Lewisburg

I sat in a quaker meeting. Everyone was silent. I stared at the ceiling and the walls. This one-room schoolhouse full of old people. People in "simple dress". Once in a while, someone would stand up and say a few words, and then they would sit down. I didn't trust that any of the speakers were quaking and thus had to speak, but nonetheless.

Then I sat in a universalist-unitarian meeting. People talked. Talked and they talked. It reminded me of the methodist church i used to attend (methodist being a misnomer, really). Talking and talking. Full of pretty ideas. Ideas I've pretty much thought to death for the past decade. Sometimes said in a novel way, at a novel angle, but nonetheless, just talking. Talking and talking. Like Winesburg, Ohio, with all the men in town who talk and talk and the author doesn't bother to write down the bullshit they say.

Personalities are not persons. Personas are not persons. They are the peel, which we can peel -- the exterior protective layer to keep the flesh within, safe and long-lasting. But the peels fail, and the fruit rots nonetheless. It all rots. And I feel as if I have rotted into nothingness, a blankness. I have crawled into a compost pile and my flesh has been eaten off to bones and my bones crumbled and now I am just soil. Sitting there. Resting there. Waiting for a root of whatever sort to suck my nutrients into their being.