Lately It Has Occurred To Me

Lately it has occurred to me that if I hadn’t made all the dumb choices I made in life, really stupid decisions, completely irresponsible, utterly mindless, that are somewhat compensated by some of my more prouder decisions, that if I had given into temptation on such and such an occasion, or if I’d not given into temptation on such and such a whim, or said this, or said that, or quit that job, get fired from that job, and so on and so forth, I would not be at this place, this circumstance, this adventure, this kismet, this karma, this eudemonia, which feels perfect to me.

Outside our gloom we can sometimes redeem ourselves through vagueness and fabrication. A gothic mailbox grows a beard and we call it a letter from God. Treasure this rapture. Map it. Smack it. Toss it like a stone among the beatitudes. It may not make a ripple. It may not make a wave. It may seem a little questionable, a little too sweet and difficult to digest. It may produce a fish. Sometimes a trout may seem like a donation, or a Hittite. You may call me wrong. You may call me pretentious. But is that any different than two suspicious characters in the park dismantling bikes? You can’t stop a perception from meaning something. All it takes is a smell, a pendulum, a face, or a stick of gum to send the imagination on a mission of import and daring. There is a room nearby in which I can dedicate my life to cinnabar. Please join me. Bring a cave. Bring a buddy and a crowbar. Together we will decipher codes from the death of the traffic light.

Some things in life are achieved through chicanery. Swelling, bloating, turgescence. All of it an act, of course, a representation possessed of sabotage and sackcloth calculated to arouse esteem and opportunity in the eyes of the pious. I think you know where this is going. If your answer is the latrine, I salute you. We can laugh now, and relax. No, this isn’t a survey, it’s more like a filiation mulled in balderdash with a dollop of bunkum and a side order of flapdoodle. These things come in handy when you’re attempting to swagger across the barroom floor with your spurs jingling and your conjectures lagging behind like a three-legged dog. And don’t you know that literature has gone the way of the deadlight? If you’ve spent any time at all eavesdropping on Kerouac’s letters, you’ll know there’s a place for ecstasy, and is revealed to you by flashlight. 

If you see a mountain in the distance, don’t rush towards it. Let it come to you. Point a stampede at it, of words and definitions. Write things down. It is with pleasure that I splash the notation with nouns. The immense sleet that blew it there continued its journey north. I felt within me a feeling of humble beginnings develop into a story. I was somewhere south of lethargy coming to in a bar in the Black Forest of Germany. I could hear a gust of wind outside, and injustice and clamors of deification. A flash of lightning as The Elves of Redemption thundered across the bridge. It has always been such. Some people want to know what. Others want to know why. I want to know what distant green knowledge is harbored in the skull and why it’s so hard to find.