Off With His Cast!

Well, the cast came off yesterday, and the stitches were removed. It's hard to believe how swollen my foot still is two weeks after surgery. The bottom of my foot is so swollen that when I put my foot flat on the ground, my toes still hover about a half-inch off the floor. Oh well, at least I'm out of that gigantic cast.

I guess I should say something here about injuries that's profound and insightful. Though, having broken eight bones in the last seven years, I'm not sure there really is anything profound to be said about being injured.

Acting Cruelly

"When you've never done a thing before, and that thing is not simply and clearly right or wrong, you frequently do not know if it is a cruel thing. You just go ahead and do it. Maybe later you'll be able to determine whether you've acted cruelly...too late of course, but at least you'll know."
--Russel Banks

Gray

The Autumn rains are beginning to set in. A thick solemn gray permeates the sky, the air, and the deepest thoughts and feelings of the local inhabitants. Winter will be upon us soon, along with its cold, silent stillness--so reminiscent of death. It's the weather of the recluse; grave and life-wary as the hermit's soul.

Stir Crazy

I've been a virtual shut-in for the last two and a half weeks--only getting out when somebody with a car and a few free hours to kill happens to drop by. For a man with few friends (and making less everyday), this doesn't occur very often. I think my walls may actually be growing smaller...next time I go out I should get a tape-measure, then I can be sure. The air in my apartment is quickly growing stale and inhospitable to the fragile requirements of human lungs. And then to top everything off, I think someone keeps coming in at night while I'm sleeping, and moving everything into hard to reach locations so they can sit around laughing at me...they must have installed a camera while I was under the influence of their damnable anesthetic. Well, I'll show them. Tonight I'm going to stay up all night, sitting, waiting for them in the dark. Just me, my bottle of scotch, and Mr. 357...then we'll see who's laughing.

From the Land of Cannibals

"In solitude the solitary man consumes himself, in the crowd the crowd consumes him. Now choose." --Friedrich Nietzsche

Quick Update

For anyone who cares, concerning my last post, I will be going in for surgery on my ankle on Wednesday to get two screws put in. Also, walking on crutches wouldn't be nearly so bad if it weren't for the fact that the foot I'm putting all my weight on is also broken. Oh well, God may have won this battle, but the war is far from over.

Beware of God

In a recent post I told a short story which ended with me hitting God in the face with a stick. It seems God did not find the story nearly as funny as I did, and so on Sunday morning (appropriately enough), he took his revenge. Instead of simply hitting me back in the face with a stick, however, he decided to one-up me by running over both of my legs with a Dodge Ram while I slept--breaking my right ankle and my left foot at the same time. I'll be going in for surgery on the ankle sometime early next week. Moral of the story: always remember to let sleeping Gods lie.

Insomnia

Insomnia is proof that God does exist, and that he despises you with a passion only known to fresh lovers, and the kind of psychopath who would torture a man to find out whether or not he actually believes in you (see Job; chapters 1 through 42). There's absolutely nothing worse than laying awake all night, knowing that you have to wake up before the sun does, but no matter how hard you try, you can't force yourself to sleep. Every nerve is on fire, and your thoughts linger among fields of self- doubt, self-hatred, and deep-seated childhood fears that never quite leave you alone. You lay down in your bed, close your eyes, and prepare for that momentary oblivion that you look forward to all day long when, to your utter dismay, you find that your mind is suddenly full of all the thoughts and memories that you would rather just let die.

So you turn on the t.v., pour yourself a drink, and prepare yourself for another long, lonely night of hell's most perfect torture. After all, who needs eternal damnation, when you've got insomnia?

Is God Really Dead?

It had been another excruciatingly long and boring holiday--I spent the whole day either watching t.v. or surfing the net. So around eight o clock I decided to go ahead and take a nice evening ambulation to the park. The weather was exquisite, and there was a fine sunset to accompany my rambling thoughts. I was strolling down the path as it meandered in and out of the coves of trees that spotted the park, when I came across what looked like some sleeping transient. By this time the light was beginning to fade out, and so I leaned in to get a better look. That's when I noticed something strange about this drunken rabble. To begin with, he had a long white beard reaching down to the middle of his chest (note--this in itself is not that exceptionally odd, as many of our city's homeless have this distinction, as well as the distinction of being passed out drunk in the park), but what made this fellow truly remarkable was the flowing white robes that seemed to illuminate the space around him, along with the exceptionally wrathful look of his furrowed brow. By God! It was God!

I stood utterly still for several seconds, holding my breath, and just listening. I couldn't tell whether or not he was breathing, or what exactly not breathing would imply. Does God breathe? There was an empty bottle still occupying his half-clutched fist. Was he just sleeping one off? Or could it be...is it possible...was God actually dead? I searched the ground all around me, and found an appropriately sized stick. "Only one way to find out," I thought. Backing away to what seemed a safe distance, I pointed the stick at his ribs and gave a slight poke. Nothing. I steadied myself and again gave a jab, this time a little harder than the first. Still nothing. "Alright," I thought. "If this doesn't work then I'll know for certain he's dead." With that thought running through my head, I raised the stick high above my head, and then with all the force and precision of an executioner, I brought the stick down right across the bridge of his nose.

God shot straight up, and let fly a string of obscenities that hardly seemed appropriate coming from the mouth of the creator of the universe. As his mighty wrath came showering down upon me, I comforted myself with the knowledge that Nietzsche was wrong: God wasn't dead, he was just piss drunk.

A Brief Respite from the Day-to-day Monotony

What is it that draws a persons attention to an accident? We've all seen it before, and we've all participated in it: rubber-necking. Something about car wrecks seems to grab our attention and not let us go, no matter how hard we struggle against it. Is it, as the cynic in me would suggest, simple schadenfreude (the joy one finds in watching others suffer), or is it something else?

For many of us, life is nothing more than routine and habit. We wake up, go to work, come home, make dinner, clean the dishes, watch a little t.v., and maybe have a couple of drinks before going to bed. Day in and day out, it's the same damn thing over and over, like Sisyphus and his rock. And then one day something completely unexpected happens; some unforeseen event is allowed to unfold before our eyes, and for a brief moment we seem to shed all the circuits and wires of our robotic existence, and we are allowed to live for those few seconds. Even though it didn't happen to us, still our imagination takes flight. What if it was me in that car? What if that truck had reached that car just a split-second earlier? Might someone have died? I wonder what it would feel like to be in a car as it rolls over again and again? All these questions, along with a thousand similar ones, come racing through our minds all at once--half way perceived, and half way unconscious.

And so it is that we find our own humanity during this brief respite from the day-to-day monotony of life.

Bacchian Beauty

He clutched the bottle, like some sacred talisman, tight to his chest as though he would be able to absorb its warming effects by osmosis. It had been four solid days since he had his last drink, and the mere thought of going even one more day was eating him up inside. Putting the bottle back down on his writing desk, he pulled a small silver knife from his pocket, and began cutting the tinfoil wrapper away from the cork. He could already taste the whiskey, as he had been dreaming of virtually nothing else for the last three days. The wrapper now disposed of--discarded on the living room floor--he gently pried the cork from the bottle, listening for that subtle "pop" as the air rushed in to fill the small vacuum. With the patient eagerness of a man relishing the anticipation, he poured the light brown liquid over the single ice-cube that occupied the glass. Solemnly, lovingly, he pressed the top of the glass between thumb and forefinger, and with a delicacy only a true alcoholic could appreciate, he formed a small, repeated circular motion with his hand, watching with joy as the water mingled with the whiskey, producing a magnificent work of art, unbeknownst to the inner echelons of high society and the artists that fill its ranks. Lifting the glass to his nose, he took in the sweet aroma before pressing the glass to his lips. The liquid filled his mouth, rushing over his tongue, and warming his chest and belly. The grotesque multitudinous of life merged and transformed within his soul into a singular moment of Bacchian beauty.

Playful Movements

Meandering light-footedly through paths of fallen leaves and broken twigs,
The body twists, spins, turns and flips in playful movements of joyous jubilation.
The cool autumn breeze blows lightly through the hair,
Picking it up and making it dance like a marionette controlling its own strings.
Rays of light warm the naked skin.
Everywhere there is the feeling of a connection with God.

Just a Leaf

It fluttered down before him; this leaf on its journey to nowhere. A winter dream, and nothing more.

The Wisdom of Kafka

"Like a path in autumn: no sooner is it cleared than it is once again littered with fallen leaves." --The Zurau Aphorisms; #15

We look in every direction, and see before us only the Sisyphean futility of an unrelenting universe. Regardless of how many bills we pay, our desks remain eternally entrenched with past-due notices. Despite our unending number of friends, enemies, indifferent acquaintances and neighbors, we are forever meeting new people. No matter how many days we have wasted or seized, there is always tomorrow.

The wisdom of Kafka lies in his ability to see this futility, not as something dreadful or terrible, but as something akin to autumn leaves, gently falling upon the pathway; to be cleaned away or left alone, solely at our discretion.

I'm Back

Well it's been about nine months now since I last posted anything. I've been off vacationing in my own little corner of hell, and I gotta tell you it's not quite as bad as Dante makes it out to be, in fact some parts of it are really pretty nice. But, having had my fill of the place, I decided to come back to linger a bit longer with you, my dear readers. (Ha ha, just kidding. Nobody actually reads this tripe.)