Watched a live production of Sweeney Todd today. Wow, that was a downer! My favorite part was when all the characters that I had grown so attached to throughout the whole show murdered each other at the end. Now, this isn't a declaration that Sweeney and I didn't get along through much of the production (downers can be very important to my mental health sometimes), but I did find some of his philosophy to be uncomfortably intriguing. Two quotes come to mind, both having to do with Sweeney's decision to murder ALOT of people and turn them into meat pies.

"Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief. For the rest of us death will be a relief. We all deserve to die."

and

"It's man devouring man, my dear! Then who are we to deny it in here"

The scary thing is that these little social commentaries actually made sense to me at their time of delivery, which causes me to curse Mr. Todd and his keen ability to make me agree with depressing things. I'm taken back to the birth of my keen sense of duty to the world, sprouted from my days on the southern California beach (where so many social crusaders are born). I was the kid who got emotionally attached to his sand castle. Who actually became angry when the first wave breached his wall and moat defensive network. Upon first attack, I fought back with resilient determination. When the system inevitably failed I would find myself strewn across the front of my little sand village, taking the brunt of the waves, while the other children laughed instead of coming to my aid. Sweeney is just another one of those kids.
Life is hard (ok, Sweeney's was harder than mine), but its ours! Protect it. The D&C empowers us to be änxiously engaged in a good cause" and to "bring about much righteousness". There is more to life than watching our sand castles wash away. I'm grateful for a God who plans my trials for my good and allows me to struggle at making use of my life.

Licking my wounds

The Last Leaf

The wind blows and the leaves fall,
Releasing the weathered branches that gave them life,
They whirl and spin to the pile of rot below.
Like shooting stars running to meet the night,
Soaring and burning, they crash to the ground.

But not all will choose this way to dance!

I am the last leaf.
My coat is scorched brown from the alluring heat of Summer
And once again aches for the green of a Spring birth.
I cleave to the branch my brothers have given up for dead.
Day after day, I watch them dance on the breeze,
These are thrills I will never know.
My branch quakes in the wind and sags from the strain.

But still,

I hold on.

Believing against belief,
That although the Fall has come,
The Winter never will.

Once the leaves hit the ground, they all look the same.



...Or Not To Be

What would it be to dissolve and cease
To lie down in a puddle and just...give in
To give up on me and give in to peace
To let transient forces break down my skin

To be a lone cloud in a near cloudless sky
And feel my thin wisps licked clean by the sun
To be cotton candy, once cumulus and high
But now, but a glaze on a sugar-drenched tongue...

...And what would it be if this already was
Myself, just a dot on an impressionist's brush
Smeared on a canvas where other dots pause
To pierce through my borders with a gentle harsh push

And what would it be if this could but be!
An eternal forfeit in the face of a fall
Choosing to end with my last chance to choose
Believing, Ï'm nothing,"then believing nothing at all.

What would this be, this nihilist's dream
Where I could lie down without taking a fall
And pull out my stitches at each careworn seam
Free from doubt, free from faith, free from choice, free from all.