Circuitous Nature of Life

It is indeed the circuitous nature of life; the palindrome of our existence, to repeat, then to repeat again the faults of restless men, too busy to correct the wrong. To knowingly settle for the sublime when bigger and better lie encrusted behind a mixture of sweat, hard work and mental persistence. Faults so old, they sit inside our skin like DNA. Bridges neglected by lazy builders too caught up in trying to cross the bridge before they can finish erecting it.

I've seen it all. Well, maybe not all, but enough to inform me of specters of truth. You see, the reality is we don't create reality; reality creates us. And we think so lazily that we cannot see how that plays out. We wear dormant attitudes like bubble geese coats in winter and like flip flops in summer.

You never know when lightening may strike until your hair rises. Problem is, we put so much grease in our hair that it never raises. Strike! And there we are; lying in a pool of stagnation, bleeding complacency and coughing up nerve; blasted into oblivion, only to further exist as particles floating in the wind and dangling off of empty matter.

What’s worse is we speak. We speak without action. We speak without movement. If we didn’t have to get from one place to another, I doubt some of us would move at all. But we sure can talk about it. As the theory of change facilitates our metamorphosis into subcutaneous beings, we forget that our outer layer of skin is the first mode of contact with the world. But, boy, can we sure talk!

Our movements have become pitiful. We walk in circles and we talk in circles; sometimes clockwise and sometimes counter-clockwise. We don’t know if we’re coming or going, but it doesn’t really matter because we’re always sure to find someone “there.” And to us, that’s all right; that’s enough. To know that no matter the final destination, someone will be waiting “there” for us. I take no solace in that. I take no solace in traveling the road so known that at each turn rests tourist signs and Starbucks couches.

I take no solace in going to places where locals hang on relics of Americana like living exhibits making martyrs out of their ancestry because somehow someway, you know they fought for cultural preservation a little bit harder than those of today. Yes indeed, it is the circuitous nature of life to divulge secrets of our histories to the commander and chief whilst giving him the pestle and mortar necessary to pulverize the remaining shreds of connectedness. We marvel at the ability. We marvel at the sight like car crashes before our very eyes. But no matter how amazing the sight, there is only destruction resulting. So much so that we can forget about going back to the drawing board where the blueprint has turned to dust.

In its stead? We find evolution. But not evolution of body. Evolution of mind. We find father time aged and with wrinkles. We find mother nature, weathered and tired of the storms. We find God lying down, tired of standing upright, or for what’s right as it were. We find empty bottles of libations and caterpillar casings with dying, uninspired butterflies with skeletons for wings. We find, depravity in the form of a healthy 25 year old begging someone, anyone. . .to tell him which direction he needs to go, because he wasn’t taught and thus lacks the training to find his direction out for himself. We find copper pennies, worthless money no one wants. We find hamburgers and French fries drenched in ketchup. A pack of cigarettes next to a broken lighter. A case of bottled water next to a river with human feces and impoverished, bathing children floating in it. We find flecks of dead skin and empty bottles of sunscreen lotion. Tornados leaning up against trees panting for fresh air, too tired and sick to spin. Lady Liberty being taken away in handcuffs because she came over illegally and the government couldn’t find the paperwork on her. For all they know, her hollow cavity could be harboring weapons of mass destruction. We find clay jars and metal pots. We find a rose in quarantine on a metal table surrounded by horticulturalist performing surgery on it to reattach its beauty. We find George Bush with a shotgun in his hands shooting at apparitional demons floating about his head calling him “father.” We find angst masked as happiness. Diet masked as salad dressing. Pain masked as commonplace. 10 pills in a pillbox and a bottle of Evian water masked as one square meal. We see a teddy bear on the shelf with thread holding his button nose on by a strand of itself.

We’re not kids anymore. It’s time we stop leading these children around in our circle, and take them to a different path. We must not continue recreating how we did it for generations to come. We have not done it correctly and so we must dispose of those ways.

It is the circuitous nature of life we must overcome.