An empire and a man are both painted with gun oil. i had written out an impossible, rambling exploit to try to elaborate this, but decided it was because I wanted to hear myself typing more than it was actually necessary.

 I hate it when people say 'I don't get it' when most of what I have to say is a Rorschach. It doesn't matter what I was thinking when I was writing it as much as what it means to you right now.

There comes a time when everything I am is just as much a part of me as it is everyone else. 

I imagine it'll be 3:44am, and we all wake up together from a strange dream, go outside (despite it being freezing cold) and let our feet stick to the icy steps. We'll all be looking at the same moon, ready to ascend but knowing there's too much left for us to finish.

I've had a few dreams like that. Given the outstretched hand of a beneficent omnipresence, overwhelmed with an expanded feeling of "it's ok. You've done enough. You've been enough. Please, it's time to come home" For a second, I believed it was true, but am suddenly aware of how desolate my home looks behind me, faded almost to the horizon, and have to decline.

"but there's so much left to do. There's so much left to do for everyone. If I've found my way here once, surely I'll be here again."

It's been what feels like decades since I've had that dream again, and I'm not sure exactly where to go now. It's my belief that I was going to die in my sleep on nights where I had those dreams. there are darker minutes in my head where I've resolved that not taking that hand is my only regret.

but I'm here right now.
there's so much work to do

what exactly I'm supposed to do is a blank first page in a lined scribbler. At least I've got the title so far. It's the same feeling you get when you're done school and won't ever have to go back. Rolling in front of you is utter open-endedness, limitlessness. There's so much you can choose to do, but in choosing one thing you are by default sacrificing the amount of time it takes to do that one thing, in that one space of time that only moves forward and only happens once, you are forfeit to another thing. This is not to say that the other things cannot be done, but you will not be the same you that you were if you were to do it second as opposed to first.

opposed.
I wonder if that word's being used in the right context here.
I read something inspiring once (I have to mention that I read something because it's a writers' job to tell people that they read more than they actually do). I kind of wish I could just leave that open-ended. I read something inspiring once. 

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If nothing else, if I'm not to inspire or feed or clothe anyone, build anything to outlive me, raise anyone to outlive me, clambering in vain for permanence in my purpose so I can rest easy in the ground, I suppose I'll have to choose to celebrate a single second. Then, to share that celebration or appreciation with someone else's second. 

I read something inspiring once.
"Religion and science are opposed in the same sense that my thumb and forefinger are opposed. Between them, I can grasp everything." 
-not me

Some people say that all evil spawns from religion. To say that, I think, would be to submit that life imitates art. God, under the pseudonym God, would have to be so much smaller of an idea to hate as people hate things and other people. We took what we saw in ourselves into our theology and threw God in a box, stamped it, named it, and gave it our voice. Then the people coming after us kept opening it, renaming it, fighting wars over how small the idea contained within it actually was.

God is his own pinky finger, according to faith. People invented "evil" before they were people. People invented "evil" when they knew what hungry was, and what full was, and never wanted to be hungry again.

Religion did not exist before people, and if you're into science, you'll take this sentence in for consideration. 

Sorry.