a picture frame with some pictures of us in it, im getting him a pair of white low top chucks, maybe some cologne he wants (armani's acqua di rio or something like that), and some small things like making him a CD, a gift certificate to joe muggs and whatever else.

i got my hair did on tuesday by fred...he just trimmed it, but he put a dark tint on the majority of my hair to bring out the richness of the dark shades and then put some chunky blonde highlights around my face...now to be honest, im not sure what i thought of the highlights at first, because i have never had blonde in my hair, and im such a dark headed person. they are starting to grow on me though, and everyone else really seems to like them. i figure, hey, at least people will be able to tell the difference between me and renee at the store now. its amazing how many people think were sisters or just cant tell us apart.

well anyway, vickis almost here so im outtie.

I accidentally just spilled coffee on our rotweilers face. (it wasnt hot)

























Toothpaste For Dinner!

so whos the dork who paid for an upgraded blogdrive package? yeah, i know, i am a dork, but i went with the smallest one (2.95/month) and blogdrive has had the best layout designs and the friendliest staff of any online journal ive ever used. so make sure to scroll down the page, because ill have new polls posted on the side probably every couple of days, at least once a week.

i am in the mood to watch amelie.

well my fourth was fun. lots of food...shish-ka-bobs (with shrimp for me--marinaded in lemon pepper [yum!], filet for everyone else), steaks (filet), corn on the cob, cole slaw, olives, nuts, watermelon, chips and salsa, deviled eggs, homemade apple pie, lemon icebox pie...and whatever else i cant think of. lots of pretty fire works. and i learned how to say "i love pie" in spanish: Me Encanta Pie. wooT!

going to the mall today. going to enjoy a nice day off with a little amanda time. i want to call a friend to go with me, because i still have friends i havent got to see since ive been back, but i am in the mood to be by myself today.

i guess thats all. later days.

One Armed Man

this is awesome!

btw, my new favorite cereal is wheaties.

I added a new link in my favorite sites section...Black People Love Us dot com.  i had been to this site forever ago and its so freaking hilarious, i had just forgotten about it until now. i am not racist, but this is some funny shit.

oh yes, and i finally got my copy of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in the mail, so be prepared to be bombarded with excerpts from it :)