May 2, 2003 (idea)

I am sitting alone at a computer that I do not own. I have no need and little reason to be where I am, but I don't want to go home because home seems such a lonely place right now. The minimalist Trent Reznor remix mp3 playing now probably isn't helping, nor the fact that I forgot to take the Prozac prescribed to me most of the past 8 days or so. (Did I take it today? I think I did before I left the house this morning.)

On occasion this week I've calmed myself by listening to Soul Coughing. I felt that repeating the rhythmic post-beat-poet lyrics kept the other noises away, the background din of thoughts of pain. Even listening to the music isn't terribly necessary. The words become like a prayer.

I prayed some, too, but that only helps so much. I've been wrestling with my beliefs at the moment. I'm not sure what I believe, and have a hard time describing it to others. I believe in a Higher Power. I believe that power, the Lord he is some sort of holistic and encompassing one, which, by the thousands-of-years-old-teachings that informed the instructing of my rabbis, is not quite right. Is He conscious in a way that has any significance? Is it possible for Him to have a will? Does it matter if I nullify a little of my will for the sake of something that doesn't exist? Do all the rules and regulations mean anything if I don't believe there's any thing actually behind it, that the whole religion is a large, intricate, beautiful and often useful facade elaborately constructed over the millennia to carefully protect absolutely nothing? In part, I would like to build my own fence¹ around what I only see as nothing and add that fence to all those that preceded me. But no one has told me yet - do we stay inside the fence or do we keep ourselves out of it?

Maybe I should be Zen-like: Maybe I should build a fence around the Torah that has no inside or outside. Maybe I might build a fence but should not want to build a fence. I would like to be released from suffering, for sure.

Maybe I should stop typing for a second.

I'm typing this as a cry for attention, even as I try to convince my self never to show it to anyone. I’m typing this because I have no one I feel I can let myself talk to at the moment. Or tomorrow. Or next week. Not about this.

I have created my own fence, which I shouldn't have made. It is around something just as valuable as Torah, nafshi - myself. Pakuach ha-nefesh² eh? Are we to build a fence around souls, too?

Ah, but that last part was typing just to hear the tone of speech in my head. It is little more than an attempt to capture the mood by imitating poetic mannerisms I've heard before. This paragraph feels to me like a cool breeze, and bits of the pain drift away with it.

Now I'm no longer worried that my home is a lonely place. Now I have little desire to follow out my original plan for the next day of hopping the fence, flouting my own purported beliefs and pissing my time away in computer games I only almost enjoy.

I have created bad fences. I have created good fences. Now maybe I should create something non-fence.