Keep my head down. Keep the body awake. Find a way out. My life is at stake!
Break the ankles now. Throwing the shackles away. Shake fleas from the doubt. There’s fuckin’ nothing to say!
I wanna run! I wanna run! I wanna run!
Flee the panic, the pain. Haven’t slept in a year. Don’t know how I got stained. With blood that’s not even real!
Don’t know where I have been. There’s nowhere to turn. As the walls they close in. Sweat floods in the eye. Can’t see from the burn.
I wanna run! I wanna run! Away from here!
And how this darkness found me. Within these blinding halls. And as the stones are thrown. Collapse into debris. And with each bruise. I find an excuse. Right straight through the bone. I regain the memory. I’m so confused!
I wanna run! I try to run! Away from here! I try to run! Just disappear! I wanna run!
Strapped to this bed, now! Keep my eyes down! Glued to another syringe! Cannot be convinced! (I wanna run!) I checked myself in! (I tried to run!) Until I saw for myself! (I wanna run!) The lines with my name! (Away from here!) I signed with my own hand!
Don’t tell me how to feel. Like I don’t know how to grieve. I’ll tell you when I’m over it. The nausea’ll pass over.
But I need you, to need me too! I need this to bleed! I need you to breathe, for me! And I am. And you are. A false impression, dragging me down!
I think I might have blurred my trends again. I think I’m being, just a little petulant. Just need to embrace my sins. And let it all begin again.
Cross the river. Rebuild the bridge. Drop to my bloody knees. Beg for my redemption. Or die singing in perfect pitch.
Of an empty vessel? A paranoid delusional shell? Phobic and fucking unloved?
Why do I hate me?! And I refuse your love? Have I confused my inner twin? Is it only Ego and Id?
Am I cursed? Am I blessed? You’re not impressed. You know I can fucking tell!
I’ve disappointed again. And I am sorry. Please forgive me! Mourning Glory.
Get out of my way! I need air to breathe!! Vermicide’s release!
I’m out of my head. Better off dead.
I need a minute… Just one minute…
Now, now I’m ready.
Had a muscle flinch, pulled the knife out, then I slit my wrist, watched it pour out, on the bathroom mat, not like you’ll notice, I’m just a gutter rat!
Roll over watch the light fade! I remember every fucking word you said to me! All the abuse, from the fist to my face! That’s why I’m lying here, with a razor in the fucking sink!
Clean up my fucking mess this time! All the clots, from the main line! I’m not giving in! I’ll tear the sutures out, inch by fucking inch!
I’ve taken your shit for too long. Self-destruction, there ain’t nothing wrong! I won’t be your sheep! Wait until you sleep! Head high, wrist clinched, and I’m in too deep!!
Take a crimson digit, scrawl it on the wall. It was written in your name after all! In a coffin or in a ditch, this mistake, this life, I’ll bleed ’til the last twitch!
On my own terms, ask the rope burns! They’re the third degree! There’s only one way out, you’re not murdering me! You sloven fat pig, what was wrong with me?! Fucking you was bestiality!
I need a minute! I need the fucking sleep! Okay, I’m steady! Get the guest room ready! I’m finally ready!
Cross the river. Rebuild the bridge. Drop to my bloody knees. Beg for my redemption. Or die singing in perfect pitch!
I wasn’t bullied or abused as a kid so my intense self-loathing and inward hatred has to come from somewhere, from something.
There are some places you know you just do not belong but yet you’re there anyway and you have no memory or recollection as to how you arrived whatsoever. How did I get here?
You’re born and then some people make decisions and choices and actually swim somewhere and I’m not entirely different. I make decisions. I make choices. Where I differ is that I have no control over where I’m swimming. My entire life has been perpetually caught in an oceanic undertow. I keep swimming and it takes me wherever it wants to.
I have full control over my decisions but it doesn’t seem to matter. You just hang there in limbo, pummeled and violently thrown head over foot, slowly suffocating but you went into the ocean didn’t you? Why? You knew the risks but you chose anyway because what’s the worst that could happen. You’re waist deep. In control.
No.
You’re not.
We amble through the redundancies of daily life like zombies, lured in by success, fame, money and ego and we don’t even realize that nothing fucking matters. Existence is an undertow. Life throws you wherever it wants to and by the time you realize that you’re either on death’s doorstep or it’s too late to do anything about it. Not that you could anyway.
Power means nothing. Our possessions own us and credit scores and criminal records are Scarlet Letters we will never be able to remove. You can’t please anyone. You can’t make anyone happy either and that dependence or co-dependence on the approval of others bends you to its will.
People come and go from day to day. Some die young and society always says the same trite things. “Taken from this world too soon!”, “A bright flame extinguished!”
Says you.
No one can ever know where a person will end up in life. You think Hitler’s parents ever foresaw their child’s future turning out like that?
God is not perfect. I don’t care what anyone says about that. You can’t blame everything on sin, the Devil or choices because sometimes people are just trash and I think God needs to own up to their mistakes. If God made us in his image, what kind of God is he??
Think about this; merely touching the spinal cord lightly can paralyze a human being permanently. Is God that fucking fragile too?
It doesn’t matter how saintly a person can be for them to trip, fall down an uncovered sewer grate and die. That’s God’s plan? Really?? Happenstance, coincidence and accidents are God’s immaculate plan for Sewer Guy?
Then what’s the fucking point of being alive if everything is in God’s hands. If it’s all predestined and basically scripted, why should I give a shit about other people or other things or politics or even be a good person to myself??
I don’t like the notion of being a Sim in God’s video game.
“But, if you commit suicide you go to Hell!”
Says the bible…sort of. And why do you go to Hell? Because you took control out of God’s hands and fucked up his simulation? So, then if we all have free will, it shouldn’t matter. Now, killing one’s self seems more like a punishment than free will.
No. Go ahead and rationalize it for me. I’ll wait…
How do you communicate to people that you’re not suicidal but don’t want to live anymore?
I know that’s a coarse question to start off with so, let me back up a second.
I’m not suicidal. I don’t want to kill myself. I just don’t want to live anymore. See what I mean? It’s confusing. I’ve tried three times to kill myself already in my lifetime and have either changed my mind or failed. In those cases I was copping out, running away but I’m older and wiser and I know my situation isn’t going to change or suddenly become bright and shiny so, I’m not copping out and running away, I’ve already faced most of my demons and just no longer see the point.
Darkness has always lived in me. I was born into it and I’ve spent more than four decades trying to navigate that darkness and somehow manage to like myself there, let alone love myself in it.
My problems are not really all that different than others and in many cases are far smaller but, you know when you’re watching a movie and about halfway through, you know it’s a shite movie and you’re done, so, you turn it off. That’s where I’m at. I’m done. I don’t like this movie and I would like to turn it off.
I have a medical condition that leaves me in constant physical pain. I live around the clock in depression, severe anxiety and PTSD from a former abusive marriage where I was controlled, emotionally assaulted, physically battered and ultimately raped repeatedly. My ex is responsible for me losing two years of my life after our divorce because of false charges that landed me in jail, before I was exonerated.
My Mother is nearing her finish line, no matter what I try. I’m not running away from that as I’ve lost friends and family to suicides, car wrecks, overdoses, etc. all my life. My job requires me to work with women and children that have been stabbed, abused, raped and almost murdered on a daily basis. That job also requires me to deal with some of the people involved in their abuses. That job is a 24/7 job too and has taken what little emotional depth I had remaining and drained it barren but I’m lucky, in America’s economy to have a job.
America is another issue. We’ve become decadent, psychotic trash and the Republican Party is at the root of it but all we can do is vote? Yeah, nah.
Sure, I have my passport now and could leave this fucking shithole country but will it do any good?
Truth be told, yeah, I’m pretty fucking lonely. I’m not looking for sympathy. It is what it is. Would I like friends that live close enough to be social with on a frequent basis. Yeah, sure.
It’s not a matter of sex either. I’ve been Asexual since my marriage a decade ago and I simply have no interest in it. Would I like to have the company of the opposite sex on a consistent basis. Yes, I would, if I’m honest but it’s highly unlikely.
I’m in a progressive metal band and I love my bandmates like family and while we get along better and tighter than we ever have, I just cannot find the joy in recording music anymore and that makes me feel horrible because they are high as a kite about it. My voice isn’t what it used to be 20 years ago. The technology is different and I don’t feel like learning it. Their talents have grown and improved and I’ve regressed and I’m really not worth anything to them anymore.
I’ve always been a fighter, a survivor. There just comes a time when you can’t physically and emotionally fight anymore. Like, you literally just collapse and I’m at that point.
No, the Pandemic of COVID-19 didn’t help but I was rapidly retreating inward before then and I don’t know if I’m having a psychotic break or if I’ve already had one but…I’m just ready for the nightmare to be over…
Hell, all Social Media sites are malignant cancers that metastasize through your blood stream, collective conscious and ultimately your organs, causing what can only be described as something equally horrific as the waking nightmares that are Ebola or Marburg. Liquefying your internal organs causing intense hemorrhaging from every orifice as the grips of their fevers slowly cook your brain like a skewered pig in a luau pit in summer on Oahu.
Now, I don’t know Toby Morton personally, nor does he know me but I enjoy his work, his writing, his comedic DNA and when he recently began designing and publishing parody websites about some of the most vile, nauseating and excrement-spewing members of Congress, I was elated. These sites were tongue-in-cheek, clear parody but there was one thing that stood out and was far more visible than any mountain ridge and that was the honest truth about these subhuman wastes of space.
For example; these are just a few of the websites that Toby has published, calling attention to the felonious, stupid and hateful words and actions of just a few of the Republican Terrorist Army’s worst.
Subliterate reptiles like Lauren Boebert, psychopaths like Marjorie Taylor Greene, absolute fucking morons like Devin Nunes, pedophiles like Matt Gaetz, rape sympathizers like Jim Jordan and walking, talking skunk anus Ted Cruz are literal shit stains on the American flag. It’s not that they’re as useless as a vibrator without batteries or that they’re liars, adulterers, pedophiles, racists, gun-humping wads of shit floating on the surface of a clogged sewer drain. It’s not that they’re so stupid that I seriously believe that inbreeding is the main cause of their severe brain damage or that drugs and alcohol and animal sacrifices and eating fetuses is the problem.
The problem is bigger than their myopic and pants-shitting strained thoughts, micro-penises and their back-ass-wards pride over launching baby primate after baby primate onto their trailer’s dirt floor, as if almost every other fucking animal isn’t capable of that. No, the human populous, society if you can even call it that with a straight face anymore is largely to blame and yes, I’m painfully aware that generations of hateful, cousin-fucking legislators paved the pathway to the destruction of our educational system decades ago but in the medieval days, hell, right up until the 1960’s, people who were too developmentally disfigured or just too stupid to pick up a book were housed in institutions, not allowed to carry guns, drive vehicles or vote and nor should the same anchors of humankind be allowed to legislate either, as if what they do even comes close to that!
Every immigrant that longs, craves, yearns and dreams of becoming a U.S. citizen has to take a test that they must pass. You want to fly a plane? You pass a test. You want to drive a car? You pass a test. You want to be a Doctor? You pass a test. You want to own a gun or be a member of Congress? Meh. Close enough…
Social media share the absolute biggest piece of this dumb-fuck pie. What once was a way to reconnect with old classmates, relatives and friends and to connect with new friends has become nothing but the Jerry Springer and Maury Povich show in text form, with memes.
I’m not even going to harp about Political Correctness, Wokeness or Cancel Culture because all of those things, one way or the other, whether conjured up by Democrats or pulled out of their crusty, old assholes by Republicans are just like bringing piss to a shit fight. There’s nothing wrong with any of them at their core but they’ve been warped into carboard shields for people to hide behind, to use as a delusional force field for their racist rhetoric or their phobic nature and if that’s who you are, a racist, homophobic, xenophobic, Dung Beetle, then you do you but I, just as anyone else has the right to return your vile rhetoric by calling you a piece of shit.
But, social media is, to a degree, a force field. Donald Trump didn’t wobble along and just open the floodgates for people to be trash. Being able to post intimate nude photos for revenge, like what happened to Katie Hill, calling some kid the “N Word” through a headset because you’re virtually invisible, sexually harassing women with pictures of your wart-covered dick…all of it has been enabled by the assumed anonymity of the internet and platforms that started with ICQ, AIM, and then mutated into MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and on and on ad nauseum.
There are worse offenders than Twitter, Facebook, Parler, etc. but Twitter has to be the cherry on top of the pond scum cupcake. They’re just plain elitist. As if their algorithms have mastered the filtration of all the piss, feces, hate speech and other pollutants from their site. Well, you haven’t Twitter. You haven’t mastered anything. You have, however, managed to paint yourselves into a dark, dank corner where a simple click of the “Report” button, with no evaluation, context or additional information gets reviewed before that tweet or that account is just obliterated and your system is broken and it’s fucking stupid.
When you allow people like Donald Trump to even get a football field away from the insurrection and murder he caused, and, only as that happens you suspend his account…you’re the fucking problem. You still have people spouting Proud Boy, Boogaloo Boi, QAnon hate speech, RIGHT NOW, on your platform. You still have people blatantly spreading mis/disinformation about COVID-19 that are getting people killed and you do nothing. Nothing!
But God forbid a comedy writer, who believes in truth, integrity and patriotism creates websites with truthful and factual information about a congressperson’s crimes, like Sedition, Treason, Tax Evasion, Stalking, Harassment, Child Sex Trafficking, Pedophilia, Murder…do you want me to go on Jack, because I can?? They get deleted?! I know which side you’re on now Twitter and it’s not the side of fairness or truth.
But you allow this. A private company, who sets their own rules, regulations, standards and policies chooses to randomly enforce them, if they do at all and your disregard for accountability and consistency sickens me.
Twitter, again, is not the worst. Parler and Facebook and 4Chan…they’re at the top but Twitter? You have become that public swimming pool that gives everyone Pink Eye and E.coli and apparently, you only have a red Solo cup of chlorine at your disposal or…
You just don’t give a shit. And, as I write this your last three months on the market look like this:
So, obviously, I’m not the only one that thinks this. I’ll be honest with you Jack. I owned 50 shares in September of 2020. How you handled the Insurrection and how you treat non-blue checks made me sell every single share and yeah Jack…I lost money on that investment but you don’t owe me anything.
Because you’re too self-absorbed and obsessed with being some eclectic Johnny Depp/Elon Musk/James Dean like Frankenstein.
Have fun with the supersonic hate jet you’re nose-diving into terra firma with your egomania, as you stare at yourself in the sun visor’s mirror.
Ask Tom over at MySpace how things are going these days…
Sometimes. You want to climb. Inside. Never come out.
Sometimes. You wonder, whether. The anesthetic will be better.
If you added. A little something. Round and solid. Could you fly? A Scarlet Letter? In and through, the widening gyre.
Burn with the Sun! And I, fall to the ground! In a pile of sudden ashes. Reanimation has begun! Within. Would you even care at all?
If away. Blew you. Did the wind?
Would you? Mind reconnection? From the senses. Sell yourself. On the wings. Of numb bisection.
Burning, the One! And I fall to the knees! In a mass of sullen chances! Mutilation has begun! And I, sterilize my own reflection! Would you even care at all?
If away. Blew you. Did the wind.
Sort of congenial. Sort of wrong. And in its grasp. Difficult to tear away. Never mind the broken pilot. Did the zephyr, blow you astray?
Sober with intoxication. I want to touch these. Paralyzed and vacant eyes. Fractured by hallucinations. Hidden but from in the skies. Their zeniths are, really teething. Careful of a bloodshot reasons. Cause the bite, is worse than breathing.
Burn with the Sun! And I, fall to the ground! In a pile of sudden ashes. Reanimation has begun! Again. Would you even care at all?
The death of DMX wasn’t caused by an inability to deliver his words, his message. He was, fortunately, able to have the opportunity to do that and the world is better for it. But, too many young rappers never get that opportunity in the music industry.
Tendencies to fall prey to the toxic masculinity of proving how tough they are catches them in a spider’s web of guns, drugs, violence and sometimes crime and murder. Sometimes, it’s their own murder.
The world of Hip Hop and Rap has given us a plethora of artistic wonders but what we actually get to hear and what actually is pushed by the industry is only a fraction, a tiny fraction of a world of truly gifted poets and auteurs, who aren’t seen as marketable by an industry only concerned with scraping dollar-sized slices of their flesh into their coffers but if you’re an artist that has climbed that mountain and achieved success, you have my respect and I congratulate you for that.
However…
The list of Hip Hop artists slain because they were caught up in the bullshit of fame, fortune and machismo is miles long. Since 1987, that we know of, only 17 were aged 30 or above. From Tupac to Pop Smoke to Nipsey Hussle, the murder game amongst Hip Hop and Rap stars is a young person’s mouse trap. In fact, in 2015, the website The Conversation did a study that showed 51.5% of American Hip Hop musicians’ deaths are from homicide. [1]
Now, I’m perfectly aware that gang violence, diss tracks, beef and murders aren’t going to just vanish but all of these artists are all equally talented and this list is just a very small sample size of lyricists that have been cut down in what, at its core, is the pursuit of expression, getting their message out to others and connecting with others who have experienced what they have experienced or to enlighten and educate the ones who have not.
Of course, there are individuals who just rhyme words and desire to make bank and garner millions of views and followers but fuck them, I’m not talking about them.
In and of itself, sex, drugs and violence in lyrical, spoken word or prose are fine. They’re forms of expression but when you introduce direction to those words, such as so-and-so is a bitch or I’m gonna put so-and-so in a coffin, that expression becomes a threat. This is targeting and targeting is okay too but it’s how you cultivate it. Saying “I hate Trump!” or “Fuck Trump!” is much, much different than attaching a violent act to it.
And…
Directional expression is also fine…again, when done in a vague, general way that still allows the writer to express their emotions but does not target an individual or group of individuals. Creative Writing is tricky sometimes but the majority of these artists put a deep amount of thought and effort and critical thinking into their works and sadly, one of the best ways, aside from social media, to fire those verbal bullets is through song and a song on YouTube or Spotify is going to go viral much faster and blow up much larger than a tweet or an Instagram diss.
But, what if there were an outlet, a way for these young writers to express themselves and have that message delivered to an audience, albeit a smaller audience than the music industry provides, not with censorship but with guidance, advice and a choice. A choice to take the lazy route, targeting someone with violent threats, or, the more intellectual route, finding a way to deliver those negative feelings in a manner that maintains their intensity but doesn’t lead to incitement and retaliation or…murder.
It can be done…and I want to do it. I want to at least try.
I want to start a business.
A publishing company.
I only used the music industry and Hip Hop as an example and stepping stone to a much larger idea. I want to sign as many young, aspiring artists, and, I’ll be honest up front, I want to sign young people who are in situations and environments that you hear about all too often these days. Poverty, hunger, a lack of employment access, substandard educational opportunities, an absence of mental healthcare, police harassment, violence, drugs, sex, teenage pregnancy and yes, crime.
The youth of our nation…the disenfranchised, the abandoned, the ignored, the used and abused. And it doesn’t matter what race, gender or genre either. I’m not interested in offering opportunities to young people with access to money or privilege either because, and, I’m not singling out any section of society but you know who you are and if you’re remotely wealthy and are a shade on the color spectrum that is treated far better than others, you have access. You have the ability. You already have opportunities.
I’m looking for young men and women that have none of those things. That have a voice that needs to be heard, that no one will listen to. That have no way to express themselves emotionally without fear. That have no direction or guidance, life skills or how to construct and further develop, to hone their creative and artistic abilities. I want to take their art, whether it be poetry, photography, painting, graffiti, I want to show them that there are multiple roads of expression and I want to put books of their words, their thoughts and their images in the hands of others.
I want to give them an opportunity to speak their minds, share their ups, down and experiences but most of all, I want to amplify their voices and existence. I want to, even if on a small scale, help change what is a bleak and hopeless outlook into possibility.
And with the right funding, the rewards are endless. From scholarships, an appropriate amount of money for their work, healthcare, educational, employment, childcare, help for their loved ones and other benefits and opportunities.
Opportunities for expression are a core concept but providing pathways to hope, self-sufficiency and a better way of life for these kids is the ultimate goal. To show them that an industry that makes a fortune off of their art, while they continue to suffer and die for it is not the only route from Point A to Point B. That dollar signs and designer clothes are just an interstate where velocity and youth are a deadly combination.
And for every artist out there that the “scene” deems irrelevant or a has-been. No. I want and need them too. To be mentors, role models, guides. To take these young people’s minds on the scenic pathways and avenues, so they can see life as it develops. To appreciate the moment, the details and to see the unseen. Not a blur of chemicals and excess.
It’s also about tangibility and reflection. Being able to physically hold a book full of your artwork and knowing that others out their are being inspired by it, that it is being appreciated and revered shows a person worth.
And that’s the penultimate goal; to show the disenfranchised youth of a repressive and oppressive society that they are worth it.
The human brain is a marvel biologically. We can dissect it, scan it, test it and even communicate with it but the one thing we cannot do is truly see past the surface of it. It’s this massive warehouse with no windows or exits. Much like a roach motel, things check in but, often, they never check out.
Inside this complex and paradoxical organ is an intricate and disorienting labyrinth of hallways and corridors, lined with identical doors. Doors that are bolted and locked, having no descriptive indications as to what is inside. The human psyche has the skeleton key to each and every door and most of the time, it takes some grand epiphany to realize that we can unlock any of them whenever we want, should we choose to but the psyche operates not as something that holds you hostage but rather as something that holds the contents of those rooms hostage from you.
Now, I’ve had psychiatrists, counselors, social workers and psychologists tell me of the necessity of unlocking all of those rooms and taking inventory but I’m not going to advise anyone reading this to do that. It’s not a good idea. Because, if you imagine a haunted house and behind every locked door could be a demon, ghost or ghoul, you wouldn’t just let them all out at once. Much like in Ghostbusters when that prick forced them to release all of the spirits they had trapped. Wasn’t a good idea…
Plenty of my locked rooms have things from my past locked inside for a reason. Like the deaths of beloved pets, friends and other horrid events like being raped by my ex-wife. I’m perfectly aware that those memories and events are locked away and it doesn’t mean I haven’t dealt with them or processed them at least a little over the years but they’re locked in there because I do not want them running loose in my conscious headspace. I know where they are and I know that they’re not able to cause a mutiny.
I also had the realization that, after unlocking one of those doors, that some things need to stay imprisoned. I know the details and remember the pain well enough that it still sometimes feels real. I just don’t need to have a chat with those particular demons. Some people might though and if you do, you have to be prepared to relive some things, to think about events that scarred you mentally, physically and/or both.
If you’re not ready, it’s like climbing Mt. Everest in a thong.
My goal, yes, is to help people, to be a pillar of hope and strength if they need one and I failed to realize that a graphicly detailed horror story doesn’t help people relate. Instead, the goriness of those details has a tendency to shut people down because, and I still believe this, we’re caring and compassionate creatures and we don’t want to know each minute, microscopic facet of an atrocity. Simply knowing it happened in a general sense is enough to engage a person to the point of being empathetic.
After all, the reason we watch and enjoy horror movies/novels is because once the credits roll, we know it’s over. It’s fictional and we can rationalize that away into conversational fodder and it’s really interesting to me how we can spend hours, whether it be a YouTube video, a podcast or a lengthy article actually talking and discussing movies that are fiction but we can’t seem to have a real, meaningful conversation about topics like racism, rape and religion without it breaking down into an argument or judgemental bitterness.
The one thing that bonds and connects us as sentient beings is communication of thoughts, feelings and ideas and somewhere along the dirt road of time, that became almost taboo. No society claiming to be enlightened and highly evolved can make such a claim when it grossly toxifies education, science, reading, expression and most of all…communication.
You see and hear it all the time in relationships and marriages. “We just stopped talking to one another.” or “We just grew apart.”
How??
No. You didn’t just stop talking to one another, someone, maybe both of you stopped listening and it all starts when you stop caring about what purse your girlfriend/wife bought or how much fun your boyfriend/husband had at the football game. Sure, it’s not something you’re interested in but it is to them. Ignoring them or dismissing their interests, no matter how boring is the start of disassociation. Pretty soon, you don’t care about their interests and soon after that, you don’t care what they say at all.
I’m not a marriage counselor. But, this is exactly how my former marriage began to fall apart. She stopped listening to the little things, then the big things and then she didn’t care what I said whatsoever and that built up a lot of resentment and hurt my feelings terribly because I no longer felt like my voice was important or that it mattered. It doesn’t take five seconds to listen and say “Cool!” or “I’m happy you had fun!”. It takes the same amount of energy to ask, unsolicited: “How are you feeling?”
If you aren’t happy or content being single, you won’t be happy in a relationship or marriage.
Every choice we make throughout our daily lives requires, much like in The Matrix, us taking a pill. A red pill or a blue pill and most of the times we take those pills, or, make those decisions and choices instantaneously. Almost through muscle memory but it’s much more complex than that. It’s not mere memory or repetition that triggers those instantaneous determinations and depending on which pill you take, the outcome can be grave and dire or serendipitous and fortuitous.
Now, I’m not naïve to the fact that those outcomes come with x amount of variables but you can’t control other people and their actions or inactions or which pill they take or even Mother Nature’s temperament at that moment. Figuratively speaking, of course, whichever pill you take is completely up to you, by your own volition.
But, that’s the paradox of the red pill/blue pill theory. Each pill has a different outcome printed on it for each choice. The problem arises when we fail to look at those imprints. An example: You’ve been out with friends to a club and had a few drinks. In the median of your consciousness those two pills sit. One says “Drive. What’s the worst that could happen?”, the other “You’ve been drinking, don’t be stupid!” but 95% of the time we pay no mind to those imprints and act rather than react.
This can’t be blamed on a poor parental upbringing or on a substantially underfunded school system. Comprehension and critical thinking are not always inherent. More often than not, they can be acquired through experience and prior lessons learned or picked up like gum on your shoe. Technology may share some of the blame but even that requires a choice.
This is called common sense…
Our world is split between two realms; the physical and the spiritual. While there have been a lot of creations in the physical world, there have been far more negative and abhorrent ones. I’m not a bleeding heart liberal and I’m not a right wing zealot either. I’m not an independent either. I dance to my own tune. I belong to as few man-made ideologies as possible but I’m off track. The point of that is that at some point one of those three political ideologies made the choice to create darkness and iniquitous conceptions and ideals. Sometimes, all three chose blood on their hands.
When Plato said “No human thing is of serious importance.” he wasn’t referring to human beings, he was referring to human matters, possessions and/or physical appurtenances. He simply meant that transience, precarity and eventually devastation is the rule of the land when it comes to physical invention. Everything is ephemeral.
This materialism and decadent dependence on property, assets, money, fame and possessions is antithetical and in direct opposition to the spiritual realm and when bad things happen because people choose not to think, to read, to learn and to expand their library of knowledge I often hear: “God only knows I…” or “God knows I___________” but the reality is that no one knows God. You can’t know God. God is an enigma. Esoteric.
Knowledge liberates our anima, allowing light to clarify, inform and expound. Material objects and concepts are a necessary evil in our current world but without wisdom, comprehension and conscious perception, they’re mere artifacts of useless intent.
As the saying goes: “Think. It’s not illegal…yet.”
There’s this, alarming awareness that we all feel at one point in our lives. Where our actuality, our viability, existence is very much on the precipice of departure. Many refer to these occurrences as “near death” experiences but aren’t they really “near life” experiences?
Don’t they make us aware of our animation in the greater macrocosm?
We approach death every second of every day. It’s an inevitability and as a culture, we’re paranoid, obsessed and completely and totally phobic and neurotic about dying. It’s going to happen to you, to all of us and we as a species or at the very least, a massive collective of livestock seem to focus half on one end of the spectrum and the other half on the opposite end
One long, chaotic game of tug-of-war and the verity is that no one is focusing on where the flag in the middle of the rope is. Death is not stronger than life. Life is not stronger than death. They are equally powerful but, neither force commands or even demands our obsessive compulsion.
A car accident, turbulence, a mugging; all of these things force us to pull harder toward life and sure, the flag may move but ask yourselves just how far it will?
While standing in my bathroom shaving I felt an overwhelming pull, bright light, a loss of all senses. I wasn’t going blackout or lose consciousness. It was a schism and I consciously knew that. I won’t bring in religion to this conversation with myself because it’s purely an existential, metaphysical one.
The alleged light we see at the end of the tunnel, in my belief, is not at the end of the tunnel. It’s us…leaving the body, this realm.
We are the light.
Where that light is going, I don’t know but I wasn’t ready to find out just yet and I focused deeply to bottle it up again but the point is, I could have. I could have just let my inner marrow give up the ghost and dissipate but I’m not interested in the game of life vs. death right now.
I’ve been close to death in a medical sense more times than I can recollect. A drug overdose, that my shit-sucking friends cared so much about that they left me next to a KFC dumpster in Arcata, CA. I’ve slit my wrists twice. I was stabbed in the neck in Biloxi, MS and I damn near jumped from a 4th story window of a building under construction in Bismarck, ND but I wasn’t seeking death. I wanted out of this body, out of this skin.
That was in 1998. Things have not changed…much. I still loathe being in this iron maiden of a body. Sure, I could change a lot…physically. But, that won’t change this body’s malformation, nor will it change the ugliness it masks inside.
What changed was this: I realized that it didn’t fucking matter which side the flag on the rope ended up on because there is no clear winner. Life and death are not a game and eventually, I realized the flag was the point, the answer.
It was right in the middle…where we all should be focused. Perfectly aware of death on one end and what really amounts to eternal life on the other. If the flag ends up on death’s side, you’re dead, gone, done. If it ends up on life’s side, well that side is a lie. Because that flag will always find it’s way over to death’s side. It’s just that death is patient, if not opportunistic.
Doesn’t mean you should be reckless, careless or stupid about living. It means relax, stop obsessing over death or the perfect life or even if you’re living life like you should be. Just be a good person, do the right thing and live by that code.
One day a proverbial gust of wind will blow your flag over to death but in the meantime…just exist in the middle. Be centered.
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