Well the family stuff is finally over. The house is weirdly silent and comfortable. It seems bigger and more fitting. I feel a loss of familiar contact, and a refreshing independence. I drank my first beer today since last Sunday. It tasted both bitter and disturbingly delicious, as if it were the bitter dregs of happiness.

Wayne's farewell was on sunday. Strangely, he was a big factor in my moving to Boise. Now he's leaving and I feel slightly how I did when Arrian and Braden left on their missions. Like I'm losing someone large and important in my life. And yet although that feeling resonates to a small degree in my bones, I don't really feel it anywhere else. I don't feel sorry anymore that he's caught up in that insane mess we call a religion. I almost don't care. At least not for his sake. Only for my own. It's all a freakish reminder that in some part my identity, my heritage, are still wrapped up in that nightmare of irrational thinking and subconscious doublespeak. The heart follows the head, and my heart was heavy this weekend. I can't get rid of my family, I don't want to, and yet I don't want to be exposed emotionally to that stuff anymore. Getting hit from all sides from people who either want to 'save' me, or to watch me burn for my infidelity.
What am I saying?

I took a long bike ride today with my dad and my friend Ben who lives in McCall and who attends College of Idaho. He's a gay atheist liberal who is big into theater and history. Our conversations usually have to do with either movies or history.
It was a terrible ride, and I crashed about three times; my legs were a bruised, bloody mess, but we did stop by this amazing waterfall where you could swim around. The trick was to try to see how far you could get swimming against the current. It was fun because it was hard just to stay in the same spot because of how strong the current was, attempting to rush your cold wet body along a long rocky path. It was amazing; the saving grace of the whole ridiculous trip. It reminded me of my fights with the family, my rebelling against the institutions that I feel are trying to impart certain conventional understandings of the world onto my young mind under the guise of open minded liberalism. It's fighting against the current. This is a hilarious concept because yes, it does absolutely nothing with the idea of changing the current. I did not change the world today, no matter how hard I swam. I only momentarily succeeded in staying in the same place. Yet I noticed something interesting.
My arms hurt afterwards. My legs hurt. My abs hurt. I gave up realizing futility and the fact that I physically couldn't do it any longer. Yet tonight my arms look better. My abs look tighter. I'm in better shape as a result of fighting.

When I fight my family about religion, or about the war, or about economics, I am growing stronger. I'm not changing minds any more that I made any actual difference in the current today, but I'm changing myself. So therefore there isn't futility in fighting. Because at the end of the day we are only ourselves, so everything we do is in defense of ourselves, our ideas, our ideals, our lives.

So to me, it seems detachment is the answer. But not the overall answer, and not for everyone else. Just myself. Analysis from the outside. Study the stream. Laugh at it, admire it. But then jump in and fight. Understand also from experience. Sometimes I forget that many people believe that the end is coming soon. That jesus, or whoever is coming to destroy the unbelievers, to restore the one thing that no one can prove, and yet the one thing that needs no proof. Why? Hahahahaha. Because we are human. Because we are still savages, with a small veneer of sophistication. Because we see the sun and conclude that something is keeping it there. That there is still magic and mystery which makes us somehow better or more special than anything else. Because nobody wants to believe in coincidences, no one wants to believe that they aren't unique. That they are not special. I know that I don't. Hahahahahahahaha.

I have hit a wall tonight. I have a lot to say, I just don't know how yet.