I Don't Know Anymore

11/08 /08 – Home Base – Deck – 6:23 pm

Fall has et upon the Midwestern plains, bringing a lustful chill reminiscent of those hoary nights in high school when new love was abound awash in adolescent testosterone fantasies. Nostalgia is in everything tonight – the dogs barking in the distance behind the soft roar of traffic on a distant highway that only comes when the air is cool, the smell of moist fallen leaves, the lonesome cricket hiding in the reeds singing its sad song.

Tonight I sit, seventeen years older, alone in Colorado under the few stars that can be seen this close to the city and think of all the good times there have been along this disturbingly interesting life. I remember faces of the girls who stole my heart and, in turn, became a thread woven into my intricate tapestry. There were stoner buddies and petty thugs peppered throughout the mosaic of places, times, feelings, memories, events, smiles, tears and every other darn thing. I was blessed to not face any measurable amount of tragedy, though a few have occurred around me via friends and acquaintances. This evening I remember the moments which gave birth to the man I am today with silent amazement that my heart still beats and my brain is still relatively capable of coherent thought. Seventeen years from where I once stood.....

....Where on earth does the joy go????

Time passes and builds stresses that snow-coat the mane of the most noble of survivor in the new century. The youthful wonder dries into dust and is blown to the wind. All of the curious emotions of pubescence become a dull “Blah” or are replaced with anger. Personal inter-communications seal up with welds of paranoia and disgust. Then..... Then, one morning, you wake up with a gun in your hand and a half-empty bottle of tequila looking for someone to damage.

Is this really what evolution intended? Is it in our nature as animals to destroy each other until we can destroy ourselves? No matter the angle in which you examine it, it appears that this is so. Civility among humans is such a distant concept that it is just too out of reach for the common person – yet a simple mind such as mine can conceive a world in harmony. Why, then, can't the “greatest” minds of all times?

I'm not here do pretend to deliver answers. I posed all these questions to express to the reader the utter disdain that a human in the 21st century is submerged in on a daily fight to stay afloat.