On "screwing" the old life

"Never mind, bad joke."
"I was just trying to find something amusing to respond to."
"I thought it was self explanintory."
I just wasn't sure. That's all.

But nowadays, it's of no consequence. Thanks to all the misery, we're happy now.

And maybe that's not exactly fair enough to say. Not in public, you'd admonish me, not like that Because words like that, with power of swords, shouldn't be so blunted -- and besides, darling, you've already said it all. Haven't you? Or have we?

Well we aren't saying it for anyone this time - anyone but a worthy reader who doesn't know our situation. Someone who might find love prevailing in these ways a sort of titilating story anyway.

And you'd say, But darling, that's not exactly appropriate - because you always like to say those sorts of things.

And instead of getting angry, I'd laugh and slap your knee and fall into your warm lap where you'd stroke my hair and spend the next few moments just calling me crazy. Then, I'd sigh and give you one of those half-hearted laughs, and probably beg you to talk like one of those musicians you probably could have worshipped. And we'd sit and discuss philosophy and the greater points of what the end of time might look like.

And I'd say a million times in between then and now: it's of no consequence.
We're happy now.

-RK

Assimilating Disturbing Information

Could you, if asked, look down on me - on the whole and rest of us - and at least feign the same reaction you had all those years ago? Back then, when someone asked if you thought we'd be perfect, if you though we could hope to be whole again; or if you'd just admit you loved us?

Well, maybe all of this is the sort of pointless drivel born out of nothing and headed nowhere in particular. But either way, look here. Here's a bit of a memory we used to talk about. Do you remember it? Remember when awkardness was new and the way you pranced around the stage made us laugh and smile and reach for you? Do you remember when memory was just happiness bottled up in green colored glass jars that we'd always come and have a drink from? Can you still recall the times when we sat you down in the cathedrals of your living space, stared back into your sorrowed eyes, and said we'd want you, desire you, keep you forever?

Well, maybe the proper admission now is that we lied.

I, like my counterparts, am bad liar, though. A bad actor and a bad pretender. I'm no good at the stage-show three-ring-circus version of life you portend we live. I'm not skilled at the running around, at the jumping through hoops, at the truly being clever, at the answering all the right questions in just the right way, so we can pretend you show us something.

These words, maybe I'm good enough at them, if you can still believe I'm good at all. Maybe okay at painting bad landscapes with ugly images, but at least - I suppose - they still stimulate the mind.

I wonder. Do I still stimulate you? Do I make you shiver or make you quake or make chills run down your proverbial unmarked spine? Do I make your knees weak and your blood run cold and everything in between tingle with some sort of excitement or enthrawled shock? Do I make your belly turn and your heart rate rise and your blood pressure put your life in danger any time I'm near enough to call to you?

Do you love me, love any of us in any of those sorts physical ways? The ones that make your eyes gloss over for a moment before responding to our questions and inquiries and concerns about where we're headed? Do you ever need us in that purely animalistic way, that makes a thing salivate and drown in mental passion whenever its lover is around? Do you think of us as something living, something breathing? Or are we just your version of some prized meat to be devoured at first sign of death?

Questions. Endless streams of them. And all the answers we could place in between come up startling or meaningless. Yet, there's something to it, isn't there? To words and exclamations that sound fine and pretty together. Something in the way our semantics and syntax and morphology tie our struggles together in just such a way that we can hope to still get at something.

Or, at least, it's arguably easier. Easier than just tackling the merry-go-round hopefulless existence that gets us back from the shallow end just to dump us in the drowning pool again; this hop-on-hop-off sort of riding the tide until we're sick to our stomachs will all the options we've had - that somehow, at some point and without ever really noticing, we left behind. Or just forgot about.

So then what, my darlin, my love, can we talk about? What sort of past, presently processed information can even hope to get at now?

Here, I'll just give you a mutliple choice answer sheet and you can mark down all the right answers -- all the "a"s and "b"s, maybe even a few "c"s and one "d", if you will. And when you're done, we'll sit down on a couch in your vastly littered lobby and we'll ruminate over them. And then, sooner than later, we'll go back home and we'll see you in another lifetime, - or another year. Whichever is more convenient, really.

Because we wouldn't want to pressure you into sharing any decisions. And we wouldn't want to push you to coming to reveal any real conclusions. And we'd hate to shove you off into any complicated explanations of things you probably don't want to have to explain, anyway.

Like, let's say, Love for example. But no, that shouldn't probably be capitalized, because then we could ascribe to saying that it "just exists". And you'd let us get away with that because no one likes to have to explain it any other way, because then it doesn't mean as much to us. So instead, we just talk about the abstractified, obsurified sort of lower-cased "love" that could be earth shattering just as much as made out of solid gold or worthless metal, like the same stainless steel our sinks drip into when the faucet doesn't turn off all the way. Because then, when we're vague about it, we can still practice our precious free will and dissassociate our guilt from it -- not "believe in it" anymore. As if that were a viable option.

Well, so there we are: it's clearly "love" and not "Love". And we'll leave it like that, so we can make cliquey little claims about it and how it affects or relates to the collective "they": like soceity or humanity. All because, somehow, that makes our assimilation to ideals we don't really want to ascribe to a little bit easier. And well hell, we're all probably still at least 75% human. So that means we still want life to be easy, and we still believe that we have our rights claimed for happiness. And not just the frugal fruitless pursuit of it, either - because if we can somehow avoid being realistic and yet still screw around with reality, we're fairly and pretty much generally happy beings.

Because in the end, we really all just want to be happy.
We want to drink our tea without boiling water. Want to enjoy our coffee without buying a brewer. Want to eat pastry without paying a baker.
And at the heart and soul of it all, we just want to claim oursevles living without needing or pursuing a maker.

-RK

Vindetta

You're a "blog", aren't you? Something of an internet journal or memoir or public arena where I can voice or publish or display any little insignificant tidbit about my very existence?

Oh, I'm sorry. We aren't supposed to be speaking in the first person, are we? And we shouldn't address our audience in such blatant second-person terms, should we? We ought to address our audience in the third person -- or perhas from on a purely definitive second-person standpoint. For 'in a formal paper, one should never address oneself as "I" or "me" or any singular personal pronoun thereof' and 'one should never directly address an audience in such informal language as to assume the audience is personable'. This is considered very poor prescriptive grammar.

The well-formulated formal paper considers a subject verb conguation style which is of the utmost propreity. In this sense, dangling modifiers and split infinitives and such, are utterly incompatible with said style. Such things as this are not proper grammar and should be nixed at the first availibility. In addition to, semantics of the utmost importance are. To these, careful attention pay. Unless the meaning, lost, should become and the utterly brilliant minds confounded stand.

This is an unacceptible example. Please do not use it as a referent when constructing your three page, single spaced peer reviews which will be due in Monday.

The stated guidelines can be found in your APA or HMRA or Oxford Direct handbook. If you do not have access to such handbooks, please contact Bob Jones University Press for such printed materials as will be required for your present research.

The faculty will be expecting a three to five minute oral presentation on the results within the coming week. Please come prepared or don't come at all.

Thank you.

-RK

First, first

So shall I bow to you before I take the stage? Shall I ruffle my notes, ceremoniously laying them out flat on the podium, so that (beyond a shadow of a doubt) you know that I am ready? Shall I clear my throat in a commanding sort of tone, speak in a compelling sort of voice, state all my points in a clever sort of way?

Or shall I take off my shoes, instead? Supplicate my body and kiss the ground?

I fear all the holy has gone out of our ground, all the trembling gone out of our fear, all the ethic gone out of our work.

So instead, shall I address you as 'the audience'. Would you prefer a more personable title? I could add on a ma'am or a sir to that; would that make you feel more atoned? More respected? More revered? More significant?

Perhaps the problem isn't the amount of reverence or respect we carry around in our coat pockets on any given day anymore. Perhaps it's our impotence, our infervance, our unaffectedness that's causing all the must in our lives. Causing fissures much deeper, much realer than some simple gap in the generational education about how to know you're properly civilized.

Perhaps its the very idea of civilization that breaks generations down - that spike our neon hair, paint thick black lines on our pretty blue brown eyes, cover our banquet tables in booze and our ballroom gowns in gauze and gore and lies. Shattering the windows of our prevailence on 'good moral issues', causing what we've come to call the degradation of humanity's 'good' youth. (I'd say 'American', but that's not fair. China and Kenya, and yes even Iraq are as bad off as we are.)

But what if, maybe it's not that. Not just the materialism, the consumerism, the capitalistic savagery of our economy that's tearing at our hope of really be alive someday. What if. If it isn't just chemical imbalances and bad situations and a long list of things-to-get-done that's making us manicly depressed; isn't just the way we go about the things we go about anymore that's making us hollow, aimless, meaningless things.

What then?

What if, to prove the point - for a brief moment - the theologians stopped blaming the scientists, the Christians stopped blaming the Muslims, the children stopped blaming the elders, the individuals stopped blaming the masses, the guilty stopped blaming the innocent. What if - for just a glimmer of time - the radicals stopped raging against the institutions and the institutions stopped oppressing the minorities. What if all the movements stopped being exclusive, all the individuals stopped being egocentric, and all of soceity stopped being falsely ethnogeneric.

Would we still be standing on holy land?
Could we still watch our blood seep into alien ground?

Would we be stop forging weapons, stop feigning peace?
Could we go on in ignorance until dying from defeat?

Would we stir up new symbols, instilled with new rites?
Could be simply sit back, sip our tea, avoid fights?

Could we start being humans, even at such costs?
Or are we too frightened, too lazy, too lost?

Are we so desensitized that we don't even try?
Are we so used to unhappines, we can't even cry?

-RK

Treatise

Hey you! Look. I've been listening - all ears - bated for your every opinion for far too long now.

Now you seem think, to in fact believe quite fervantly that you've got control over me with your niceties. That your little "meh"s of disapproval sway my abilities. That your cliquey little comments on how you think I ought to say things, ought to think of things, ought to be one day somehow mean everything to me.

But you've been hindering my progress, blocking off success for too long. Been holding your clammy hand over my mouth long enough. Held your fingers on my pen, your thoughts host in my brain long enough.

I'm tired of your reign. So I'm starting a revolution.
Prepare yourself for war.

-Rali