drunk girls know that love is an astronaut...

It comes back, but it's never the same.

I now know how to upload video from my new phone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBNU0ZYemrk

yard marble...marred yarble

"All I can think of is 'ahh. ah ah. ahh...'
each specimen of heavy hollywood
wind down, little one"

Sometimes, the things I do must be an attempt at getting my inside on the outside.  I think that's what the picture above is.  

I have some things to say about how the most satisfying things in life are finding out about yourself and you are never quite as fulfilled and close to love as when you go inside yourself.  Because this is, I believe, how we find God and His voice; I gleaned this from a flash of inspiration one morning, and I kind of want to write a poem about it, but I haven't yet.  It was this, simply- "God, when did you join the silence?"  There are so many, so many voices out there.  There are truths and there are lies, and there are sincere exhortations and there are outright manipulations, but those don't matter unless you know what's inside of you.   I was walking down the street last week in the middle of the night, and the fog was forcing down on everything around me.  I could barely see anything except for the hazy glow from the streetlights.  In that atmosphere, nothing was clear, and nothing was discernible.  That is how I feel most of the time in this life.  The moments when everything is clear, just like a morning after a really clean rainstorm and the sun is shining and you can see everything for miles and miles around, those moments usually come when I go inside my self, quietly.  God has joined the silence.  He is not in the confused fog of the night, he is not in the advice and ideas and truths and lies and conversations of all the people around us.  He is in the silence.  And in the silence, he talks peace; he talks gentleness and healing to the soul.

That being said, everything else is important- the fog and the conversations and crazy life.  They fill your silence with more meaning and more life.  They give you reasons to keep going back to sort things out in the silence.

Now, because I think I am being funny by saying the next words, for my own selfish pleasure (are you laughing?) , I would like to interpret what came out of me with the drawing and poem that is above these words.

I changed my mind, about 40 hours later.

Just remember that the flower is being blasted by the sun while being soaked in water from a hose...a hose...  And ahh.  ah ah.  ahh is aesthetically pleasing.  Let it work in your buh-rain.

Please watch Stella.  Listen to JJ.  Speak nice words.  Eat to your needs.  Face your heart.  Dance your face off.  Or just dance your face.  Face the dance?  Let there be a tumultuous noise.  Fight everything.

-Someday things bigger than me will swallow the ocean.

i keep saying things i don't mean...

my heart keeps changing colors

I haven't wanted to write for a long time (I didn't want to write anything- lists, letters, facebook posts, blogs, journal entries, notes, love poems, etc...), so I am glad the desire came back, tonight.  I miss not being full...

Something really special happened to me a few weeks ago.  Let me set the scene a little bit- a month or two ago, I was in a place I really didn't want to be.  I was pretty well unhappy, and I felt constrained by stupid habits I had.  There were some things I just couldn't seem to free myself from.  And the worst part was, that there were some habits I had that I knew weren't good but I didn't even really want to be away from them.  So, I would set goals and I would not do those bad habits for a day or two, and then, because the desire really wasn't there, I would just fall back into the way life was before I attempted the little goals.  (I am really finding out in my life that some goals are better than others.  In fact, the word "goal" started making me sick to my stomach before some cool stuff started happening here.)  To sum it all up, I was in a place that was getting me nowhere, but I did not want to let go of the things holding me back.  The saving power in all of this was that when I stood back and objectively looked at my life, I knew that I could be happier, and I knew that even though I didn't desire to get rid of my stupid habits, I did want to be happier and was willing to change for happiness.

However during this time, I started to get frustrated with myself because I couldn't change.  I felt like I was in this muddy pit, and every time I tried scrambling out of it, I would just lose my footing and slide right back to the bottom of the pit.  That's why this quote scared me so bad in this context- "the immutable heart of what we are that bleeds through what we might become."  I hate hate hate the idea that just because we have certain preferences and certain leanings towards certain mistakes in this life that we can't overcome them.  I hate hate hate the idea that what we are inside of us is essentially evil and that every attempt at change for good is just a sham and who we really are (sinful, evil) will always bleed through those changes.  When I heard that quote, I really wondered, "Is that really true?  Are these habits that I have really who I am?  Should I just embrace my poor decisions because there's no getting around having them?"  The quote seemed to be true because I really tried goal after goal to change with no success, and I was getting scared.

Then I started to think about the principle of having a change of heart.  You know how sometimes some thoughts come to you and they just feel good?  Like you are swimming around in some sort of uncomfortable, red, fiery air and you feel like you have heart burn all of the time, and then a giant drop of cool, refreshing water splashes you in the face and you think, wow, this feels good?  That's how this thought came to me, and generally when I get those thoughts, they are not my own thoughts, per say, but flashes of light from Heaven.  What came to me were things expressed here- "and they did all declare unto the people the selfsame thing—that their hearts had been changed," and that "the Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent, ...has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually." And I asked myself "have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts?"


I knew that this was the way out- a mighty change of heart.  This sounds strange, but I had to have a new heart, one that had new, better desires (there were things that I knew were good for me that I didn't want.  I needed a heart that wanted those things).  I had to have a heart that didn't just take goals step by step to get away from habits, but one that was new and that had a chance to make new habits.


So, I started it all off with a fast and a prayer. After that, my goals changed.  I went from wanting to change a habit to wanting to change my heart.  C.S. Lewis said something cool, "Christ says, ‘Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. … Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours." I realized that I had been chopping at branches, trying to cut one here and one there, when I actually needed to be going for the roots.  I wanted a whole new me, not a pruned me.  Eventually, over a short time I had experiences that shaped and prepared me, and then I had an experience that changed me.  It's impossible to describe and better left unsaid, but my heart...I am different now, and that means everything to me.  My desires are new.  My habits are new.  My heart is new.  I can change, and even though nothing like this is permanent without work, I am different now, which means that the immutable heart of what we are, when it does bleed through, can be a good, new heart.

Love sincerely,
Zach J. for Johnson

i have some reservations about posting this one...

Why is hell always suspended above our heads?
Each corner held by a rope, the center sags
If I stand up too straight, my head brushes
Gentlemen, don't put your hands up
Unless it's- gentlemen, put your hands up!
And they have a gun
Moving around or
When I jump the pieces of hell start giggling as they clink together
Everything I do breaks down and adds to the weight
When it collapses, the white paint around me starts speaking "red"
Go away hell, I don't want your pain
I'm tired of every little game
Every time I look up- you're there
I think to myself "I'm not good enough,"
And I'm not, so a corner comes undone
I start trying too hard, and I am-
So there goes another corner
I throw my cares in the air like sand
I rhyme I try to find relief
I read I write I pray
I try good
I try bad
I try quiet
I try loud
There goes another corner
Three are gone...three are gone!
Ah, here comes hell
I really tried to tie those strings again
I did what I did yesterday when there was no injury
Yesterday's routine turned into today's smoking gun
Saying, gentleman, put yr hands up!
Black and red
We're already dead
I have to get out of this room
In an atmosphere this thick, I might drown
pad pad pad to the next room
I close my eyes because I wish my eyes were closed
There's hell in this one, too

crooked angle

i kept on lingering.
       smiling.
 my crooked teeth set
in a crooked path.
      "from this angle,
 you look like a crooked angel."
but i would have none of that.
   the weight of eternity
  sits on my eyes, it rests
         on my head.
when i bleed it's eternal blood
  and my feet are golden.
"from who's garden did you grow?"
 the rabbits
     they are stealing
from out of the cellar.
     they are
   tying white ribbons to old oak trees
 right when you're climbin'-
    i didn't want to be
     your ghost.
    i didn't want to be
 anyone's ghost.

working in hyperboles, today

The most terrifying quote I have ever heard-
"the immutable heart of what we are that bleeds through what we might become"

The scariest/most beautiful song I have ever heard-
Conversation 16

The funniest music video I have ever seen-
Drunk Girls

Blogging world, I may be petering out...

a tribute

Senj, this one's for you.  I like the name of your blog.

Also, I got a girlfriend today.  There is a video of her here.

i love what isn't true

I am reading a really incredible play by one of my favorite people- his name is Tom Stoppard.  I love him solely on the merits of his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, but I am now reading another play of his called Arcadia, and I love him even more.

I know, as I read, Arcadia is going way, way over my head, but since knowledge is a step by step accumulation, I think I am just grasping the first step of Stoppard's ideas and knowledge, and it's kind of blowing my mind.  Check this out (it's a scene from Arcadia where a young girl is talking to her mentor, Septimus)-

THOMASINA- When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas.  But if you stir backward, the jam will not come together again.  Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before.  Do you think this is odd?
SEPTIMUS- No.
THOMASINA- Well, I do.  You cannot stir things apart.
SEPTIMUS- No more you can, time must needs run backward, and since it will not, we must stir our way onward mixing as we go, disorder out of disorder into disorder until pink is complete, unchanging and unchangeable, and we are done with it for ever.  This is known as free will or self-determination.

 Okay, so after you read that, did it start to bother you that jam can't be unmixed from the rice pudding?  Did it make you think of things like a piece of wood shattering and not being able to go back to the way it was before?  Of thoughts and actions that will never leave you, but that mix into who you are?  Of relationships?  Of chaos and atrophy? The jam in the rice pudding is still the most apt imagery- you just can't extract the jam from the rice pudding anymore.  It's now one thing, or it's a broken thing; ah, the world we live in...

So I have been thinking- the only way to make something whole again, to take away its trails of chaos, is to make it new and to start fresh from the beginning.  If you want rice pudding that isn't pink and has no jam in it,  you have to make a new batch.  If you want a piece of wood that is whole and complete, you have to start with a new tree.  But what if we want to be freed from our ideas and our thoughts and actions that are all become chaotic?  Is there a way out?  What about with our relationships that have spiraled into a red-jelly meteorological chaos?

I wrote a poem while having these thoughts.  It is not all the way organized, but I love it.  So I present it to you in its incomplete and rough form-

If there is one less witch in the house tonight
It will be called "progress"
If one wrinkle is consumed by the marble of your brow
It will be called "improvement"
If every star in the sky collapses into the castled cosmos
It will be called "our chance"
If, at the end of the day, our little fires burn so low
It will be regarded "safe"

Liturgy, spent in chaos, cost
The token-inertia of this only-
"I run the spectrum
I run the spectrum
I run the spectrum
I run the spectrum
I run the spectrum
I run the spectrum
I run the spectrum
I run the spectrum
I run the spectrum
I run the spectrum"

And I thought, this must be order,
As I crashed through the room;
Ugly Anglican mirrors crushed the cradle
And I couldn't reverse the chaos.
Our chance came when we again reached the head
And stood forward in the arc of progress
But though we searched, there was no improvement
And so what regard had we for safety?


 This poem begs a lot of questions.  Is progress really removing what we call evil or do we just not understand that every one is supposed to mix together?  Is staying young and hiding our age really an improvement?  Is old age and atrophy good because it's a part of the natural order?  "Our chance came when we again reached the head" is a reference to the image of the snake eating its tail and continuing on for eternity:

And so, when the stars are all gone and the earth is gone will it all start off new and fresh again, at the head?  Is safety truly just being really careful and being cautious of what we mix into our souls (I have started to listen to Kanye's new album.  Should I avoid it because it's full of discontent?  Or is that something that is in the universe and part of chaos that needs to mix in my soul?)  Where does religion and where does what I believe fit into this notion of the jam mixing into the rice pudding?  Does it slow the mixing down or does it contribute to the inertia of the mixing?  What should it do?  


And the way the poem is set up is fun.  It establishes definitions for terms like "progress" and "safety" in the first half, and then in the middle of the poem, time happens- "I run the spectrum/ I run the spectrum/ I run the spectrum."  At the end, the definitions are approached again.  Did the definitions really fit the terms they were attached to?  Did the head of the snake really represent the new beginning for the universe?  Since innocence is gone, can we ever have it back?  Will things start all over again new?  Will we be any further ahead or is the course the same over and over again?  What is my role in the course?  What, really, is progress?


The more I think about all of this, the more it establishes the need for Christ.  Chaos just does not go away on its own.  Really.  It just keeps going on and on.  And I think chaos can be divided up into two kinds- the physical kind, which is the way the big universe and the little, molecular universe work.  That is the process of a sun forming, growing old, expanding, and exploding into space forever and ever mixing into the universe.  Christ creates worlds- he is the active creator that fights all that atrophy and destruction and chaos.  And then there is the kind of chaos that is a personal chaos.  It's our lives.  And were it not for Christ's intervention, our lives could not do anything but keep spiraling further and further into chaos- "And our spirits must have become like unto [the devil], and we become devils, angels to a devil, to be shut out from the presence of our God, and to remain with the father of lies in misery..." (2 Nephi 9:9).  Without Christ, if we made a mistake, that would add more jam into the rice pudding.  We would try to reverse the jam, but we just can't- that would be like trying to stop the destruction of the sun.  We don't have the power to reverse time and its effects, and the more we learn and experience and see and do, the more chaos is in our minds.  I think Christ has a lot to do with the organizing that chaos, and He does that by truth.  Truth helps everything fit correctly in its proper place.  It gives light to our understanding.  Without Christ, our lives are chaos.  There must be a force and a power to balance the chaos.




And now here we are.  I hope you made it to the end.  Here is your reprieve and breath of beautiful air.  Please listen to "Kin" and read the lyrics.  They are a wave of peace.  I think they are from the perspective of our loving God.


I love you, too.




(PS.  I went on a blind date this week.  I made a bunch of new friends this week.  I registered for classes.  I went to church here and, miracle! liked it.  I am making strides and bounds.  And please enjoy the Christmas song on my playlist.  It's my favorite.)

liquid mountaineering

If this is real, it's amazing.

If it's a joke, it's one of the funniest thing I have ever seen.  (My favorite part is where the guy is falling in the water, holding up three fingers, excited for his three steps.)  (...just in case you were wondering.)

Liquid Mountaineering.  The new extreme sport.

happiness..?

I guess I am slow... I just figured something out yesterday.  You can say "duh" if you want.

I was walking down the street after work yesterday, just walkin' with a huge smile on my face, looking at the gorgeous Provo winter mountains, and I think I must have looked happy.  I was happy.  It was the happiest I have been in a long time.  Something shifted or something lifted (cryptic, I know.  Sorry.  But not sorry enough to clarify haha).  While I was being happy, I got a couple of big smiles from other people.  In fact, I could see one girl, out of the corner of my eye, watching me the entire time we were getting closer and closer to each other on the sidewalk.  Right before we passed, our eyes met and she gave me a big smile and a really happy "hello."

Oh my gosh.  Really?  People like happy people?

And I wondered why it was hard for me to make friends...

That was yesterday.  I am trying super hard to have that outlook on life that is one of constant looking out to others and constant focus on "happiness."  It gets kind of hard sometimes.  Like when I go to school sometimes, I start to hate people.  I hate that people are so confused and then they pretend they aren't and then propagate stupid, confusing (confused) theories and philosophies.  Thank goodness that every time I am reeling, tripping and jumping and dodging theories flying through my mind I always have a base to come back to.  What is the base?  Simply this- Heavenly Father.  Jesus Christ.  Faith.  Repentance.  Baptism.  The Gift of the Holy Ghost.  And Enduring to the End.  These are a constant in the face of everything, everything else, because everything else changes.

I now shift gears quickly.  Here is my stream of consciousness from this morning.  I don't know how much longer this will last haha.  I am already kind of bored of it.  I will have to maybe try a new way of approaching it...

Set your sights to swinging- I can't take much more of this lack of being. You just get younger and younger until you forget about justice and the dead side of the road starts to crack and become warped by a sort of smoky silt. Little pepper grains of dust sit and rise and sit and rise with the vagrant wind. Why do you keep going and sitting down on the side of the road? Spending the last five years in a dusty dawn and wrapping yourself in a cloud of soot is certainly bringing you no closer to the freeway.
So the jumping bears and the sad clowns came and waved. We spent years just watching them play their games. We followed them, walking the side of the road, until we came to manhattan. We knew we had found something like a home because the raised hats waved us in. All the crowds in manhattan were not jumping bears or sad clowns. They all had faces and hands and mouths. Their performances were tireless and pure. The spectrum was in decibels of love.