I can't save you.
I can't talk you down.
I will hold you,
But I won't watch you drown.

In my life, things have a way of growing downward.
And I don't know if I can watch myself be a coward
Again.

I don't know you
Like I thought I did.
But I have shown you
Things that I kept hid.

In my life, I've always been the one that had to ruin things,
So I don't know if some dark angel is pulling on my heart strings
Again.

People change.
I don't know what for.
Strangers walking in,
In and out my door.

Something's got to change.
The past just hangs here to remind me.
One of these mornings when I reach for you
I'll find me.

I have told you
That I won't watch you drown.

I can't save you,
But I will be around.

-Warren Haynes

Do you read Reader's Digest? If so, have you noticed how the Quotable Quotes page has become such a travesty over the past few years? I don't know about you, but I like a bit of profundity in my bathroom reading. Quotable Quotes used to be pretty good for that. Of course, there was a time when that page featured brief but insightful quips from the likes of Golda Meir, Victor Hugo and/or Stephen Hawking. Nowadays the column features throwaway pablum from the likes of Garth Brooks, Regis Philbin and and/or Mischa Barton.

But then again, when I think about my favorite quotes, most of 'em come from pop culture. So who am I to look down my nose at the Reader's Digest?

Quotes are the subject because of Janet's most recent Tell It To Me Tuesday topic: What are some of your favorite quotes, who said them and why do you like them so much?

I like the format MCF used for his response post, so I'm gonna steal it. The quotes below will be clickable ... click them for the source. Though you probably won't need to, since most of these are from rock music, movies, and other pop culture sources that you'll probably recognize easily.

• "If you need someone to blame, throw a rock in the air, you'll hit someone guilty."
  Accountably ain't what it used to be. So many people screw up their own lives with bad decisions, or with their failure to even make decisions. Then they look for someone to blame. And if you're looking for someone to blame, you're damn sure going to find someone. This quote is from a song by my favorite rock lyricist.



• "The things you own end up owning you."
  It seems like no matter how much money you make, you're always making just enough. Enough said.



• "It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he's got and all he's ever going to have."
  This is a line from my favorite film. It speaks to the real nature of murder, I think. I'd stop short of saying that this is the thesis sentence of the work. The movie is really about forgiveness and redemption, and how forgiveness must begin with each of us forgiving ourselves. Otherwise, we're giving ourselves license to commit the same sins over and over again. Anyway, I just like this line.



• "The words that you have spoken hang frozen in the air. Sometimes I look right through them, as if they were not there."
  Another song lyric from another favorite lyricist. I like what it says about the importance of guarding our tongues. It's possible to say things to our loved ones that will simply never be forgotten. Words can hurt more than any kind of physical violence, and sometimes the best we can do is learn to look through the words that still haunt us. But they're always right there.



• "I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!"
  A great, ironically comic line from a great recent movie. It's replaced phrases like "BOOO-yah!" and "Owned!" as my new favorite gloat phrase. Deathmatch me at Halo and you can expect to hear it. If I do manage to get a frag, that is.



• "And then, one day, you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun."
  Time flies, man. It friggin' FLIES. And if you aren't where you ought to be in your life, you better start getting there NOW.



• "In the depth of my disgraces, in the then invincible ignorance of my intellect, all this was given me without asking, even without consent."
  My favorite writer, describing the conditions of his reluctant, early religious conversion. Sometimes the realization of ones growing, embryonic faith can be a painful experience. The death of self, the acceptance of Grace, etc. It's overwhelming. I love the bit about the "ignorance of intellect." Some things must be felt out, not thought out.



• "My kingdom's walls have fallen down. But I know that I don't wear an undeserved crown. And though it seemed to fit me well, underneath it I would certainly fall down."
  Every failure brings a chance to begin again. It's all about taking baby steps.



• "I can't afford to hate people. I don't have that kind of time."
  If you haven't seen the movie that this quote is from, you ought to log off the net right now and go rent it or buy it. This movie is a life-changer.



• "It ought to be easy, ought to be simple enough. Man meets woman and they fall in love. But this house is haunted and this ride gets rough. You've got to learn to live with what you can't rise above."
  Deceptively simply lyrics from The Boss. Learning to live with what you can't rise above ... well, that there's the greatest challenge in all of life, isn't it?

Just a brief note for the two or three "blog buddies" I have who check this blog from time to time... and for The Governor, Jamie and other real life-friends who surf by.

Last week sucked. Absolutely S-U-C-K-E-D. The last while, in fact, has been very stressful ... and the stress seemed to culminate last weekend with the sudden, unexpected death of a good friend. It hit me like a train.

As of my last post, I'd decided to stop blogging for a while for a number of reasons. I can't really put it in words, though. Something to do with the desperation and sadness of trying to have relationships on the internet while the real relationships in your life remain neglected. I have known people ... and I ain't naming names ... who honesty care more about the people they "know" on the net than they do about spouses, friends, family, etc. It's sad to see the effect that has on families. I know someone who's going through something like that now and it's just sad.

And then, just as that feeling was coming into sharp relief, my friend died. His death has had a lot to do with my current train of thought ... This guy was someone I'm truly fortunate to have known. I loved him like family and I never told him that. I felt some disgust with myself and I guess that staying away from the blog this week has been kind of an act of penance.

But I do feel a bit of a compulsion to blog. And I think that ultimately that's because this blog is little more than my personal diary. This is my sounding board and I do think it does me more good than ill. It's not as though I've disappeared into some sort of "second life."

So, anyway, I'm blogging again. My thoughts aren't just going to sort themselves out, I suppose.

Labels: Blogs, Personal

Time for another break from blogging. Things aren't going well right now. Be back sometime, whenever. I'll wrap up for now with a song.

Labels: Blogs

Judging from a few notes in my inbox, I think yesterday's April Fools' Day prank was a bit too obtuse. But then, my sense of humor often is. If you tried to visit the SouthCon main page today, you ended up here instead. Har har har.

Then again, nothing I came up with for an April Fools Day post would have been anywhere near as cool as this turned out to be. Especially for the lucky few who actually got hold of the Joker's balls.

Click here to read a summary of what I'm rambling about.

Labels: Movies, Trivial Matters