Friday, July 23, 2021

2 Minutes. Go!

Adult amnesia is a tricky thing. We get so wrapped up in ego and maintaining. We lose wonder. We lose honest reflection. We are curating the experience instead of experiencing it. Children don’t do this. Not until they get programmed. 

We judge children for giving into their emotions so fully. We old folks forget how thick and sticky moods and emotions can be. 

Before you became teflon, you felt real joy, real sadness, real anger. Now, you feel facsimiles of these things and fill in the iffy parts with radio jingles and bucket lists - little pieces of movies and shows that you think happened to you. 

Meanwhile, your kids are just picking a hole in the arm of the sofa, but they are INTO that shit. And you ask them why. And they look at you like you’re crazy. Like, why’s there always gotta be a why, old man? What’s wrong with I felt like it; it felt good; I wanted to see what would happen. Meanwhile, your shields are up and you’re thinking about how much sofas cost, missing the point.

It’s hard being human, but everyone gotta pretend. Not kids. That’s why I like them. When they’re mad, they’re mad. You know it. Happy? Same thing. It takes a while to learn to lie about how you feel, to wrap yourself up into a presentable, marketable package, poker-faced. HERE I AM, A FUNCTIONING ADULT WHO IS DOING JUST FINE, THANK YOU VERY MUCH! Ask an adult how they’re doing. Fine. Ask a kid; get a real answer. 

I don’t have any answers, but I’ve got a bunch of questions. Wasn’t planning on writing today, but Antrobus called it, and I will always answer that call. So, here it is. The cap to the day - a day filled with deer conversations and otter nonsense. A pretty objectively GREAT day.

Does it matter? I don’t know. The deer aren’t thinking about it, and maybe they’re lucky. Maybe it’s me, sitting here thinking about how animals will come to you if you are quiet, open, gentle. Reflecting. Stuffing meaning into it.

Man, give me a world full of kids and animals. Send the adults to an island somewhere. They can talk about mortgage payments and politics. 

Just don’t make me go with them.

4 comments:

  1. As always, I love the way you paint a picture. And I'm with you on the kids and animals.

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  2. A stunt. That’s what the Head Nitwit called it. But it’s not a stunt. It’s a maneuver. A gambit. A tactic. A tactic, not a strategy – strategy is about the long game, the big picture. This isn’t the big picture, just a tiny bit of it – like a piece of a puzzle. Not a border piece – don’t even talk to me about borders – or a corner, but just as important. Maybe even more so. If the big picture was the night sky, this would be the North Star. And in this picture, the North Star is blue.

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  3. "Meanwhile, your kids are just picking a hole in the arm of the sofa" — I love this detail. And yeah, why's there gotta be a why? And this:

    "Ask an adult how they’re doing. Fine. Ask a kid; get a real answer."

    This should be some kind of slogan, echoing over decades. A truism or something.

    And yes, the Call. We hear it. I hear it. You call too, and I'll drag my sorry ass up here to where animals still approach if you're quiet enough, gentle enough, accepting enough.

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  4. “Henceforth Be Masterless”

    Hello. Hey. Hello. Yes, it’s me.

    Broken doll, dry as a rough season, no midsummer leakage on such snowlike sheets. For years you were bloodless to me. Yet your death breaches and even shatters the carefully engineered channels of my heart. You absolute cunt. You knew one day you’d do this to me, make me culpable. And now, even if I wanted to, I can’t get to you.

    I don’t know how to say this: you put every part of yourself into this, to be there for someone, to love them and accommodate them and believe in what they believed and stir in your own stuff, mix and dance the hybrid love, and yet they still go away, and all your efforts—huge, monumental even—aren’t enough, and deadspace clouds track a headland, and the tide laps the promontory, and the stars themselves are veiled by a sudden troubled mist, the sound of muted keys and strings lost in some undreamed of background noise like the echo of you and us (and everything).

    We lay in a hot room not all that sure if sheets hung from the windows would keep us cooler or warmer. Calla squirmed from speakers we didn’t even remember placing. Neon smeared itself buglike.

    Walk these urban spaces nightly.

    Dream these calisthenic drones.

    Might coulda been. Might could even have oughta.

    Been in your shoes yesterday.

    Each day I want to fucking scream.

    Each fucking day I want to scream.

    Always, I want the best for you. My faltering heart is ruined but true.

    Listen to all the songs now, before the juice is turned off. Cement them inside your head. Make them part of you. The shapes and the rhythms. Each plucked and bowed and fingered note, every subdued harmonic purr.

    You know, it’s perfect: Lana even rhymes with Americana.

    Close your damn eyes. Your legs too. Wish, oh wish, your baby was already born.

    Nothing new is born.

    Is ever gonna be born.

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