Segue part 3

In yet another autobiographical foray into law school...

Oh wait, just kidding. I'm finally creative!

Church

The church is the biggest thing in town
Huge, hewn stone, hauled hundreds of miles
A testament to Christianity,
A monument in itself, to the rightness
Of righteous belief
For who could haul and hew
If they knew
Their questions would go unanswered
Their inquisitions, begged on bended knee
Fly out of flying buttresses,
Bounce off the belltower,
And bring nothing but silence
But belief needs no concrete
The tons of stone are enough
Their mere presence a testimony
To the belief of the builders

The unbending, balustraded nave
Brooks no bouts of doubt
It's physicality manifests harsh juxtaposition
To my infirmity
For my beliefs have have never sparked
Such superior structure
Such skyward-seeking symbology
Such arduous adoration
Never allowed me assurance to commit
Wholly,
To assert my authority over attention

You can't help but look up to it
Neck craned and cricked in stricture
You can't help but hear it
The ringing adulation of the bells
Extolling virtues in idyllic scripture
So who am I to doubt
The devout
As I wander,
Ghostly,
Unseen and un-momentous below?


I'm not sure how I feel about this one. The first stanza was written in my iPad as a note from when I was living in my car in Missouri. I remember when I was writing it I wanted to make an ironic transition from the devoutness and righteousness the people felt while they were building the church and their certainty in their religious and compare it to the pyramids. The pyramids were built by slaves, of course (and there are probably plenty of parallels I could draw to the mindless way people seem to follow religion today), but the sheer size of the task overshadows the churches completely. I was going to say something to the extent of "if the people who built this church did so as an exhibition of their belief and their authority in that belief, imagine how much more devotion and authority the Egyptians had. But then I wrote some other stuff that doesn't quite go with the first stanza. There are a couple of interpretations I am thinking of for how I wrote it, but I'll keep those to myself in case I want to revise it to more completely adhere to one of them.

I also found this in my notes from Missouri:

Last night was the first night it was actually cold, and my feet hurt for a while before I eventually got back to sleep. It wasn't until around 9:00 or 10:00 this morning that I realized they were numb when I tried to walk and felt unbalanced due to my lack of toes. All was well soon after, though, as the blood started moving and feeling came back. I believe I will break out the sleeping bag tonight, just in case. By the time I thought about it last night, it was too cold outside of the blanket to warrant trying to remedy the situation. I figured all that was really cold were my feet, and it wasn't worth the risk, so I'd just cut my losses. Yet another reason not to leave decisions to my tired brain. This comic pretty much sums it up:  http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2402

I'll write more soon. Just wanted to post before I'm off to my next class.