Something always happens on the way to bedlam.
When they said repent I wondered what that meant.
Pull me closer and whisper in my ear. It might mean something to me. No one knows. There are things in everyday life that make us wonder how long it will take before we are washed away or stolen into the night by the undertow. Why smile unless the smile is geniune? We devalue everything by playing a part instead of opening the self to exposure and to false judges. How much of ourselves do we hide and how much do we allow to slip out in statements and actions we allow to be misinterpreted because it is easier than stopping the misinterpretation? It is easier to pretend to be interested than to tell another that what they say and offer means very little or that we just don't happen to give a fuck. Is that wrong? If we are traveling this life in search of connections that teach us something and help us somehow and validate us... are we losing touch with the road by pretending to care about things and people just to spare their feelings as well as our own?
A couple days ago a person who I only know as a noder here and have never met in person lit a beacon in my mind. This person, who shall remain nameless (protect the innocent and change the names and lose your charts kind of thing) made only a handful of vague statements open to interpretation. Yet, those statements burst a dam in my soul and caused me to re-evaluate my own course. A few minutes of reading and exchanging /msgs with this person has been all that happened, and yet it brings me to wonder why this poet and talented but angry writer means more to me based on this than people I work with and spend hours every week exchanging mindless banter with. Why? Because we seem to have lost our way. Courtesy is more important than purpose all too often in this life of ours and we seek the path of least resistance. This jump dish lickety split version of a life we muddle our way through here in this frame of existence has become a throw away flyer on the windshield of a much larger car shuttling us individually through the experiences we're only just somewhere in the middle of. How often do we slip another peg down the ladder of our experience by wearing false faces and trying to please and entertain all those who audition for parts in the play we call our lives.
Do we give a shit about honesty anymore or do we only care about trying to please everyone all the time. Our exceptions come when we get too pissed to take it any longer and lash out at some silly git who just happened to wander into our life at the wrong time. The dishwater sponge keeps soaking up more of our time and energy and we're all too reluctant to wring it out until we can only wring it out with anger.
The stop light we wait on determines things we are not aware of.
I remember the day I gave up on small talk and swore it off forever. As a result I spend more time nodding and walking past people I know and would otherwise be expected to ask "Did you have ham for lunch today?" I'm more interested in why they're getting divorced or why there is that scar running down the side of their face, but it isn't polite for me to ask the questions that I really want answers to so I'm supposed to ask them about ham. I can't do that. It distracts me and makes me feel sick to my stomach.
I once came very close to taking another human being's life. That was in 1989, but a voice spoke to me and stopped me. The voice came from inside me but I had never heard it before. So easy to have that desire when someone is taking everything you have and treating it like their own personal latrine because they caught you on the downside of life. I can talk about that anytime, but I cannot talk about whether or not you had a ham sandwich for lunch. I love weird, wacky conversations with no barriers where we can laugh until it hurts, but I don't want to hear "the one about the priest and the donkey." Why do we waste so much of each other's time?
There are those who call me a prick because I delete their e-mail forwards, tell them when I'm bored by their conversation or that I don't want to "just go somewhere and hang out." Cover the blackboard with chalk and paint everything the color of your soul. Give me something I can taste. I walk away when I feel I can no longer offer anything to someone's life path and all too often I wish they would do the same. It doesn't mean I don't love them anymore. Shit, I can't remember the last time I "stopped" loving someone, but I remember the last time I stopped being able to offer someone anything and it is just about ten minutes from now.
What if you got halfway to your destination and found out the captain lied?
Oh, and by the way, Jessie loves you, just stop calling every ten minutes and give Jessie some time to be Jessie for chrissakes.
Don't forget to tip your waitresses and bartenders.