Surveillance

Feet. Snakes. Period. Automatic Flushable Toilets. Heights. Poop. Few things freak me out beyond these few points. But I will now add one more to the list. I just found out my family reads my blog. In fact, they are reading this and giggling and chuckling to themselves in New York. Even my parents, whose English knowledge is limited, has received print-out copies of my blog from my siblings. This has caused me to create a microfilm in my head of every post I have ever written, from the content to the language. In the same way that a woman does not want their ex-boyfriend to see them lonely and bored on a Friday night, or a man does not want another man talking to them in the neighboring urinal, there are certain rules in the world of blogging. One of them which I have already previously pointed out, but continually happens is when someone brings up something personal you wrote in your blog. There exists a purgatory state between a diary that is hidden under your bed and something I say to you. The blog is that state. Learn to respect it. The other one seems assumed and often taken for granted. Parents should not read their children's blogs.

So this got me to some thinking. Blogging is no longer about mental peeping toms or overdramatic writers who are too bored to do anything else. It is about emotionally starved individuals whose only hope to know someone is through reading their blogs. The sense of excitement from my family or anyone else to read my blog is their own window into what my heart is really feeling. Past the silence, communication awkwardness, football games, talks about food and bills, they are too afraid to ask me and I am too afraid to wonder if they want to ask me. It is somewhat sad that we have to wait weekly or sometimes, nightly to understand a person's heart as if they were some sort of Dickinson type character, locked in their own house as a genious recluse, tossing out a slab of meat taken shape in a website, to feed emotional gluttons. But maybe it is not their fault. Or since I am writing about you, the reader, maybe it is not your fault. Maybe I should tell you everything and anything in the poetic and anonymous form that I do here. Maybe I should change the conversation from girlfriends and religion and politics to my breaking heart and my frustration with God and how I really do not care about politics. Maybe I should have told my father what I wrote in "A Song For My Father" or tell my 162 friends that I do care for them or tell Kristain Stanfill to stop caring about his hair so much or tell you that I love you. Maybe I should open the door.

No. No! I am not going to open the door. If there is something that I have learned about myself after living in a one-room basement with a family of five for 1 year, a small house that was the laughing stock of anyone who passed for 11 years, one studious and loner roomate, one gay and outgoing roomate, three roomates in an apartment, a summer of 15 people in one house, I have learned that I am a loner. I like to hang out and be outgoing, but on my time. I want to retreat back to my own space and my own bed, and dance like Ricky Martin and doing the electric slide to Christmas songs without having to worry who is watching. I need alone time and if I don't get it, I will create it. So you're telling to not only have an open door policy for my room, but an open door policy for my heart as well? No. Heck no. "Hell" no. Hell no.

I might give you an open window. I might give you a peephole. I might provide a surveillance camera. I just might. Here is the point. I will let you see everything, as long as everything is everything that I want you to see. I will let you see that I like to dance, Christmas songs, and the dates/times that I was thinking about this material, but beyond that? Good luck. But being that I do spend most of my time in front of other men's and women's eyes, I realize my subconscious method of doing what I am doing or not doing what I'm not doing based on who is watching. For example, if I am near a Christian group, I am extra sensitive to make sure that I do not say FUCK no matter what, even if a huge bookcase falls on my funny bone. I will have to utter something ridiculous and unnatural such as "Fudge Cookies from the son of a Milkshake." Pathetic. If I am near a girl, I'd give a deeper sigh once the words "abortion" or "rape" are mentioned. If I near a guy, I'll give a louder grunt and say "Yeah, seriously, right?!" when they just make some comment on a pathetic coach from the Georgia Tech Buckeyes or the UGA Jackets. I think I just pissed off enough hardcore southerners to start up a revolution of the KKK:remixed, now with popped up collars and waffled-flavored Bibles. But I digress.

So here is the question. Who am I? I am who I am when no one else is looking. When I'm not in Sunday's best singing "Blessed be your name" around a few hundred people and when I'm not watching BET music videos with a bunch of horny men, who am I? But the ensuing question is, when is there a time when no one else is looking? Technically, if I actually believe what I claim to believe, that God is always walking beside me and sees me and loves me in the moments when I am in the deep, dark corner with no more artificial lighting to expose anything I am doing, even to myself. If I actually believed this fact, then I am never alone. This is even the point that gets many people through times of loneliness or pain in their lives. But when I think back to all the moments when I have not been seen by people, the resume would not be very attractive. I am a murderer. I am a rapist. I am easily-angered. I am god in my own eyes. I am a hypocrite. I do not love. (And he loves me anyway?) But put on that smile as I open the door, pretend to be what everyone expects me to be, and I'll be okay.

Someone told me, eyes can reflect light better than most parts of your body. Somewhat like a mini-sattelite of the sun, it can be used as light. And therefore, in the same way that light exposes, eyes have the capacity to expose as well. So I guess, I run from eyes as a way to run from light. Why do I care more about the opinions of men than the opinions of God? It is not because I do not believe in the existence of God. If I didn't, I might as well become an extreme heathen. I'd rather be one of those than a lukewarm man, who swings back and forth like a slut on Jerry Springer. But I think I have created some sort of silly illusion into thinking that I am filtering out my life to God, only letting him see me during church, fellowship meetings, lunch dates with people, or anytime I am giving to charity. That is when the spotlight is on. That is when surveillance is the heaviest, when the angels Gabriel and Michael take seat. But when I am alone in the dark, I get the angels Dexter and Helga to take their place.

"God sees everything," he says. Go get those rapists and those terrorists and those blasphemers, God. Go get' em. Finally, just ice will be served. "So what about you?" he says. John said it best..."Thank God for grace."