Spencer Moseley

  T iny, prickly, toothpicks dance like fireflies. Blues swept with yellow and pink. Light nods off, and dim-lit stars emerge on canvas, arranged by Zeus— Cassiopeia stirs the sea god's wrath. Like three wise men, who conned a king, the cows lie down, a tempest brews. Cloudbursts rupture  Loki's pedestal.  Why is tonight different from all other nights? Tolerable yet intolerable discomfort, A Glaucus-trade made,  Diomedes laughs. As sunlight wakens, s ingularities vibrant, a phoenix emerges, soaring higher than Icarus. Toothpicks to nails, Why have you forsaken me?

I hear people say, "I want to be unapologetically myself", and I agree with the sentiment. But when my authentic reaction to someone with a deformed face is disgust, I'd prefer to curb that reaction. Or if I can't catch myself before I make a face, I hope I apologize. So I'm in a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, I want to be unapologetically myself, but on the other, I'm having these knee-jerk reactions of disgust that I do not want to have.  So i n order to be a guilt-free version of "unapologetically myself", I need to change my behavior when I see a deformed face, which means I need to change the way I perceive deformed faces; and in order to change my perception, I need to consider why I react with disgust in the first place.  Why do I react with disgust? When I see a deformed face, it's scary. I start thinking "I was one chromosome tweak away from this?", "why does this guy look so weird?", "that looks painful...

Telling people, "Be yourself" seems like bad advice, though well-intentioned. "Yourself" implies stagnation, that there's this part of us that just is . I remember growing up my mom would tell me to mingle more in crowds and get to know people. We had a running argument where I would tell her, "you're more extroverted, so it's just easier for you". I pigeon-holed myself into a "shy" category, and while it's true that I felt more introverted, I was capable of expanding my life experience. "Be yourself" is also not great advice because it begs the question, "what is my ' self '"? This is a rabbit-hole I've explored far too often, and it leads nowhere. My sneaking suspicion is that the Buddhists were right when they said that the "self" doesn't exist. It's much the same reason why I think God might not exist. When you go searching for a "self" or "God" or "per...

Hi. One of my friends is going back to the ole Catholic faith, and that got me thinking. Do I miss that too?  I've been playing more Catholic hymns on guitar lately: I am the Bread of Life, Silent Night, You Satisfy the Hungry Heart, etc. DOES THAT MEAN I'M SECRETLY CATHOLIC IN MY SOUL (side note: tf is a soul?)? I find it hard to be alone sometimes, and that's when the thought of Jesus is most appealing. I'll be eating chicken in my quiet home with my quiet dog on my quiet sofa—wondering if somewhere out there, I'm missing something. Is there some God-shaped hole in my heart just waiting to be filled? Come fill me, Jesus. 😈 But the truth is, I just miss elements of Catholicism, not the whole thing. And I can have those elements and pick and choose things from it that fit me (love your neighbor, finding quiet time, developing an interior life); and the loneliness is going to be an ongoing project of leaning into it so I can grow and become more comfortable with the...

There isn't really anything I know.  ..and that's insane to me. I can talk about rocket ships and the moon, math and science, good and evil. But I don't know anything . I believe a lot of things that I learned in school that may turn out to be fake news later (like how we used to believe the earth was flat until one day they were like, "nah fam it's a sphere"). We use tests to confirm gravity is real so that you can be confident that when you take shit, it will fall into the toilet; but some level of faith in the scientific process, what others tell me, and my personal experience that no one else can share, governs my life.  So since I can't know anything with any certainty, I'm starting to think that choices are all that matters. There are times when I haven't always felt love for people close to me, but I've chosen to stay by their side. Other times I haven't felt like going into work, but I went in anyway. Sometimes customers say rude co...

I built a bookshelf yesterday. As I built it, I chose carefully which books would go on which shelf. Novels on one, studies on another, philosophy here, history there. My apartment space is nice and organized now, and everything is in its place.  That's what it feels like to create order out of chaos. To choose a path forward without knowing where things will end up feels as adventurous as it feels scary and difficult.  In my love life I've also built a bookshelf. I know my gay side is less explored, so I'm choosing to move in that direction with dating (#yasyasyasqueen).  In my spiritual world, I am exploring the Unitarians since the Church I've visited explores spirituality with openness and kindness.  In my career, well... I'm probably exploring too much and need to choose one out of the creative endeavors I love to dedicate all of my energy to: comedy, singing, theater, or writing. I'm thinking singing because I truly love it and could see myself improving. ...

As an atheist/agnostic, I'm sometimes too hardcore about there "likely not being a god".  My coworker, in earnest, said: "Someone/something must've created all this. Name me one design that doesn't have a designer." Instead of just shrugging it off, I had to reply: "True. I'm not arguing that things just happened to appear into existence with no cause, but what question have we answered if we posit a creator? Aren't we back to the same question we already have if we have to ask, 'well what created the creator?'" There was an uncomfortable silence, and another coworker chimed in that everyone should feel free to believe what the believe. And again, I had to jump in with, "true, but I think we are talking about science, not faith right now". More uncomfortable silence.  It got me thinking, why did I try to sway him to my side? Why couldn't I just hold my tongue, acknowledge that I think differently, and wait until t...