Friday, April 25, 2008

Marching toward Oblivion.

Somewhere along the line, I went horribly, horribly wrong.

You see, friends and neighbors, for some reason I actually cared about what was going on around me. Even from my early days as a lay-about-wanna-be-Dylan-Thomas-alcoholic-poet, I was aware of the things going on around me; I wanted to know; I wanted to see.

I cared about politics, and history, and how they are intertwined. I cared about the trends on television and in film. I was interested on the ever changing tastes in music. I was all agog over the simple complexities of the English language, and even though I can't speak any OTHER language, I was curious on how our language is adapted from other languages. I read books without discrimination; no genre was left unturned, no author turned away into the dark night of apathy.

I travelled the great wide world; I slept in huge beds dressed up in the highest thread counts, and I slept in the bandstand with four homeless Vietnam veterans. I saw the sun rise in the desert and the sun set over the vast Pacific Ocean. I've eaten caviar from Russia, and Brown Trout from a mountain stream. I stood shoulder to shoulder with my neighbors, filling sandbags to keep the Mississippi from pushing it's way into town, and helped to rebuild houses in places that weren't so lucky. I listened to thousands of stories from hundreds of mouths, and if I concentrate I can still hear the voices; and I can DAMNED SURE repeat the stories.

In short, I read, watched, observed, wrote about, studied, researched, laughed over, cried about, and basked in the glory that was simply walking around the world with my eyes wide open.

And now, I find that I was horribly, horribly wrong.

For you see, friends and neighbors, it doesn't matter. Because the well versed, well read, and thoughtful individuals are the ones that society nails upon the cross of short sightedness, and just out and out stupidity.

I can't believe that all those cro-mags that pushed me around in high school were actually RIGHT. That the pursuit of knowledge is actually the world's largest joke. And it's all on me.

And all it took?
All it took was for somebody to look me straight in the eye and say the magic words:
"You're very weird."

It was enough to make a middle aged man cry.
But not in public.
Never in public.

There was a time when "marching to the beat of a different drummer" was considered a kind of compliment. That unique perspectives were not only welcome, but admired. Where creativity moved the stars in their flight, and the orbs in their celestial patterns. Now, it's lukewarm, leftover, line forms on the right, and you'd better tow the line, or it's a one way ticket to the city of Pariah.


And some people wonder why I became an alcoholic.
And some other people wonder why I even bothered with sobriety.

And how was your day, Bunky?

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