Thursday, September 20, 2007

Literary Exercise #12--The Need for Constancy

I don't know why I'm writing this. In a journalistic headline, it's late and I should be asleep. I feel akin to the madness that many others have felt--Shelley in her first telling of Frankenstein and Poe is in his morbid dreams and tales. The irrationality, the experience that tells me better--I must ignore them. I have to or it will never happen. See, I have things to do, but I also have things to write. I don't want this to become a bemoanment of my inner tensions, but really, they get in the way. I know that I draw life from this, but every time I pick up a pencil, the sketch comes back to haunt me--not in show-and-tell and refrigerator magnets, nor pieces that merit a bronze or golden frame, but in horrific distortion, clown faces that become bandersnatches and forests that turn dark and brooding. But what am I to do? The reality is, I miss it, and not even hallucinations or scratches from gnarled branches can hold me back. This is, as I said, what I live for. So I can die for it as well.



Where to start? Oh, how it is to feel free, to frequent the fields of elysium and wander down its many jaunts and paths. I long for it so much I'm tempted to fall on my own sword. I cherish it so much I'm willing to stay that emotion. To be free! Pragmatically, real life and I are mutually exclusive. We've never been on talking terms and it's unlikely to start now. I am Dracula who has left his coffin and returns to the office only on weekdays. I am the prodigal son who has to learn his lesson, for better of worse. I am Lewis and Clark, and I must have my America. And I am you. When you stub your toe, and sooth your blisters with loam and crisp leaves. When you give your presentation to the janitors, and finally find a caring audience. When you run a spare on the interstate and enjoy the slowing scene. When you burn your job, tie, and hair-cut in your mid-life crisis and finally have room to breathe. I am like one hanging on the cross, bleeding your frustrations so they can be expressed in flowing crimson warmth. I fear that you never will, so I will it upon myself. What is it like to save humanity at the expense of your own soul? Can salvation come from those who have spent your life, all because you wished their's to be lives worth spending? I do not know. Semper Fi, as they say, is not to question. It is a resolute resignation. And if I have to determine myself by closing my eyes, cradle my racking sobs till they rest like a sleeping giant, and summon my throat to hold down the bile, please do not mark me with disdain. For I am your newborn child, precariously perched, and if the winds don't have their way with me, I'm afraid that you will.

 
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