Moving Along Now

Been a while since the last Phaysis site news update. Nothing out of the ordinary with that. Dropping in to mention that I’m considering a site redesign; this design is novel, it’s fun, I like it, others like it, but it’s getting old on me. It’s the shellacked, plasticene sheen on my otherwise foul temperament as of late. It’s a seasonal thing, I hope.

In one of my side projects I’m playing around with a lot of DOM-level html scripting. Cool stuff. Building tables on the fly from javascript data. Capturing mouse events on each table row. Client-side manipulation of the document interface. That kind of stuff. Super cool. Also, same project, using new perl modules to automatically handle class-to-database relationships; a true lifesaver. All that stuff is ongoing. Everything is ongoing.

Ok. So, yeah, site stuff soon. You heard it here first.

The Gentle Question of Faith

Reconnection and an Old Kinship:

A week ago, I received a particular letter from an old friend of mine with whom I have recently begun corresponding again; he is one of my friends from my years at Ouachita. Our first acquaintance was in 1991 during the beginning of my second, and his first, year there. Through our short several years of walking along the common path, this man became one of the few people whose spiritual steadfastness, flexibility, and common sense I had come to respect over those years and beyond; even though I left Ouachita as a nonbeliever, I still respected him and admired that he still, to this day, would not settle for anything less than What Is Right.

We Felt The Answers As We Walked:

In our early years at Ouachita, he and I and a several other friends would gather together ad-hoc and discuss our religion, our bible, our lives, and our faith. Sometimes during our chats we would delve into something we were studying in our bible courses or foundational theology classes or perhaps something from a lecture or sermon we attended. Sometimes we’d discuss the things that weighed heavy on our hearts, minds, and souls. Being a faith-based college, these kinds of discussions happened quite often all over the place. But even with these given surroundings, very few examinations, and fewer examiners, I feel, went as deep into faith as our particular circle of friends. Though my major, minor, and work-study kept me away in parallel but close circles, I had the great fortune to join with them on many occasions.

On a cold, damp, overcast evening some time near the early winter of 1992, we wrapped ourselves up in warm clothing, put on our hiking shoes, packed up our flashlights, some snacks, water bottles and bibles and we hiked, the five of us, to a small clearing in the woods between a large pasture north of campus and the Ouachita river to its east (an area where I had enjoyed hiking alone many times). As we talked about some heavy and important things like personal inner struggles and problems, and as we touched on some inner places where we needed help, we felt the Holy Spirit move us. So we talked, opened up, and shared. To us, true change was to begin on the inside.

In one spontaneous instant, one of us stood up, held up their hands, and started praying, opening up the conversation to our Lord. The Spirit was calling and we answered: we locked together, arms around each other, huddled close for warmth and healing, and we prayed the prayers of five humble mendicants, five believers who intensely needed strength to make it through our days. The Spirit moved us, and we kept praying, kept pouring tears; some of us knelt down, some of us lay prone, but we kept praying. When we felt our hearts were about to burst, we stopped, ended our prayer with blessing and praise, then we opened our eyes and perceived that something had changed. Upon picking up our satchels, we wiped away our tears, smiled, and quietly streamed our way out of the woods towards the nearby pasture to return to campus.

It was then, as we neared the edge of the woods, that we noticed the big white fluffy flakes of snow. If my memory serves me well, at that early in the winter season, snow was possible but improbable, and it was not on the forecast. Knowing this, we looked at each other and scratched our heads, expressing wonder about the possibility, any at all, of any relation between the two events — the prayer and the snow — and we laughed, elated, agreeing that whether it was a sign to us or not, the snow was provided to us by our Lord. Bless God! Bless God! On our trek back to campus, we were giddy, our spirits lifted, and we knew that everything was going to be alright.

Walking Into the Debate — the Reversed Roles:

Some years later, I had been walking around campus late on this one particular evening. My mood had been foul for a few days, and I was deeply troubled, hence the walk. After having lost and left my faith a few months prior, I was still wrestling with questions that I could not answer without the faith that provided those answers. As I walked, I crossed paths with my old friend by happenstance. At that time, our paths in life had diverged a bit but, given our proximity, we still ran parallel. So, with our first chance to talk in months, we stopped for a light Chat About Things and found ourselves sitting on the streetside steps of Lile Hall for the better part of 2 hours. I confessed to him my recent loss of faith. I presented my new views, and he played (for lack of better terms) Devil’s Advocate against my views; he grilled me, presented logical arguments, scripture and doctrine, allowed me some space to cast some doubt on my own doubts, and generally shook me up. I was some small measure offended or taken aback by his grilling, but only offended to the extent that he, quite necessarily, probed and questioned where others would have backed away. Chilled and sore from the concrete steps, we said our goodnights. As I walked back to my dorm, I was visibly shaken. His questions made me reconsider my own questions of faith.

Our paths diverged a little more steeply after our conversation that night. This probably had less to do with faith differences and more to do with social circles, but the agreeable schism was still there: he was still a believer, I was still an agnostic. About a year later, our circles crossed over again when my friends, mostly theatre majors, were involved in a production of “The Grapes of Wrath”. Through a twist of coincedence, this friend was also on the cast; his role was that of the Reverend Jim Casy, a preacher who had fallen from faith. Superb acting and delivery aside, I felt that the coincidence of his role to our prior discussion was quite heavy and a fair amount ironic.

In December of that year, about a week before I was due to leave Ouachita for perpetuity, I crossed paths with him again at the student center. We had some time to kill, so we had a quick chat, catching up on my leaving school and what’s been going on in the past year or so. I brought up the subject of his role in “The Grapes of Wrath”, and expressed to him that the character he played was the very definition of what I had become in my own loss of faith some time before. I believe this gave him pause to reflect. We wished each other well in our lives and parted ways. It would be a few years before I would see him again.

The Travel Alone, and a Quiet Agreement:

We have recently reopened communications after several years of lost track. In the 9 years since I left Ouachita we have both been down long roads; he has brought me up to date with the major events in his life so far: marriage, seminary, international travel, divorce, wandering, reconstruction, return to school, and so on. A lot of changes.

It was in this recent letter that he confessed to me that he, too, had lost his faith. It was during his time in seminary; with each passing year, he felt less certain about his faith until it had simply evaporated and vanished. This was similar to my own struggle, insomuch that when faced with religion day in, day out, when it’s in your face everywhere you turn, when you’re forced to address it in its big and small forms, in its feelgood and stoich means, religion itself grows threadbare and worn, and you begin to see the thinness of the threads of faith which keep it held together. His news came as a mild shock to me, but given what I had read of his writings online and from other context clues left around the net, I did have some expectation that his faith had been left behind just as it had happened to me and to many, many others in the world. But it was still a mild shock.

Genesis To Exodus — My Own Answers Destroyed:

At some point along my path at Ouachita, I poked my head up and looked around; to the left and to the right I saw instances of the extremes of religion and faith. One morning, for instance, I counted no less than 20 “Jesus shirts” on my trip from my dormroom to my first class of the morning; this was from seeing only 30 people within the distance of 150 yards. My world, on that baptist university campus, was the utter reflection of a church camp. It was in this environment that I saw too much of the ridiculous, I heard too much of the insane, and I tasted too much of the nauseating. This troubled me, and after several more observations, tests and expositions, and I had had enough. In trying to boil down my religion into the essences of pure faith, in trying to get to the golden nugget of God inside it all, I started asking questions, I started examining for myself what was said, what I had previously taken as gospel truth. It was in this examination that things fell apart for me. If I had a strong doubt about one portion of my religion, my faith in the other portions was highly suspect; the supporting evidences for those remaining portions were dubious at best. I had to have truth, validity, proof. Faith’s suspension of disbelief was no longer enough.

Historical record, alterable as it is, tells us that indeed there was a man named Jesus, born in Nazareth, and that he, at the age of 33, was led up to his crucifixion following a particularly complex betrayal snafu. But, without the shelter provided by faith, I cannot tell you, and believe it for a minute, that he was the one true Son of God in Flesh who came to die for us and to symbolically save us, His beloved, from eternal punishment and abandonment in hell fire for our sins. I cannot believe that; at one time I did, but I cannot any longer. I can no longer have life-committing faith in the unprovable. I cannot prove that we have souls, that there is a Heaven, a Hell, a Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. My hands are empty.

This is the place where faith falls short; it evaporated when I started asking questions, and disappeared when the feel-good numbness of Being Right died from my head. Doubt has been cast into the fold. Party over. Faith is belief regardless of proof; the presence of proof supports belief, the absence of proof supports faith. Given the lack of proof and my newfound loss of faith, I could no longer believe.

On To Revelation — the Question Mark At the End:

Over the years I myself have travelled around and back, holding onto a diminishing hope that there might be Something Higher, something guiding us or fueling us from and/or towards the spiritual realm. I sought something else, thinking maybe some other religion would pick up where Christianity failed. I examined other religions and schools of thought. My self-guided studies ranged from Taoism, Buddhism and Zen to Paganism, Wicca and, to a small amount, Satanic/Humanist dogma. From those studies I picked up many threads and found things that were similar or universal, things that we should all hold close to our hearts and take to task: Golden Rules, the “love your neighbor”, “do not raise your hand to murder” stuff. Those tenets do not require faith, only community. But everything else about those religions and theologies, the supernatural stuff, required faith. And it was there that I met my stumbling block; I could not get past the issue of faith. If I could not believe and maintain faith in the Christian idea, without the support of proof and evidence, I could not believe and offer faith, completely, in any other religious ideology. Whether I have failed to see something or I have succeeded in seeing something is an unanswerable question, but this has become my view and my life.

So what have we now? We have a question with no answer. I have no answer to this gentle question of faith. In the complete absence of proof, how can I believe and continue to believe?

The Apex Was Early

The past week has been something different.

Last weekend was, for the most part, pleasant. I hung out with some friends friday and saturday night, we went to eat, played games, had coffee, talked about stuff, and so on. Was cool. Sunday was just “blah” as almost all my sundays are.

Monday did not start off well. My house server crashed; just completely seized up. This is twice it’s done it in the past 2 months. The last crash completely stopped my personal record “uptime” of 190-odd days. And this time stopped an ongoing 42-day uptime. This was getting to be a hassle, so I knew what I had to do. Most importantly, I rebooted the server, logged in, fought to establish the house’s internet connection, dealt with looking through some of the logs to find nothing logged about the crash, and got up, still groggy and angered, to hurriedly get ready for work. I was late.

After work, I doddled around not doing much of anything outside of wondering what to do for the evening. Some time around 9pm I got hungry for Zen (a local Japanese fast-food chain). Knowing they had wireless, I went with my laptop and ate. Got online and met, in my IRC channel, another person from Austin (finally!). When dinner was done (and Zen was closing), I put my laptop, wireless card and all, in my backpack as I made my way to Bouldin Creek for some coffee and more laptop time. Somehow, the part of my wireless card that sticks out of the card slot got bent and cracked, so when I saw it, I went ahead and completed the damage by pulling the two pieces apart carefully to see what was inside. To my surprise I found that my crappy $50 wireless card HAS AN ANTENNA JACK. I couldn’t believe it. Bonus!

Tuesday, I got the notion to take advantage of the early voting. After work, I cruised by a school near my job thinking it was a polling place. Wouldn’t you know, it wasn’t. The nearest polling place was Highland Mall (how’s that for blurring the line between politics and commerce?). Remembering that I saw a polling place at the Randall’s Grocery on 38th and Kerbey Lane (blurrrr), I drove over, stood in line, showed my id, and cast my ballot on one of the new electronic tablets. I’m not pleased that Travis County is using them, but I still have faith that due process, and governmentally-minded diligence, will keep the ballot records faithful and true. I picked up an “I Voted” sticker and went my merry way with the smugness of being a Citizen of This Great Country(tm).

Later that night, I reconfigured my wireless router, which normally has the minor task of bridging wireless devices to the house network, to be the router, gateway, and dhcp server for the house while I shut down the main server for repairs. I pulled some unnecessary peripherals off of the server, like the parallel-port ZIP drive and the external 33.6 data/fax/voice modem (sniff), disconnected the server from its neverending umbilicals, and pulled it out of its cubbyhole in its corner of the living room. After pulling the cover off, I saw what amounted to about a pound of dark brown dust (smokers’ dust!). I took the server outside and attacked every nook and cranny of that thing with a can of compressed air and an old toothbrush. The patio is stained from dust smudges. Heh. Went back inside.

I removed the internal QIC-80 tape backup drive (don’t need it anymore, heh), discovered that the heatsink assembly is permanently fused to the CPU (thanks to the wonder of thermal paste), I rerouted the internal power cables and data ribbons for best airflow, and I built another fresh-air ducting hose (my best duct hose yet) and ran it from the bottom-back of the case to the CPU. With everything clean and reconnected and trimmed down, I put it back in place in the living room, reconfigured the cabling, and powered up. Another hour later I had the automatic network configuration scripts analyzed, debugged, and working flawlessly; it now reboots and connects to the internet automatically and completely hands-free. And I am happy.

So happy, I went to bed late enough to get only 4 hours of sleep. I was late for work the next morning.

Wednesday, the night of the lunar eclipse, was something weird. Really weird. It seemed that all manner of things were finally coming together. After work I drove to Fry’s Electronics to see if I could find an adaptor for my wireless card’s antenna jack. Not surprisingly, none could be found. So about half an hour of digging and another half an hour browsing, I left with a new floppy cable for my server.

I get home and check my voicemail. Nothing important; just a call from a local company, Beneficial, asking me (by name) to call them (I had no clue who this company is; it wasn’t until today, after online research, that I found out they’re a debt consolidation place – bastards). Not the message I was wanting to hear; I wanted to hear, “Hi, this is Waterloo records! Your CD is in!” Well, apparently the lunar eclipse did something strange to all the stuff that’s been building up and not happening, because I check my email and 1) get a message from my webhost saying an issue they’ve been dealing with is finally fixed, and 2) I get an email from a company called Tom Binh saying my hardshell laptop case has finally been shipped to me. In my elation, I grab my stuff and was about to leave the house when the phone rang. I answered, and it was Waterloo Records saying my CD was in. SWEET.

So I leave the house and the moon is just over halfway dark. Soooo incredibly weird and creepy and cool. I cast glances at it while I’m stopped at redlights, and only some of the people in neighboring cars figured out what I was staring at. By the time I reached the CD shop, it was completely covered, and it was too cool. People were outside just chattering and watching. I went in, bought the disc, and made my way out to the coffeeshop. Suddenly sick from the coffee, I make my way home earlier than sensible, picked up some food, and got home in time to see these low, streaked, fast-moving clouds swoop in and completely obscure the sky and the moon which was just uncovering itself. In that brief period, something changed.

Thursday, among my emails, I get one from a man I have not seen nor heard from in 6 years. He is one of the people I’ve listed on my Canonical List of Memorable Ouachita People(tm). He found me by googling his own name (as was my plan), found my site, located the journal entry from May 2004, and proceeded to email me. It is a surprise to see a plan like that work that well. So far, that makes 3 people who have found me. I will write him soon. There is so much to catch up on.

Well, earlier that Thursday I get a tip from a friend of mine that there indeed are halloween party plans for the weekend, and we set forth brainstorming costume ideas. I settled on an idea and ran with it. Later that night I went to a big-box store, browsed for stuff for the costume, ended up buying some necessary clothing like jeans, t-shirts, and bought a toy gun for the costume. My idea was to go dressed as Kurt Cobain. I had almost everything I needed; all that was left was a gun, a pair of black square-framed glasses, and a cardigan sweater. Well, I had the gun thing right, but it was wrong – he was killed by a shotgun, not a revolver; an easy exchange. So, friday, I went to another big-box and found the cardigan, and elsewhere found the glasses. Success. Things were looking up.

That night, as I went to have coffee at the usual friday-night hangout, I found some old friends from Mojo’s who, just like me, had exhiled themselves elsewhere. It was good to hang out with them. Got caught up on things, but the conversations went south and things descended into the very same places they would go back when I still hung out at Mojo’s. It’s like nothing changed. My usual bunch didn’t show up at all, and instead I got The Replacements. I don’t want to look at it like that, but that’s how it felt. (Hope you understand.) Loaded up on 3 mugs of iced tea and a lungfull of other people’s smoke, I headed home at closing time, prodded at the internet, and went to sleep.

Saturday, I felt like hell. Absolute hell. I knew I had the party to go to that night, but to be honest I didn’t feel like meeting new people, didn’t want to dress up, didn’t want to go with a plan that was, at best, tenuously made. I had made all these plans on the thin thread that a friend of mine’s girlfriend’s coworker was throwing it. I’d never met this person, didn’t know where she lived, and felt it best if I only went escorted by my friend and his girlfriend.

Well, after some dinner late in the day, I had considered it, and decided that whatever the plans were, if I was going to go out, to the party, to the 6th Street thing, or to a bar, having a toy popgun would have been a hazardous proposition at best. So I returned to the big-box and got a refund on the toy. I later contacted my friend and found out that he and his Other were not going to make the party. They backed out, so I felt kind of relieved and bummed at the same time.

I returned the reading glasses I had bought, got my money back (I’m not returning the cardigan – I’m planning on wearing it still). They announced that they were instead going to the coffeeshop they were going to visit friday night, so I met up with them and just, i dunno, hung out. I didn’t speak much to anyone, and I apologize if I came off distant, aloof, and bored. I was there in body, but my mind was just, I dunno, clicked off. I was still nursing the same all-day headache and the caffeine hangover from the night before, and I was around more smoking again. So when everyone made plans to disperse and watch movies, I shook my hands to the negative and went home. Spent a short time online, then went to bed just as the time changed from 1:59am to 1:00am.

Today, I got up after 7 or 8 broken hours of sleep. Bummed around, chatting online, listening to music, trying to intake some caffeine and a pop tart, and around 3 hours after I woke up I went down for a 40-minute nap. Finally got up when the album I was listening to was finished, cleaned myself up, took a shower, and pulled all the dirty clothes and linens together. Left the house.

Got a sandwich from Thundercloud (the guy got my order wrong and made the wrong sandwich, but fixed it at no charge). As I ate, an accident happened at the intersection right outside the restaurant; the small truck looked ok, the big suburban looked all bent-up bad. As I left, I saw this hot girl who works there (and who, I’m sure, would never give me any time of day). Made my way to one of the smaller laundromats to discover NO parking spaces left, so I went to my usual and braced for the crowds and prices. Did laundry, came back home, unpacked, remade my bed, and frumped online.

Finally left again. As I went to Bouldin Creek, where their wireless is STILL fubarred, I almost got into a wreck with this bitch driving a minivan who thought that using signals was something other people did; she didn’t see me as she swerved into my lane to avoid rear-ending this line of cars stopped in her lane — luckily she missed all of us. So, after a longer-than-necessary drive, I got there, got a coffee, got some code to poke at, got my head good and twisted around this one set of technical problems, got sick at the coffee again and got annoyed by this (apparently) mentally-handicapped person with a political grudge, so I got up and left at 9pm (!!) for home. Got food, came home (almost got into another wreck because of a stupid college jock asshole who forgot courtesy), ate, and now I’m here, writing a journal entry.

It’s been a weird week. And I’m just not happy. Some things are finally working out, stuff is moving, but I’m just not happy. I feel nothing but caffeine addiction, loss of sleep, and no joy in my job, my social life, my lack of interaction, nor my place in this town or this world. I just, bleh.

Damn these public journals.

Operation Livecrime

If you have doubts about the currency, edge, and power of legendary rockers Queensrÿche, you may put those doubts to rest. Their show tonight at La Zona Rosa was pretty good. I bought a ticket a week ago and couldn’t wait; I was happy to finally be seeing them after being a fan for the 14 years since the 1990 release of “Empire”. After finding suitable parking and a backtracking walk to put some of the contents of my pockets back in my car, I couldn’t get inside soon enough to get a primo standing spot. However, I settled instead on a higher place towards the back of the main section; depending on how I stood I could look through the heads in front of me and see the whole stage. Otherwise, no complaints.

The evening was nothing but Queensrÿche. They did a double set. The first set was hits, misses, new stuff and old ranging from, of course, “Silent Lucidity” all the way back to the first song they wrote. The second set, however, was nothing but the entire “Operation Mindcrime” show complete with actors, props, and synchronized video entertwined in the band’s performance of the album. During the second set, they brought out the quadraphonic sound which pulled the audio out into the audience. I stood near the right rear speaker and heard some of the vocals and spoken samples clearly. Small club big bonus.

I was impressed with singer Jeff Tate. I had some doubt and concern about his ability to hit the high notes like he did in the early days of Queensrÿche; for the most part, he nailed them but tended to take artistic liberties in reinterpreting the vocal pitch, which was fine given it’s a live show and not an album take. His chattiness between songs was good; some of it was generic “always have a great time here” cheese, but he tended to keep us tuned in and told us some bits about where some of the songs came from, which was cool. A bonus. I haven’t seen pictures of him since “Empire”, so it was different to see him with his long hair cut off into something like a rockabilly/aged metalhead haircut. Comes off kinda cool. And he makes mascara and eye liner look good.

At the end of the second act, after the band left the stage, they played a video teaser for the intended 2005 release of the followup to the second set: “Operation Mindcrime II”. As I understand, it’s going to be more relevant than its elder, more current certainly, and more fully produced. It has some big shoes to fill, but they played one of the tracks, “Bound” (or something like that), which sounded good.

My ears ring now. Small club shows always do it to me, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Arena gigs are cool, but they’re fraught with dealing with security, assigned seating, high-priced concessions, and you’re three miles from the stage. Small clubs, you have a chance of the band actually seeing YOU, they’re that intimate.

I’m tired, sipping water, sitting down, music off, and I am happy. I saw nobody I knew, spoke to no one other than the bartender, merch guy, and parking attendant, and enjoyed the show without extra-personal baggage. And I am happy.

On TRF, TXK, ACL, IMG, MP3, and TXT

Went to the opening weekend of Texas Renaissance Festival. I give my weekend’s experience a score of 65%. Friday night sucked, saturday morning sucked, but saturday afternoon and evening made up for it mostly. I hung out with my Texarkana friend Brian. We set up camp close to this group of people from Houston and San Antonio. A bunch of party animals. I made sure to get myself drunk saturday night on some of Brian’s camp-famous punch and two rum-and-cokes. Over two evenings I was able to eak out less than eight shoddy hours of sleep.

After the higher-than-expected ticket price, the flat tire made when looking most of friday night for Brian and his camp, and my expenditures on food, drink, and supplies, coupled with the lack of sleep, I made the choice to strike camp sunday morning, skip the second day of Festival, say g’bye to my new friends, and drive home where a shower and bed awaited. After unpacking and cleaning up, and during the process of getting dressed, I fell asleep. Woke up enough to transplant to the bed and stayed there for 11 hours. Got up around 2am sneezing my ass off, then went back to bed at 4 for another 4 hours of sleep before work. Sunday just did not exist.

65%.

The presidential debates are under way. Watched the Vice Presidential debate. Wasn’t as clear as the first Presidential debate last week. Both sides made good points.

Currently feeling something resembling the leading edge of a case of bronchitis. I’m in the denial stage. Feeling a little better after vacuuming my room and cooling off. Funny what a little cleaning up can do. A cluttered, unsanitary room with papers, tissues, and stuff everywhere is totally the way my room is when I’m sick. It’s not that way any more, so maybe it’ll work in the reverse direction.

Water + vitamins + cleaning = healthy Shawn

So, I got paid today. Rent is now paid, as are two of the three house bills. I got one of my breathing medications refilled. Got my three rolls of Austin City Limits film processed. I’m now certain that my camera has outlived its life expectancy. Quite a few of the shots are seriously lacking. Some are even double-exposed. I’ll have to do some creative cropping and color correction to get anything decent out of them, as most shots have the members of the various bands consisting of small blobs of film grain. I hate to admit, but I fear it’s time to get a digital camera.

I’ll see what I can do about the pictures; I’ll have to edit and decide which to post. That’ll be later. Sorry.

I got the inspiration to work on some Glass Door songs the other day. The desire waned by the time I got home from work and commenced to screwing with my music software. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it to even bother with the Glass Door venture.

Course, same could be said for Chrontium, Glyph (the planned website engine for Phaysis.com), the image gallery tool, and some other secret side projects.

Shawn, the Great Initiator.

Sleepy now. What follows is a bit I wrote a few weeks ago concerning an element currently no longer in my life. Enjoy. Signing off.

Resigned
(8/25/2004)

This back is broken shapeless, the bastards got it beat
hands empty to the merciless, on knees to pledge defeat.
Running from the headache, to flee from venom’s might
I could have won the battle, but I have lost the fight.

These ears are filled with sludge, from months of backstab hate
and petty bicker laughing, the faceless fools’ berate.
Holding back the bile, who cares if you are right
I know I’ve won the battle, but I have lost the fight.

Hands burning from the liars, who tempt and tease deceit
who promise love unconquered, then pull from under feet.
Bowing to the heartbreak, I’m lonely here tonight
I may have won the battle, but I have lost the fight.

Heart aching from the lesson, each passing day is learned
you think of me as nothing, your silence has me burned.
I leave your cold contempting, and make my burden light
tonight I’ve won the battle, but I have lost the fight.