I grew up in a religion where we weren't "supposed" to watch R-Rated movies. 

This was a moral conundrum for me because movies have always been an obsession for me, and I liked watching as many possible. I wanted to know as many as I could. 

I also wanted to be a good member of the church I was a part of. 

I was contemplating this conundrum, when a friend shared a handy-dandy analogy to help me navigate my moral mindfield a bit better. "Would you eat a chocolate cake with a little bit of poop in it?" His point being, yes, parts of the movie might seem good, but you're still ingesting a little bit of poop with every one you watch. 

The efficacy of this pearl of wisdom aside, I can't help but think of it as I try to keep updated on what's happening to the world tonight. You see this year I made a commitment to myself to not "play ostrich" anymore. In the past I've decided that trying to keep on top of current events only makes me angry and depressed. My solution in the past: not caring. 

Now I'm old enough to know how irresponsible that is. 

It doesn't make the follow-through any easier, because right now the world seems like an endless hellscape. 

I feel I'm walking through a blizzard of constant chaos and insincerity. But where most people have echo chambers and partisan comment sections to shelter from the storm, my biggest challenge always seems to be answering a question: "Where do I fit in?"

It's one of my greatest desires to not be a misanthrope. I don't want to be the guy who hates everybody, but the struggle is real. 

For the past 5 years I've been thinking about "the middle". The silent majority as Nixon called it, though as soon as you saw me quoting Nixon, you probably have already clicked off this post. Still here? I'm talking about most of the world. You see it's my theory that most of the world isn't crazy. 

There is one great sin which I have come to fear above all others. Certainty. - Conclave.

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity” is a line from the poem “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats.

Make It So I'm Never Found. - A novella

 There are places that feel terribly desolate in the most unlikely places. Some of the most populous states in the US of A are home to the most lonely locales imaginable, and a human can die there without ever being heard to make a sound, like a man dying of thirst surrounded by an ocean of water. 

Jonathan Ritz loved that very fact about his vast plot of land, even if eventually it would be his sole source of regret. 

As with the loneliest of places, it didn't have a name. With all places so inclined you could only call it by what it was not. The places it was near. 

"You'll go five miles southeast of Maiden Valley. In the foothills of the Santa Maria mountains just below Mt. Winamac. The entrance is halfway beyond mile marker 18. You'll see a large rusty gate, and the road will look impassable. It's not impassable, it only looks that way." 

These are the directions Thomas had received from Victoria, Ritz's former assistant, even if it had taken quite alot of prodding, and quite a bit of money. He'd killed her three nights later. A bit of unsavory business, but sadly necessary. No one could follow his trail, especially not the Robes.  

That's the place Thomas thought, the perfect place to die, and never be found. 

If only he was right. 

Thomas wound his S-Class, a vehicle perfectly unsuitable for such a trek, up a winding asphalt road overgrown on all sides by live oaks trees and poison oak bushes. He had never been one for the woods, but even he could see the appeal of this place, beyond his obvious need for remoteness.  

But as the woods grew deeper and more oppressive, Thomas's mind naturally wandered to darker things. He wondered how many people had died in these woods. 

If by some miracle, Jesus was real, and all the dead of the millenia whose bones rested here could suddenly reform and walk, what kind of crowd they would draw. He didn't suppose that it was impossible for the guy from Nazareth to coexist, with the dark behemoths he had gotten to know over the last few months. Maybe the ideas of christians, and the Robes all fit together in some twisted way.like some overly elaborate puzzlebox. Surely every darkness has its counterbalance in light. Why couldn't the Christ be theirs? Still, as he ascended further into these dark woods, he couldn't help but be reminded of the epic size of those terrors he had witnessed. Even Jesus felt so very small against the scope of their gargantuan blackness.