The Slow Decay of Eternity

What is the real life?

What is smoke and what is solid?

Where is the golden jewel that shines with nuclear majesty?

Cradled amid silver twigs with blood of molten suns

That small and sacred spark shudders with a heartbeat

A surge of breath into a muscle devoid of wonder

So that meat is galvanized by electricity.

This smoke drifts and curls

I follow it in dreams

Sitting in my chair behind my desk

(My brain awake)

I watch it dance and I see clearly.

In the night, though clouds are heavy

I see with rare sight.

I have walked in this world’s streets

Tasted a dreamless sleep

The vacant eyes of people walking

Not awake

Not dreaming

Drifting like flotsam in the sea.

Their faces are worn smooth and their eyes are blind.

They cannot see.

An old man left his village to climb a mountain.

He said he went to see the face of God.

He climbed over jagged rocks

Trudged through bitter snows

Shivered in cold winds.

But he continued through the night

Passing through clouds and up the last steep slope;

In darkness he ascended the spire.

Morning came, and he clung to the pinnacle

Ablaze with brilliant light.

Early evening, he returned to the village

He could not see, his eyes were blind, but his face shone with light.

No one ever knew…

And no one asked…

Was it the fierce sunrise, unfiltered by dust and haze

Or did he see God’s face for a single shining second

Before the frail organs of perception shorted in spiritual sparks?

Yet the old man was not unhappy.

Children, even men and women

They gathered around him, sat and listened.

 He told and retold the story of glimpsing the light of heaven.

He would lean forward, raise a finger, whispering, “The Light! The Light! I have seen it!”

In his blindness he would whisper, “I see it still! All I can see is light.”

Jumper

I'm listening to one of my music mixes tonight from several years ago. Hadn't jammed to Third Eye Blind in a long time. I have strange connections to this "flash in the pan" band from the late nineties. Do you ever listen to a song and suddenly a string of associative memories streams through your head like a stream of clattering marbles? Well, this one had just one memory, but this one was a bowling ball through my front window. Made me laugh just to think about it.

First time I heard Third Eye Blind, there I am, standing in the Abilene Mall, strategically positioned next to a clothing rack in the BUCKLE, a new salesman waiting to rush on the next hapless juvenile entrusted with Mom and Dad's credit card. The BUCKLE was the only time in MY LIFE where I walked out on a job.

Initially, I thought it would be a good deal for a twenty year old single guy: high dollar clothes, cool looking store, salespeople with an uber-high cool-factor, a lot of cute female co-workers, and a huge employee discount. The assistant manager took my application and set up an appointment for me to interview with the manager. She gave me a heads up on some things. First, a BUCKLE salesperson may only wear BUCKLE clothes, so dress like an Abercrombie and Fitch commercial. Second, the manager is a super-bitch- "Don't be too assertive with her" she cautioned. "She had her first baby a couple months ago, and she hasn't been able to loose the extra pounds. Don't judge her, she used to be really skinny." Then, she reassured me that I passed the appearance test, and when I looked confused, she explained BUCKLE employees had to be clean-cut, good at least to amazing looking people. I looked at her- "Okaayyy... well thanks for telling me I didn't break the mirror." Internally, I was wondering, "What the hell is this place??...". 

Holly the manager had a pinched mouth, hard eyes, and didn't smile. I was a mildly interesting farm animal with reasonably good teeth. She glanced over my application, told me I was hired, and warned me that my hours were dependent on my selling ability. My salary was primarily based on my commission. I accepted my name tag and joined the sales floor. 

When you work at the BUCKLE, or at least that BUCKLE, you discover in a commission-only sales environment, no one is your friend. You have to corner a customer, and then sell your soul to the gods of Abercrombie&Fitch, Lucky jeans, Billabong and compatriots to pester nineteen year kids to buy two shirts to go with their jeans, and while they change in the dressing room, invade their privacy by laying accessories over the curtain, "How about this belt that Usher wore in his last music video? Or this graphic tee shirt?". 

Seriously. If you didn't, Holly would materialize from behind a clothing rack and scold you with a long red-painted claw. When I protested that people didn't want all a that extra stuff, I was informed it was BUCKLE policy. I wound up using reverse psychology, 'Man, I don't want to, but I have to show you this other shirt or that scary looking lady over there is going to lecture me for thirty minutes on my sales technique. Can you pretend to look at this for a second?" Actually, several people bought the accessories- although I couldn't figure out if they felt sorry for me or were they actually that species of "consumer sheep" who ate whatever mercantile carrot was dangled in front of them. 

Anyway, it didn't matter. By the end of the day, I had lost most of my dignity. I trudged to my car in the wide parking lot in a state of dejected degradation. By day seven, my sales percentage had dropped, and Holly batted eyelids matted with mascara, reminding me in an icy voice that I needed to "Show her the Money". (That was when Tom Cruise was still cool). The other male salesmen laughed nervously and distanced themselves from me, smoothing their AmbercrombieFitch haircuts and smiling for no good reason. Proto-type metrosexuals. They definitely did not have my back.

I was standing there in the late morning, hiding from Holly, watching the old men and women power walk in the mall. The song JUMPER from Third Eye Blind came on. I thought to myself, "This is a Damn good song." I stood there jammin' to the song, nodding my head, especially in the part with the guitar solo and the guy says "yeah, yeah- YEAH!". 

Of course, at that moment, Holly decides to ambush me. "I don't pay you to stand here and listen to music. You have to move around and generate movement in the store."

I guess my look to her said, "Screw you"... but what I said was, "Well, considering you don't pay me a lot anyway, this is pretty reasonable." She made some other remark I don't remember exactly but something to the effect I was paid what I deserved. Whatever it was, it was the last straw.

"You know Holly, I quit." I turned around, walked out of the store and never went back- not even for my meager 52 dollar check. 

I never regretted that decision. Or the frozen look of affronted disbelief on her face.

Guess the song kind of helped me out, although I totally jumped off the ledge and it felt great.

I think she understood. I just wish I had added the caveat, "Go to hell!".

JUMPER- Third Eye Blind

How stand I then?

Tonight, I feel like I am running with wings strapped to my arms, but I can't get any lift. I'm not complaining, and I'm not whining. It's just the way it is.

We start out free-ranging ships, eagles with unlimited sky. Somehow, over time, the world becomes a committee of penguins who convince us that we are not ships aiming for the golden thread of the horizon- no, not stallions, nor eagles. No, we are iron locomotives fed black coal so we can chug forward indefinitely along a single track line. We must eat the coal or the "true death" comes. This is not a eye-widening explosion wrought by a sharpened stake, but a death by rust, by slow lethargic consignment to a decay of momentum into a twilight junkyard of oxidizing iron. 

Perhaps my subtle leanings towards a gnostic view of the universe have worn some callouses on my brain. Or perhaps, I have read a little too much of Philip K. Dick's Exegesis and taken him too seriously. And then maybe a Shocktop would take the edge off. I could laugh, shake my head and go back to blowing my train whistle while the autopilot light quietly blinks on. Whoo Whoo!

Right.

Last time I checked, I was still alive. I still have breath going through my bronchioles and Mike Burns ain't no consumptive coughing into a bloody handkerchief. Playing Doc Holiday, the "Dying Hamlet Hero" is tempting, but I'd like to keep it real.

But this transition and death seems inevitable. Can we fight it? When it comes at me, can I clock it in the head with an aluminum baseball bat? *KRUNG!*


When that damn angel grabs hold of me, judo-chop that dude to the ground and full-nelson him until I get a blessing? When Mr. Smith kicks me in the chest and holds my head to the train track saying:

"You hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability. That is the sound of your death."

How about getting back up to do a Kung Fu "come to daddy" move and with the cool little hand motion beckon, tell Mr. Smith where he can stick his "inevitability".

So Fuck that locomotive. 


I'll fight to keep my wings. My Kung Fu is definitely stronger than any damn penguin committee.

Earlier this evening, I watched a short film (only 25 minutes) that captured the correct mental state and outward action I think we should all aim for. 

Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" (Read the full text story here online: 

http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html) is an unforgettable short science fiction story that I first read in High School English. The year is 2081 and everyone is forced to become "truly equal". 

The "Handicapper General" ensures that all citizens are "equalized", to the detriment of individuality and repression of the extraordinary. Yet one man defies this tyranny and challenges the establishment to a unique stand-off for a surprising objective. Someone spent a lot money to produce an almost perfect dramatic rendition of this in the form of a short film. 

Brilliantly executed. They nailed it, and I was touched.

Watch it below; I think we should all strive to say Harrison Bergeron's Creed: 

"I am an abomination of the able. 

I am an exception to the accepted. 

I am the greatest man, you have never known." 

2081- Harrison Bergeron

Death to the locomotive. 

Long live open seas and wide skies, 
and Harrison Bergeron!