Cell + 7
Things are changing.
I feel my mind polarizing, causing the plates to shift and stressing a fault line down the middle of my skull. I dreamed about the goddess at the bottom of the well again, and awoke feeling ashamed of my fear.
Like a grown man fleeing a girl scout armed with thin mints, there is no justification for this emotion, no explanation for the little red light blinking in the peripherals of my head.
There is now another severed cry, another rift whispering the fragile nature of my stability. I’m losing track of the bond between my mind and my eyes. I’m losing faith in my sanity, for my grip on this place.
For example, this morning delivered another hammer strike in the form of a small note. Just another straw added to the weight that will eventually snap my back.
I’d almost overlooked it as I gathered the growing collection of my loose journal. It sat servile beneath the pile, waiting to grow sharp upon observation. A single sentence was typed at the center of the page.
“We’re here to help when you are ready.”
Had it always been there? Perhaps I’d mistakenly picked it up each day, keeping it hidden at the rear of the pile.
Who is the “we” referenced, and why don’t they make themselves known?
When I’m ready for what?
My head hurts and I’m afraid. My will is weakening, and the unexplainable is beginning to outnumber the known. This battle over my sanity is deferring to the growing populace of the lacking. The tide is only pulling out, grasping hungrily to drown.
If I split in two, will the result be considered homicide or suicide?
Still, through all this, against the surging wave a fear hovering over me, beneath the weight of the cross strapped to my back, there shines the tiniest of hopes. Have I come to a crossroads?
Only days ago, such a note as I found today, would have sent me parading down the chasm of self annihilation waving a bloodied white flag of surrender to whatever demons waited to rip me apart, but today something is different.
A slight chemical transformation has taken place. The oil and water have somehow begun to mix. A bridge is threatening to span the ocean between myself and I.
Frightened and hopeful at the same time, I’ll embrace the storm growing in me and try to trust that the rains it brings will serve to wash away whatever stain holds me, and not reign over the process of my demise. Am I giving up or fighting back? I don’t know and don’t care.
Wherever this current chooses to drop me is out of my hands.
Friday, August 14, 2009
The Awakening (non-sports) - Part 14
Cell + 6
Last night I had a dream of seeming significance, but I have no feeling as to why. It’s as if facts I’ve not learned dance and pulse in my head casting their scriptures off in carelessness, living vicariously in the waves their crashing sends.
My head pulls in so many directions at once. I’m simply waiting for the spray of small maroon geysers to erupt from my temples along cracks that must soon give way. So many voices, and I’ve no idea which ones to trust.
My dream, as I remember it, refuses to hide. Even as I found myself once again tied to a cold bed bathed in a field of warm white light this morning, and felt the prick of something like a bee sting high on my forearm, the dream’s topography mapped itself on the back of my eyes.
I’ve charted its grounds again and again since I’ve been back in my cell, and perhaps it is only my ignorance which forfeits my understanding.
Anyway, I’ll do my best to lay the dream here for later interpretation.
It begins in a place I don’t recall, and can’t outline, but what I saw is all that is of importance. At least, I think that’s the case. I want to say it was in the middle of a field of tall tan grass swaying under the fingers of an overcast sky dragging hands of warm air. The sky was that of a harsh winter storm, but the air was warm and without precipitation.
Feeling the grass slide over my pant legs or fold beneath my weight, I waded forward to a waist high circle of gray stone. Once upon it, I peered down into the hollow center of a well.
Far beneath where my feet held the floor of my dream, light flickered like a phantom moonlit candle. Many shades of gray caressed and spun over each other just beneath the surface of what had to be ancient holy water.
From this twirling mesh of shimmering gray came the haunting white of a beautiful woman’s face. Her hair floated on the currents in the water before her face, and I realized the water was slowly rising, bringing her closer.
There was nothing to be afraid of. Yet, fear rose in me, matching the growing height of the water inch for inch. I wanted to turn and run, to fly up and through the clouds and feel the wonderful heat of the sun blister me as I soared into its flames, burning me beyond ash, leaving no residue of my existence.
I wanted nothing more than to turn my head away. As often is the case, what I wanted was of little regard. Instead, I watched the water rise and the woman beneath its churning surface come closer.
As she came, her features blinked in and out of focus. White folds of waving fabric sank from her shoulders into the darkness below. There was no malice in her eyes, and no ferocity to her gestures. My heart sped and pumped the fear throughout my being, like a fever of rolling razorblades, leaving my insides, my self, shred and bleeding in agony.
The well, now only feet from filled, began to shake and without order, my body took one step back. Just as I did, water jumped from the opening towards the sky. The woman rode the blast to its peak and then burst free of the falling water. Her arms lifted from her sides. White cloth trailed her ascent, and then she was coming down to me, leaving the fabric to twist up behind her.
She was angelic, godlike. She was a living representation of some Roman goddess I could not name.
There was still nothing menacing about her, other than the overall situation of her arrival. Again, I tried to move, to run, but my body was disconnected from my will, leaving me sitting, waiting to be crushed as she fell towards me.
Just as we were about to make contact, my eyes closed in the dream. When I opened them again, I was again standing beside the well, peering in. Far beneath, I could see the shimmer of the water’s surface, and nothing else.
Taking a step back, I realized the structure of the well had changed. Where there was only the circle of the well’s rim, there was more. A wooden arch now rose over the well’s stone mouth. There was an arm to the right of the wood frame, connected by a pulley and rope, where a bucket should hang, directly over the well’s open mouth, there hung a rusted sign.
I read the words, and directly after, woke up.
Four words, by my own lack of knowledge, they are a mystery to me, but something about them calls the fear within me.
It read:
Veritas on the Horizon.
Who or what is Veritas, and why am I afraid of it?
Last night I had a dream of seeming significance, but I have no feeling as to why. It’s as if facts I’ve not learned dance and pulse in my head casting their scriptures off in carelessness, living vicariously in the waves their crashing sends.
My head pulls in so many directions at once. I’m simply waiting for the spray of small maroon geysers to erupt from my temples along cracks that must soon give way. So many voices, and I’ve no idea which ones to trust.
My dream, as I remember it, refuses to hide. Even as I found myself once again tied to a cold bed bathed in a field of warm white light this morning, and felt the prick of something like a bee sting high on my forearm, the dream’s topography mapped itself on the back of my eyes.
I’ve charted its grounds again and again since I’ve been back in my cell, and perhaps it is only my ignorance which forfeits my understanding.
Anyway, I’ll do my best to lay the dream here for later interpretation.
It begins in a place I don’t recall, and can’t outline, but what I saw is all that is of importance. At least, I think that’s the case. I want to say it was in the middle of a field of tall tan grass swaying under the fingers of an overcast sky dragging hands of warm air. The sky was that of a harsh winter storm, but the air was warm and without precipitation.
Feeling the grass slide over my pant legs or fold beneath my weight, I waded forward to a waist high circle of gray stone. Once upon it, I peered down into the hollow center of a well.
Far beneath where my feet held the floor of my dream, light flickered like a phantom moonlit candle. Many shades of gray caressed and spun over each other just beneath the surface of what had to be ancient holy water.
From this twirling mesh of shimmering gray came the haunting white of a beautiful woman’s face. Her hair floated on the currents in the water before her face, and I realized the water was slowly rising, bringing her closer.
There was nothing to be afraid of. Yet, fear rose in me, matching the growing height of the water inch for inch. I wanted to turn and run, to fly up and through the clouds and feel the wonderful heat of the sun blister me as I soared into its flames, burning me beyond ash, leaving no residue of my existence.
I wanted nothing more than to turn my head away. As often is the case, what I wanted was of little regard. Instead, I watched the water rise and the woman beneath its churning surface come closer.
As she came, her features blinked in and out of focus. White folds of waving fabric sank from her shoulders into the darkness below. There was no malice in her eyes, and no ferocity to her gestures. My heart sped and pumped the fear throughout my being, like a fever of rolling razorblades, leaving my insides, my self, shred and bleeding in agony.
The well, now only feet from filled, began to shake and without order, my body took one step back. Just as I did, water jumped from the opening towards the sky. The woman rode the blast to its peak and then burst free of the falling water. Her arms lifted from her sides. White cloth trailed her ascent, and then she was coming down to me, leaving the fabric to twist up behind her.
She was angelic, godlike. She was a living representation of some Roman goddess I could not name.
There was still nothing menacing about her, other than the overall situation of her arrival. Again, I tried to move, to run, but my body was disconnected from my will, leaving me sitting, waiting to be crushed as she fell towards me.
Just as we were about to make contact, my eyes closed in the dream. When I opened them again, I was again standing beside the well, peering in. Far beneath, I could see the shimmer of the water’s surface, and nothing else.
Taking a step back, I realized the structure of the well had changed. Where there was only the circle of the well’s rim, there was more. A wooden arch now rose over the well’s stone mouth. There was an arm to the right of the wood frame, connected by a pulley and rope, where a bucket should hang, directly over the well’s open mouth, there hung a rusted sign.
I read the words, and directly after, woke up.
Four words, by my own lack of knowledge, they are a mystery to me, but something about them calls the fear within me.
It read:
Veritas on the Horizon.
Who or what is Veritas, and why am I afraid of it?
The Awakening (non-sports) - Part 13
Cell + 3
Maybe not.
I remember stories and mythologies of a role sparrows are said to play. Couriers towing souls from this world to the next, they are the reaper’s trailing shadow. They turn the page to reveal the next written line.
Now, given the fact that I haven’t even seen a hint of sunlight in….in however many days and can find no link from the outside world to my cell, the fact that I saw a sparrow today is a little disconcerting.
What’s more troublesome is that the sparrow wasn’t even the strangest thing about the moment of its appearance.
Let me regress to earlier in the day or night. I’ll just say to earlier, as I again have no proof of the suns standing.
The day, as defined by my sleep pattern, began once more with a quickly subdued panic as I found myself bathed in white light and strapped helplessly to a table before awareness blinked and I was again sitting here in my cell. This is disheartening, but as it was the second occurrence, I’ll not go further into it.
Some time passed, when suddenly, there it was. My head spun quickly at the small sound of its beating wings to see the brown and gray sparrow gracefully land just beyond the veiled wall of my cell. It stared at me with dark eyes, like droplets of floating ink. Needless to say, I was more than a little surprised, and honestly terrified.
My entire body tried to creep back into a tiny space behind my spine, to shrink itself to an easily overlooked and non-threatening molecule not worth inspection. Like a child pulling the sheets over their head, I hid in plain sight.
It was only my mind that attempted to retreat, as my body was paralyzed with fear. This was the first living thing I had encountered in weeks, possibly months. As I stared at the small bird, something else began to happen.
Like staring at the screen of an etch-o-sketch, lines began to trace themselves from nothing into reality. It was as if a tear in the wall of my perception revealed itself in the wake of the sparrow’s path. From left to right iron bars outlined and then filled themselves along the edge of my cell.
Simultaneously, before them, I watched as the blank pages which I now write on, filled with pictures and typed script beneath my messy green crayon handwriting. What now only resembles a newspaper in shape became just that, a complete and filled newspaper, and something caught my eye at the center of the front page.
The picture was folded and half hidden, but I could have sworn I saw me there in faded color beneath a headline that I saw but cannot recall.
Suddenly, the outline of fingers wrapped around one of my cell bars. The lines then traced an arm, torso and quickly filled out to be an entire person who was staring in at me with a quizzical look. A moment later, there were two of them, one on either side of the sparrow.
They wore white lab coats and held clipboards, one horizontal at her waist, the other limply at his side, as they observed.
In that moment the fear sunk its teeth into my head and tore away any sense of….of…of sense.
As the horror stole me, I felt something in my head, something from my childhood. A thought which I cannot label as comforting or bothersome fell through the twisted web of my consciousness.
“Not even a sparrow can fall without God’s notice.”
Confused, I closed my eyes just as the new world around me began to peel. The sparrow fell into the floor and disappeared. Leaving the emptiness I’ve come to know.
When the strength returned to open my eyes, it was this hollow, familiar, comforting (?) place I found. As easily as not, it could have been a dream. I feel a change coming, like the cool winds tugging a storm overhead.
I’m scared.
Maybe not.
I remember stories and mythologies of a role sparrows are said to play. Couriers towing souls from this world to the next, they are the reaper’s trailing shadow. They turn the page to reveal the next written line.
Now, given the fact that I haven’t even seen a hint of sunlight in….in however many days and can find no link from the outside world to my cell, the fact that I saw a sparrow today is a little disconcerting.
What’s more troublesome is that the sparrow wasn’t even the strangest thing about the moment of its appearance.
Let me regress to earlier in the day or night. I’ll just say to earlier, as I again have no proof of the suns standing.
The day, as defined by my sleep pattern, began once more with a quickly subdued panic as I found myself bathed in white light and strapped helplessly to a table before awareness blinked and I was again sitting here in my cell. This is disheartening, but as it was the second occurrence, I’ll not go further into it.
Some time passed, when suddenly, there it was. My head spun quickly at the small sound of its beating wings to see the brown and gray sparrow gracefully land just beyond the veiled wall of my cell. It stared at me with dark eyes, like droplets of floating ink. Needless to say, I was more than a little surprised, and honestly terrified.
My entire body tried to creep back into a tiny space behind my spine, to shrink itself to an easily overlooked and non-threatening molecule not worth inspection. Like a child pulling the sheets over their head, I hid in plain sight.
It was only my mind that attempted to retreat, as my body was paralyzed with fear. This was the first living thing I had encountered in weeks, possibly months. As I stared at the small bird, something else began to happen.
Like staring at the screen of an etch-o-sketch, lines began to trace themselves from nothing into reality. It was as if a tear in the wall of my perception revealed itself in the wake of the sparrow’s path. From left to right iron bars outlined and then filled themselves along the edge of my cell.
Simultaneously, before them, I watched as the blank pages which I now write on, filled with pictures and typed script beneath my messy green crayon handwriting. What now only resembles a newspaper in shape became just that, a complete and filled newspaper, and something caught my eye at the center of the front page.
The picture was folded and half hidden, but I could have sworn I saw me there in faded color beneath a headline that I saw but cannot recall.
Suddenly, the outline of fingers wrapped around one of my cell bars. The lines then traced an arm, torso and quickly filled out to be an entire person who was staring in at me with a quizzical look. A moment later, there were two of them, one on either side of the sparrow.
They wore white lab coats and held clipboards, one horizontal at her waist, the other limply at his side, as they observed.
In that moment the fear sunk its teeth into my head and tore away any sense of….of…of sense.
As the horror stole me, I felt something in my head, something from my childhood. A thought which I cannot label as comforting or bothersome fell through the twisted web of my consciousness.
“Not even a sparrow can fall without God’s notice.”
Confused, I closed my eyes just as the new world around me began to peel. The sparrow fell into the floor and disappeared. Leaving the emptiness I’ve come to know.
When the strength returned to open my eyes, it was this hollow, familiar, comforting (?) place I found. As easily as not, it could have been a dream. I feel a change coming, like the cool winds tugging a storm overhead.
I’m scared.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
The Awakening (non-sports) - Part 12
Cell + 2
It’s taken several hours for my nerves to quell the calamity of fear and panic which had set them alight, but here I finally sit with a crayon in my hand beginning to spill the contents of another day to these hollow, unresponsive pages. Is it sad for one to find security, to find comfort, in this manner?
My only remaining family is consisted of the compressed and slowly decaying remains of trees I never saw clutch the ground while searching for the sky. Trees I never spent a second beneath. Never felt the relief of their cool shade. Never found the solace of thoughts left behind while rocking carelessly in a tire suspended from one of their abiding limbs.
No, they were severed, devoured by machine, compacted and recomposed in these lifeless pages long before I ever found them. Still, I covet them like brother, sister, mother and father. They are as much me, as the hand which tattoos them now.
So, it’s with them I’ll share this growing fear, or is it a realization? My life is not my own. My fate is not of my choosing. I am simply a passenger of thought staring from the windshield of a vehicle I have no control over.
I awoke this morning tied to a bed, bathed in a room of pure white. Unable to move anything but my eyes, I could make out nothing other than the essence of blinding light which stole the edges from shape and gave the illusion of hovering at the middle of an empty and colorless vacuum. Never have I felt more detached from the life I once knew than in that moment.
My arms roared for freedom, but found themselves bound with their calls disregarded. Legs were simply ornaments to the table I felt supporting my back. Only my eyes were alive and moving, as my head found itself without the ability to turn or rise. Like a deer strapped to the roof of a speeding SUV while the life had yet to completely drain out, I was caught and escorted by anything but my will, a piece of meat awaiting the press of cold, sharpened steel to carve the awareness away.
As I once again sank into the anti-Eden of hysteria’s belly, something like a warm breath pushed its way through my inner halls, and this world once again slipped away beneath the cloak of sleep in the wake of a soothing whisper.
“Feel no more.” A calming, gentle woman’s voice echoed as it traveled the final channels of thought in my receding consciousness.
My next moment of clarity comes from here in my cell. Alone, other than that woman’s voice, which continued to play somewhere beneath the chorus of my slowly untangling mind, I eventually eased from my bed with no sheets to this pile of pages I call kin.
Was she real? Do angels actually take the time to visit the realm of men, of man? Have they taken the time to set aside a glimpse of thought for me?
Perhaps I am not forgotten. Maybe there is a train coming in search of me, coming to deliver me home.
All of my relatives and friends stand at a station anxiously awaiting my arrival, and my bags are already packed and tagged, having long since cleared security. They curse my delayed departure, and laugh over stories we shared parts in as they huddle in wait. Only my attention, my touch to the ticket’s stub, remains to set this journey adrift over rails long since laid.
Maybe hope has not had its heart pierced to bleed its life out in a slow release of life’s slippery hand.
Maybe….
It’s taken several hours for my nerves to quell the calamity of fear and panic which had set them alight, but here I finally sit with a crayon in my hand beginning to spill the contents of another day to these hollow, unresponsive pages. Is it sad for one to find security, to find comfort, in this manner?
My only remaining family is consisted of the compressed and slowly decaying remains of trees I never saw clutch the ground while searching for the sky. Trees I never spent a second beneath. Never felt the relief of their cool shade. Never found the solace of thoughts left behind while rocking carelessly in a tire suspended from one of their abiding limbs.
No, they were severed, devoured by machine, compacted and recomposed in these lifeless pages long before I ever found them. Still, I covet them like brother, sister, mother and father. They are as much me, as the hand which tattoos them now.
So, it’s with them I’ll share this growing fear, or is it a realization? My life is not my own. My fate is not of my choosing. I am simply a passenger of thought staring from the windshield of a vehicle I have no control over.
I awoke this morning tied to a bed, bathed in a room of pure white. Unable to move anything but my eyes, I could make out nothing other than the essence of blinding light which stole the edges from shape and gave the illusion of hovering at the middle of an empty and colorless vacuum. Never have I felt more detached from the life I once knew than in that moment.
My arms roared for freedom, but found themselves bound with their calls disregarded. Legs were simply ornaments to the table I felt supporting my back. Only my eyes were alive and moving, as my head found itself without the ability to turn or rise. Like a deer strapped to the roof of a speeding SUV while the life had yet to completely drain out, I was caught and escorted by anything but my will, a piece of meat awaiting the press of cold, sharpened steel to carve the awareness away.
As I once again sank into the anti-Eden of hysteria’s belly, something like a warm breath pushed its way through my inner halls, and this world once again slipped away beneath the cloak of sleep in the wake of a soothing whisper.
“Feel no more.” A calming, gentle woman’s voice echoed as it traveled the final channels of thought in my receding consciousness.
My next moment of clarity comes from here in my cell. Alone, other than that woman’s voice, which continued to play somewhere beneath the chorus of my slowly untangling mind, I eventually eased from my bed with no sheets to this pile of pages I call kin.
Was she real? Do angels actually take the time to visit the realm of men, of man? Have they taken the time to set aside a glimpse of thought for me?
Perhaps I am not forgotten. Maybe there is a train coming in search of me, coming to deliver me home.
All of my relatives and friends stand at a station anxiously awaiting my arrival, and my bags are already packed and tagged, having long since cleared security. They curse my delayed departure, and laugh over stories we shared parts in as they huddle in wait. Only my attention, my touch to the ticket’s stub, remains to set this journey adrift over rails long since laid.
Maybe hope has not had its heart pierced to bleed its life out in a slow release of life’s slippery hand.
Maybe….
The Awakening (non-sports) - Part 11
Cell + 1
If nothing else, being held in the proprietary palm of unknown captors renders the contours of time smooth, and indefinable, and presses the national collection of geographic monuments to the dust of forgotten never to be found artifacts.
For most of my life, I would not have found this to be an endearing quality, but here in a corner that time overlooked; it is something of a relief. Why concern myself with days, weeks or even years when I’ve lost the ability to track them? Why impress upon myself the importance of a world that I cannot see?
I suppose I could begin to count the moments, but the tedious nature of this task lends itself to discard. Free of the need to chart my destination lacking journey, I can focus my mind on other things.
Unfortunately, this leads me back to the negatives of being caged. There is nothing of interest here. I do seem to be a little cleaner than I was, as if simply escaping the outside world somehow removed a film of filth from my skin. Was I simply sticking my legs from the base of a cage before, and walking it around like my own personal Bedrock Cadillac? At least now I can’t roam and prove the vast emptiness is exactly that.
Who am I kidding? There is no silver lining. I can’t even begin to explain what has happened. Perhaps, the weight of it all has finally flattened me. Stolen the muscles from my frame, and left me as a sigh harnessed to the wind to be carried wherever it may lead, casting off my will with indifference.
I’ve begun the gradually sudden process of giving up, but hey, admitting it is the first step to recovery, or so I seem to remember. So, I’ve got that going for me.
Since I have nothing but time, I’ll take a moment to recount how I came to have this here notebook, which is not the same one I’d kept before, as you may have noticed by the entries written in crayon. Simply stated, it is not near the quality of my former, but what is?
It could have been minutes, but something tells me it was closer to hours, after arriving in this cell when an experience I’d found before returned for an encore. At the wall, that is not a wall, of my cell there appeared a folded stack of cheap, thin paper suspended about waist high. Suddenly, it fell to the ground, where it lay for some time before I found the courage to approach it.
My memory, and who’s to say anything there can be relied upon, says it resembles a newspaper, minus the print. Just cheap paper, folded and stacked over its self in several sections, all tucked within an outer, slightly larger, creased sheet. There is no binding to hold it together.
I suppose it wouldn’t make sense if my notebook did not deteriorate at a parallel pace to the rest of the world.
At first, there was no writing instrument of any kind, but after searching my cell with growing frenzy and what was soon an overwhelming desperation, I watched as the green crayon this is written in rolled from nothingness to lay beside the newspaper void of news.
Lucky me.
I’m sorry, I will now quit for awhile. I wouldn’t want to wear my crayon to a thin slice of colored wax. What if no other comes to replace it?
If nothing else, being held in the proprietary palm of unknown captors renders the contours of time smooth, and indefinable, and presses the national collection of geographic monuments to the dust of forgotten never to be found artifacts.
For most of my life, I would not have found this to be an endearing quality, but here in a corner that time overlooked; it is something of a relief. Why concern myself with days, weeks or even years when I’ve lost the ability to track them? Why impress upon myself the importance of a world that I cannot see?
I suppose I could begin to count the moments, but the tedious nature of this task lends itself to discard. Free of the need to chart my destination lacking journey, I can focus my mind on other things.
Unfortunately, this leads me back to the negatives of being caged. There is nothing of interest here. I do seem to be a little cleaner than I was, as if simply escaping the outside world somehow removed a film of filth from my skin. Was I simply sticking my legs from the base of a cage before, and walking it around like my own personal Bedrock Cadillac? At least now I can’t roam and prove the vast emptiness is exactly that.
Who am I kidding? There is no silver lining. I can’t even begin to explain what has happened. Perhaps, the weight of it all has finally flattened me. Stolen the muscles from my frame, and left me as a sigh harnessed to the wind to be carried wherever it may lead, casting off my will with indifference.
I’ve begun the gradually sudden process of giving up, but hey, admitting it is the first step to recovery, or so I seem to remember. So, I’ve got that going for me.
Since I have nothing but time, I’ll take a moment to recount how I came to have this here notebook, which is not the same one I’d kept before, as you may have noticed by the entries written in crayon. Simply stated, it is not near the quality of my former, but what is?
It could have been minutes, but something tells me it was closer to hours, after arriving in this cell when an experience I’d found before returned for an encore. At the wall, that is not a wall, of my cell there appeared a folded stack of cheap, thin paper suspended about waist high. Suddenly, it fell to the ground, where it lay for some time before I found the courage to approach it.
My memory, and who’s to say anything there can be relied upon, says it resembles a newspaper, minus the print. Just cheap paper, folded and stacked over its self in several sections, all tucked within an outer, slightly larger, creased sheet. There is no binding to hold it together.
I suppose it wouldn’t make sense if my notebook did not deteriorate at a parallel pace to the rest of the world.
At first, there was no writing instrument of any kind, but after searching my cell with growing frenzy and what was soon an overwhelming desperation, I watched as the green crayon this is written in rolled from nothingness to lay beside the newspaper void of news.
Lucky me.
I’m sorry, I will now quit for awhile. I wouldn’t want to wear my crayon to a thin slice of colored wax. What if no other comes to replace it?
The Awakening (non-sports) - Part 10
Day ?
It’s been a few days. How many? It’s hard to say from my cell. I can explain, sort of, how I got here, but why is beyond my comprehension. It’s all very confusing, and more than a little worrisome.
Let me begin where I last ended.
I had fallen asleep behind the counter of a picture booth at a Wal-Mart, when I was suddenly awakened by a jarring presence overwhelming me. From the nothingness of dreamless sleep, I snapped into the hazy reality of unseen hands or vices gripping me just beneath the shoulder on my arms.
Like a magician’s assistant, minus the beauty, I was lifted perpendicular to the ground with my legs still folded beneath me. Confused and shaking off the remnants of sleep, I moved as a lifeless puppet suspended from a conveyer belt, from behind the counter and along the rows of small shops that line the front wall of nearly all Wal-Mart stores. My feet slid uselessly beneath and behind me as I glided to and through the front doors.
Panic began to settle in as the realization that this wasn’t a dream took hold. Frantically I got to my feet, twisted and pulled with all my strength to free my arms from whatever held them, while kicking at the ground in a failing attempt to run.
I screamed and tried to spin away. For a single moment, my right arm came free, and fight or flight swung purely into flight. I pushed off hard, but found only another large weight slammed against my back causing me to lose my balance and fall to the ground. Suddenly it was on top of me, like a roller pressing down over still balled dough in the act of creating a tortilla. Sadly, I was the tortilla.
A moment later sharp pains pulsed through my body and somewhere between my brain and limbs the connection was lost. I lay unwillingly motionless and panting, still making a sound that weakly resembled a mixture of screaming and crying, like prey pinned for consumption by an unknown predator.
At that time, I must have passed out for a few moments, because the next thing I remember I was laying sideways suspended on a bed of nothing a couple of feet above the pavement of a road quickly slipping by beneath me. It was the closest thing to flying I have every experienced, and if not for the fear of what was happening to me, I may have actually enjoyed it.
My fingers and feet twitched at the buzz of swarming nerves reaching to reconnect beneath my skin. Gradually, I could feel my power over them begin to return, but the speed of the road beneath me and the fear of what may occur should I move, kept me still, though not calm.
My thoughts were like fish in a sealed glass beneath the ocean. They darted in every direction only to hit invisible walls and grow more chaotic with every failed attempt at direction.
How do you escape the shadows of the night when there is no light to be found?
I could feel the fear climbing over every space of my muddled mind, conquer it, and move on. Soon, there was nothing to my being to reign over it, and I was no longer anything more than a gasoline drenched twig in a raging forest fire. Terror lapped at me and devoured me whole. In its belly I found nothing but more fire to scrape away any reasonable sense of sanity. Without the cognition to gain control of my surroundings, I let out a deep howl of pain and horror.
And as soon as this nightmare had come to claim my waking mind, thought was lost and the serenity of ignorant darkness reclaimed the ground beneath me. I passed out.
When consciousness came back for me, I found myself here, in what must be a cell. There are three windowless, stone walls, with the fourth being left open, or at least from appearance, left open. The truth of this fourth wall is still imprinted on my cheek and forehead, as I’d walked face first into it hours ago. There is a steel toilet opposite the wall that hides from my eyes, and a worn striped, cot mounted on the wall to my left when facing the toilet. I’ve all the amenities any king could demand.
Is this where I’m meant to die? Am I dead already, moved from purgatory to hell’s waiting room?
From there, the oddities only continue, but my mind is sore and tired from trying to remember, and make sense of, these days passed. I’ve no way to decipher day from night, and no idea how much time has passed, but the need to rest is strong.
Like a mockingbird stationed at, and tethered to, the South Pole, struggling with weary wings to break its chain while waiting for the cold to steal its life away, I fly in the cage that is my life awaiting impending death, and for the cold to bury me.
It’s been a few days. How many? It’s hard to say from my cell. I can explain, sort of, how I got here, but why is beyond my comprehension. It’s all very confusing, and more than a little worrisome.
Let me begin where I last ended.
I had fallen asleep behind the counter of a picture booth at a Wal-Mart, when I was suddenly awakened by a jarring presence overwhelming me. From the nothingness of dreamless sleep, I snapped into the hazy reality of unseen hands or vices gripping me just beneath the shoulder on my arms.
Like a magician’s assistant, minus the beauty, I was lifted perpendicular to the ground with my legs still folded beneath me. Confused and shaking off the remnants of sleep, I moved as a lifeless puppet suspended from a conveyer belt, from behind the counter and along the rows of small shops that line the front wall of nearly all Wal-Mart stores. My feet slid uselessly beneath and behind me as I glided to and through the front doors.
Panic began to settle in as the realization that this wasn’t a dream took hold. Frantically I got to my feet, twisted and pulled with all my strength to free my arms from whatever held them, while kicking at the ground in a failing attempt to run.
I screamed and tried to spin away. For a single moment, my right arm came free, and fight or flight swung purely into flight. I pushed off hard, but found only another large weight slammed against my back causing me to lose my balance and fall to the ground. Suddenly it was on top of me, like a roller pressing down over still balled dough in the act of creating a tortilla. Sadly, I was the tortilla.
A moment later sharp pains pulsed through my body and somewhere between my brain and limbs the connection was lost. I lay unwillingly motionless and panting, still making a sound that weakly resembled a mixture of screaming and crying, like prey pinned for consumption by an unknown predator.
At that time, I must have passed out for a few moments, because the next thing I remember I was laying sideways suspended on a bed of nothing a couple of feet above the pavement of a road quickly slipping by beneath me. It was the closest thing to flying I have every experienced, and if not for the fear of what was happening to me, I may have actually enjoyed it.
My fingers and feet twitched at the buzz of swarming nerves reaching to reconnect beneath my skin. Gradually, I could feel my power over them begin to return, but the speed of the road beneath me and the fear of what may occur should I move, kept me still, though not calm.
My thoughts were like fish in a sealed glass beneath the ocean. They darted in every direction only to hit invisible walls and grow more chaotic with every failed attempt at direction.
How do you escape the shadows of the night when there is no light to be found?
I could feel the fear climbing over every space of my muddled mind, conquer it, and move on. Soon, there was nothing to my being to reign over it, and I was no longer anything more than a gasoline drenched twig in a raging forest fire. Terror lapped at me and devoured me whole. In its belly I found nothing but more fire to scrape away any reasonable sense of sanity. Without the cognition to gain control of my surroundings, I let out a deep howl of pain and horror.
And as soon as this nightmare had come to claim my waking mind, thought was lost and the serenity of ignorant darkness reclaimed the ground beneath me. I passed out.
When consciousness came back for me, I found myself here, in what must be a cell. There are three windowless, stone walls, with the fourth being left open, or at least from appearance, left open. The truth of this fourth wall is still imprinted on my cheek and forehead, as I’d walked face first into it hours ago. There is a steel toilet opposite the wall that hides from my eyes, and a worn striped, cot mounted on the wall to my left when facing the toilet. I’ve all the amenities any king could demand.
Is this where I’m meant to die? Am I dead already, moved from purgatory to hell’s waiting room?
From there, the oddities only continue, but my mind is sore and tired from trying to remember, and make sense of, these days passed. I’ve no way to decipher day from night, and no idea how much time has passed, but the need to rest is strong.
Like a mockingbird stationed at, and tethered to, the South Pole, struggling with weary wings to break its chain while waiting for the cold to steal its life away, I fly in the cage that is my life awaiting impending death, and for the cold to bury me.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
The Awakening (non-sports) - Part 9
Day 11
Loneliness isn’t a violent occurrence. It creeps and embeds itself into the fiber of one’s soul with soft subtlety, leaking its toxic stain into the veins until your blood is its blood. Your breath feeds it, and every passing moment of solitude strengthens your parasitic marriage until it becomes a skin over all that is, or was you. All separation is lost, and it wonders absently under the badge of your name.
You become the host to one that never promised you anything, yet intended for nothing less than stealing every thing. Even memories once held away in protective cocoons become coarse and sharp as they tear their way through once hallowed corridors of nostalgia, now the shredded and dying halls of bruised skies.
With these talons clutching my insides, I happened upon another artifact of lives past. And, though my experience from only days before had been less than ideal, to say the least, my new, worn point of view whispered no warning, spawned no fear at all.
This was not the same store I’d been to, and the surroundings were not of those being faded in my memory, like photographs bleeding to a solid and faceless gray. I’d wondered into a place I’d not been before.
Though this was a Wal-Mart, set up almost precisely as the last, it was new to me. Head down, I approached through the paved prairie parking lot, remaining in the unpainted lanes between rows of vacant yellow lines as my mind’s muscle memory clung to habit, and came to the front doors, which again slid casually open. They glided apart like nothing had changed and the world was still thriving with life.
Today I had no set course and no defined need within the store, but once I lifted my head and perused the available scenery I found a point of interest and headed in that direction. It was the small cubicle that housed both the new memory card or disc based photo developing terminals, and the rows of colorful envelopes holding developed photographs behind a counter awaiting customers to arrive and carry them home.
These rows are what drove my curiosity. With only a slight hesitation, again old habits die hard, I moved behind the counter and began to flip through the envelopes before removing a random pack of pictures.
My mind was like a sock in the dryer, tossed from thought to thought. It had been so long since I’d seen another’s face, or heard a stranger’s voice. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d caught my reflection. Did the past exist, or was all simply born to this moment? Am I a forgotten notion wandering the abyss of nothingness in a purgatory of my own design?
Now, as a voyeuristic alien exploring a foreign world, I removed a small stack of glossy photos and began to study the tracings of lives I had never known in the faces of people I had and would never meet.
My heart sank into my stomach, stirring the butterflies sleeping there. My mind climbed over itself with sudden violent attention, clamoring to fill the front row behind my eyes. My breath hesitated and then sped in anticipation. In my hands came the proof of a past that had been slipping further and further away from any tangible reality.
The photos were of a couple who appeared to be blatantly in love. Perhaps in awareness of the camera’s eye, they seemed unable to discard their shared smiles. They appeared to have a firm grasp on something I can only vaguely remember, happiness, companionship.
I have no fact based notion of their names, but in my own head I called them by name none-the-less. The woman was Miriam, and the man held within her embrace was Max.
Miriam and Max were the world I could not find. They were the past and future which had fled this place, leaving me as an orphan at the doorstep of a tenantless building. They were what I chased and never caught up to. They were the dream sleep couldn’t track down.
Fearing something worse than death, I slowly sat and then lay on the ground behind the counter of the photo booth with the pictures in my hand.
I feared I would live here forever, alone.
Gradually my thoughts mixed all the colors they could catch into an edgeless chasm of swirling black and sleep did it’s best to comfort me by removing this place, and allowing the serenity of complete emptiness, void of thought and memory and…of anything.
I slept….when suddenly….
Loneliness isn’t a violent occurrence. It creeps and embeds itself into the fiber of one’s soul with soft subtlety, leaking its toxic stain into the veins until your blood is its blood. Your breath feeds it, and every passing moment of solitude strengthens your parasitic marriage until it becomes a skin over all that is, or was you. All separation is lost, and it wonders absently under the badge of your name.
You become the host to one that never promised you anything, yet intended for nothing less than stealing every thing. Even memories once held away in protective cocoons become coarse and sharp as they tear their way through once hallowed corridors of nostalgia, now the shredded and dying halls of bruised skies.
With these talons clutching my insides, I happened upon another artifact of lives past. And, though my experience from only days before had been less than ideal, to say the least, my new, worn point of view whispered no warning, spawned no fear at all.
This was not the same store I’d been to, and the surroundings were not of those being faded in my memory, like photographs bleeding to a solid and faceless gray. I’d wondered into a place I’d not been before.
Though this was a Wal-Mart, set up almost precisely as the last, it was new to me. Head down, I approached through the paved prairie parking lot, remaining in the unpainted lanes between rows of vacant yellow lines as my mind’s muscle memory clung to habit, and came to the front doors, which again slid casually open. They glided apart like nothing had changed and the world was still thriving with life.
Today I had no set course and no defined need within the store, but once I lifted my head and perused the available scenery I found a point of interest and headed in that direction. It was the small cubicle that housed both the new memory card or disc based photo developing terminals, and the rows of colorful envelopes holding developed photographs behind a counter awaiting customers to arrive and carry them home.
These rows are what drove my curiosity. With only a slight hesitation, again old habits die hard, I moved behind the counter and began to flip through the envelopes before removing a random pack of pictures.
My mind was like a sock in the dryer, tossed from thought to thought. It had been so long since I’d seen another’s face, or heard a stranger’s voice. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d caught my reflection. Did the past exist, or was all simply born to this moment? Am I a forgotten notion wandering the abyss of nothingness in a purgatory of my own design?
Now, as a voyeuristic alien exploring a foreign world, I removed a small stack of glossy photos and began to study the tracings of lives I had never known in the faces of people I had and would never meet.
My heart sank into my stomach, stirring the butterflies sleeping there. My mind climbed over itself with sudden violent attention, clamoring to fill the front row behind my eyes. My breath hesitated and then sped in anticipation. In my hands came the proof of a past that had been slipping further and further away from any tangible reality.
The photos were of a couple who appeared to be blatantly in love. Perhaps in awareness of the camera’s eye, they seemed unable to discard their shared smiles. They appeared to have a firm grasp on something I can only vaguely remember, happiness, companionship.
I have no fact based notion of their names, but in my own head I called them by name none-the-less. The woman was Miriam, and the man held within her embrace was Max.
Miriam and Max were the world I could not find. They were the past and future which had fled this place, leaving me as an orphan at the doorstep of a tenantless building. They were what I chased and never caught up to. They were the dream sleep couldn’t track down.
Fearing something worse than death, I slowly sat and then lay on the ground behind the counter of the photo booth with the pictures in my hand.
I feared I would live here forever, alone.
Gradually my thoughts mixed all the colors they could catch into an edgeless chasm of swirling black and sleep did it’s best to comfort me by removing this place, and allowing the serenity of complete emptiness, void of thought and memory and…of anything.
I slept….when suddenly….
The Awakening (non-sports) - Part 8
Day 10
I’ve yet to completely separate myself from the pity party I held yesterday. There are things that flash and implode to nothing a hundred times in a single blink, and there are others that grow thicker with time and exposure, like a well fed fungus or mold. I’ve clumsily clutched myself to the latter.
As the curator and sole visitor to the museum, mausoleum, called earth, I wonder the streets bored and listless like a child on a forced vacation to the doldrums of adult interests. There is nothing of consequence here, nothing of significance. Tombs and relics slip by, all headstones in a forgotten, yet well kept, graveyard I’ve no interest in mourning.
I’ve stopped bathing, stopped seeking shelter, stopped searching out food, and seriously welled up a near intolerable indifference. I could argue with myself for hours, or could have once done so, debating whether indifference is precluded from being intolerable by nature, but today it’s all for naught.
Anyway, not that there was a direction to my movements before, a method to my madness, but today my steps do not hunger for the next, nor flee the prior. They simply come and go like constellations adorning a blind man’s sky.
I did see something strange, or rather feel it, today. Once again, I find the words to describe it elusive. That being said, future me, I’m sure you won’t let it bother you. If you do, maybe you should have considered this before reading. You’d think you’d know better. I mean, you, we, lived it.
Sorry, what’s a moment to force a smile, but an instance thrived upon, especially in times of desperation.
Back to what I experienced for an odd moment today, it was only a fleeting feeling and probably holds no importance, but with nothing else craving my time, here goes.
It was in the afternoon, and my newly polished mausoleum spoke the absent words of death without the stench of decay as the sun was just growing tired of its perch’s view and stepping down towards it’s next stop, it’s next day, when I noticed a towering Wendy’s sign reaching to poke the cloudless sky, an attempt to puncture the blue ceiling and drown me with its’ oceans.
With a sudden panic, a red glow stole my sight. My head throbbed violently and I buckled down over myself in pain. As soon as the sign was replaced by the nondescript gray of the sidewalk beneath my feet, the feeling passed and the pain left me to genuflect for a moment longer, feeling nothing.
That was it. I made sure not to look back to the sign, and like a giant with a mattress strapped to its back, I fell back with little regard, into my monotone life. Gradually, the butterflies which flicked their wings against the interior of my stomach began to tire and I was once again left with simple melancholy.
Besides the single moment, I have nothing of interest to recant today.
So, until tomorrow, I bid you a good night and sweet dreams.
I’ve yet to completely separate myself from the pity party I held yesterday. There are things that flash and implode to nothing a hundred times in a single blink, and there are others that grow thicker with time and exposure, like a well fed fungus or mold. I’ve clumsily clutched myself to the latter.
As the curator and sole visitor to the museum, mausoleum, called earth, I wonder the streets bored and listless like a child on a forced vacation to the doldrums of adult interests. There is nothing of consequence here, nothing of significance. Tombs and relics slip by, all headstones in a forgotten, yet well kept, graveyard I’ve no interest in mourning.
I’ve stopped bathing, stopped seeking shelter, stopped searching out food, and seriously welled up a near intolerable indifference. I could argue with myself for hours, or could have once done so, debating whether indifference is precluded from being intolerable by nature, but today it’s all for naught.
Anyway, not that there was a direction to my movements before, a method to my madness, but today my steps do not hunger for the next, nor flee the prior. They simply come and go like constellations adorning a blind man’s sky.
I did see something strange, or rather feel it, today. Once again, I find the words to describe it elusive. That being said, future me, I’m sure you won’t let it bother you. If you do, maybe you should have considered this before reading. You’d think you’d know better. I mean, you, we, lived it.
Sorry, what’s a moment to force a smile, but an instance thrived upon, especially in times of desperation.
Back to what I experienced for an odd moment today, it was only a fleeting feeling and probably holds no importance, but with nothing else craving my time, here goes.
It was in the afternoon, and my newly polished mausoleum spoke the absent words of death without the stench of decay as the sun was just growing tired of its perch’s view and stepping down towards it’s next stop, it’s next day, when I noticed a towering Wendy’s sign reaching to poke the cloudless sky, an attempt to puncture the blue ceiling and drown me with its’ oceans.
With a sudden panic, a red glow stole my sight. My head throbbed violently and I buckled down over myself in pain. As soon as the sign was replaced by the nondescript gray of the sidewalk beneath my feet, the feeling passed and the pain left me to genuflect for a moment longer, feeling nothing.
That was it. I made sure not to look back to the sign, and like a giant with a mattress strapped to its back, I fell back with little regard, into my monotone life. Gradually, the butterflies which flicked their wings against the interior of my stomach began to tire and I was once again left with simple melancholy.
Besides the single moment, I have nothing of interest to recant today.
So, until tomorrow, I bid you a good night and sweet dreams.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
The Awakening (non-sports) - Part 7
Day 9
I’ll begin with a simple fact. The pole I retrieved yesterday is gone. I carried it for the better part of this morning, yet lacking the proper items to give it usefulness combined with the growing soreness of holding it, pitched it aside.
In a strange way, a small sadness crept into my thoughts at the sight of it hit hitting and scraping against the ground. I’m not sure it was this act that brought the feeling on, as much as what it represented. Putting this into words is difficult, but I’ll give it my best attempt.
Two semi-parallel feelings twist around each other. I’ll begin with memories and things left by the wayside, like a funeral at sea leaving the dead to sink behind a ship that cannot be slowed, or even steered. Ghosts of the life I once knew haunt my waking, sleep walking mind. This place is a coffin for every hope or desire I once held close. Every sweet memory, every cherished lullaby of a story lived and recited back in dream, while sleeping or awake, for a vicarious tracing of footsteps which once found their way to happiness.
These things slip from me like rain over an oil slicked windshield, and I haven’t the will to catch or gather them back. Ghosts cannot be held. They can only haunt.
Secondly, and perhaps scales of this can be found shed in the first sentiment, comes the discarding of hope. With an anti-Midas’s touch, it is not gold my fingers leave behind, but heavy lead bricks tied to the ankles of a tiring man above the deepest of ocean crevasses.
Ignore my self pity. It can do no good.
So, like bait adorning a hook I am cast out into this world to call in whatever callous monster waits in the darkness to feed on my shrinking shell. For what worth has the last of anything, but as a reminder of goals left incomplete and unsatisfied; a memento of the lost.
Am I the last man on earth?
My eyes scream it to be so. My ears sing its lonely song. My heart beats out a rhythm of solitude, a palpitation without need of or defined by harmony. My soul searches for some semblance of familiarity, for some domesticated sense of home without result. My feet climb from step to step, but do they lead to or from a destination?
Regardless of hope, I’ll press on and find my only sense of companionship in this diary of the end of the world...if need be.
I’ll begin with a simple fact. The pole I retrieved yesterday is gone. I carried it for the better part of this morning, yet lacking the proper items to give it usefulness combined with the growing soreness of holding it, pitched it aside.
In a strange way, a small sadness crept into my thoughts at the sight of it hit hitting and scraping against the ground. I’m not sure it was this act that brought the feeling on, as much as what it represented. Putting this into words is difficult, but I’ll give it my best attempt.
Two semi-parallel feelings twist around each other. I’ll begin with memories and things left by the wayside, like a funeral at sea leaving the dead to sink behind a ship that cannot be slowed, or even steered. Ghosts of the life I once knew haunt my waking, sleep walking mind. This place is a coffin for every hope or desire I once held close. Every sweet memory, every cherished lullaby of a story lived and recited back in dream, while sleeping or awake, for a vicarious tracing of footsteps which once found their way to happiness.
These things slip from me like rain over an oil slicked windshield, and I haven’t the will to catch or gather them back. Ghosts cannot be held. They can only haunt.
Secondly, and perhaps scales of this can be found shed in the first sentiment, comes the discarding of hope. With an anti-Midas’s touch, it is not gold my fingers leave behind, but heavy lead bricks tied to the ankles of a tiring man above the deepest of ocean crevasses.
Ignore my self pity. It can do no good.
So, like bait adorning a hook I am cast out into this world to call in whatever callous monster waits in the darkness to feed on my shrinking shell. For what worth has the last of anything, but as a reminder of goals left incomplete and unsatisfied; a memento of the lost.
Am I the last man on earth?
My eyes scream it to be so. My ears sing its lonely song. My heart beats out a rhythm of solitude, a palpitation without need of or defined by harmony. My soul searches for some semblance of familiarity, for some domesticated sense of home without result. My feet climb from step to step, but do they lead to or from a destination?
Regardless of hope, I’ll press on and find my only sense of companionship in this diary of the end of the world...if need be.
The Awakening (non-sports) - Part 6
Day 8
Today, I decided to shed the shackles of my own mental cracks, which have chained me to undeniable fault lines and wrecked my stability in rhythmic quakes still crashing against my reason like the surging waves of an incoming tide. Though weathered and eroded to a version of myself that would no longer recognize my former self, today I chose to smile.
Leaving the intertwined branches of paved limbs and houses in suburbia, I ventured into an area of once thriving retail. My search, though taking longer than I intended, was fulfilled when I came across a Wal-Mart. This venture, spurned by a desire for a variety in sustenance, led me towards the rear of the store.
Perhaps I was also urged on by memories I’ve yet to cast aside of fishing trips with my father as a child. I was the child, not with my father when he was a child. That would be impossible. Of course, given my current circumstance, who am I to argue with plausibility.
I digress. I found what I was searching for among an assortment of fishing gear, and barring the constrictions of finance, picked exactly what I’d come for, the IM6 Lightning Rod, “top of the line” as my father had always said.
“Pure fishing,” he’d also planted in me, a seed that lay dormant only to have sprouted today’s adventure. Should I use that word, adventure? Perhaps exploration is slightly more apt.
With a smile on my face, and the rod and reel in my hand, I’d headed back to the exit. It was at the doors that my world stumbled away, once again, from pleasant semi-normalcy. I felt it quite clearly this time. Something grabbed tightly onto my shirt at the back of my neck, pulling the collar tight against my throat.
Several choked coughs squeezed out beneath the strain as my upper body tilted back. I quickly spun to face the store behind me. My eyes searched from empty registers to vacant aisles for some proof of….of something, anything.
Shroud in the silence of desolation, the sparkling ghost town of my world peered back. My breathing sped up and I felt my head waver, and then every thing stood still. I know, how does something without movement suddenly become still? Maybe it was only my own breathing and thoughts, but for a moment a celestial pause button was pressed. An instant later, that same heavenly remote released the pause button and mashed fast forward.
I turned and ran from the store, spinning and nearly falling when the automatic doors failed to open fast enough. Thinking back, I can’t decide if the fact that the automatic doors were still working is relevant or not. Is a man taking a piss off the coast of Japan relevant to the water purity in Arkansas? On the molecular level, isn’t it, even if it’s in the tiniest of percentiles?
I’m sorry. Again, my mind tends to break the tether from coherent thought more and more these days.
I ran until my legs and lungs would no longer allow. When I finally stopped and took a few minutes to catch my breath, my eyes traced the new surroundings, nothing familiar to be found.
Walking step after step in directions that accumulated to only chase away the fading day, I carried my only possessions; my new pole and this notebook.
If granting nothing else, perhaps physically stressing myself so thoroughly will lend itself to inviting a good night’s rest.
With that thought, I’ll retire from this pen and chase whatever dream sleep sees fit to deliver me. Perhaps there I will find a perfect lake bountifully stocked.
Great, I just realized I didn’t get any bait, or even a hook, and I’m not sure I house the nerve to go back for them.
Today, I decided to shed the shackles of my own mental cracks, which have chained me to undeniable fault lines and wrecked my stability in rhythmic quakes still crashing against my reason like the surging waves of an incoming tide. Though weathered and eroded to a version of myself that would no longer recognize my former self, today I chose to smile.
Leaving the intertwined branches of paved limbs and houses in suburbia, I ventured into an area of once thriving retail. My search, though taking longer than I intended, was fulfilled when I came across a Wal-Mart. This venture, spurned by a desire for a variety in sustenance, led me towards the rear of the store.
Perhaps I was also urged on by memories I’ve yet to cast aside of fishing trips with my father as a child. I was the child, not with my father when he was a child. That would be impossible. Of course, given my current circumstance, who am I to argue with plausibility.
I digress. I found what I was searching for among an assortment of fishing gear, and barring the constrictions of finance, picked exactly what I’d come for, the IM6 Lightning Rod, “top of the line” as my father had always said.
“Pure fishing,” he’d also planted in me, a seed that lay dormant only to have sprouted today’s adventure. Should I use that word, adventure? Perhaps exploration is slightly more apt.
With a smile on my face, and the rod and reel in my hand, I’d headed back to the exit. It was at the doors that my world stumbled away, once again, from pleasant semi-normalcy. I felt it quite clearly this time. Something grabbed tightly onto my shirt at the back of my neck, pulling the collar tight against my throat.
Several choked coughs squeezed out beneath the strain as my upper body tilted back. I quickly spun to face the store behind me. My eyes searched from empty registers to vacant aisles for some proof of….of something, anything.
Shroud in the silence of desolation, the sparkling ghost town of my world peered back. My breathing sped up and I felt my head waver, and then every thing stood still. I know, how does something without movement suddenly become still? Maybe it was only my own breathing and thoughts, but for a moment a celestial pause button was pressed. An instant later, that same heavenly remote released the pause button and mashed fast forward.
I turned and ran from the store, spinning and nearly falling when the automatic doors failed to open fast enough. Thinking back, I can’t decide if the fact that the automatic doors were still working is relevant or not. Is a man taking a piss off the coast of Japan relevant to the water purity in Arkansas? On the molecular level, isn’t it, even if it’s in the tiniest of percentiles?
I’m sorry. Again, my mind tends to break the tether from coherent thought more and more these days.
I ran until my legs and lungs would no longer allow. When I finally stopped and took a few minutes to catch my breath, my eyes traced the new surroundings, nothing familiar to be found.
Walking step after step in directions that accumulated to only chase away the fading day, I carried my only possessions; my new pole and this notebook.
If granting nothing else, perhaps physically stressing myself so thoroughly will lend itself to inviting a good night’s rest.
With that thought, I’ll retire from this pen and chase whatever dream sleep sees fit to deliver me. Perhaps there I will find a perfect lake bountifully stocked.
Great, I just realized I didn’t get any bait, or even a hook, and I’m not sure I house the nerve to go back for them.
The Awakening (non-sports) - Part 5
Day 7
I’m sorry. A couple of days seemed to have slipped away. Time sneezed them off.
It’s hard to write. They’re all around me, eyes without faces staring without being seen. As flutters in the corners of my vision, they track me. They’re clever, but I know they’re there.
Other than the presence of whatever they are, things have actually tripped somewhere back within the range of what I currently call normal. No more bumping into invisible walls. No more sitting on things that aren’t there, and no more items materializing in midair to crash to the ground. I guess you could say things are on the upswing.
Still, how do you rest when you can’t get comfortable? How do you sleep when you feel like a deer held by a zoo on the wrong side of the lion’s gate? There is no shelter left in this place that they cannot penetrate. There are no walls to keep phantoms out.
As night comes to cloak their movements once again, I’ve found a place to call home for a night under a bridge. Not the most grand of accommodations, but for some reason I find the lack of walls a plus. As they have failed in the purpose of keeping things out, walls only serve to imprison me. At least here, I am free to run whichever direction I choose.
…
I’m back. Several hours have passed since the paragraphs above. The night has now fully descended upon me, and there are not shadows in this place, as there is no light to give the black contour. Forgive my handwriting, as I cannot see my hand before me, or the page it passes over.
I write because I was awakened from my slumber (I call it that almost in jest), by what I can only describe as an airquake. Imagine finding yourself enveloped by a storm cloud, and shaken in the bowels of a tremendous thunder. This is what I experienced.
There was the emptiness of semi-sleep, and then I was wide awake with the air around me enraged in a sudden civil war. My world rumbled and shook under the sound of a million air soldiers firing their air cannons and screaming in rage, sorrow or pain.
Rising quickly, I caused myself to slide a couple of feet down the concrete embankment of the bridges underbelly. The hard surface grated against my clothes and skin. My arms and hands were busy covering my ears. Leaving my shoes to brace against and correct the slide. There is a chance I was screaming, but recollection fails to say definitively.
And then, as soon as it had come, it was gone, yielding to this hollow nothing. Pulling my hands from my ears, I realized the intensity of my grip in the wet smudges of blood on several fingertips. Perhaps it also decorates this page. In the dark, it’s impossible to know.
Needless to say, I will not be sleeping again tonight. Rather, I’ll stare out into the many eyes I cannot see, as they stare in on me.
I’m sorry. A couple of days seemed to have slipped away. Time sneezed them off.
It’s hard to write. They’re all around me, eyes without faces staring without being seen. As flutters in the corners of my vision, they track me. They’re clever, but I know they’re there.
Other than the presence of whatever they are, things have actually tripped somewhere back within the range of what I currently call normal. No more bumping into invisible walls. No more sitting on things that aren’t there, and no more items materializing in midair to crash to the ground. I guess you could say things are on the upswing.
Still, how do you rest when you can’t get comfortable? How do you sleep when you feel like a deer held by a zoo on the wrong side of the lion’s gate? There is no shelter left in this place that they cannot penetrate. There are no walls to keep phantoms out.
As night comes to cloak their movements once again, I’ve found a place to call home for a night under a bridge. Not the most grand of accommodations, but for some reason I find the lack of walls a plus. As they have failed in the purpose of keeping things out, walls only serve to imprison me. At least here, I am free to run whichever direction I choose.
…
I’m back. Several hours have passed since the paragraphs above. The night has now fully descended upon me, and there are not shadows in this place, as there is no light to give the black contour. Forgive my handwriting, as I cannot see my hand before me, or the page it passes over.
I write because I was awakened from my slumber (I call it that almost in jest), by what I can only describe as an airquake. Imagine finding yourself enveloped by a storm cloud, and shaken in the bowels of a tremendous thunder. This is what I experienced.
There was the emptiness of semi-sleep, and then I was wide awake with the air around me enraged in a sudden civil war. My world rumbled and shook under the sound of a million air soldiers firing their air cannons and screaming in rage, sorrow or pain.
Rising quickly, I caused myself to slide a couple of feet down the concrete embankment of the bridges underbelly. The hard surface grated against my clothes and skin. My arms and hands were busy covering my ears. Leaving my shoes to brace against and correct the slide. There is a chance I was screaming, but recollection fails to say definitively.
And then, as soon as it had come, it was gone, yielding to this hollow nothing. Pulling my hands from my ears, I realized the intensity of my grip in the wet smudges of blood on several fingertips. Perhaps it also decorates this page. In the dark, it’s impossible to know.
Needless to say, I will not be sleeping again tonight. Rather, I’ll stare out into the many eyes I cannot see, as they stare in on me.
The Awakening (non-sports) - Part 4
Day 4
Today has replaced yesterday’s tomorrow, and here I sit in a home that is not my home. Night has yet to arrive, but growing shadows have spoken their promise to seal this day beneath their weight.
I wrote yesterday of strange moments I could not explain, and to my growing worry, that road has loaned itself to today as well. The world is rolling on, tracing a new line of rail that remains mapped beyond the horizon of my eye.
Like a roach, I live on as I was, while the world around me has evolved into something much more complex, and thus much more fragile. There seems to be a balance growing in tilt with every passing moment, and I am alone here to dangle from one edge to the other, like a pendulum swinging without rhythm or course.
I’m sorry. I’m confused and probably not making much sense. I can just feel that something isn’t right with me, with this place. I’ll try to explain, but how do you explain what you don’t understand. I haven’t the words to fully describe how raw products become a working car. Yet, I can tell you we have cars and they do, did run.
Yesterday, after I left McDonald’s, I walked, still abiding by the rules of a lost society, along the sidewalks. There is no point to this, as the streets have no passengers, only habit. It was here, on the sidewalk mid-stride that I again stumbled upon the unexplainable.
The closest feeling I can equate to what happened would be bumping your shoulder on a corner you cut too close. My thoughts were lost within themselves, a snake eating its own tail, so I may have missed something, but for the life of me, I cannot remember anything out of place. There was just one step after another and then suddenly an invisible corner or hand thrust hard against my left shoulder.
It spun me around, or at least I think it did. Honestly, I can’t remember, but I was suddenly facing the opposite direction, kneeling over myself with a sore shoulder. There were no sounds, no follow up touches, only the first abrupt hit.
Did my mind come to a hurdle and forget to jump? I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on.
After a moment of bewilderment, that I left unresolved, I stood and began to walk. My head tried to create a parallel to normalcy, but could only spin. I began to feel nauseous. There was a bus stop ahead, and I aimed myself haphazardly towards it. Unfortunately, this didn’t make things better.
As I went to sit down something else happened. I’m sorry, for again, I find it difficult to explain. Just because I don’t know the physics of why the sun burns, doesn’t mean it won’t rise tomorrow. Am I arguing with myself? I think I am, and it doesn’t feel like I’m winning. Is that possible?
I sat, but didn’t make it all the way to the bench. Does that make sense? I mean, I sat on something, but it was quickly pulled out from under me, causing me to flop hard against the actual bench. In the end, I essentially sat down twice in one fractured motion, or at least, that’s the best I can explain it.
Now, I’ll skip forward a little bit, if you’ll indulge me. Feeling uneasy, and more than a little drunk, minus the alcohol, I found my way to a house with an unlocked door, thinking shelter would help calm me down.
But, once inside, I’d swear I watched an open book materialize in mid-air before saddling up on gravity and galloping recklessly into the floor. I wanted to run. I still want to run, but where would I go? If you can’t see the sharks in the water, how do you know which way to swim, or if swimming itself will only make it worse?
I’m sorry. Am I chasing my tail? What happens if I catch it? I’m so confused.
Maybe tomorrow things will make a little more sense.
Today has replaced yesterday’s tomorrow, and here I sit in a home that is not my home. Night has yet to arrive, but growing shadows have spoken their promise to seal this day beneath their weight.
I wrote yesterday of strange moments I could not explain, and to my growing worry, that road has loaned itself to today as well. The world is rolling on, tracing a new line of rail that remains mapped beyond the horizon of my eye.
Like a roach, I live on as I was, while the world around me has evolved into something much more complex, and thus much more fragile. There seems to be a balance growing in tilt with every passing moment, and I am alone here to dangle from one edge to the other, like a pendulum swinging without rhythm or course.
I’m sorry. I’m confused and probably not making much sense. I can just feel that something isn’t right with me, with this place. I’ll try to explain, but how do you explain what you don’t understand. I haven’t the words to fully describe how raw products become a working car. Yet, I can tell you we have cars and they do, did run.
Yesterday, after I left McDonald’s, I walked, still abiding by the rules of a lost society, along the sidewalks. There is no point to this, as the streets have no passengers, only habit. It was here, on the sidewalk mid-stride that I again stumbled upon the unexplainable.
The closest feeling I can equate to what happened would be bumping your shoulder on a corner you cut too close. My thoughts were lost within themselves, a snake eating its own tail, so I may have missed something, but for the life of me, I cannot remember anything out of place. There was just one step after another and then suddenly an invisible corner or hand thrust hard against my left shoulder.
It spun me around, or at least I think it did. Honestly, I can’t remember, but I was suddenly facing the opposite direction, kneeling over myself with a sore shoulder. There were no sounds, no follow up touches, only the first abrupt hit.
Did my mind come to a hurdle and forget to jump? I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on.
After a moment of bewilderment, that I left unresolved, I stood and began to walk. My head tried to create a parallel to normalcy, but could only spin. I began to feel nauseous. There was a bus stop ahead, and I aimed myself haphazardly towards it. Unfortunately, this didn’t make things better.
As I went to sit down something else happened. I’m sorry, for again, I find it difficult to explain. Just because I don’t know the physics of why the sun burns, doesn’t mean it won’t rise tomorrow. Am I arguing with myself? I think I am, and it doesn’t feel like I’m winning. Is that possible?
I sat, but didn’t make it all the way to the bench. Does that make sense? I mean, I sat on something, but it was quickly pulled out from under me, causing me to flop hard against the actual bench. In the end, I essentially sat down twice in one fractured motion, or at least, that’s the best I can explain it.
Now, I’ll skip forward a little bit, if you’ll indulge me. Feeling uneasy, and more than a little drunk, minus the alcohol, I found my way to a house with an unlocked door, thinking shelter would help calm me down.
But, once inside, I’d swear I watched an open book materialize in mid-air before saddling up on gravity and galloping recklessly into the floor. I wanted to run. I still want to run, but where would I go? If you can’t see the sharks in the water, how do you know which way to swim, or if swimming itself will only make it worse?
I’m sorry. Am I chasing my tail? What happens if I catch it? I’m so confused.
Maybe tomorrow things will make a little more sense.
The Awakening (non-sports) - Part 3
Day 3
Have you ever been in silence for an extended period of time, and after chasing the tail of a spiraling thought, been caught off guard by a whimper of sound climbing your throat, and actually jumped back in recoil? No. Well, as of today, I have.
I can’t actually pinpoint the last sound of life I heard, nor whether or not one initially escaped my throat today. Yet, the vibration alone was enough to startle me. Then, realizing I had only been afraid of myself, laughter pocketed my focus and held me in its warm embrace, and for the first time, I actually found myself thankful for the absence of others. Had there been a crowd to witness, I am quite sure I would have appeared delirious.
That moment aside, or not withstanding…either way, this day has been a strange one. To put it bluntly, I feel like I took a dart to the temple, with the metal tip remaining caught and occasionally scratching the surface of my brain, tangling the thoughts beneath its point.
Flashes of memory, or dream, or fantasy….or, I don’t know, but they’ve come and gone like whispers sewn into a fleeting breeze. I find myself confused, and truly wishing for someone to talk to.
Am I going crazy? If so, is writing here cathartic or only adding wood to the fire? Of course, if I am losing my mind, what’s one more match thrown into the sun? It won’t change the lighting of my day, or the shadows of this place. I’m sorry, me. I’ve strayed from the point. Today was odd.
I found myself strolling down an abandoned sidewalk, wondering this barren landscape of skeletal buildings connected by fossil roads like the dried, petrified veins of a dead, moved on society, when I came across something familiar and strangely inviting, a McDonald’s restaurant.
It could have been memories of meals past, or just the shiny, reflective glow of the fresh red and gold everywhere, but it called to me none the less. Once through the door, the absence of scent and sound was apparent, as my nostrils and ears expected to find the songs of beef and potatoes frying, but those siren songs remained housed in unfounded lungs. Aimlessly, I continued in.
There was no surprise when a swipe of my finger over the counter returned without dust. It was as everything here, left behind and unused, but somehow brand new and kept. Though it had been weeks since a customer stood there and pondered the bright, almost neon, menu, I’d have sworn the age did not show, and a cleansing rag had been swirled over the surface only hours, minutes, before, and then it hit me.
Suddenly, there were people all around me alive with sound and pushed by the current of life. At the counter a woman held one hand in her purse, while pointing high at the menu with the other, as the number 3 spilled from her lips.
Spinning around, I found the dining area full of patrons, and then as soon as it had come, it was gone. Only empty tables and a hollow room stared back at me. Unable to find any other response, I began to laugh.
“What was that?” I said to no one with a near frantic laugh, and when no one failed to answer, I walked away from the counter. Beside the bank of fountain drinks on a bench sat a lifeless ceramic Ronald McDonald, a statue that waved at me with one leg crossed over the other before blank, and near hysterically jubilant eyes.
With no one else to turn to, to share this moment with, I strode to stand, and then sit beside the statue. As I sat there, muttering some incoherent words to Ronald with a smirk of my own, it happened again, though much quicker this time. Like an inverted blink, the world was there and alive, and then it was gone.
Feeling uncomfortable and slightly rattled, I fled the building into the silence of the empty planet surrounding it.
There was more, but again night threatens, and I find the need to take shelter. So, I will return to this tomorrow, should tomorrow come. If it fails and jumps from the tracks of time, well…well, then I guess I won’t.
Have you ever been in silence for an extended period of time, and after chasing the tail of a spiraling thought, been caught off guard by a whimper of sound climbing your throat, and actually jumped back in recoil? No. Well, as of today, I have.
I can’t actually pinpoint the last sound of life I heard, nor whether or not one initially escaped my throat today. Yet, the vibration alone was enough to startle me. Then, realizing I had only been afraid of myself, laughter pocketed my focus and held me in its warm embrace, and for the first time, I actually found myself thankful for the absence of others. Had there been a crowd to witness, I am quite sure I would have appeared delirious.
That moment aside, or not withstanding…either way, this day has been a strange one. To put it bluntly, I feel like I took a dart to the temple, with the metal tip remaining caught and occasionally scratching the surface of my brain, tangling the thoughts beneath its point.
Flashes of memory, or dream, or fantasy….or, I don’t know, but they’ve come and gone like whispers sewn into a fleeting breeze. I find myself confused, and truly wishing for someone to talk to.
Am I going crazy? If so, is writing here cathartic or only adding wood to the fire? Of course, if I am losing my mind, what’s one more match thrown into the sun? It won’t change the lighting of my day, or the shadows of this place. I’m sorry, me. I’ve strayed from the point. Today was odd.
I found myself strolling down an abandoned sidewalk, wondering this barren landscape of skeletal buildings connected by fossil roads like the dried, petrified veins of a dead, moved on society, when I came across something familiar and strangely inviting, a McDonald’s restaurant.
It could have been memories of meals past, or just the shiny, reflective glow of the fresh red and gold everywhere, but it called to me none the less. Once through the door, the absence of scent and sound was apparent, as my nostrils and ears expected to find the songs of beef and potatoes frying, but those siren songs remained housed in unfounded lungs. Aimlessly, I continued in.
There was no surprise when a swipe of my finger over the counter returned without dust. It was as everything here, left behind and unused, but somehow brand new and kept. Though it had been weeks since a customer stood there and pondered the bright, almost neon, menu, I’d have sworn the age did not show, and a cleansing rag had been swirled over the surface only hours, minutes, before, and then it hit me.
Suddenly, there were people all around me alive with sound and pushed by the current of life. At the counter a woman held one hand in her purse, while pointing high at the menu with the other, as the number 3 spilled from her lips.
Spinning around, I found the dining area full of patrons, and then as soon as it had come, it was gone. Only empty tables and a hollow room stared back at me. Unable to find any other response, I began to laugh.
“What was that?” I said to no one with a near frantic laugh, and when no one failed to answer, I walked away from the counter. Beside the bank of fountain drinks on a bench sat a lifeless ceramic Ronald McDonald, a statue that waved at me with one leg crossed over the other before blank, and near hysterically jubilant eyes.
With no one else to turn to, to share this moment with, I strode to stand, and then sit beside the statue. As I sat there, muttering some incoherent words to Ronald with a smirk of my own, it happened again, though much quicker this time. Like an inverted blink, the world was there and alive, and then it was gone.
Feeling uncomfortable and slightly rattled, I fled the building into the silence of the empty planet surrounding it.
There was more, but again night threatens, and I find the need to take shelter. So, I will return to this tomorrow, should tomorrow come. If it fails and jumps from the tracks of time, well…well, then I guess I won’t.
The Awakening (non-sports) - Part 2
Day 2
A journal, it’s funny. I never thought I’d be the kind of person that kept a journal, or even pressed a pen to paper when my paycheck didn’t directly command it. Yet, as the world has moved on, and left me to spin in its wake, it’s what I have turned to. Have I adapted in a shallow attempt to save my sanity, in what amounts to holding a conversation with myself (an odd method to sanity, to say the least), or am I not who I used to be? Does the answer matter?
Whether we come across circumstance via happenstance, insistence of plan, or a yielding to the unseen hands of fate…does it matter? Does the route to a destination matter? Or, is it only the circumstance, the end, itself which retains significance?
As darkness once again promises to steal this day from me, I find the urge to tell you the beginning, or at least how the world transitioned to what it has become, how the conversion worked, but I’ll put that away for another day. Instead, I’ll let my mind wonder the environment it is now confined to.
Though a protest wells in me, like a tear near cresting the eyelid only to be blinked into submission, I say that I am the only one left. Everything about that statement rings false, but who am I to argue with my tangible senses. There is no decay, no stench, no sounds of life, no near silence of death and the chaos of life it brings, no anything. Seeing nothing, I can only assume, and my assumption is that I am alone.
One thing, you could call it a shine, glistens for my attention within every passing day. This was not something I could label with any quickness, but once it clicked, it was everywhere. Think of buying a car. You think you’re the first one in your area to get a specific model; you buy it, and over the next weeks notice it everywhere. The originality of the idea was based solely in ignorance. Once the awareness was born, it could not be erased.
I’ll digress for just a moment. Please forgive my meanderings. As I’ve said, I don’t write this to chronicle what happened here to whoever may find this, should that ever occur, but to keep myself engaged in moving on. Today I actually found that I looked forward to coming back here and sliding myself through the pen to be, well, not immortal, as paper and ink do fade, but sustained beyond my own mortality. Perhaps, years down the line, I’ll read my own story with a faint senility that will make the words come as new experiences accompanied by a greater understanding, rather than as memory.
So, I must apologize to my future self, forgive my ramblings.
That thing, which I realized, and cannot undo, as I see it everywhere, is a lack of dust or aging. Without life or movement, the world has somehow staved off becoming stagnant. As it all slips further and further from use, it somehow remains kept and alive. As I mentioned yesterday, it seems impossible to become comfortable here, perhaps this is part of the reason why. Days do not seem new, but reused.
It’s like everyone could return at any moment.
A journal, it’s funny. I never thought I’d be the kind of person that kept a journal, or even pressed a pen to paper when my paycheck didn’t directly command it. Yet, as the world has moved on, and left me to spin in its wake, it’s what I have turned to. Have I adapted in a shallow attempt to save my sanity, in what amounts to holding a conversation with myself (an odd method to sanity, to say the least), or am I not who I used to be? Does the answer matter?
Whether we come across circumstance via happenstance, insistence of plan, or a yielding to the unseen hands of fate…does it matter? Does the route to a destination matter? Or, is it only the circumstance, the end, itself which retains significance?
As darkness once again promises to steal this day from me, I find the urge to tell you the beginning, or at least how the world transitioned to what it has become, how the conversion worked, but I’ll put that away for another day. Instead, I’ll let my mind wonder the environment it is now confined to.
Though a protest wells in me, like a tear near cresting the eyelid only to be blinked into submission, I say that I am the only one left. Everything about that statement rings false, but who am I to argue with my tangible senses. There is no decay, no stench, no sounds of life, no near silence of death and the chaos of life it brings, no anything. Seeing nothing, I can only assume, and my assumption is that I am alone.
One thing, you could call it a shine, glistens for my attention within every passing day. This was not something I could label with any quickness, but once it clicked, it was everywhere. Think of buying a car. You think you’re the first one in your area to get a specific model; you buy it, and over the next weeks notice it everywhere. The originality of the idea was based solely in ignorance. Once the awareness was born, it could not be erased.
I’ll digress for just a moment. Please forgive my meanderings. As I’ve said, I don’t write this to chronicle what happened here to whoever may find this, should that ever occur, but to keep myself engaged in moving on. Today I actually found that I looked forward to coming back here and sliding myself through the pen to be, well, not immortal, as paper and ink do fade, but sustained beyond my own mortality. Perhaps, years down the line, I’ll read my own story with a faint senility that will make the words come as new experiences accompanied by a greater understanding, rather than as memory.
So, I must apologize to my future self, forgive my ramblings.
That thing, which I realized, and cannot undo, as I see it everywhere, is a lack of dust or aging. Without life or movement, the world has somehow staved off becoming stagnant. As it all slips further and further from use, it somehow remains kept and alive. As I mentioned yesterday, it seems impossible to become comfortable here, perhaps this is part of the reason why. Days do not seem new, but reused.
It’s like everyone could return at any moment.
The Awakening - (non-sports) Part 1
Day 1
Have you ever been deep in sleep, and awakened suddenly by a sound you haven't the ability to define. It's there on the edge of your consciousness, but remains unsettling by it's resistance to name. You know there was something loud enough, jarring enough to break the thick stream of sleep that held you, but what exactly it was remains cloaked in shadow, a word on the tip of the tongue, but refusing to jump from the lips.
It was with this anxiousness that I awoke this morning. Of course, under the circumstances, you'd think I be adjusting to the abnormal. On a side note, how long does abnormal have to rule before it is transposed to being the norm? Whatever the amount of time, I must be close to striding over it.
In the darkness, foreign walls laid as an unknown canvass, unmapped to my memory, for shadows to dance hand in hand around my swimming perception, still caught by the slurred lines of fading sleep. This was not my home, for I haven’t been there in weeks. It was only shelter from the night, and the thoughts that roam there. I’d entered by night, and found myself abruptly awoken still deep in its embrace. My head played with ideas of horror movies and childhood nightmares passed, cast from the realm of dream into my current reality.
Had they found me? Was there even a “they”? It’d been weeks since I’d seen another living creature. Not so much as a bird came to serenade me as I walked this barren landscape. Still, I found the lack of bodies alarming, to say the least. There had to be a “they”.
Inching, as a snail fearing his complete surroundings to be made of salt, I lifted myself from a bed belonging to one I never met, sheets smelling of someone I’d never known. My shoe gently scraped the bedpost, causing me to recoil. As with most nights, there wasn’t comfort enough to disrobe prior to sleep, allowing me to wake fully dressed.
With my hands feeling the air before me, I crept forward to find only more silent darkness. Through a hallway, a left turn and another short hallway I came to the front door. Unlocked when I’d initially found it, I unlocked it again. As I said, comfort had become hard to come by, even if there didn’t seem to be anyone, or anything to intrude.
The door opened slowly as I pulled to reveal the gray licked light of the moon, which smiled from its sideways slit of a grin, reflecting in the empty world around me. Whatever had made the sound was now gone, or at least hidden. I took two steps outside and decided to press on. Sleep wouldn’t tread where I could catch it again tonight.
I'll put away this small notebook that is to be my only companion, and promise only to return when time allows.
Have you ever been deep in sleep, and awakened suddenly by a sound you haven't the ability to define. It's there on the edge of your consciousness, but remains unsettling by it's resistance to name. You know there was something loud enough, jarring enough to break the thick stream of sleep that held you, but what exactly it was remains cloaked in shadow, a word on the tip of the tongue, but refusing to jump from the lips.
It was with this anxiousness that I awoke this morning. Of course, under the circumstances, you'd think I be adjusting to the abnormal. On a side note, how long does abnormal have to rule before it is transposed to being the norm? Whatever the amount of time, I must be close to striding over it.
In the darkness, foreign walls laid as an unknown canvass, unmapped to my memory, for shadows to dance hand in hand around my swimming perception, still caught by the slurred lines of fading sleep. This was not my home, for I haven’t been there in weeks. It was only shelter from the night, and the thoughts that roam there. I’d entered by night, and found myself abruptly awoken still deep in its embrace. My head played with ideas of horror movies and childhood nightmares passed, cast from the realm of dream into my current reality.
Had they found me? Was there even a “they”? It’d been weeks since I’d seen another living creature. Not so much as a bird came to serenade me as I walked this barren landscape. Still, I found the lack of bodies alarming, to say the least. There had to be a “they”.
Inching, as a snail fearing his complete surroundings to be made of salt, I lifted myself from a bed belonging to one I never met, sheets smelling of someone I’d never known. My shoe gently scraped the bedpost, causing me to recoil. As with most nights, there wasn’t comfort enough to disrobe prior to sleep, allowing me to wake fully dressed.
With my hands feeling the air before me, I crept forward to find only more silent darkness. Through a hallway, a left turn and another short hallway I came to the front door. Unlocked when I’d initially found it, I unlocked it again. As I said, comfort had become hard to come by, even if there didn’t seem to be anyone, or anything to intrude.
The door opened slowly as I pulled to reveal the gray licked light of the moon, which smiled from its sideways slit of a grin, reflecting in the empty world around me. Whatever had made the sound was now gone, or at least hidden. I took two steps outside and decided to press on. Sleep wouldn’t tread where I could catch it again tonight.
I'll put away this small notebook that is to be my only companion, and promise only to return when time allows.
New Posts
I will be posting a story that is fairly long (for a blog), at about 20-30 pages. It was something I did for fun at my office (written during each day's lunch break) when our company began an internal Facebook-ish network, which included a personal blog.
The story was posted at about a page a day, in the form of a journal being kept by the writer. For the sake of time, I may post it a little more quickly here. Each day will remain labeled as it was in it's original form, and posted individually. For literary sake, think of each day as a chapter....and I may post more than a "chapter" a day.
I hope all my reader (not a typo) out there enjoy. If not, at least I enjoyed writing it, and it passed some time at work.
The story was posted at about a page a day, in the form of a journal being kept by the writer. For the sake of time, I may post it a little more quickly here. Each day will remain labeled as it was in it's original form, and posted individually. For literary sake, think of each day as a chapter....and I may post more than a "chapter" a day.
I hope all my reader (not a typo) out there enjoy. If not, at least I enjoyed writing it, and it passed some time at work.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Fable of the Cynic
Once upon a time, in a land long since lost beneath memories born and born again, there was a great drought. Recorded history shows no sign of the scarring, and nature will not present the long healed wounds, for they cannot remember what never was.
There was a drought, but only in the opinion of a localized group of malcontents. They felt the rain, and danced as the storms fed their fertile lands, but never did they come to stare upon the “Finals Storm”, a revered orgy of sky poured water, growth and celebration which enveloped precisely one tract of land exactly once every course of seasons.
If summer slipped past, and arrived at your door once more, and no “Finals Storm” had embraced your land, the heat came with a slight downward head tilt, minor furrowing of the brow, and dreams of next year erased those dismissed from that before.
In the eyes of a single man, who’s story I tell here (a single man that was also many), who failed to bear witness to that perfect yearly storm, who’s head fell lower, who’s brow furrowed just a little more with each coming summer, this time was labeled the most severe drought mankind had ever known.
He took to preaching his distaste to any and all who would listen, while standing on plush stages straddling ripe crops and blossoming vegetation, and cursing the fickle sky who dared not share such paradise, while damning the sun who had the audacity to shed its light in opposition, or impediment of what he saw as “The” storm strolling just beyond the horizon. In the rains, in the heat, in the embarrassment of what so many would call opulent riches, he screamed his message of dissatisfaction over a full belly and lush lands.
When, one day, his words rang out no more. Like white noise or static interference suddenly quiet, the people turned their heads and shrugged in unison at the change. In the silence, there came the sound of a hammer to wood, followed by brief silence, followed by the hammer calling out again, like a woodpecker serenading a deaf and uncaring forest.
One day, another happened across the man, who now stood close to thirty feet above the ground.
“What are you doing there, sir?” the onlooker asked.
“I’ve taken to action. Before the next “Finals Storm” passes us by, I will have built a pillar and ascended its back to stand before the sun, where I will pierce its fiery skin and clear the last obstacle between “The” storm and here.”
With a slight chuckle, the onlooker waved and went on his way. He spread the word of the man’s plight, but none gave it much thought or remained awake at night.
Days passed. Rain came and went. Season’s changed, and like a house of cards the man’s pillar grew taller and taller as the townsfolk paid him no mind, and lent him no ear. From high above his rants would float down like whispered tears to disappear without heed into the dirt.
Then one day much as that day months before, the monotonous sounds of his incessant ranting and endless hammering came to a sudden halt. Once again, those still tethered to the ground turned in a quiet questioning that resolved itself in a not so subtle shrug.
While, in the near distance and only moments before, the man had become so enthralled with his climb that he’d carelessly placed his foot where a foot could not be held. He stopped his tirade mid-sentence and released the hammer from his hands, where it floated in freefall at his side. Like a split second drum roll in a desolate auditorium, his day’s supply of wood, hammer and body crashed to the ground from a great height, but having tuned out there came only that shared shrug in response from his fellow townsfolk.
They did not investigate, did not panic. Did not even know of the loss they’d incurred. Instead, they went about their daily routines until that fateful day when the “Finals Storm” did find them in its path.
There, as they celebrated and danced through the nights, they remembered the man who could not share in their joy, as he’d been bathed and laid to rest in his hate so long ago. With a casual shrug, the thought, the memory passed.
Moral: Those that embrace their anger and hate, fail to share the happiness and find no joy in the journey there…if they stay long enough to make it there at all.
There was a drought, but only in the opinion of a localized group of malcontents. They felt the rain, and danced as the storms fed their fertile lands, but never did they come to stare upon the “Finals Storm”, a revered orgy of sky poured water, growth and celebration which enveloped precisely one tract of land exactly once every course of seasons.
If summer slipped past, and arrived at your door once more, and no “Finals Storm” had embraced your land, the heat came with a slight downward head tilt, minor furrowing of the brow, and dreams of next year erased those dismissed from that before.
In the eyes of a single man, who’s story I tell here (a single man that was also many), who failed to bear witness to that perfect yearly storm, who’s head fell lower, who’s brow furrowed just a little more with each coming summer, this time was labeled the most severe drought mankind had ever known.
He took to preaching his distaste to any and all who would listen, while standing on plush stages straddling ripe crops and blossoming vegetation, and cursing the fickle sky who dared not share such paradise, while damning the sun who had the audacity to shed its light in opposition, or impediment of what he saw as “The” storm strolling just beyond the horizon. In the rains, in the heat, in the embarrassment of what so many would call opulent riches, he screamed his message of dissatisfaction over a full belly and lush lands.
When, one day, his words rang out no more. Like white noise or static interference suddenly quiet, the people turned their heads and shrugged in unison at the change. In the silence, there came the sound of a hammer to wood, followed by brief silence, followed by the hammer calling out again, like a woodpecker serenading a deaf and uncaring forest.
One day, another happened across the man, who now stood close to thirty feet above the ground.
“What are you doing there, sir?” the onlooker asked.
“I’ve taken to action. Before the next “Finals Storm” passes us by, I will have built a pillar and ascended its back to stand before the sun, where I will pierce its fiery skin and clear the last obstacle between “The” storm and here.”
With a slight chuckle, the onlooker waved and went on his way. He spread the word of the man’s plight, but none gave it much thought or remained awake at night.
Days passed. Rain came and went. Season’s changed, and like a house of cards the man’s pillar grew taller and taller as the townsfolk paid him no mind, and lent him no ear. From high above his rants would float down like whispered tears to disappear without heed into the dirt.
Then one day much as that day months before, the monotonous sounds of his incessant ranting and endless hammering came to a sudden halt. Once again, those still tethered to the ground turned in a quiet questioning that resolved itself in a not so subtle shrug.
While, in the near distance and only moments before, the man had become so enthralled with his climb that he’d carelessly placed his foot where a foot could not be held. He stopped his tirade mid-sentence and released the hammer from his hands, where it floated in freefall at his side. Like a split second drum roll in a desolate auditorium, his day’s supply of wood, hammer and body crashed to the ground from a great height, but having tuned out there came only that shared shrug in response from his fellow townsfolk.
They did not investigate, did not panic. Did not even know of the loss they’d incurred. Instead, they went about their daily routines until that fateful day when the “Finals Storm” did find them in its path.
There, as they celebrated and danced through the nights, they remembered the man who could not share in their joy, as he’d been bathed and laid to rest in his hate so long ago. With a casual shrug, the thought, the memory passed.
Moral: Those that embrace their anger and hate, fail to share the happiness and find no joy in the journey there…if they stay long enough to make it there at all.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
"New Life"?
"There's a jolt exhilarating from the phone I'm holding. I hear the words of what I'll become, how eager the hands that reach for love." Blind Melon's "New Life".
So, it appears that I have now etched the beginning of a splinter that will become the newest branch on my family tree. My wife has somehow become "with child". Who knew sex could lead to such things? They really should advertise that a little more.
Honestly, after some initial shock, the excitement has begun to settle in. We certainly weren't planning on tracing this particular path at this date, but a gift is a gift regardless of where on the calendar it is given.
A couple days ago we went to her first Obstetrician's visit and got our first peek at the child we will eventually come to know by a name. This is somewhat of a surreal experience. You're really only looking at a dark finger smudge across a camera lens, until you see the heart beating and suddenly you know that it's a life....one leaving the fields we graze prior to here....for here.
Reaching blindly, we somehow plucked a soul from wherever they tread, and now pull it toward us. How odd. How surreal.
There's a lot of thoughts that come from the realization that you are going to be a parent, and perhaps there is no better way to express them than in their question form. I'm not sure I ever expect these to be consciously answered, at least in any form other than actions. Still:
Will I be a good father (broad and clichéd, but blatantly unavoidable)? Would we prefer a boy or a girl (I think I am leaning towards a son, but it's hard to really say)? Can we afford this (No - but, would we ever)? Are we prepared for a child (No, but again, we'll find a way)? Am I mature enough to be responsible for a child when I'm barely responsible for myself (Again, what choice is there at this point - I best be)? Per another line from the Blind Melon song that opened this post ("Should I teach one not to know how, how to live in the world we live in now?"), do we teach our child how to live (and succeed) in the world we live in now (a very tough question)?
When the wave is south bound, do you teach to ride it, rather than be crushed by it, or do you pray for the knowledge to swim against it and not be drowned in the struggle - and for the ability to teach such knowledge? Morally speaking, the answer seems obvious. Realistically, not as much. I only hope I can teach and not hinder the person our child will become.
I think I could make this post vastly more in depth than I am, but for the sake of time I'll keep it short (or somewhat short).
It's still a little hard to firmly grasp...meaning the fact that I will be a father...and I'm sure it may not be until it is actually born that this metamorphosis is complete (from non-parent to parent). Thus, the reality of it may not envelope me until that day, but it is very strange to think that there will be a third member of our family by the time the next Super Bowl rolls around....and yes, I will push the Texans on him/her.
Our family's sports hierarchy: Texans and Mavericks first. Cowboys and Rockets second. Broncos a distant third. No baseball, but Rangers and Astros get minor love (meaning attention is paid only if they reach the World Series). Some Stars love from me, but my wife refuses to care for hockey. As far as I am concerned, NASCAR and other forms of racing do not exist.
So, it appears that I have now etched the beginning of a splinter that will become the newest branch on my family tree. My wife has somehow become "with child". Who knew sex could lead to such things? They really should advertise that a little more.
Honestly, after some initial shock, the excitement has begun to settle in. We certainly weren't planning on tracing this particular path at this date, but a gift is a gift regardless of where on the calendar it is given.
A couple days ago we went to her first Obstetrician's visit and got our first peek at the child we will eventually come to know by a name. This is somewhat of a surreal experience. You're really only looking at a dark finger smudge across a camera lens, until you see the heart beating and suddenly you know that it's a life....one leaving the fields we graze prior to here....for here.
Reaching blindly, we somehow plucked a soul from wherever they tread, and now pull it toward us. How odd. How surreal.
There's a lot of thoughts that come from the realization that you are going to be a parent, and perhaps there is no better way to express them than in their question form. I'm not sure I ever expect these to be consciously answered, at least in any form other than actions. Still:
Will I be a good father (broad and clichéd, but blatantly unavoidable)? Would we prefer a boy or a girl (I think I am leaning towards a son, but it's hard to really say)? Can we afford this (No - but, would we ever)? Are we prepared for a child (No, but again, we'll find a way)? Am I mature enough to be responsible for a child when I'm barely responsible for myself (Again, what choice is there at this point - I best be)? Per another line from the Blind Melon song that opened this post ("Should I teach one not to know how, how to live in the world we live in now?"), do we teach our child how to live (and succeed) in the world we live in now (a very tough question)?
When the wave is south bound, do you teach to ride it, rather than be crushed by it, or do you pray for the knowledge to swim against it and not be drowned in the struggle - and for the ability to teach such knowledge? Morally speaking, the answer seems obvious. Realistically, not as much. I only hope I can teach and not hinder the person our child will become.
I think I could make this post vastly more in depth than I am, but for the sake of time I'll keep it short (or somewhat short).
It's still a little hard to firmly grasp...meaning the fact that I will be a father...and I'm sure it may not be until it is actually born that this metamorphosis is complete (from non-parent to parent). Thus, the reality of it may not envelope me until that day, but it is very strange to think that there will be a third member of our family by the time the next Super Bowl rolls around....and yes, I will push the Texans on him/her.
Our family's sports hierarchy: Texans and Mavericks first. Cowboys and Rockets second. Broncos a distant third. No baseball, but Rangers and Astros get minor love (meaning attention is paid only if they reach the World Series). Some Stars love from me, but my wife refuses to care for hockey. As far as I am concerned, NASCAR and other forms of racing do not exist.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Did Journalism Die?
Journalism is dead. Stripped of integrity, love and relevance, it has passed behind the curtain of pertinence. Does the blood of its death stain the hands of blogs, the internet or other interactive and immediate media? Does it tattoo the teeth of videogames, cable television and strangled attention spans? No....or yes, but not directly. These are merely symptoms of a larger disease. Greed, and the final destination of all things capitalism.
I'll try to refrain from making this an economic theory debate, but will instead try to sum up that part of my argument in just a few of lines.
In sport, and in just about every facet of life, the correct path lies not at the fringes of the extreme (in either direction), but rather in the gray, compromise laden middle. In my opinion, this holds true in socioeconomics as well. A population can not donate itself entirely to either true communism or true capitalism, as both fail to register the failings of the human ego. While one, communism, fails to properly reward achievement (when all are equal those that exceed expectation become passed over and forgotten, a sin which pride will not allow) while Capitalism does so with vast overcompensation (when currency is both the measure of success and suddenly a prelude to respect, both the id and the ego are fed...whether it be direct, or indirect).
Ok, enough of that. It's not really my point, but I felt it needed to be briefly addressed in order to present what is my argument. Journalism is dead, and greed is who stands over its carcass.
Major newspapers are failing, not because they are not profitable, but because they aren't profitable enough. The largest paper in a significant market is shutting down (or becoming solely an internet venture - which isn't a problem in itself as newspapers must adapt to the modern medium) not because it is losing money, but because it is only making ten million dollars a year. Journalist are being sent home to cut cost, again not because keeping them is putting the business in the red, but because it isn't as profitable as it could be....respect, cultural significance be damned.
Skeleton crews are kept to produce stories only meant for mass consumption. Their time railed away from where their instincts may take them, and herded into short term dollars and/or hits. These assembly line stories haven't the need for deep research or fact checking, thus the true explanation of "downsizing" in this field.
Information is no longer essential, unless it directly contributes to the numbers that can be presented to potential advertisers.
As corporations have taken over the American vistas, the accountability of products (as services are no longer services provided to and for the community, they are simply products) have been dismissed in favor of the bottom line. Who cares about inspiring change or the plight of the righteous when a picture of Paris Hilton or Britney Spears forgetting to wear panties can sell at least twice as many copies, or gather infinite more hits.
Where there was once a divide between true journalism and sensationalism, there is now a bond. After all, when the same company owns both and makes far more money from one, isn't it only an amount of time before that corporation sheds the lesser earner, especially if there is no societal responsibility felt. When the company that owns your paper/station/site is based in New York or any other place, do you think they honestly concern themselves with their effect on your environment? They are only hungry for what's in your wallet/purse, not in the quality of your life, because they know they don't have to be. You don't make them, and they know you won't.
Radio was the first to stab a thorn into the heart of journalism. Television soon pried that wound much wider and dug deeper. Now, the internet has gripped it's heart with hands too young to be calloused and set in motion the apocalypse of the well researched and meticulously planned written word. Even as I sit here typing this, I am a culprit. Speed and entertainment have trumped importance and accuracy.
Given where our attentions are thrown, we the consumer are as much to blame as anyone. When everything is a business, and every business is alive merely to earn money, everything is for sale and all is measured in the currency collected. Corporations are ruled by men and women who sold their morality to be where they are (not every one, but there are too many examples to deny this statement in its entirety), by those who view corruption not as a weakness but as a line in the standard rules. So, how can we expect the deities they control to be any different.
Again, when only money matters, it goes without saying that nothing else does.
As you peruse sites designed for immediate attraction by minimal staffs without the time or support to do their jobs accurately (thoroughly) remember why that is...because of you (and me). We ignore their greed because we don't believe we feel its effect, though it has come to completely shape this world around us. You feel it as you search for that next loan. You find it in the sites you visit, designed not to inform but to gather the ads that litter its face like scarring acne. You find it in the void left where true journalist once tread, where through the tedium of misguided sources stories died and rarely, when research and time did prove fruitful, they crept up to change the world around them and changed the lens you see the world through.
When you curse the blatant corruption rampant in our own government, or the distorted hierarchy of modern American life (where money overrides importance), try to remember how many stories you glanced by or skipped over about these facts to get to that most recent nipple slip, or Hollywood rumor. Try to remember how many people showed up to protest Enron leaders minimal punishments or a complete lack of government accountability, and then try to remember how many were there to denounce one of that very same group who slept with an intern or slipped with any other sexual misstep.
Where people once followed the outrage carried to light on the back of journalism and those in danger of being outed found fear, there are no more flies on the wall and the fear of being sought out is forgotten. And, why wouldn't it be? If you get caught, just act out the scenes your PR staff scripts and then keep quiet and we'll forget soon enough. You're only in trouble for as long we're interested.
Ok, I guess that's enough of a rant. I know this is somewhat convoluted and goes in too many directions at once, but hey....I'm not getting paid to fill out the flesh of the story.
Addendum:
A quick comment from me....
I am aware that there are some, if not many newspapers that are realistically in the "red" and that their cutbacks in staffing, and thus quality journalism, are out of necessity for survival.
However, I am also aware that maintaining a profit margin, not just a profit, is as rampant as necessity.
And, as long as we the consumer give only financial reward for these cutbacks and reversions toward sensationalism and away from information derived through time consuming investigation, why would they choose any other path?
Making one of my larger points very bluntly is this, we the consumer choose what we are sold, thus we haven't the right to be upset when we find that we are deceived and uncared for by the deities we choose to support with the money we've sold to them.
Don't wonder why no one told us we were being deceived, when we all but turned our back on the people and/or protectors once appointed to do so.
You complain about the press, yet you shape who and what they are.
So, I guess we stand hand in hand with greed as the coffin of true journalism is lowered into the ground.
I'll try to refrain from making this an economic theory debate, but will instead try to sum up that part of my argument in just a few of lines.
In sport, and in just about every facet of life, the correct path lies not at the fringes of the extreme (in either direction), but rather in the gray, compromise laden middle. In my opinion, this holds true in socioeconomics as well. A population can not donate itself entirely to either true communism or true capitalism, as both fail to register the failings of the human ego. While one, communism, fails to properly reward achievement (when all are equal those that exceed expectation become passed over and forgotten, a sin which pride will not allow) while Capitalism does so with vast overcompensation (when currency is both the measure of success and suddenly a prelude to respect, both the id and the ego are fed...whether it be direct, or indirect).
Ok, enough of that. It's not really my point, but I felt it needed to be briefly addressed in order to present what is my argument. Journalism is dead, and greed is who stands over its carcass.
Major newspapers are failing, not because they are not profitable, but because they aren't profitable enough. The largest paper in a significant market is shutting down (or becoming solely an internet venture - which isn't a problem in itself as newspapers must adapt to the modern medium) not because it is losing money, but because it is only making ten million dollars a year. Journalist are being sent home to cut cost, again not because keeping them is putting the business in the red, but because it isn't as profitable as it could be....respect, cultural significance be damned.
Skeleton crews are kept to produce stories only meant for mass consumption. Their time railed away from where their instincts may take them, and herded into short term dollars and/or hits. These assembly line stories haven't the need for deep research or fact checking, thus the true explanation of "downsizing" in this field.
Information is no longer essential, unless it directly contributes to the numbers that can be presented to potential advertisers.
As corporations have taken over the American vistas, the accountability of products (as services are no longer services provided to and for the community, they are simply products) have been dismissed in favor of the bottom line. Who cares about inspiring change or the plight of the righteous when a picture of Paris Hilton or Britney Spears forgetting to wear panties can sell at least twice as many copies, or gather infinite more hits.
Where there was once a divide between true journalism and sensationalism, there is now a bond. After all, when the same company owns both and makes far more money from one, isn't it only an amount of time before that corporation sheds the lesser earner, especially if there is no societal responsibility felt. When the company that owns your paper/station/site is based in New York or any other place, do you think they honestly concern themselves with their effect on your environment? They are only hungry for what's in your wallet/purse, not in the quality of your life, because they know they don't have to be. You don't make them, and they know you won't.
Radio was the first to stab a thorn into the heart of journalism. Television soon pried that wound much wider and dug deeper. Now, the internet has gripped it's heart with hands too young to be calloused and set in motion the apocalypse of the well researched and meticulously planned written word. Even as I sit here typing this, I am a culprit. Speed and entertainment have trumped importance and accuracy.
Given where our attentions are thrown, we the consumer are as much to blame as anyone. When everything is a business, and every business is alive merely to earn money, everything is for sale and all is measured in the currency collected. Corporations are ruled by men and women who sold their morality to be where they are (not every one, but there are too many examples to deny this statement in its entirety), by those who view corruption not as a weakness but as a line in the standard rules. So, how can we expect the deities they control to be any different.
Again, when only money matters, it goes without saying that nothing else does.
As you peruse sites designed for immediate attraction by minimal staffs without the time or support to do their jobs accurately (thoroughly) remember why that is...because of you (and me). We ignore their greed because we don't believe we feel its effect, though it has come to completely shape this world around us. You feel it as you search for that next loan. You find it in the sites you visit, designed not to inform but to gather the ads that litter its face like scarring acne. You find it in the void left where true journalist once tread, where through the tedium of misguided sources stories died and rarely, when research and time did prove fruitful, they crept up to change the world around them and changed the lens you see the world through.
When you curse the blatant corruption rampant in our own government, or the distorted hierarchy of modern American life (where money overrides importance), try to remember how many stories you glanced by or skipped over about these facts to get to that most recent nipple slip, or Hollywood rumor. Try to remember how many people showed up to protest Enron leaders minimal punishments or a complete lack of government accountability, and then try to remember how many were there to denounce one of that very same group who slept with an intern or slipped with any other sexual misstep.
Where people once followed the outrage carried to light on the back of journalism and those in danger of being outed found fear, there are no more flies on the wall and the fear of being sought out is forgotten. And, why wouldn't it be? If you get caught, just act out the scenes your PR staff scripts and then keep quiet and we'll forget soon enough. You're only in trouble for as long we're interested.
Ok, I guess that's enough of a rant. I know this is somewhat convoluted and goes in too many directions at once, but hey....I'm not getting paid to fill out the flesh of the story.
Addendum:
A quick comment from me....
I am aware that there are some, if not many newspapers that are realistically in the "red" and that their cutbacks in staffing, and thus quality journalism, are out of necessity for survival.
However, I am also aware that maintaining a profit margin, not just a profit, is as rampant as necessity.
And, as long as we the consumer give only financial reward for these cutbacks and reversions toward sensationalism and away from information derived through time consuming investigation, why would they choose any other path?
Making one of my larger points very bluntly is this, we the consumer choose what we are sold, thus we haven't the right to be upset when we find that we are deceived and uncared for by the deities we choose to support with the money we've sold to them.
Don't wonder why no one told us we were being deceived, when we all but turned our back on the people and/or protectors once appointed to do so.
You complain about the press, yet you shape who and what they are.
So, I guess we stand hand in hand with greed as the coffin of true journalism is lowered into the ground.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Sad, Desperate, Angry, Apathetic?
Like most nights, I went into last night's Mavs game with quiet optimism. You know, that subtle hope that this team is better than it's given credit for. That they were the reincarnation of the Rockets on their second title run (another team I watched faithfully, and seemed to endlessly lead me on fruitless chases into disappointment....well, until the playoffs that is). That this team could sneak into the playoffs at something better than the 8th seed to avoid playing the Lakers in the first round, where they could then uncoil the strike they've been storing up all season to "shock the world".
That, like the Rockets, they have developed the habit of playing up to or down to their opponent.
Then came the second highly contested game against a young team with talent, but without most of that talent playing, in the team stolen from Seattle (the team that serves as a not so subtle sirens call that when all teams are for sale, any can be bought).
As a Mavs fan, this season hasn't been easy, beginning with the silence of what promised (honest, the promises came to us from the lips of our own Generic Masochist - isn't that what GM stands for) to be an active and eventful draft day, to the echoed promises of what was sure to be a frantic and rewarding trading deadline, to the current whispers of what could and should be this off-season or the next....and more to the point, to what we're seeing on the court.
Going into the year, we all wondered if Kidd had enough to be a valid contributor and dreamed of what could come back when we finally broke up the true core of the team that choked away the Finals and a Golden State series, and traded Josh Howard (or mini-Damp, as he is often prone to be). The dreams paved the way to a destination where hope wasn't being strangled away from its decaying grip by reality. Hope was as vibrant and gleeful as I was when watching the full-screen version of The Breakup (haven't actually seen it, but supposedly the scene with Anniston walking naked through the apartment includes her visibly topless - don't quote me on that however, as I have not been able to verify it myself, sadly).
Sorry, even the thoughts sidetracked me, but we've found that yes, Kidd can still be a very good player...and as clutch as anyone the Mavs have ever had (which makes you wonder even louder why Avery benched him at the end of that Spurs game). Sadly, we've also found the ineptitude of our front office knows no bounds. How many times must this core (Dirk, Terry, Howard - and whether you admit it or not, that was and is the core. Harris was only beginning to be a part of it, but was still only peripheral) fail before it is tweaked. Apparently, at least once more.
Dirk IS the kind of player a team can be built around, regardless of what countless unappreciative Dallas fans will say. A trip to the Finals alone proves this. Terry is the heart and soul of this team, and honestly, it's going to hurt whenever he does leave. You couldn't ask for a better guy to be a part of "your" team. That leaves Howard. The supposed second best player on this team for years. Yet, also a player that has never done anything when it mattered. The front office's overvaluing of him alone is what is attempting to destroy what was once a golden opportunity.
They say he's a top 20 player in this league, regardless of the fact that I could name at least 50 I'd rather have, and have refused to move him when his value was high. Hopefully we'll find out where his value is this summer, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear the company line cast again - never mind that the lake is dry and the suffocating fish are growing more and more uninterested in what this company has to say (need to check the TV ratings again).
The fact that Dampier is still in the NBA is a direct insult on the league itself. David Stern should be begging to buy out his contract yesterday, personally.
Anyway, I've digressed (another symptom of frustration and anger - it's too easy to pull those chords and want to trace that rail of rant)....then came the storm of the Thunder, and hell came with them. The hell of realizing this team has a very real chance of missing the playoffs. The hell of watching a bunch of millionaires that supposedly love this team and city give about 30% effort for three quarters before realizing they were even playing in a game that counted. The hell of seeing Dirk, Terry and Kidd trying to carry a team that just doesn't seem to care.
Last year we thought this lack of effort was a team giving up on its coach. So, what's the problem this year?
If this team can sneak into (how long has it been put that way - "sneak") the playoffs and avoid the Lakers and Utah, I still think they can put up a good fight, but that sneaking is going to have to come behind a fist. We'll see, and then we'll ultimately see what they do this summer. We are approaching the last chance ride with Dirk, and we print the tickets this summer.
That, like the Rockets, they have developed the habit of playing up to or down to their opponent.
Then came the second highly contested game against a young team with talent, but without most of that talent playing, in the team stolen from Seattle (the team that serves as a not so subtle sirens call that when all teams are for sale, any can be bought).
As a Mavs fan, this season hasn't been easy, beginning with the silence of what promised (honest, the promises came to us from the lips of our own Generic Masochist - isn't that what GM stands for) to be an active and eventful draft day, to the echoed promises of what was sure to be a frantic and rewarding trading deadline, to the current whispers of what could and should be this off-season or the next....and more to the point, to what we're seeing on the court.
Going into the year, we all wondered if Kidd had enough to be a valid contributor and dreamed of what could come back when we finally broke up the true core of the team that choked away the Finals and a Golden State series, and traded Josh Howard (or mini-Damp, as he is often prone to be). The dreams paved the way to a destination where hope wasn't being strangled away from its decaying grip by reality. Hope was as vibrant and gleeful as I was when watching the full-screen version of The Breakup (haven't actually seen it, but supposedly the scene with Anniston walking naked through the apartment includes her visibly topless - don't quote me on that however, as I have not been able to verify it myself, sadly).
Sorry, even the thoughts sidetracked me, but we've found that yes, Kidd can still be a very good player...and as clutch as anyone the Mavs have ever had (which makes you wonder even louder why Avery benched him at the end of that Spurs game). Sadly, we've also found the ineptitude of our front office knows no bounds. How many times must this core (Dirk, Terry, Howard - and whether you admit it or not, that was and is the core. Harris was only beginning to be a part of it, but was still only peripheral) fail before it is tweaked. Apparently, at least once more.
Dirk IS the kind of player a team can be built around, regardless of what countless unappreciative Dallas fans will say. A trip to the Finals alone proves this. Terry is the heart and soul of this team, and honestly, it's going to hurt whenever he does leave. You couldn't ask for a better guy to be a part of "your" team. That leaves Howard. The supposed second best player on this team for years. Yet, also a player that has never done anything when it mattered. The front office's overvaluing of him alone is what is attempting to destroy what was once a golden opportunity.
They say he's a top 20 player in this league, regardless of the fact that I could name at least 50 I'd rather have, and have refused to move him when his value was high. Hopefully we'll find out where his value is this summer, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear the company line cast again - never mind that the lake is dry and the suffocating fish are growing more and more uninterested in what this company has to say (need to check the TV ratings again).
The fact that Dampier is still in the NBA is a direct insult on the league itself. David Stern should be begging to buy out his contract yesterday, personally.
Anyway, I've digressed (another symptom of frustration and anger - it's too easy to pull those chords and want to trace that rail of rant)....then came the storm of the Thunder, and hell came with them. The hell of realizing this team has a very real chance of missing the playoffs. The hell of watching a bunch of millionaires that supposedly love this team and city give about 30% effort for three quarters before realizing they were even playing in a game that counted. The hell of seeing Dirk, Terry and Kidd trying to carry a team that just doesn't seem to care.
Last year we thought this lack of effort was a team giving up on its coach. So, what's the problem this year?
If this team can sneak into (how long has it been put that way - "sneak") the playoffs and avoid the Lakers and Utah, I still think they can put up a good fight, but that sneaking is going to have to come behind a fist. We'll see, and then we'll ultimately see what they do this summer. We are approaching the last chance ride with Dirk, and we print the tickets this summer.
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