on the way home (again)

I was listening to Bill Bryson today, while preparing to move out of my flat. It was A Short History of Nearly Everything, specifically. I'm looking for a place that I'll call home #6 in about a year and a half of being on the Gold Coast. This almost nomadic-like house hopping is made possible, because, In The Beginning, there was a Big Bang (at least that's generally the consensus on the best way to start the story). Sometimes I genuinely feel the need "to be still and know" that there's something much bigger than myself out there. Some people call it God, I call it the universe. Thanks Bill.

An unfathomable amount of unlikely events have transpired since time has been steadily unfolding at one second per second. One of the unlikely, almost miraculous, results of this combinatorial explosion of possibilities is my existence. Well, pretty much the existence of everything is nigh on miraculous. It all conjures up that age old question: why is there something instead of nothing? Scientists, usually the most ardent supporters of Occham's razor, have a strange and somewhat unexpected answer (if you can call it that). There are infinitely many universes of which ours just happens to be one, and a rare one at that. In our particular permutation, all the elements in play found a delicate balance, such that life was able to emerge. Do not multiply entities unnecessarily, except in the case of universes, I suppose. But back to me ;) Of all the universes in all of the multiverse, of all the atoms in existence, of all the people who ever had sex at one point or another, somehow I won the consciousness lottery (along with 6 billion others and their ancestors). It's amazing. Ahh *pause* and here I am ... Alive.

The reason why this comes as a mildly exultant epiphany at this particular time is because I am concerned that if this truly is the only chance I get -- no doubt my atoms will take on some other form, only without my memories, at the point of my extinction -- then I should probably start enjoying things just a tad more; this is all well and good, but it has come to my attention that I have certain issues that need processing that are, at present, inhibiting my ability to do so. I am a bitter ex-Mormon, with a raging hard-on for atheism. Now there's nothing wrong with the latter part of that statement, except possibly the word choice, but I feel the ex-Mormon part needs some addressing.

I was under the impression that I had already easily negotiated all 5 stages of grief and even Fowler's 6 stages of faith in less than 3.5 seconds (but maybe in regards to the grief, I've been stuck in 1st the entire time: Denial). Given the vastness of my intellect, which by the way, is rivaled only by the immensity of space itself, and my considerably more limited emotional range, I thought that I could put the tragic little episode, popularly known as my Crisis of Faith, behind me, for good, like an unremarkable piece of refuse flushed away and forgotten forever. But I was wrong. Shocking, I know. A good friend of mine from New Zealand, now living in Korea, yes you Justin, has been in contact with me recently over this very blog and the results have been mixed, but usually bad. Bad, because somewhere deep in the recesses of my dark soul, an as yet untapped vein of pent up animosity has been revealed and I haven't handled it well, instead I've started mining. It turns out I'm pissed off, so sometimes I write stupid things like the last post I did (I still held back quite a bit, can't let Mr. ID completely out of the cage. Yet). Call it writing as therapy.

I really thought I was over this. I didn't want this blog to be one of those angry apostate ones. I'm an enlightened individual, above the common pettiness of mere mortals, or so I thought. Perhaps, I somehow managed to ignore the very real pain left in the wake of the upheaval of my entire world. Even convinced myself it wasn't there for a while. I'm good at masking pain (we'll get into that another day), but this time I've really out done myself. If the catholic church has taught me anything it's that when you suppress certain aspects of your humanity that probably should be expressed, sometimes they manifest themselves anyway in unwanted and very repulsive ways (there I go, being offensive again). Somebody get me a fixer. It might be time that I start dealing with my little problem directly, although I'm not sure what that means yet. So, beware as I get all introspective up in this public space, things could get ugly. I guess I just need to be patient and as excruciating as it is humble, as I try to find a new home (in more ways than one), a new way, a greater peace. Shalom.