Tombstones

Tombstones

By Ryan Billington

Sometime between 2006 and 2007

I don’t know how I got here.

Covered with cuts and bruises;

My left arm is numb and my head is throbbing.

I find myself in the bottom of a crevasse.

Something is behind me—I have to get out.

Running frantically, trying to escape this doom.

Emotions rush through me like riptides, creating a storm inside—

Unpredictable currents with no purpose or direction,

Blowing, tossing the small paper boat of my sanity like chafe in the wind.

On an impulse, I rush at the canyon wall

Grabbing at sticks and sand,

Trying to pull myself out of this prison.

But the lock holds firm.

The sand melts into emptiness, and the sticks are transformed into loose briars

That only tear at my hands.

Falling… falling yet again.

The impact sends my mind further into delirium.

Panic furthers its grip on me;

I can feel the crack running down my mind—

Reason is being fought by Panic.

I am fighting a loosing battle; I am being taken over.

What will happen when my desire shrivels to the nothingness that surrounds me?

I’ll fade away—

Becoming part of this desolate wasteland,

Melting away into the sand.

Every path I stumble up ends in another bruise, another knock to my reeling mind

Every rock and briar that I grasp collapses.

Is this it?  Will I simply fade away?

I can find no escape,

Desperately trying to hold onto the little life I have left.

Another desperate lunge, another failure.

My senses are spinning

I try to stand but instead sink to battered knees.

It’s playing with my emotions:

Panic, anger, fear

Emptiness, loneliness.

We cannot both survive this.

I can’t escape; I can’t run away.

I’ve finally found myself in the corner I’ve seen coming in the worst of my nightmares.

But they used to be only nightmares—

Then, I could wake up.

Now, I can’t.

Will I ever wake up again?

As myself?

Will it leave me?  Will I become a shell?

Without feeling, emotion, intellect, personality—

Melting into the sand of mediocrity so well that I shall simply disappear.

Fatalism—I loathe the very word.

There is always hope, but I cannot find it.

I cannot get out.

I am stuck and loosing my mind as my emotions are played with like I am some sort of toy.

Life is beautiful—

But living a deadness is like living in hell:

Seeing but never being able to create, to form, to have;

Tasting warmth to know the bitter cold;

Seeing a glimpse of the sun so that I may fathom the complete blackness in which I’ve lost my way.

God can pierce this darkness, but the damage has been done—

The scars will remain.

I must do something to escape from this crevasse

But I am forced to do nothing.

Only to sit and watch, helpless in this awful reality of the garbage that surrounds my cage.

Instead, we walk around this graveyard, this crevasse

And analyze, critique.

Why do we choose to stay here instead of running to the meadow that is over the hill?

No.

We stay and analyze the tombstones…

Ryan Billington

5-2-06

AP English

Extra Credit

Giraffes and Flip-flops

            The unique fascinations held by people can prove to be quite intriguing.  A love for a certain squeaky pen has dramatically affected most UCA students academic experience, and this year would not have been the same without a certain ASB officer’s fire for Ephesians 3:16-19.  From dancing in the bathroom to rubber duckies to “questing” to the squishiness of a sea anemone to giraffes to penguins to lime green flip-flops to the cloudy skies of Portland, there is no end to the list of these special items.  Some come with stories, several with personality, and a lot with, “…don’t ask why, I just do.”  But these individualized, seemingly random interests can often expose sides of a person that are impossible to see, and offer insights that words cannot capture.  Although “being unique” is often beaten to death in speeches, sermons, and other verbal bantering, only a few pause to appreciate these specific differences that break up the monotony of the everyday.  In this rush of last year activities, it seems that life is often transformed into a cyclone that rips through life and days later we wake up and realize that time, the events, and the people are gone with the wind.  In a quiet moment, remember to take the time to notice the unique and pause to thank God for the person next to and for the diversity.

Ryan Billington

3-10-06

AP English

Extra Credit

World Famous

By Ryan Billington

            I had the privilege of going on the UCA gymnastics tour to Yakima and Brewster this March.  Over the 5-day tour, the team racked up over 17 hours on the bus.  Our team left Thursday evening and stayed at Ma and Pa Soule’s house that night.  We performed at Yakima Adventist Christian School and then drove to Brewster for a show Saturday night, after which we drove all the way back to Yakima. 

Sunday morning found everyone tired, sore, and a little low on enthusiasm.  We were scheduled to arrive at the All Nations Center, run by the Kravig family, to give a show and clinic for the kids.  Our half time show, unicycle routine, mixed pairs, and quads all rushed by without a hitch, and suddenly Soule was out on the mat, announcing that it was time for all the kids to come forward.  Each gymnast grabbed one or two kids, and suddenly life was teeming with shouts, yells, and people everywhere.  I picked out two boys.  Then David Wheeler and I set to work teaching them the tricks of the trade.  After several stunts, we were running low on ideas, so we asked the boys what they would like to learn.  After a mumbled, “I don’t know,” the eldest looked up and said, “Umm… do you know my sister?  She goes to UCA.  Oh, you wouldn’t know her.  You’re world famous.”  I chuckled and helped the youngster into position for a Front Angel.  But his words echoed inside my head… world famous.  We finished the clinic and wrapped up the show, which had gone fairly well.  While almost all of the pyramids had gone up, it seemed our timing was farther off than previous shows and that we weren’t as together as a whole.  After the mats were rolled, the trailer packed, and the pizzas eaten, we loaded the bus for a 3-hour trip to UCA.  Still, the boy’s words would not leave me.  I didn’t even know him, yet our 10-minute interaction had left my mind spinning.  I saw him as a normal, wide-eyed kid with a shy smile and a timid voice.  In his eyes, we were a world-class gymnastic team that was taking time to play and be friends with him: to show him how to stand on top of a pyramid of giants, and to give him a high five.   

            In life, we don’t often see ourselves through the eyes of others.  The sight of our character, our way of interacting, and our everyday actions is limited to a single perspective.  We are almost blind to the ways we affect others, the thoughts we inspire, and the impact we have.  For the gymnastic team on the tour, working and connecting with those kids was a simple part of our show, but for the boy I worked with, it was almost surreal.  It’s the everyday events in life, the everyday moments we live that can mean so much to someone else.  A smile, five minutes of connection, an encouraging note, a caring question that shows not our face, but the face of Christ.  Living is for Christ.  Not Week of Prayer, not a handful of Sabbaths.  Living… and that, my friends, is beyond anything else:  even being world famous. 

Melancholy

Ryan Billington

2-28-06

AP English

Descriptive Essay

Melancholy

            Winter’s sky ripples across the horizon.  The wind swirls strokes of gray and marble with white, contrasted by threads of blue.   While my passions and pastimes are framed in sunshine and warmth, there is a capturing presence carried by this landscape, by nature in winter.  The air is flavored with rain and earth, a crispness I taste, I breathe.  I feel the tinge of the chilled gusts sweeping across fields that roll and dip with the sky.  Pinpricks jump from my skin, and it seems I am standing by the windswept sea as a wave crashes, covering me with the sensation of ten thousand salted icicles sweeping through my skin.  A lone tree beckons me to join him in thought and offers a root-broken patch of grass which welcomes my hands, its pale yellow strands scattered amongst a faded green, scant covering over the earthen brown below me.  With rough birch bark at my back, I allow my thoughts to be pulled away.   

            Gray has enveloped nature, a touch of mortality in the strokes of the artist’s brush.  Nothing is left unaltered.  The leafless trees wave their twigged fingers at a washed blue sky.  The brown fields look worn, tired from trudging the length of parallel furrows in a lifelong journey.  Even the grass is hidden behind a mist of silver.  Faded from the world, death and life come together in season.  The air is pregnant with reflection, smelling of good clean soil.  Spring abandoned this scene long ago, and Winter feels the pain of its passing, sad sorrow at the loss of an old friend.  So he remains:  watching, waiting, wistfully longing for the sight of his companion.  It seems Winter has grown old and gray and somewhere in this landscape is the wisdom of his thousand years waiting for discovery, hidden behind this curtain of sobriety.  Beauty in sobriety, nobility in gray…

            A question was asked, “How do I live, how do I act with the knowledge of so much evil in the world?”  As one of four seasons lives as a testimony to grayness there is a season of people:  people that carry a deep sadness, a wistfulness through life, searching, scanning the horizon for an old friend.  A piece of puzzle is missing, a rightness that is gone from the world.  They journey along the furrows of life, fulfilled yet knowing this incompleteness, seeing that not all is right.   Wholeness is missing until an old friend comes home.  It is their service—it is their personality to carry this burden and to be the visual reminder of absence, a reminder of suffering.  Beauty in sobriety, nobility in gray…

Backed by the trunk of my companion, I stare at this silver world.  Life reveals the life that has left; color reveals the existence of gray.

High on Exhaustion

Ryan Billington

12-5-05

AP English

Journal Entry Essay

High on Exhaustion

            A man stumbles down the sidewalk.  His eyes are bloodshot and his clothes and hair are rumpled.  He trips on the uneven surface of the sidewalk and falls to the ground.  Most people would assume that this man is abusing some type of substance.  But the man is not high, drunk, or wasted; he just hasn’t slept for 4 days.  Although most people never consider it, the experience of living in an exhausted state is remarkably similar the “high” effect produced by the misuse of drugs or alcohol.  Inability to focus, vagueness or loss of memory, the condition of finding mundane events uproarious, and experiencing strange feelings are usually all thought of as drug-induced states; but exhaustion produces similar effects.

            Examples supporting such a conclusion lay hidden on every side.  Examine the driving situation:  a car weaves down a two-lane road.  It drifts into the left lane, and jerks back into the right.  All of the driver’s actions are delayed, and car is barely staying on the asphalt.  The driver is in a semi-conscious state:  is he drunk, or is he drowsy?  The meager evidence makes it difficult to answer, because the actions of a drunk driver and a sleepy driver while on the road are alike.  In accidents, both survive more often than people that are awake and alert, and both usually find it difficult to recall the events leading up to the accident.  Many more illustrations can be drawn:  physical side effects, the prohibition of alcohol and sleeping agents…

            Everyone reacts differently when confronted with sleep deprivation.  Some people become moody, quickly rising in rage over the most innocent misunderstanding.  Others seem happily disconnected from reality, while still others are transformed into very mellow creatures, flowing along with the current of life.  Exhaustion changes the psychological, physical, and emotional aspects of a person’s life.  Common sense becomes not so common, and the process of logical thought is suddenly filled with pitfalls and snares.  Because they are seeing life differently, individuals in a semi somnambulant state experience different emotions than they normally would.  A drowsy person often seems to move through the day as if they were encased in quicksand.  But can’t all of these descriptions be applied to someone who is involved with drugs or alcohol?  The similarities are striking... once normal people are transformed into angry drunks, mellow marijuana smokers, and emotionally unstable meth addicts.

            Imagine a world in which these similarities were realized; a world in which alcohol, heroin, LSD, marijuana, PCP, and methamphetamines didn’t exist, replaced by lack of sleep.  In such a world alcohol wouldn’t claim millions of lives per year.  Teenagers wouldn’t die from overdosing on drugs, ruin their lives with addictions, or destroy their minds with substances.  Babies wouldn’t suffer from the effects of drugs and alcohol at birth.  Suicide rates would drop.  Depression would be almost non-existent.  To escape from life, all someone would need is time and a pillow.  They could call in sick, stay up for 2 days, sleep for one, and return to ordinary life the next day, without side effects.  Imagine such a world…

A Pen

 

A Pen

by Ryan Billington

Written in the summer of 2005

Meaningless scribbles, a pen in the hand

Neither understanding nor fathoming the depth or use it holds

A purpose it has, a brush for the Master’s piece

Resting in the scars

But to what end is it that I write?

Uncontrolled existence, chaos fills the purpose

Poetry, prose, arithmetic, or account

I know I am held but for what?

Does ink even flow from this mind that consumes me?

Thoughts forever flowing, but from the Source or the stone?

Pride in use, purpose, Maker—not self

Confidence, assurity in what dirt contains

Jar of clay or piece of shale,

To what end have I been formed?

To some a crown and to some a fork

Both from silver vein

But in the end, its purpose served, both shall melt away

For what makes it last and fulfill purpose laid

Is the Maker not the clay

And so I sit a pen, this lump of mud

Unsure, unstable, confident, assured

A pen resting in the Master’s scars