2 Minutes. Go!

C'mere buddy. Up close. I'm gonna fuck your whole belief system. Close your eyes and open your mouth, I'm gonna shove my whole arm down your throat and pull your insides outside. It don't matter that you think you saw a sign in the clouds, the heavens. None of that means shit, because everyone has their own interpretation. 

So many godly variations.

Let me pull you by the elbow, guide your face into this whirring band saw, let me pour this lacquer into your eyes. Let me cut off pieces of you to add to my collection. 

Listen lady, I know you got your own rage. I just don't care. I tried caring, but it made me too tired. I gave it up, just like I gave up drinking - it was hard, but worth it. 

We can have this conversation anytime. You know where to find me. I'll be here, sharpening my knives until they can slice air. I'll be here with a hatchet and some kerosene. I'll be flexing my fingers and imagining how good it would feel, plucking out your eyeballs.

I'll be waiting for you.

2 Minutes. Go!

 Here’s something I don’t understand. I am almost fifty. In fifty years on this planet, there have been many instances where someone has either implied (or straight out told me!) that I should hate some whole other group of people. Maybe it was gay people. Black people. A different religion. I always understood that anyone who asks you to hate a faceless mass of people is an asshole. 

There’s no way all jews can be evil. It’s absurd to think that all republicans are pedofiles. Of course all democrats don’t want to rewrite the constitution, and they aren’t all hippies. Just the idea is absurd! It would be like saying that all blind people are assholes. Are some of them assholes? Sure, probably, but not all. Absolutes are bullshit. These paper cutouts we’re told to hate just don’t exist. I’ve met tons of awesome blind people.

It’s boring, and it’s getting tiring. Are you so intellectually feeble that you need someone to tell you what’s good and bad? What matters and what doesn’t? Who you should trust? What rings true and what sounds preposterous? What your opinion should be?!?!

I’m kind of into this critical thinking thing, myself. And I’m not a paper doll. Like you, I am a complex human that doesn’t fit into boxes neatly. If you need the Cliffs Notes to life, that’s fine, but not everyone does. 

The rest of us will be over here thinking. 

2 Minutes. Go!

The sun sets on the water. The trout are either aggressive or in hiding. Trying to protect their young. The bass are cruising by, ambushing small fish from the deep cover of the weeds; they are machines programmed to kill and kill again.

They kill without emotion. 

Small bass need to fear the trout, but the big ones are untouchable. They are made for processing the meat of their neighbors. They will never sate their hunger; they are not the sensitive fish that trout are. 

The sun on the water is like paint. Drips and drabs dropped by an omnipotent and solicitous hand. The hour of the wolf leads us into the trade, night for day. Light for darkness. The darkness will last a long time, but light will come again.

You might wonder how this story ends, and it is a natural thing to wonder. Nature knows when she is being abused. Evil comes in waves. Fish and people are not so different. One trying to keep his head above water. One below. If you are scared, and you should be, then get to the weeds. The forest. Find someplace you can hide until the world has corrected itself. 

Don’t take the bait. They can make it look so good. 

Don’t take the bait.

Remember, they feed…

2 Minutes, Go!

    "Because, Mija, the river is wide enough for all the fishes. The ones who are native to this water, and the ones who are not. The problem...sometimes the new fish are bullies. Sometimes, they push the other fish around. They take their food, their homes."

    "How can you tell which new fish will cause problems?"

    "Listen. All animals, fish included, can work together. The problem is that some animals are greedy. Some of them are selfish or stupid. Many of them don't realize the consequences of their actions. They are parasites, and parasites need to be removed before they kill."

    "The bass? They are big. They are strong. They are aggressive. They can learn to coexist, but there will always be fish who act out of character. Just like people. Some bass get so big, so strong. When they are small, there is peace, but the bigger they get, the more power they have, and the more they want."

    The girl nodded her head slowly but did not speak.

    "They have different personalities, fish. The trout are made for this water. They are cautious fish, and they can be extremely hard to catch. This is not the case for bass. Bass will attack anything in the right mood. They will eat a fish that chokes and kills them."

    "Then why don't we kill the bass we catch. Get them out of the water, so they can't hurt the trout?"

    "I have done it. Years, I did it. But then I realized. People move. Animals move. They migrate. They hunt. It is not for me to decide who belongs where. I am not a god. Who am I to say that these fish belong and these don't? Who am I to question the plan?"

    "What if there is no god?"

    "It is still not up to us. Science tells us that animals change over time. Science also tells us that all people started in the same place. We moved, explored, we changed depending on where we found ourselves. This is the way it has always been. No man should decide that he has the right to question nature's plan. There is no right place to be."

    "This is about more than just the fish?"

    "Of course, Mija. This is everything. There are those, like our friends in their bullet proof vests, who want to control nature, control life. To own God. Look at the bass, strong. Black and silver and white. You could write ICE on their chests and it would look right at home. I will not eat them. The native fish? They are beautiful, full of color and spirit, painted like the rainbow. They are home. They have history. The bass will always be there to take from the trout, but as long as the trout still exist, their colors cannot be muted - their beauty cannot be dimmed."

    The sun dropped behind the trees, and the light from the fire danced on the pines. There was stillness, and the man gradually drifted off to sleep. The girl did not. She stayed up all night, thinking about fish, and federales, and fate.

2 Minutes. Go!

Sipping shit slowly can kiss my ass; I want results, and I want them fast. Six shots go down and the sweat starts up. There is a tipping point, and it begins in your gut. You are either going to puke those shots into the sink or you'll start feeling better. Slowly... 

Unless you've been there, you can't imagine how slow.

Hands shaking mean glasses breaking so you always drink out of plastic. You use the fuel to stop the shake, but it won't make you feel fantastic. 

It won't make you feel at all if you're lucky. 

In the whole ordeal, there's just a blip where you land right where you wanted. Then you've gone too far, you can't come back. Your thoughts are becoming stunted.

Somehow on autopilot, you find yourself in bed. Five hours to pass before the mass, you wake up in your aching head. Then off to work, nine hours straight, and then you can return. To the kitchen shelf where you keep your wealth, and you feel the whiskey burn.

2 Minutes. Go!

What are you gonna do when the narrative betrays you? It can happen to writers, but we can rule with an iron fist in our kingdoms constructed of words. What about the narratives you use to explain life? What about the ones you didn't write? What about the narratives that tell your history? What about the weaponized narratives the rich use to make us hate each other?

What happens when you lose control of societal narratives? People suffer. People die. People let hate take them over.

Its easy to blame social media, but I blame humanity. We have always been like this. We, the majority, have always tried to live happily among the sociopaths who only crave power. They have always existed, and they often get what they want. 

Suffering follows, generally.

It's not that things used to be better, it's just that you used to be less informed. Used to be, it took "news" months to travel the world and, still, not everyone would hear it. Now we have our own personally-tailored 24 hour news cycles in our pockets. They tell us just what we want to hear. 

Narratives are tricky. I don't know a lot about a lot of things, but I know about stories. They are hard to change once you've written them, so it is always wise to tread carefully. Go slow. Take your time.

Me? I'm running from narratives grounded in reality. I'm about to build a fort out of books and live in it forever. 

No soliciting, no visitors.

 

2 Minutes. Go!

The phone rang. That was all that happened. Nothing crazy. Nothing to get upset about. But Tony was upset. Maybe that wasn't fair, but it also didn't stop him from ripping the phone out of the wall and smashing it. 

After that, it was real quiet.

He didn't like surprises. That was part of it. He also didn't like the sound of the ring. When he was expecting a call, he would stand right beside the phone and grab it before the ringing started. This call was a surprise, so that was one thing. 

Tony was also having a particularly bad morning. He'd killed a man that somehow refused to stay dead. It didn't make sense. He'd put seven bullets into the man, but the word was people kept seeing him on the street. Only in flashes, like he was some kind of fucking ghost. 

So, it was a bad morning. 

It would be a bad afternoon, too. This whole hit had shaken him up, even if he didn't want to admit it. There was something about the guy. He never seemed scared. He didn't act like scared people act. Tony was used to the behavior of those about to die. 

He didn't recognize it in the man. 

He crossed the office, stepping on broken pieces of phone. He huffed and his face was red. He should have been paying attention, because suddenly there was cold metal on the back of his skull. 

"Tony, I'm just returning the favor, man. No hard feelings."

Tony was going to tell Johnny to go fuck himself, but the bullet entering his brain took the words away. 

The gunman looked down and smiled. Then, he put four shots into the man's chest and one more to the side of his head. Tony was soup, now, but it had to be done. 

Johnny knew from experience...how easy it could be to come back from the dead.