Cake or Death

 "I'm so tired. Tired of all of it. I don't want to do this anymore. I can't do this anymore. My whole life, my whole fucking life, I worked and paid bills and did what all the good little obedient people do. I don't know why. It ripped me apart. Every minute, every conversation, every obligation, every sacrifice. It ripped me all apart.

Because I knew better. This game we all play, it is futile. It is a sad, cruel joke. I knew that going in. But for unfathomable reasons, I put my head down, put one foot in front of the other, and marched dutifully forward towards regret. I built up mountains of it, regret, and carried it on my shoulders. I kept adding to it, growing it to skyscraper heights. My knees sagged and screamed under the weight. So I added more to the load, piled it even higher, and staggered forward. To nothingness.

There is no reward for this. Only emptiness. And suffocating suffering. You reach a point where you either give up and die, or keep on staggering forward to die. Neither one a pretty option. But sickeningly commonplace.

If I was smart I would have retired years ago. Many years ago. But I never made provisions. When you have nothing, you have to give everything. Physically, psychologically - trudging forward like a donkey with a broken back. Repeating the daily cycle. Getting nowhere, despising the obligation, mourning the lack of freedom, unable to escape it.

I don't want to do this anymore. But they make me do it. The people I owe money to. The people who control my life. The money lenders. The greedy, soulless monsters who take everything I earn, then demand more. The people who arbitrarily raise food prices, gas prices, interest rates, insurance costs. The people who keep me in my place, grinding, struggling, suffering the indignity of a shattered ego.

I am too old for this. I expected to retire. I thought it would happen. I know I deserved to. But I can't. They won't let me. I don't let me. Bad decisions, no passion or dream to drive me. A lost soul in a vacuum that sucks up lost souls.

I'm so tired. I don't want to do this anymore. I can't do this anymore."

His words ran into silence.

Krakatoa Karl looked up to realize he was alone. Of course he was. He thought he was having a conversation with a loved one but there weren't any loved ones. Not anymore. He drove them all away.

Not purposefully. His wife - divorced. His kids - not speaking to him anymore. His friends - too embarrassed to come around. Even his enemies - did not feel he was worth the effort. 

Because he was a loser. No one likes a loser.

He did not see himself as a loser. He was just a guy. A guy who never fit in and did not know what to do about it. As a stranger in a strange land, you got to kick, scream, slice flesh and break bones to make a little space for yourself. If you don't do that, your bones get crushed. Your spine collapses and you crawl through every day dripping blood through broken teeth.

Karl shook his head. When he did, tears flew onto the sleeve of his flannel shirt.

In bed that night, he prayed to die. As he did every night. To close his eyes and never wake up.

The following morning, the alarm shocked him awake. He put his feet to the floor and wiped the first drops of blood from his lips. He staggered to the bathroom, a walking corpse enduring a life. Preparing for another day of drudgery.

What else could he do?

The Author Knows Me

 "No disrespect to the golfers and gardeners and so on but activities don't work for me. I don't want to go gently into a future of activities. I want a whole new life to replace the one that's wearing out. I know this is unrealistic. I'm not asking to be young again; I'm not asking to be exempt from time and its punishments. But I don't want to spend the rest of my life playing games or doing exercises or taking bus tours overseas. I want to find something that will kick my discontent in its fat ass and carry me to the finish line feeling that I'd finished strong, finally grasping some sort of intensity or richness or bold embrace of life that eluded or intimidated me when I was young."

From Falling Into The Mob by Steve Zousmer

Just Another Life

 A close friend said to me:

"I am barely functioning. I wake up in fear and go to sleep defeated. In between, I pray for a miracle."

I had no words of comfort for him.

So I left.

Two Quotes of Consequence

"Old age is the most unexpected of all things that can happen to a man."

Leon Trotsky

I like that, but the quote has been misstated and erroneously attributed to Leo Tolstoy in a scene from the movie Elegy. I like the misquote better - it's more direct and hits a little harder:

1) "The biggest surprise in a man's life is old age."

2) "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me." 

William Shakespeare from Richard II

I printed these quotes in bold to really hammer them home. Turns out it was unnecessary.

Broken Dreams Defined

 "In the evening hours my brothers and I filled mason jars with lightning bugs to keep as night lights after the candles were blown out so Dad could chase the neon lights of fame, playing low-ceilinged honky-tonks up and down the Carolinas and sometimes into Georgia. When I woke each morning, Dad was always sleeping the deep sleep of whiskey and defeat on the couch with his cowboy boots still on, his guitar in its case by the door, and my lightning bugs upside down with suffocation in the grass at the bottom of their jars."

From Low Country by J. Nicole Jones

Pet Lovers Unite

This country is boiling over with hatred, violence, and disregard for the opinions of others. We excel at it. 

We are all in the same boat, striving for the same things, fighting the same daily battles, but for some fucked-up reason we have decided that if you think differently than I do, you are the enemy.

Used to be you had an opinion, I had a different opinion, but we could still drink beer in our folding chairs at a neighborhood cookout and laugh. Now you end up with a black eye or chipped tooth for disagreeing with the person next to you.

Not sure how that happened. Maybe it reveals the weakness of human nature rapidly deteriorating over time, maybe it results from this thing we used to have called democracy, maybe it's a combination of both. Whatever it is, we have crossed a line that we can never cross back. The concept of people getting along is wishful thinking at this point.

Pet lovers can save us.

I'm talking about people who genuinely love their pets. People whose relationship with their pets is sacred. People who see them as living breathing things with thoughts and emotions and sensitivity, not just as animals.

I am not talking about people who keep pets for amusement, or to make a statement. People who pay attention to them only when it suits them or when they have the time. I'm talking about people who talk to their pets, who hug them and kiss them, who continually acknowledge their presence just like you would a human being.

That kind of love is pure. It is sacred. It feeds your soul, it saves your soul. Pet lovers of that caliber experience life close to the bone, life as it is supposed to be lived. These people are powerful.

We need to establish a country-wide network of genuine pet lovers. Online, face to face, in local communities, state to state, and in nation-wide groups.

The love generated in the get togethers of genuine pet lovers and their  precious pets anywhere and everywhere would be so intense it would defy explanation. It would be a love of a magnitude never before experienced in the history of the world. It would be self-feeding and self-escalating until it would become invincible.

We could use that love to defeat all the hatred and violence, close-mindedness and stupidity, that is strangling the lives of everyday people.

We could become human again.

Huh, what? Oh shit, I fell asleep again. Was I dreaming? Oh yeah, I remember now - the pet lovers thing.

Forget it. It is only a pipe dream. Hatred is a blood sport in this country now. 

Love your pets deeply and honestly. It is good for you. It is healthy for you and your pets.

Then go out and spit on your neighbor.

Two Thoughts

1) I need to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

My situation is dire.

Of course, with my luck, the rabbit will be fucking dead.

2) I recently learned that deep breathing temporarily relieves anxiety. 

As a consequence, I also learned that, at my level of dysfunction, hyperventilation results.