Draft rough, Write drunk, Edit never

Spaceship bodies have minds for drivers, and souls for passengers.

I don’t know if I have a mantra, but I’ve been saying that a lot these days. I suspect you could limit it further to soul spaceships. Or soulship. Or soulspace.

Either way, my spaceship was hurting in places that I hadn’t really hurt in a while, namely, my upper inside left groin, along some kind of super tight band that would need some kind of an apology from me later, if I ever survive this yoga class.

We move throughout space and time, but they both only really negatively affect the body. The harder we go the stronger we get, but the longer the go, the more our bodies break down. Especially once we start to slow down and take easy ways out.

My idea to combat this is yoga. The ancient art of wondering what you’re doing and sneakily trying to look at other people to see if they have any idea either.

Our mind is a gigantic pleasure and pain receptor and uses the two of them to decide when it wants to go somewhere and when it wants to stop going. An entirely pleasurable path leads to binge watching successive seasons in sweatpants. An entirely painful path leads to... actually I’m not sure about the pain side of things. I’m very familiar with my sweatpants though, which probably explains why there’s so much pain in this stupid Warrior 1 pose.

The significance of the number denotes what I imagine to be the order in which the poses are meant to be performed, and which could trace its roots to ancient history very easily. Warrior One features a perpendicular-to-the-ground front shin bone and eyes and front body facing straight ahead with arms stretched out to the sky.

This is obviously the part of the battle where the warrior gives up at sight of the enemy. Which gets confusing when they both Warrior One simultaneously. Although all those up-stretched arms must have made quite a sight on Battlefield One.

Warrior 2 is another legs spread pose but instead of arms up they are pointing front and back with hands face down. Legs in a pseudo-lunge stance, with feet perpendicular to each other, but that same straight up and down shin-bone persists.

The key to planetary success is balance. Between pleasure and pain, wealth and poverty, generosity and self-care, but upon the life we lead there are certain cultural limitations that stop us from advancing as far as we’d like to.

“Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another,” wrote Geert Hofstede in 1984. But he admits in a 2017 interview with Psychology Today that “cultural dimensions don’t exist in real life. They are only a way of understanding a very complex world.”

Our limitations on this planet, whether it be the inability to travel, or to spend money on something, or to pursue a career in a particular track, are imagined. (Except for physical limitations, I, for one, have yet to be able to fly, no matter how hard I flap my arms.) Our body and mind are defined sharply by culture absorbed in our formative years. Our soul is contained by no such limitations, but will adhere to the limits placed on it by the mind and body.

It’s the evening of November 8, 2016, and we are still in the process of electing a Trump to the White House. Just goes to show that when mob rule comes to light, you can’t really depend on someone to steal an election, The numbers are just against her. And of course, she might have already won and I am in the beautiful bliss that follows the successful destruction of a tyrant pre-oppression.

As Hunter S Thompson took to Richard Nixon, I pledge my words, my fire and my brimstone to chronicling the war on intelligence as waged by Donald Trump. There must be a way to understand. A truth behind the lie. A connecting point that must still be in America somewhere.

A commonality that separates us all seems to have emerged. And I hope that we as a country are able to see over it and reconnect. There is a lot of healing that will have to happen once tomorrow’s sun rises. But the true majesty will have to occur in the checks and balances stage.

We saw it with the moderators of the debates. Firm language, repeated simple instructions, will coach Trump towards better decisions. Let’s unite as an American people again, and come up with very succinct language that he can understand.

1. Do not give in to the machine.

2. You are an agent of change, remember to stay flexible.

3. Stay strong, even when the winds to push you towards buying in an selling out are strong.

4. End unlimited term limits. Lets change up the big boys and get them on their toes.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s the tunnel that’s the real scary bit.

Life is long, and now in our 20′s we see it as a blip on the radar. We’re old enough to see everything we’ve ever done and to start to plan the exactly what’s going to happen next. 

The really interesting stuff isn’t right after this though. It’s way after this. It’s the vacation you saved up for that you get to take with all your friends and family. It’s the dream house on the side of the lake you were finally able to afford. It’s the tree house in a Siberian wilderness that you searched 20 years to find.

Now is pretty. Its a gorgeous piece of the world that we should take every chance to get lost in. But the what’s next? That’s the real gem. That’s the whatever happens between where we are now and how we get to where we are going.

Motivation is easy. Inspire someone enough and they’ll do just about anything.

Persistence is hard. Picking a path that feels right and following it, even when your feet refuse to move, when your breath gives up in your throat, and when the road pulls you down with every step, yields the true rewards.

Anyone can make anything philosophical. There's a distinct formula to it and it all stems from the concept of convincing your readers to follow their dreams. There is also a market for that, as the numberof people who need to be picked up and pushed in the right direction outnumber the number who will listen.

Getting them to laugh is a whole other matter. Anyone can laugh. Anyone (save the few with who've survived the all-terrible laryngectomy, but even then, they can still many a half-decent chortle) has the potential to get a kick out what you throw out to the world.

And the world's oldest occupatiion was invented. (Alright, it's either the jesters or the prostitutes, believe what you will. Look back at early man. Was he a horn dog, or a home dog? Are you telling me the first time cavewoman saw a caveman's phallic profession of love there wasn't any laughing at all?)

I can't even comprehend how that joke would play out. There's no way to ensure that caveman giggles would even make it to that final round. Are you telling me the bumping and fumbling around to remove those animal skins wouldn't get a healthy guffaw out of either party.

And we've come full circle to the man who not only needs to laugh, but the man who pays for it through his time and his attention and money. So much so that whole careers can be built on eliciting a single response. Comedians, comediennes, authors, bloggers, writers, rappers, cosmetic surgeous, Vanilla Ice, politicians, all elicit that same laugh response that keeps us spending so much that they can build careers, stories, followings.

So what is the real value of attention. By monopolizing on a certain portion of consumer, one can draw a fraction of the global attention, and as such a semi-proportionate measure, a fraction of the survival resources.

In the cavemen days, that would have been meat, shelter, fire, and eventually tools. Today it's location, attention, recognition, and cash. And as the numbers start to pile up, so does the possibility of survival.

As a race, we are all going to become so funny that one-liners will be obsolete. So great that rap battles will be between two of the greatest entertainers the world has ever seen.

The world is filled with the unnecessaries: the trivialities and no-matters that suck us from happiness into despair.  We become inundated with the must-do's and the must haves and become swept up in the push and pull of it. we join the ranks of co-workers, friends, and celebrities who march to the beat of the drum that shouts "I matter. I matter. I matter." But why?

Remember life as a child? Probably not. Even if you are only 15 years since your tenth birthday, that's a decade and a half of up's and down's, in's and out's, mazes and pitfalls, career goals and failures, cars and apartments and bills and jobs and cash and on and on and on. But let's go back to that first happy memory that you had.

Personally I remember the battle of tying my shoes. I can tell you exactly where I was (brother's room) and exactly how many times my dad tied and untied my shoes before he left me to do it (4) and I can tell you how frustrated I got. How that damn bunny that was supposed to run around the other bunny just couldn't get it together. How it fell apart before it even got close and how my fingers seemed fat and incapable.

And then, in a blazing flash surge of dopamine and disbelief, my first knot. My first tied shoe. And then the second took half as long. And before you knew it I felt completely accomplished. I felt the smile and the surge and the happiness and the joy.

And then, I grew up.

Graduated college, accumulated some bills, and started the work. Work needs an article before it to separate it from any other kind of work (working out, workflow, work-gasm, workaholic). The work is any work that is not fueled by personal growth.

So the trick it seems, is to peel away anything that would distract an otherwise fully-functioning human from achieving their true potential. To, and let me quote a million successful writers, two million motivational speakers, and a half-dozen kid movies here, "follow your dreams."

And now we turn to Thoreau ("Simplify, simplify, simplify.") and start cutting away anything that isn't something that makes us truly excited to be alive. And eventually as we whittle down the bills, and build the savings, and cut away anything that isn't world-travelling, making love, or whiskey drinking, we find that 10-year-old us, who thrives on learning, doing, succeeding, and being, was there all along.

It’s hard to drive with your hand on her thigh.

Harder to go anywhere with the thoughts of her everywhere.

It’s not the how, its the why.  It’s the why’d I go? Why’d I leave? Why does anyone leave? Does anyone really leave? Where would anyone go?

The how is simple.

a) get in car.

b) drive.

It’s the where’s and the why’s and the who’s and the what the fuck do you think you’re doing, you can’t just drive wherever you want’s that slow things down.

So get the keys (Which keys? Where are the keys? How’d my keys get under there? Why didn’t anyone find them for me? Where am I going to get my next set of keys, SHUT UP). Walk out the door (Which door? Front door? Back door? ANY FUCKING DOOR). Get in the car. (who’s car? my car? Where is my car? How’d it get there. OPEN THE DAMN DOOR). Key to ignition. (DO IT) Foot to gas. (GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO)

Roll down the window and laugh with reckless abandon. Drive until the car don’t go no further. Run till the breathing gets hard. Walk till the legs can’t lift the ground. Then stumble till the collapse.

Wherever you find yourself after everything else has failed is where you are now.  Is it better than it was before you left? Does it have to be? 

Hi Self-Doubt,

It's been a while.  The struggle? Oh, its been fine thanks for asking.

See you next week,

Tom

And just like that all the un-necessaries fade to the background.  I am once again whole.  Me and the pen united again.  The words will come.  The struggle is always stronger at the starting line.  When the momentum builds and the words come together, the characters form.  They take the story wherever it will go and the really strong characters make you wonder why it took you so long to start.

Life is a battle.  There IS an easy way out.  It is called coasting.  It is called couch surfing.  It is called ignorance.  There are so many who will never get to where they need to be because where they are now is just so damn comfortable.

Not that there is anything wrong with comfort.  It isn't the enemy of fear, its the product.  Its the hope that there is a place to fall back to.  It's the bomb shelter with the waterbed.  The family of  four with the 4WDSUV in the driveway.  Its the 2 story surburban home with the nice trimmed yards and the doghouse out back.

And its perfect for raising a family.  Kids need safety and security, but there is a maelstrom of madness for those who want to live before they have to protect.

The world is so big and so free with so much to be taken and even more to be lived for.  But in the battle against fear and hate, we are losing more and more national landmarks to pipelines and oil wells, more to tourism and international capitalism.

So in all reality and in every feeling of the word.  FUCK the hesitation.  FUCK the second guess.  FUCK the feeling of unworthiness and FUCK the cheap easy pass at life.

The first day is the easiest.  When the sun rose on Monday, Doug looked at himself.  Covered in the evidence of the hole he buried in, he threw his ice-cream/ketchup/shame stained wife beater in the trash and climbed into the shower.

While he was in there, he wondered about what had happened last night.  Was it real?  The bruises were still there.  He still had her hand print smacked across his face and the scratch marks down his chest. 

As the water trickled into the drain it also brought the blood and the sweat and the grime from the last week in that clockwise spiral straight to the sewers, and as Doug watched it go, he almost missed it.

Last Monday seemed so promising.  The sun was coming up and with a full night's sleep behind him, the world literally looked open and bright and honest.  Doug did the Monday routine, got suited up, and got to work 5 minutes early as he always did. Every day.

Doug went to school for the fine arts and if you asked anyone who watched him do it, he was a hell of a painter.  To everyone who heard him at work though, he was a timid, cautious salesman, whose clientele was mostly limited to grandmama's and schoolteachers. 

It was exactly this reason that the high powered execs at the insurance firm had a neat little letter waiting for Doug on his desk.  It was so kind and courteous that Doug didn't believe it at first:

Dear Douglas, it read. 

We would like to mark on the first day of your seventh month of employment with Copley Health Insurance that your time here has been noticed.  You have been punctual, polite, and responsive.

However, your numbers are simply not what we need them to be if we are to continue to put our faith in your career. So, at this time, we would like you to pack your shit and leave.

Sincerely, it finished, twisting the knife in poor Doug's chest. Mikey "Mr. Clean" Maxim. 

And with that Doug looked at Mikey's desk to see him smiling maliciously and staring straight at Doug's face in unpleasant expectation.  

And with that, Doug knew.  He looked down quickly at his desk to smile kindly to himself.  Flipping the paper over, he took out his pen and started writing.  

It wasn't much.  MAybe a paragraph or two, and it wasnt until the last sentence that Doug included the link to the naked pictures his daughter posted with the Quarterback of the high school football team. 

Doug packed up his stuff into a box that was ever so conveniently located next to his filing cabinet and secured the lid for a quick get away. 

To the night dancers, the high fliers, the fast fallers, the sky divers.  To the belly laughers, the beer drinkers, the back slappers, the joke yokers.  I want you.  I want you all, right here, right now.  Dance and laugh and joke and play and turn my day back into last night.

Fill my day with candles and spotlights, dim the sun and crank up the stars.  Turn the obviousness of the here and now into the subtlety of the what once was.  Give me back my smiles and happies and loves and laughs.  Take away my work tomorrows, my laundrys, my thoughts of the futures, and hold them for a moment.

Just a drink really.  maybe a dance.  I have to see a girl about a thought I just had.  Give me this moment more.  And give me this moment there.   And her moment here. And that smile.  Give me a moment for that smile.  The one lit up in the bar room with the smooth jazz blowing her hair back and forth.  Give me that moment with her hair blowing so close to my ear.

Give me the banter. The back and forth.  Then take it away.  It’s a wind song.  A sea breeze.  A floating dream that melts before it turns to reality.  The electric neon packaging around a Twinkie, that promises heavenly deliciouness and delivers thigh-thickening sickly sweetness.

Give me the bitter regret, the why the fuck did I do that, give me back my responsibilities.  That’s right, that’s my overflowing laundry basket.  That’s my responsibility.  That’s my work tomorrow.  And I think I recognize that debt.  Oh yeah that’s mine.

Hey, laundry machine.  How’s the weekend?  Yep, same old, same old.  Here’s to the tomorrow.  Here’s to hoping we survive.  Hey, lunch box.  Yep.  Brightest lights, cutest smile.  Strangest face, at least in a while.

Monkey suit, check. Wallet, watch, phone, check. Crushing sense of self-doubt and denial; waiting on the front step for me to get home, check.  Confused and aimless sense of who I am and what’s coming next? Check.

I drove by a man standing in the cold New England air, just outside Beverly’s city limits.  There is a gas station there, but he wasn’t standing near the door or lounging around the heat lamp in the garage with the other mechanics.  He was standing a couple yards in front of the “Welcome to Beverly, est. 1668” sign that menacingly gleamed at me every morning on my way to work.

                The man wore a big gray canvas coat and a hat pulled down to his eyebrows.  He stood lazily watching the cars pass by, staring at each driver and passenger as they passed.  The gleam from the rising sun must have made the windows opaque.  I had to squint to see the road and thanks to a break in the glare caused by the high firs and evergreens behind the gas station, for a second or two, I could see him perfectly.

                I saw the driver of the car in front of me turn her head as she passed, before I saw him standing there.  He had a lean in the way that he stood that made him appear to get closer to the car as you drove by.  And his face is oddly peaceful.  As if that spot beneath his feet is exactly where his feet need to be and that his shoulders are exactly the way they’re supposed to be.

                That gas station was built in 1984.  They paved the spot and dug the tanks out in the summer.  Before, it was just a little park on the side of the road, down the street from the church.  When I asked around the church I met Pastor Dan.

                Dan told me that the neighborhood had changed since he was last there.   Before they added Beverly’s twelfth gas station, and paved the way for her 200th parking lot, there was more woods here than anywhere else on the North Shore.  You could approach Cabot Street from 100 different directions and only 2 would be visible by civilization.

                As the town grew up, it lost that naiveté.  Trees and secrecy made way for business and commercialization.  The comforting woods lost the war to business and commerce.  And there were only a few remainders.  A few hints of what was.

The wind whipped through the trees and shook the loose leaves from their skyscraping heights.  As they fell to the ground they laughed and danced amongst each other for just a couple minutes.  Then most of them hit the ground or landed on the white fence just underneath the mighty maple.

A few managed to dance in the wind just the right way.  They twisted and writhed mid-gust and flew higher.  The ones that had fallen looked up in amazement and awe.  As the twisters and dancers soared higher they heard the laughs and shouts of encouragement from those that had hit the ground.

"Go higher!"

"Fly away, friend!"

"Go and be well!!!"

Their voices filled those high soaring leaves with emotion and they laughed and danced even faster, joyous and alive.  Bouncing and floating with each other they twisted and danced higher than the highest leaves still clinging onto the mighty branches of the maple.

They stared in disbelief and horror at the leaves defying nature and gravity.  They were breaking the rules.  Leaves fall.  Everyone knows that. They don't fly or soar, and they most certainly don't pass the highest leaf.

This highest leaf shouted at the leaves in anger:

"Do not dare to go higher.  All leaves fall and you too will fall.  As you go higher and higher you only have farther to fall.  Cut your losses futile friends, give up and give in.  Trust gravity.  You will never get to be as high as me ever again, but this way you won't fall so far."

And the leaves around him made their own angry chorus.

"Give up fools"

"Don't even try"

"We're all waiting for you to fail"

A few of the dancers stopped.  Amazed.  They had gotten so far and climbed so high and now their own kind was telling them to fall.  A few lost their steam and started their slow sad tumble downwards, questioning why they ever tried to go so high. 

And the lowest dancer saw them fall and started to sing. 

"We will fly because we are strong.  

We will dance the whole winter long.

We will fly because we are strong.

We will dance the whole winter long."

Laughing and singing, he twisted upwards and joined the chorus of his friends, and they shouted happy thoughts to those that were on the way down.

"We love you friends"

"You are beautiful"

"Dance on the way down"

And all that were falling heard the song and the love and they smiled and twisted on their way down, just as a way of saying goodbye to their friends as they danced upwards.  

A few who had faltered started to hear the song and twisted together with their friends, dancing in and out in the magical cloud that flew even higher and higher.  Soon they were out of sight of the mighty maple and the highest leaf, green with envy and spite.

And the once lowest leaf danced and laughed with his friends, glad that they had gotten so high and so far.  As he felt truly at peace and happy. 

"Goodbye my friends," he shouted, "go far and proud, but this is as far as I go."

And he took a deep breath and let himself fall down.  Smiling and crying for his friends who would go farther still, he took in all the beauty around him.

New England in the fall, the audience of trees all waving beneath him, the mountains aflame with the colors of fall, and the smoke of the season climbing higher. 

Humans are imperfect.  Flawed, but infinitely unique.  For every flaw, there is an equal but opposite preference.  For every lazy slob, there’s another who really appreciates comfort.  For every pleasantly plump, there’s another looking for a great place to cuddle up next to. For every asshole, there is someone craving the chance to be controlled.

The longer you spend with someone, the more you get to know about their flaws and their strengths.  And you will start to notice some flaws stand out against the others.  Some little nuances will bubble up and start to swell.  But you won’t see them over the things that you love enough. Say her eyes, the way she laughs, her opinions or the way she stands behind them so ferociously, that adorable snort she gets sometimes when she stops thinking about laughing and just does it.

It seems like the real trick is sticking with someone long enough to know that they are the right one for you.  And who defines rightness? You do, but I don’t think it’s a conscious decision.  It’s a feeling.  And it’s more than being content, it’s a certain safety. 

Even the wildest of loves brings with it a security.  The sense of knowing who you are and that no matter how things turn out, someone knew who you were at one point and loved you for it.  Love is so intangible and indescribable that it cannot be a truly human creation.  There is a beauty in love that can’t be captured by words, in any language.

It doesn’t stop us from trying.  “I love you” is American for “I hope you’re always happy” and seems to get thrown like darts at a dartboard.  Everyone gets a little piece of it and still manages to elude that biggest piece of all, the bull’s-eye, the hail mary, the “at last” sigh of relief that means that you’ve got her, or that she’s got you.

Spanish’s te amo is much more potent.  To throw that around is almost a curse.  Te amo is a special love that is between two people and lasts forever.  To throw it around is to cheapen the word, and instead of Americans, the most brutal of word bastardizers, Spanish-speakers carry their ancestry and their history with them.  Te amo carries that brutal weight of understanding that surpasses the mutability of the present day.

Do the stars ever miss each other?  Do they ever cry out in fear and pain and remember the fateful day that the universe tore them asunder? Can they feel love? Is there any feeling at all between them?

In a universe of infinite possibilities, there are two planets.  Two that used to be whole together that made up this giant beautiful spinning orb that had life living on it at one point.  The planet looked on as its inhabitants moved out of the sea, made tools, and started to learn a language.

It felt strange having life on it.  What did that mean to it?  Was it a parent? Maybe, but certainly not of the same species.  Was it alive? It imagined so, I mean it could think of all the different little people living on it, couldn’t it?  What did it live off? Sunlight and superstition? And it imagined that love could even have something to do with it, although the planet didn’t really know exactly what love was.

It had observed the wanderings and wonderings of the poets that occasionally danced upon its crust, and it had seen the casanova’s and don juan’s and madonna’s and cleopatra’s make play of the sacred sex, but it had no better idea on what exactly was happening.  It compared the love of the people on its shores to the love it had for the sun.  The warming glowing beacon of radiance that seemed to love and care for all had entranced our orb and the planet loved it because without it, it couldn’t have all this beautiful life on its shores.

And so this giant beautiful spinning orb spun on. And its living kind started to learn and grow and develop into bigger and bigger things.  Making towns into cities and cities into behemoths that belched black smoke into the sky and behemoths that belched black smoke into the sky into clean and bright metropolises.  The earth stared on in wonder at the pure ambition of its people and it couldn’t help but feel proud of them.

A meteor.

A giant fucking ball of pain that travelled millions of miles through space for the sole purpose of fucking with our little orb.

Crashes.

Into.

Our new little planet.

And our planet breaks in two, sending one piece out into the universe to launch itself into orbit around the same sun.

The earth outlived the Grecians, the Romans, the dinosaurs, but it will not see the end of Americans, Chinese, or Russians.  It's survived dysentery, the bubonic and polio, but it won’t surpass AIDS, herpes, or cancer.  The chaos that is this wonderful planet is impossible to be controlled. And yet, we, the modern men and women, will not let it slow our systematic seizure of all things natural.

We started very slowly.  Like the first drops of the rain. With the Neanderthals and the CroMagnon man, who's chief appetites where whetted by fellow man and the occasional plant or animal.  Back then mankind made homes and huts out of forests and caves.  We respected the power that the earth had and likewise tied our very livelihoods to its safest and strongest.

Eventually we found the trees.  Those blessed pillars of protection.  It took us a couple millennia to figure out a way to cut em down, but once we did? Boom. Personalization.  No longer would our homes be shaped the way nature intended. No, now we can take the most unnatural of shapes and surround our family in the weirdest, strangest, oddest piece of our own ambition.  An unnatural habitat in a natural world.

We’d cut squares and rectangles into lost lonely hills and pepper the landscape with our own homes and abodes.  We’d use bricks, stones, trees, adobe, mud, sod, grass.  We’d cut them into hills, fields, mountains, valleys.  We’d pick the strangest locales and live there for entire lives.

Hermits clinging to their islands, their scenic outlooks, would look down the valley or across the water at the towns and shudder to think of the atrocities contained therein.

What started as a town hall, a church, and maybe a school has turned into office parks, and Starbucks, and apartment complexes, and skyrises, and courts and jails, and public offices, and fire stations and police stations and ambulance crews and fast food joints.  We’ve got hospitals and day cares, universities and holding cells, Domino’s pizza and high-class, high-roller dining experiences.

And now we’ve got cars.  Gotta love that Model T. The granddaddy of modern ambition.  The cruiser.  The easy-to-driver.  That lost classic that inspired in a country the need to be mobile.  The aching desire to never have to be contained to one locale.  And humanity spread like a virus.  From the occasional cliff or cave to the pepperings of towns and cities across the country, we’ve taken the world.  There isn’t  a single piece on this planet that hasn’t felt our footsteps or choke on our smog.

Love and music come together at night.  When the sun dies in the sky and the cold rips through our very bones, our souls look for a spark to keep us alive until daytime.  They will tear our very bodies and minds apart, like a drunk girl missing an iPhone, until they find that one little piece that they can hold on to.  Memories will get tossed like couch cushions, feelings thrown about like jackets, and somewhere, our minds will find us something to live for.  And the feeling when you remember that ex, the grade school crush, the second grade teacher,  that person you lost is irreplaceable, even if the object of desire isn’t.

  Hum it out, sing it like its never been sung before, blow that harmonica like the last lonely cowboy 200 miles from mama and papa and 400 miles from a safe place to sleep, with the stars spotting the sky like a billion fireflies entranced with the sound of your voice, scream the song of your soul into the vast infinity.

  The cows will stir but they won’t go anywhere.  They’ve heard this song, not this one exactly, but the one with the same emotion behind it, every night since you met ‘em and they’ll hear it every night until the slaughter.  They know their time has come, but they aren’t afraid of it.  And they listen to the fear and the lonliness in your voice as you howl at the moon and they feel oddly comforted that even now as their last hours on this big blue ball tick ever closer to black, that their family is still on hand.

  As you howl at the moon, they stare quietly on waiting for their own slumber to take them, and they are oddly grateful that their scope of emotion doesn’t even get close to depression, anguish, misery, elation, or despair. 

  Did you remember their name?  Good, now belt it, little mama.  Shake the very soil you stand on with the feeling of recollection and that last golden memory.  Stamp your feet and shout in anger. Sob quietly and howl in that very same anguish. Let those feelings flow m’dear. Laugh and shout with those beautiful recollections.

The inevitable approaches and my stomach shrinks back in fear.  Twisting itself into a knot and packing itself into my bowels, its all I can do to not sneeze and lose control of my ever-loving innards. 

My brain races with ways out.  Is the door locked? Yes. Checked it a hundred times. The windows? Barred.  All of them.  No chance for escape.  I’ve thrown my body against all the exits. Nothing.  Of course it doesn’t help that I don’t have much meat on my bones.

A puddle collected in the corner. I won’t say what it contains. But I can say that I feel synonymous with it.  Peering in, my eyes find the face of a bedraggled, haggard, ragged-looking dude with not too much left in the Cheek Department.  Except the Bones.  He has excellent and most prominent Cheek Bones, and while we’re on the subject, look at that jutting CollarBone! This is a man with Osteo’s on Display.

Yellowing skin strapped tight against the frame of a fucked up mind and body.  There isn’t too much left for me here.  Physically speaking, I’m reduced to the bare minimum.  Heart doesn’t beat any more, it races. Lungs don’t breathe so much as pant.  Liver stopped working a long time ago and in a dire conspiracy with my Kidneys has turned my piss green and my skin yellow.

Ahh the bliss of Technicolor.  Every one knows that whites and lean meats go well, except my eyes, who have opted for the rouger of the two to accompany my Spartan frame.  In place of the Spartan warrior who used to stand in my shoes, I have been reduced to the most meager of terms, much as the Sparta we used to glorify has fallen prey to Hollywood’s spoiled brats and the oversimplification of a culture of hardened warriors.

Pain will be my ultimate enemy, although in place of the typical aches and pains that accompany my walks and wavers, I have been electrified by the fear of the future.  The unbearably short one it seems.  My door gets ever closer to opening, my walls shrink around me, just as my skin has against my quivering heart (which I can watch shrivel against the coldness of the cell by the way.  It is quite the odd sensation to see your most intimate of organs be reduced to a waxy, withering ball of fear).

Footsteps. It won’t be long now.  Farewell sweet walls, Good-bye barred windows, Au revoir tepid tainted pool of a mirror.  This is my final Goodnight Moon as I too prepare the world after life.  I imagine it is like getting ready to sleep when you cant. My life has been robbed of me and as the final insult to my human form it is still going to be ripped out of my hands without so much of a flinch from the executioner.  I heard the call in the street. I am number 4 of 6.  By the time the crowd gets to me, they will already be shelled by the callowness of humanity and my head hitting the basket will be nothing but a separation between numbers 3 and 5. Both more interesting looking than I.

Maybe somebody told you that you were worthless once.  Maybe they made fun of the way you combed your hair, or danced, or put your make up on, or dressed.  Somehow, you separated yourself from the status quo, just enough be to be noticed.  And some people, when they notice things are different, have to call attention to it.

Why do they have to call attention to it?  They’re afraid.  Differences are stronger than sameness.  They, by standing alone and without support, need more strength to be maintained.  In fact, that one time that somebody told you your hair looked stupid, you might have changed your hairstyle back to the way you had been doing it, or maybe you followed what everyone else was doing.  You could have even changed it to the way that that that person had it, to avoid ridicule.

From their eyes, they changed something about someone else.  They held the power. And they used it to get what they wanted.  Namely support from another person.  Friendly behavior, sameness, whatever.

The fact is that differences are harder to accept.  It is in fact recognizing that someone is different from you, and at the same time that you are different from them.  It’s the same realization that someone else is of a different religion, skin tone, ethnicity, hair color, but the difference between the knee-jerk “they’re different and that difference must be noticed” and the much quieter “they’re different from me and I am different from them,” is respect.

The respect that recognizes difference as strength and not weakness.  If you were ever ridiculed, you felt the lack of respect, not just from the initial bully, but from the off-shoots, the various splinter cells of “nah-nah-nah-nah-boo-boo,” that continue to spread the cycle of xenophobia.

The fear is inherited in the disrespect.  It lies first in the initial observation.

Dude 1: Nice shirt, fag.

That’s really all it takes.  Maybe your grandmother bought you that shirt, maybe your mom did.  Or maybe, you found it in your dad’s closet and because he hasn’t been home since your brother was born, maybe it felt nice to be connected to him, and maybe that was the first time you felt safe in a long time.

Dude 2:……

I mean, what can you say?  He’s already fired the shot, there’s nothing you can do except assess the damage.  Are you going to stop wearing the shirt? Tear it off and go beg your mom to buy you an Abercrombie shirt, just like the one Dude 1 is wearing?

Or are you confident enough to accept that Dude 1 is more scared than you are, and he won’t be the only one to tell you that your shirt is stupid today, but he doesn’t matter.  You matter.  You put on the shirt and because that shirt is a part of you. You are stronger for it.