Hoppin' Down the Bunny Trail

Are we redeemed yet?
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5:30am and I've been up, drinking coffee, eating Pop Tarts, and doing laundry since before 5.
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The more answers I get, the more questions I have.
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You ever been kicked while you were down?
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Do you surrender yourself?
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Where are you, Hank Chinaski?
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A judgmental counselor will be a lonely counselor.
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How much pain can you hold?
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Maybe we're not like God at all. Maybe we're the parts of Himself He couldn't stand. Maybe that's our only resemblance. But He, being God and all, had the ability to peel off the corrupt, the diminutive, the weak, the lesser. Maybe we're the skin He shed, and He sits shiny and new upon some clean throne while we cast about in the slough.

We're the parts God had exorcised, perhaps. "Cut that right out, doc, and I'll be just fine."
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I'm folding tiny pink dresses. I'm glad He allowed us innocence, even if it's fleeting.
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Innocence quickly becomes a myth, a memory, something we can sense and touch, but the genie simply won't go back in the damn bottle. So we break the bottle into shards, and we cut ourselves in the process, and at least that sensation is our own.
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I refuse to give up though. I refuse to overlook innate goodness. I can't put my finger on its place, its quantity. I see it in fleeting ways. I see my father, rushing to a broken boy in the bottom of a deep ditch. I see that.

I have the words for what happened to the boy, because I saw it. Saw it all. I was first on the scene. 66 feet he was thrown. That's what the newspaper said. I know exactly where he landed. I could take you there today. He was on his back, one leg mangled, in shock, semiconscious. I have these words.

I don't have mental pictures, however. I never did. I couldn't keep them, not even for one second, even on the day of the accident. It's a strange thing.

But I see my father, calm, running to his side with a blanket, even as the boy's mother let out a scream my friend in the trailer park asked me about the next day. The trailer park was about one mile from my house.

Goodness is real. We get to have it, we sinners, we debaucherers, we blasphemers. We do. Maybe it's our natural state after all, and our course is only affected by the peripherals that call us to the precipice for most of our waking lives.
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I made a point in class last night. If you could have some choice between being labeled obsessive or being labeled an addict, go with obsessive.

Because, you see, in the minds (if not on the lips) of every person who considers the term "addict" is, at some point, a judgment. There's an inherent assumption of moral failure in addiction that simply isn't in a more clinicial-sounding term like "obsessive." No, the latter lends itself to sympathy, empathy. The former just lends itself to the clucking of tongues.

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God bless you. Really.

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[A post called "The Chorus of Swine" was here overnight. It was a bit too much. If you've come seeking it for some crazy reason, I took it down]