These things are like a storm front brewing. Somewhere over the horizon - there they are, piling grey on grey, apartments, mountains, rolling, re-arranging. Of course, nobody sees them, but me. I don’t live on an earth all spinning on an axis like you. Mine is flat, this basement a place to see the world, and see the world I do. There. Those clouds. You know them.

Not clouds anymore: strings. I couldn’t untie these. Instead, I cut them, painful as it was. Tucked them away when I was done, under my clothes. They smile, don’t they? Not the fibre of my being, I mean; the sackcloth, the ashes (the dress pants, the shoes?) Happy, almost, as if to say that I’m not feeling raw around the edges. Of course, you do the same thing. You’re just not as good at the watercolours as I am. See this charcoal? It means I’m feeling fine! Someone - believe me…

You’re sitting on a swing. I don’t know why anyone would capture your fingers, or your arm, or half your face. Smiling, halfway. I can’t tell what the rest of your face is doing, because it isn’t there. My imagination tells me that right now you’re looking for something good in life to smile about. What that means, of course, is that you’re practicing your brushstrokes.

I’d show you - really, I would. But I’d have to get that close, and I’m sick of the photographs. I have a few undeveloped. Something about Toronto, but not three by fives. A mall, maybe? Could be. Crumbling buildings? Ah yes. A storm front gathering? Most certainly.

I crumble slowly, that’s all. Gather slowly. Bits of me tumble onto the paper every now and again. You’ve even seen one or two. But for every one or two you’ve seen, I’ve got twenty more. Thirty, even. All bits of concrete, a wall built of me. It’s over there. It’s between us.

Not clouds, buildings, or strings now. Music. A minor key. Did you notice how often I use that chord? It’s because it’s the only one that fits into that place you were. It’s almost like a limb missing.

Here, I’ve been honest. Did you like that? It’s not that the month has cured me or something. I’ve got gangreen, and the aspirin doesn’t really do much. Or maybe that’s what’s lodged here (I’m pointing at my throat).

I wrote a song today, about you, another one. Nobody knows it’s about you, because I used our secret language. Oh - you thought I’d forgotten? Unlikely.

Finally, not a song. At least, not one finished playing. I’ll tell myself the final movement’s all been worked out, but it hasn’t crossed that line yet. You’ll need to push me off a building to get that point home. And yeah, I wish you’d taken me up on that offer, too. Things that good rarely come. I wonder. I wonder if they go.

I don’t love freedom. I don’t like it, even. Not freedom in some etherial sense of the word, not freedom from belonging to people. I mean “freedom” in its ultimate meaning.

See, I like to talk about being free to. Or being free from. These things are, of course, fine to talk about, to wrestle with. I am free to do such and such, to enjoy such and such, or not to suffer the pain of hell.

But these things don’t exist in a vacuum - and that’s the difficulty. I am, in the final analysis, still thinking like a postmodern. Thinking of myself as that individual, adrift in a world of individuals. Of course, that’s just ridiculous - I may live most of my life on my own, but that doesn’t mean I actually am alone.

I’ve become convinced that being in community mean being honest, primarity. Think about it. How can you be in a true community, one that builds up good and tears down evil, if no one’s honest?

A greater question, focusing less on the individual and more on the community, is how can the community promote honesty? I mean, each of us is a bad person. But the face we present to our communities isn’t that of a bad person. It’s a good person with occasional flaws that we like to iron out. Sometimes, we even modify our behavior to fit an ideal that we don’t even believe in.

There are things about me I’ve never told anyone. There are things about every single person that have never left the walls of their mind. Some of those things are horrible, and some are wonderful. But mostly, they’re probably horrible.

Maybe the problem is how good we feel compelled to act. Those secret things - people would be horrified to find them out. It’s easier to focus on the little things. Who’s been out at a bar. Who smokes. Who swore. Who listens to the radio a bit too loud. Who peeled out of the parking lot. Who watched what movie.

It’s not just these people feel free to do such things - it’s just a lot easier to pretend these are the marks of a true Christian. It’s easier to engage eachother on that level. It’s not threatening, really. If I haven’t ever visited a bar, smoked, swore, there’s nothing there to engage the layer underneath.

I don’t really want that. A few people do. But probably most don’t. It’s not an easy thing to do, either individually or corporately. It needs openness on two sides. See, inside me, I have two different people. I have an adualterous woman, and I have a pharisee. One loves to sin. The other one loves to throw stones. In the middle - Jesus, working in different ways with each. He personifies the community we seek. He’s telling the pharisee to shut up or put up, and commanding that woman to go and quit with the sinning already.

Like I said, I don’t like freedom, if freedom means to let it all hang out.