Stranger to Myself

In conversation with Julia this morning, I found this phrase coming out of my mouth:

I'm living a life that doesn't make sense to me, and I don't know what else to do.

I had quit the blogging several weeks back and figured I was probably done with it.  This was partly because I simply have not been able to come to grips with the contradictions I seem to embody.

What I have written about here feels more genuinely me than anything I've ever tried to express.  Yet, it seems that only in small ways do I live what I think I profess here.  I mean, everything I do seems to be so token, so ineffective in any significant way.

Okay, so I choose to disengage from the news media, mainstream, liberal, or independent.  I don't want my perception of the world tainted by these other 'interests.'  But I read books.  I find things on the Internet.  Does this not taint my vision, as well?

I have no confidence whatsoever in the political system of this country or any other to make any kind of significant difference in mitigating our culture's presence on this planet.

At this point I don't see any signs that there is anything afoot that could create a groundswell of change from the single individual outward.  Unless the oil gushing in the Gulf of Mexico is our attempt to fully hasten the further deterioration of our lifesphere.

Oh, how it hurts, in my belly, my heart, my bones!  How can this have happened!

How is we are not storming someones gates somewhere, shouting:  Stop, stop, stop this now!  Not another drop!

Instead, I get onto the diesel-powered bus twice a day to go to work so I can buy gas for my truck and  pay for my food to be shipped from God knows where to the grocery store, from whence all food comes, and to pay for the natural gas that heats my house and to pay for the electricity I use non-stop, which comes from dams that have clogged rivers for decades now, and to pay for the water I drink and wash and cook and bathe with, water that is very, very rapidly becoming the most precious of materials on this sad and ailing planet.

This ailing planet . . and I am part of its dis-ease.

Oh, God help me!  How ever, did we come to such a place as this?

I call on God, and yet the best I've ever done is to turn from that yearning, that sad, sad yearning for what I already am!

Still, here I am en contradiction, living with what life still chooses to flow through me.