Friday, March 8, 2024

2 Minutes. Go!

The cool of the evening settles on the valley. Day animals burrow and nestle and scurry in for the evening, while the night animals sharpen their claws. The sky is clouded, and the night is made for deception. The shadow sounds move swiftly, and they do not follow the rules that light enforces. It is night. Night is death. Death is coming.

This is the cycle, and it is what you make of it. Depending on your resources, this is bounty or famine. You may test your mettle against the night. That is part of what the night is for. But, be careful.

If you are lucky enough to see the sun rise, put food in your belly. Hope that the sun comes out. Let your full belly sit in the sun and be alive. This is what the sun is for. This is what the full belly is for. 

This is why you come to the light.

Friday, March 1, 2024

2 Minutes. Go!

It seems to me like there are some people who just shouldn't die. I don't count myself among those people. When my time comes, I'll still be lucky I made it as far as I did. The problem, for me, is not that I am alive or that I will be dead. My problem is that good people keep dying, and a bunch of shitty people keep living, and that's hard to come to terms with. 

There is a dread that lives inside me, but it is not about my death. I dread the death of people I care about. I dread that empty, hollow, unbelieving feeling. Yet, I know that it will happen to everyone eventually. Still, it's easy to push that to the back of your mind until someone you love dies. 

The pain from losing a friend starts with anger for me. Not anger at the person, but anger at the cruel path that nature walks us down. Gradually, it shifts to sadness and, finally, it settles to live in my gut. That empty feeling. That cheated feeling. 

It's a drinking feeling, but I don't drink anymore.

When you lose someone you love, it is hard to remember that you knew it was coming. I close my eyes and rub them hard and try to switch things up, but nothing happens. Just silence. Just void. Just that ache. 

I've accommodated the ache, but the random stabs of painful memory get to me. Sometimes, I feel panicked even though there is nothing to panic about. 

They say that it is better to have loved and lost than to never love at all. I believe that, but in practice...man, sometimes I just want to leave civilization behind. Be the hermit - not like Leland who loved everyone, but a real hermit with no ties to any place or any humans. The loneliness would kill me, but at least I would never feel that pain again.

Friday, February 16, 2024

2 Minutes. Go!

The air smelled of ozone, and the animals were alert. Hidden beneath the boughs of an overgrown tree, the boy waited. He was good at waiting. He had had lots of practice. What he was waiting for, he didn't know, but he felt that if he waited quietly, patiently, it would be revealed to him. This knowledge was first and foremost a prayer. He had faith. Misguided maybe, but he had faith.

He was a jumpy boy, easily startled. He hated that about himself. Always flinching. Always averting his eyes. He wasn't much of a man, he figured. He wasn't tough or particularly strong. Fights scared him. They made him frantic. Because of this, he didn't hang around the kids his age. They were pugilists, all of them. He had sampled their wares and regretted it. 

He was busy mastering an itch. It started at the base on his spine and climbed up his spinal column to the back of his head. The itch could ruin everything, so he suppressed it. He was good at suppressing things. It was a talent that served him well. 

The gum he molded to his teeth was long devoid of flavor. He was thirsty. Hungry. The gum was wearing out his jaw, but it kept the awful dryness away. 

When the buck emerged from the edge of the clearing, his heart almost stopped. It was white. Pure white like it was God's very own deer. The boy knew it could happen, but he'd never seen one. A tear sprang from his eye as he realized something. 

You could be different. You could stick out like a sore thumb...and you could still be beautiful. The boy tucked that knowledge inside his heart. When the deer left the clearing, the boy got up to go home. He was feeling lighter. He wanted to put on the soft clothes that he kept hidden.

He was thinking about how beautiful that deer was. 

Friday, February 9, 2024

2 Minutes. Go!

Her eyes open, and the room changes temperature. You can feel it. A cold gust that whips through the apartment, changing nothing. You lie still. Pretend to be asleep. You are not great at pretending, but she is not perceptive. She is looking with wolf eyes, and they are easily misled. She has no pack to back her. Lone wolf, she.

When she rises, she will start her morning process. The same way she has started every morning for forty years. Same stretch, same tea, same mug. She is married to her habits; she finds safety in them. Safety from what, I do not know. I've been wondering about it for decades now. 

When I get up, it is all pantomime. Man wakes up. All playacting. I don't have a routine. I pretend to stumble, half asleep, into the kitchen. Pour myself the coffee she made. Wonder, as per usual, if it will be the last cup of coffee I ever drink. She watches me with such expectancy. 

But I live. I carry on. I keep sleepwalking.

I'll wake up when she closes her eyes again; that is my time.

Friday, February 2, 2024

2 Minutes. Go!

The anger makes you shake. It makes your voice quake. Like you're about to start crying or spitting blood. It radiates off of you, and everyone can see it. It's like a rattlesnake tail, that shake, that rattle. It gets inside you and starts flipping switches. Old ones, made thousands of years ago when predators roamed the land, and we didn't have guns to punch holes in them. It's a natural response, and it is appropriate. 

Still, it's unsettling. It makes eye contact difficult. It makes you feel like danger is all around you. You turn into an antelope, anxious on the veldt, frozen in place while your comrades spring and jump and run away. Fight, flight, or freeze. If only you didn't always default to freezing. The veldt would pull your card quick. 

Anger and fear can get mixed up, and, combined, they are a potent cocktail. 

I call it the American dream. One part paranoia, two parts unwarranted pride. One part individualism. One part propaganda. 

Shaken, not stirred. No one has time to stir. 

Pour into a chilled glass and smash it into your face. It's good for you. It builds character. 


Friday, January 26, 2024

2 Minutes. Go!

You didn't take a victory lap. You just packed that shit up and went home. It made me think. It made my heart pound a little bit. It impressed me, I guess you could say. I would have taken the lap. I would have signed the autographs. I would have listened to the women giggle. You didn't do any of that. 

There are times I can't even look at my own reflection in the mirror. So, any kind of adulation is terrifying, but delicious. I feast on it. I feel cheapened by it. 

I don't know if anyone else saw. Or noticed. I notice a lot of things. That's something I trained my brain to do. Most of the people were watching the lasers slice the fog machine. Most of them were lost. I wanted to be lost, but I have always been able to find myself, no matter how hard I try not to. 

The car was waiting. It didn't make any sense for me to dawdle, but I felt torn up and taped back together. I felt like someone had read my fortune and it had come true. I felt naked is the honest truth. Exposed, even if I was only exposed to myself. 

Maybe I will stay away for a while. Hole myself up. Get myself whole. Maybe all this has been a hallucination...it happens. Hell, it's happened to me. But I think it was real. 

Hallucinations don't hurt so bad. 

Friday, January 19, 2024

2 Minutes. Go!

I've been thinking back ... years back. Triumphs and tribulations. Trauma. Victories. They rattle around inside my brain now. I had some of them packed away real neat, locked up in a box with a lock I did not know the combination for. Now, the combination doesn't matter. I popped the lid for a second, but it was long enough. 

It's weird that you can feel shame for things you didn't do. For things that were done to you. That's something I'm wrestling with. It's hard to look back with clarity and see anger. Or hurt. Or hurt that turned to anger. There are some things I rarely talk about. Weirdly, I had nothing to do with them. 

There is joy in there, for sure. I remember when life was much simpler. Not just because of my age, but because the world was just plain simpler. Moved slower. No one had constant news (legit or not) pumped into their brains. Journalism was still a lofty idea, a calling. There were ethical considerations regardless of politics. No social media.

Now, we're selling ad space first, telling the truth second. If we get to the truth. Truth isn't very popular these days if we're being honest. If it doesn't have the sheen of entertainment, we aren't interested.

I read the other day that deer are starting to feed and move at night, despite predators, because the days are too hot. Got me thinking how our relationship with nature will change with Global warming. Mountain lions at Costco. Coyotes at the supermarket. If they're still around. 

But I'm not going down that evolving rabbit hole. Not today. Today, I will try to focus on the things that are the same. Books are still magic. Guitar still soothes me...sometimes it even makes me feel talented. I can still write. Sometimes, the writing seems OK, too. I still have friends. Some of them from the old days, which is amazing.

Mostly, I'm just realizing that nothing ever makes sense. Not really. You grow up thinking that the pieces will fall into place and someday you will understand what everyone else understands. Then, you start realizing that most people don't even know how gravity works. Most people are going through the day shit scared that people will catch them out. Expose them as morons. 

And I'm one of those people. Honestly. I mean, I know how gravity works, but I can't explain it all that well. What can I do? I can open my heart wide, sliced like from a knife. Tell you how words make me feel. I can put my own words together. Sometimes, I can convince a kid that books and thoughts are wonderful, and I will 100% take that. 

Maybe I'm a moron. I've been called worse.