The Martial Law Diaries (Part One)

(Week Four - Desire Lanes)

This struck me last night as I lied staring up at the ceiling. What is behind our desires? Our longings?  These things that keep us up at night?

I have always found it immensely intriguing that one of the common things that drives culture's literature, cinema, and art is the basic human expression of longing. This concept is what ties all these things together. Throughout our own lives, we are driven by longing. It could be said that longing is what keeps humanity dreaming, moving, believing, and changing. But what are we longing for?  Is it happiness? A romantic relationship? Wealth? Starbucks? Phat stacks of toilet paper?

These things are all good but become quickly corrupted when these objects of longing become the objectives of longing. Look at what these stories in art show us when that happens; the great downfall of the Corleone family in ''The Godfather'', the obsession of Jay Gatsby in ''The Great Gatsby'', and the murderous fear in ''Saturn Devouring His Son''. The Bible puts it like this:


''Furthermore, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, He gave them up to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent new forms of evil; they disobey their parents.They are senseless, faithless, heartless, merciless.'' - Romans 1:28-31

What does acknowledging God have to do with all this? God IS the objective of longing, to quote the Westminster Catechism, ''The chief end of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever''.

Humanity has not done this. We get this as a result of making God's creation, as God has created anything we could desire, the objective in life or in other words:  

''Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images of mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity for the dishonoring of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator''. - Romans 1:22-25

This is why our longing becomes horribly corrupted. Our happiness turns into depression, our romantic relationships turn into selfish and unrequited love, our wealth becomes vain, Starbucks becomes a crippling addiction and the hoarding of day to day supplies entirely cuts off the poor and elderly. 

What God has created was never intended to satisfy us entirely. Our longing is to turn us towards Him and recognize that all of what He has created points back towards Himself.

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." - Revelation 22:13

ps - you should read the whole book of Romans

Saint Patrick and The Goddess of Death

^^I do not own the above artwork.

''Cue the scenes of empty streets, stores, and intersections. Long overhead shots of a deserted downtown. Pan over to the trash blowing into the wind, over the Iowa river, and the empty university campus. Cut to a wide angle zoom shot of a decayed corpse alongside a dirty sewer drain...''

''That's it!'' I say aloud to my own genius. The few people in the coffee shop look up at me in disgust. The woman in her mid forties, caked on makeup, beret, and cigarette in hand, sits with mouth open as she couldn't even fathom someone breaking the silence of her own personal space.

Finally, after exactly 120 days, I have finished the first paragraph of my screenplay. The customers soon surround me, as I'm yelling and whooping it up for my achievement, and proceed to douse me in hand sanitizer and light me on fire. ''Fire is the final purifier'' says, former MSNBC war correspondent,  Brian Williams; flames licking up in the reflection of his gyeballs, as the laughter of the corporate toiletry demi gods, could be heard far off somewhere distant...but oh, so loud. 

What was that you ask? Would you really want to know? You've ever hyperventilated into a brown paper bag in the back of a Fairway? Apparently so, because our leaders suggest it, the CDC commands it, and the death squads enforce it. Selah.

28 Javes Later

Well, this is already getting old. Everything's closed and everyone split. St Paddies day, like everything else, has been traded in for fear. How'd it get like this?

You can blame a lot of things: the shadowy figures, the Illuminati, and Elizabeth Warren but I could personally hear the satanic laughing of the Zucc himself this last weekend. Who needs the media when your cousin is telling you that Uncle Jim John Jones is buying out Wal-Mart on Facebook Messenger? 

A garage full of hand sanitizer and enough toilet paper for his men, horses, the cockroaches in the basement, and the two thieves who'll have his entire family held hostage by gunpoint by the end of the month. What's next? Who knows? Dean Koontz and Facebook does.

Barely a week passes and we're already talking about martial law, 5 month quarantines, and drinking the Kool Aid.

I looked out at my parking lot tonight and saw only the empty lots...depressing, depressing, depressing. What else?

The Dual Natures 

“Our Generation has had no Great war, no Great Depression. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives.” - Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

This is exactly what I'm talking about. This fear, this insanity, this isolation. This is the invisible war, my doodes. Not the virus but actually Satan. Spray yourself down with Lysol all you want. I've spent so much trying to understand that I'm driving myself into the hysteria. Who cares about what the crazies are saying. What the kids are smoking. The true battle is spiritual. Our culture worships itself ,and more importantly, it's own death. This ''2012'' crap is what keeps the snakes fed...don't worry, Karen will be the provider and protector now.   

What we are facing is our own humanity. Our sin. Look what happens when the guy down the block starts coughing...for those struggling with the exegesis of my nonsense, our culture, the crowd mentality that says ''BUY THE TOILET PAPER, SWAMP THE STORES, BATHE IN THE HAND SOAP, BRING IN THE ARMY, QUARANTINE THE QUESTIONABLE, SEAL OFF THE CITIES, BURN DOWN THE HIGHWAYS, BINGE WATCH THE ENTIRE GUNSMOKE SERIES, PRODUCE LOCAL METH, etc...'', is the goddess that is worshiped. It's called that because it's not necessarily an ugly beast, the notions of basic survival seem like a human right when you look back at your kids and grandparents, but it quickly becomes this unquenchable blood lust that is never satisfied. That's sin.

As the ambiguous cop out, the missionary bishop, St Patrick, once banished all snakes from Ireland. Not much is known how or why. He just did. Modern scholars understand this folk tale as an analogy of  the spread of Christianity in Ireland; picturing Patrick as the figurehead that progressed the gospel in the little island. I truly hope that this crisis reveals the ''snakes'' in our time in a way that couldn't be denied. That the fear mongers of our time will be driven back into the deepest corners of the Sub-Reddits where they belong.  Either way:

   ''Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.'' 

- Matthew 10:28(NASB)

Saint Patrick himself said this:

The Lord is greater than all: I have said enough. 

   

Elijah

The following is a transcription of a story I was told back in the winter of 2017:

My name is Elijah Parker, my full name is Elijah Mareno Mazetti. I was born in Italy, in a van, on the way to the hospital. My dad kept the umbilical cord as the doctors delivered because he was the only one there. I was the sixth and last child of my mother. I was thrown in foster care because my dad was an addict. He was a hard meth addict and an alcoholic. I was born under the influence of meth because my mother had used an hour and a half before I was born.

I lived in Italy for only about a week of my life, moved to the U.S. I am native american and Italian; half of me comes from native U.S. and the other comes from Italy. My family is a mafia and our family was relocated under the government relocation protection agency act, what they do is they take people who don't wanna do what they were doing before and relocated them under safety and change their names. When my grandmother died, my grandfather married a woman and he took her last name - Parker. So I'm now Elijah Pierce Parker.

When my dad was taking care of me for about two years (my grandparents have been taking care of me since then). He lived in Tulare, California (which is in northern California) and in a apartment. My first memory, at all, is some guy dragging me around, you know, in the apartment. I don't know what ever happened but I can't remember past that. My dad and I, eventually moved from there to southern California. To Sun City, which is by Menifee, and my dad got arrested.

On the way there, we had a U-Haul, my dad pulled over and fell asleep in the U-Haul. I remember the cops knocking on the window, and I was a little kid, shining lights in the window and next thing you know; my dad's getting arrested and the captain called my Uncle Dave (who is my dad's brother and now lives in New Zealand).

After my dad got arrested, I lived with my grandparents, and I was a crazy kid because I found out later in life (I was about seventeen); that I had PTSD. I'm on medicine for multiple personalities. When I was still inside of my mother, she was freaking out and there'd be about a couple different people inside of her head; so I had that from birth.

PTSD is really something that inhibits me from doing a lot things. My whole life, I've been kinda angry and I didn't know why and I found that out.

My grandparents put me in foster care when I was about six, and kept running away from foster homes when I was about nine; I was on the streets and I started smoking cigarettes, smoking weed. My dad got out of jail then he adopted me; he had a place near Sliver (Bodfish).Being with my father was off and on because he was in and out of jail. He was abusive, so I just kinda ran away a lot.

My dad was definitely using meth and definitely selling it. At the age of eleven, I was doing meth. Age fifth teen, my dad had strapped about an ounce of meth and an ounce of heroin on my back and said 'son, you ain't gonna go home till you sell this, okay?'. So I went to school and sold it to my friends (a couple of them have died since then; I blame myself everyday).

From there, I went to Riverside, California; which is more of a slum. I started shooting up and I got a girl pregnant and I had my daughter, Sofia, at the age of fourteen.

I just, to save myself by selling drugs on the street, and so I did and I got around by doing that. Eventually, I got to the point where I'm going to have my daughter, I really didn't care at all, then I got sober at seventeen; off of heroin. I was shooting up for about four years and I was speedballin' (which is both heroin and meth). I have been sober off heroin for nearly three years and sober off meth since September, 4, 2016. My next step is to stop smokin' weed and stop drinkin' (drinking has actually not been a problem for me).

I got arrested, and taken to prision, when I was seventeen years old. Sixteen, I was actually in the junior penitentiary (Tehachapi). I was in there because me and my dad were running a fight club, honest to God, underground in (Newberry Park, California?). They busted us on a father-son fight week, my dad and I were fighting each other when they came in; they had guns and everything but they also had tasers. My dad started swinging at the cops and, next thing you know, I'm getting tazed two times, the third time, with my dad, went over the shoulder and into my back and I have a scar from it. Right on my spine. 

My dad then, took down two of the cops and I took down one of the cops and we got arrested; I got assault charges on a officer and they were eventually dropped, after choosing to fight the case, because the officer's hadn't had started something with announcing themselves or given us our Miranda rights.


My dad just got out of prison, November of last year (2016), and my life has been crazy. I had my own house, sellin' drugs, I also had a couple cars.

My daughter was born with Spina Bifida, which means your disks are growing all funky, and she eventually passed away from it. She was given less than ten years and she passed away, four years and nine months, because she had an brain aneurysm (which is bleeding in the walls of your brain) and it was sudden, and swift, but she survived. She survived for three months and I sold my house, my two cars, and everything I had and ended up on the streets; just to make sure I had my daughter's hospital payments paid and I never paid a hospital payment before that. 

In the past couple years (last year) I lost seventeen people. A couple were to overdoses, and a few people, I've watched die from overdoses and held them and didn't know what to do.

One, I walked on, he had hung himself in the bathroom because he had just broken up with his girlfriend; he was drunk. My friend, Thomas, overdosed at a friend's house on heroin and another one passed away in the ditch by my house; he had overdosed on heroin. I had another one pass away, we were at my friend's party, and his name was Alaska. There were two people fighting, native Americans, they were drunk and someone pulled out a knife; he stepped in between them and he took the blade. He passed away on the curb.

Me and my friends were party hoppin' and one of them had taken a whole bunch of uppers and downers then, the fourth party, we go to sleep and we woke up in the morning (about 9:30) and the night before I told him 'don't go hard. Your gonna hurt yourself. Your gonna die.' and I touched him and he was ice cold. His girl was under his arm and I had to pry his arm up, stiff arm, and she didn't know. She was damaged up in her head. 

My step mom passed away months ago and my grandfather had a stroke.

So my life's been, everything it should be, because I lost faith in God. God's guided me ever since then. God has lifted me up, has been there for me to cry on his shoulder when I needed it. God is there, in the sense, that God is there when I breathe. God is there when I sleep. God is there when I mess up. God is there when I do right things, everything, God has been there and I didn't realize it till recently. 

On the way here (to Iowa); when I walked here from California. I walked from California to Albuquerque, New Mexico. There was a point where I had gotten off of the bus and (I was actually smoking meth on the bus) they caught me. I ran, I had my bag under the bus and it came all the way over here without me.

The next time I ordered a ticket, got back on the bus, it was kinda odd when I got on the bus. There was only one seat I could sit in and that was kinda odd in itself. The bus was packed to the back. I get in there, and I have my meth and I threw it in the toilet before I got on the bus. I had weed in my bag, I had walked around Flagstaff, Arizona and found that on the ground. On the bus, they do searches and stuff, and they searched me but I was paranoid because I knew it was in my bag ( I had stuffed it in my mouth at one point and was chewing it). 

I had started to hear some murmurs and there was a couple of people on the bus, that I noticed when I walked in, looking at me and it was weird; they studied me in a different kind a way that I study people. It caught me off guard when I noticed my bag, that was in front of me, started moving; under my seat. The guy in front of me had apparently reached under the seat and started to pull it. I grabbed it, real quick, and put it to my chest and I thought I had been paranoid or hallucinating. I put it back down and it started happening again. 

This bigger, African American, woman was sitting next to me; she was heavy set and she was nervous. There was a couple on the other side, an older gentleman, an older woman, that were just, literally, looking over me the whole time. It bothered me.

The man had a wife sitting next to him and she, eventually, held up her camera, right? I didn't know it was her camera; I thought it was her phone with her apps because it had apps. She moved and I could see, in her camera, there was me and I could see a little red dot and I was being recorded. On everything on my baby; I was being recorded. I was freakin' out and I was praying to Jesus Christ; that no one would touch me and the guy in front of me was like, 'can I just kill him?' (and I swear on everything. This is what he said) 'can I just kill him already?' and the lady in front, with red hair, was a nurse or something, she was telling the bus driver, up in front, 'no, no, if he had ate it (she was thinking I had eaten a meth bag or something), he'd be gagging and his heart rate would be up and he'd be sweatin' and I could hear all this and I'm thinking 'this is the most crazy thing that's ever happened to me'.

We ended up goin' to this semi-truck stop and there were two different ones on each side of the road. We stopped at the one with the gas station. I bucked it out that bus. I went to the other side and they called the cops. They thought I was crazy but I wasn't. They came and they took me and put me in a metal box, on a pick up truck, and they threw me in there and said ' we're going to take you down to the station'. They took me down to the station and they tested me, had me breathalyzed, did my blood, did my urine, and they said ' this kid's clean as a whistle'. 00 is what they said; I tested negative on everything. They had a craziest look on their faces and said, 'so you were tellin' the truth' and I said, 'yes sir, I was' and they said that I had two options: stay here overnight or leave right now. I said,'I'm gonna leave right now because I don't wanna stay in a cop's station' and they asked why and I said, 'I just don't, it's my personal preference'. So I started walkin' and I walked. 

When I was walking, there was this guy, he was native american and I asked him for a ride and he's like, 'yea, man, where you going to?' and I said,' the casino'. He was a different personality. I noticed when I got in there was an army thing, it was green (a bag?), he grabbed it real quick and put it behind his seat. He looked at me nonstop. Eye to eye contact the whole time.

When we pulled up to the casino, we were in the parking lot, and he says 'honestly, I'm just trying to get laid'. I was like 'he's going to try to rape me' and then he tries to put a knife up to my neck. I grabbed the knife and threw it up against the window. I eventually got to a truck stop and called my grandfather and said, 'grandpa, I need a ride, I'm out in the middle of New Mexico' so he picked me up.

I came to Iowa for a girl. 

When my daughter passed away, no one was there for me except for her, Carmen. She has my baby now; she's pregnant by twenty weeks. She's going to be a girl. God guided me here and brought me here for a reason.

We met over Facebook. She had a fake account, it was a guy that looked a stoner, she started talkin' funny and she said that she wanted to fight me. I got angry and said, 'oh yea, I'll fight you'. I gave her my address and everything then she said  'I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm actually a girl.' then she gave me her real name; Carmen Arson. She's my angel, she's my  everything, she was there for me when my grandfather passed away. 

Our relationship is definitely based off of God; we really haven't realized that until recently. It started out as desire, then our child, now for God. She's a really quiet girl. We definitely have plans for marriage (she had forgotten to wear her engagement ring when he told me this). 

I'm here for my baby. I'm here for me; to get better for the baby. 

Come Spring

''I can't stand to see your picture
On the dresser where I left it
Another sunny day
And you're eighty miles away...I could stand to be a fixture
In your faded family picture....Who cares if there's a party somewhere
We're gonna stay in...'' 

- The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart Come Saturday (2009)