Short Story: Crushed

A little ditty I came up with on a car ride home. What would go through the mind of a very unlikable young man with a god complex if he were trapped under the rubble of his apartment building, facing certain death? Read on to find out: Warning! Very NSFW language ahead.

Crushed

By Rob White

Your whole life is ahead of you.

That’s what I’ve said, every day. When I woke up, the possibilities were endless, and when I went to bed, those possibilities were postponed until that following morning, when I would wake up and feel again that the world was my oyster. I could do it all, when I felt like it. I could change the world, when I got around to it. I could be the next John Lennon or Mahatma Gandhi or Jesus Christ when I was ready to. I just had a few things I wanted to do first. A few movies I wanted to watch and girls I wanted to fuck. When I was done with that…woe be to those that stood in the way of my potential.

I still believe that tomorrow is another day, but goddamn if I know how I’m going to get there, I think to myself as I shift my shattered elbow an inch to the right, away from the drip drip dripping of some busted pipe and the steady rain of brick-dust I feel upon the one finger that still has feeling.

Truth is, I’m not even sure the other fingers are still there. They may be there, but ground to fleshy paste, or they may be laying somewhere under what used to be my bed, next to the box of porno mags I hid from my mom before she died. Heh. Forgot those were there until now.

Guy like me doesn’t have to whack off. A guy like me gets laid all the time. All I have to do is pick up my guitar, walk down to the coffee shop, play a few chords, and watch that intellectual college pussy fly towards me like motherfucking moths to a bug zapper.

Guess I might have to learn to play right handed again. Nah. Docs will fix me up. This is nothing. Coulda dropped a damn shopping mall on me. I got a destiny. Can’t keep me down.

I feel something wet on my jeans. Hope I didn’t piss myself.

God, where the hell are those assholes? I heard the sirens about an hour ago, but they sure are taking their sweet time getting to me. When they get here, I might have to stick my foot up their asses.

Heh. What a site that would be on the 11 o’clock news. Some chiseled fireman pulling a sexy young artist out of a pile of rubble only to get his ass kicked by him. You know I’d be famous after that. I’d kick his ass, and then pick up my guitar, dust it off and then stroll off into the night like Bruce fucking Willis. I’d be getting calls from agents by morning.

Where the hell is my guitar? That thing better not be damaged. Yeah it’s insured, but that thing has gotten me a lot of pussy in my day. My good luck charm. Or good fuck charm, I should say. I think it was over by the wall next to the window. Hell if I know. I came home drunk as hell last night. Probably still be passed out if this goddamn building hadn’t fallen on top of me.

Heh. I really must have brought down the house last night.

I hear myself laugh out loud. The sound is surprisingly scary. First of all, the sound didn’t echo or reverberate really. It just kind of landed back on my face like a lame bird. Guess that’s to be expected when my ceiling and Mrs. Olroney’s floor are hanging two or three inches from my face. Something else though. The laugh sounded kind of wet.

I turn my head to the right and spit. I can’t see it too well, but it sure tastes like blood. Shit. And…my tooth is missing. My goddamn front tooth is missing!

I scream in anger, the sound of it falling impotently back down in my face again. How the hell am I going to get laid with only one front tooth? I roll my tongue over the rest of my mouth, tasting the blood on my gums.

My gums. Fuck. I have three more teeth missing. Two in the bottom back and the incisor next to my missing front tooth.

I scream again and pound my right fist on the floor. I can’t see my right fist. My arm past my bicep is covered by something that looks like a slab of sheetrock, but at least I can feel it. Wherever the rest of that arm is, it has mobility. That’s something at least.

No teeth. Great. Yeah my guitar’s insured, but I’m not. What the hell would I need insurance for? I was born to be beautiful. God had to drop a building on me to fuck that up.

I chuckle a little again. Oh well. I’ll just have to borrow some money from Pam. I hate that bitch, but she worships me and can’t stay off my cock, so I know she’ll help me out. Fix me up. Hell, I knocked her up twice and talked her into getting an abortion both times. I can make that bitch do anything.

Well…there goes my plan of making a graceful exit out of this shit pile. Or if I do, I’ll have to keep my mouth shut. That might work. Be the strong silent type. I can still kick the fireman’s ass.

Left hand smashed to shit. Mouth full of blood. Probably swallowed half my teeth. What else is fucked up?

All right, head to toe time. Right arm is pinned at the bicep, but otherwise seems ok. Left arm is free but I can only feel part of my hand. Rest of it seems pretty mangled. I can turn my head ok and lift it the inch or two between me and the sheet of debris above me. I can feel my legs, but something’s lying on top of them. Can’t lift my head enough to look down and see very well. My pants are still wet. Warm, like piss. Doesn’t smell like piss though.

I wiggle my hips. I hear the scream erupt from my lips before I even realize what’s going on. My right side, near my kidney is pinned in place, and damn if that didn’t hurt trying to move it.

I try again to look down. It’s dark down there but I can see some shapes out of the bottom corners of my eyes. Something big and dark on top of my legs, and something long and skinny sticking out of my side, half way between my rib cage and my hip bone.

Shit. Shit shit shit!

I can smell it now. Blood. It’s blood all over my pants.

So Pam’s going to have to pay to fix more than just my teeth. Plus I might not walk out of here quite as cool and collected-like as I planned. Fuck, I’m gonna look like an invalid.

Might even be one.

Nah, don’t think like that. I got a future. I got a lot more songs to write and girls to fuck and money to make. Doesn’t matter if I’ve got a hole in my gut and a hand that’s probably too damaged to play with again and a mouth like a moonshine hillbilly.

I’m a star, baby. A star in training. Hell, this is just another highlight reel for them to show on my Behind the Music documentary. He did drugs, he had sex with girls, and at the age of twenty four he had a building fall on top of him.

Why the fuck haven’t they pulled me out yet?

Ah damn it. I don’t even know how the hell this happened. I pass out in a tequila haze and the next thing I know I wake up the next morning to four levels of apartment building collapsing on top of me. Four levels above. That means I’m on the bottom. That means they won’t get to me first by any means. Fuck.

Back to the matter at hand. What asshole did this? Some psycho terrorist? Those guys with beards and bombs strapped to their underwear? Maybe. Or some retard in another apartment might have left the gas on and lit a cigarette. Maybe Mrs. Olroney’s cunt friend in 3B.

Doesn’t make sense. I remember hearing something before the sky went all Chicken Little. It wasn’t a bang. It was a rumble. Then the cabinets opening and spilling the plates out in the kitchen, and then a twang sound in the corner. My guitar falling over.

After that was a sound like a tsunami crashing down over my skull. Must have been the building falling down. All this and my eyes stayed closed the whole time. Heard it like a goddamn dream. Wish it was.

So not a bomb or a gas explosion. Earthquake maybe. Shit that means Dad was right. Watch out for homos and earthquakes, he said. Fucking drunk ass shitbag.

Shouldn’t have left him.

Where the fuck did that come from? I’m glad as hell I left his old ass. He was only keeping me down. Wouldn’t even buy me alcohol anymore after the cops almost caught us that time. Didn’t care about my music, didn’t care when I dropped out of school, and he sure as shit didn’t care about me.

But his face when I left. Accepting it but looking like he failed at something…

Shit I need to quit it with this crap. All that matters now is getting out of this pile.

Help! I scream. Help! Man down, here!

Don’t hear anything. Maybe a faint rustling above but who knows what that is. Could be a fireman digging us out, or it could be a rat just as trapped as I am

I hear a sound escaping my lips that seems like a cross between a moan and a sob.

Get it together, asshole! You don’t die here. You die in a drug haze while having sex with six underage girls when you’re forty, or your brakes give out while drag racing on Sunset Strip on a cocaine high. Something glamorous like that. Not buried under a pile of rubble at the age of twenty four when not even a goddamn soul knows my name yet.

There’s that sound again.

Even those girls, so eager to jump my bones, probably don’t remember my name. Only Pam with her ugly pimply mug and her big ass with that stupid butterfly tattoo on it knows my name. I hate that bitch, but damn if she doesn’t love the shit out of me.

Don’t even know why I hate her. She’s not really ugly. She’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, but she does buy me shit and drive me home when I’m wasted. Hell, if she had been around last night, she might have been crushed to hell in the bed beside me. That slab of sheetrock holding my arm would also be pinning her corpse.

Glad she bailed on me.

Cause now the bitch can pay to fix me up, right? I mean, yeah she told me she was done with me yesterday morning, and yeah she didn’t show up to the gig like she usually does, but I bet she just went home to cry and eat a box of doughnuts or some shit.

She didn’t leave me. Nobody leaves me. I leave them.

That hole in my gut hurts like hell now that I know it’s there. Or I think it does anyway. Could just be my mind fucking with me. Psychosomasticating, or whatever the hell they call it. Hope I’m not losing too much blood. I’ll probably know soon enough when I start to feel like I’m huffing whippets and start seeing things.

Like my dad’s face, watching me walk out the door.

Goddamn it. Why didn’t I ever call that bastard after I left? Probably because he was a sorry piece of shit too drunk to pick up the phone, that’s why. And I was too busy.

Always too busy. Building my career. I’m a big man now, and I don’t have time for people that hold me back. Not Dad, not Pam, not anyone.

I was gonna go hit the studio and record a new demo tape next week. The one that would have made me famous and had the suits drooling.

Who the fuck am I kidding? The studio was Ben’s garage and I know we would have just sat there smoking weed and talking about Floyd and Hendrix until I fell asleep and Ben kicked me out. Just like we did the last two times. Didn’t record a note. There was always next time.

Next time.

I don’t think there’s going to be a next time.

This is the end, son. My dad says that as he sits in his recliner with beer stains on his shirt, a half-eaten bag of tortilla chips on his lap and a broken heart beating in his chest. Broken because I made it that way. I made it that way by leaving and before that I made it that way by staying and surrounding him with blame, aggression, and cold endless silence.

This is the end. I had that very thought when I looked into his eyes for the last time. This is the last image of my father I will ever have.

I was right. I never saw him again.

Shit, listen to me. Acting like I can’t get right the fuck up and visit his drunk ass when I get out of this. Probably won’t have shit to say to him, but I can do it. Can do any damn thing I want.

I can lift this building off of me like the Incredible Fucking Hulk and throw it across the damn bay and then fly out of here with the first hot reporter bitch I see on my arm. Fuck her in the clouds and piss out jet fuel all over the sad pricks below. ‘Cause that’s how I roll.

I laugh again, pushing it out despite the flat sound of it and the pain rolling up from my side like a stampeding herd of mutant buffalo. I push it out, almost hoping that the sheer will erupting from my drowning lungs can push this endless hunk of rock off of me, straight into the night sky. Straight into the fucking sun. So far away that I can pretend it never existed. That I never lived here and it never hurt me and I didn’t tell Pam to go fuck herself when she asked me to move in with her.

Can’t do it. Couldn’t leave this place behind. My guitar lives here. So does my pride.

So does the stinking pool of blood and who knows what else leaking through my shirt and pants, maybe even dripping down on some poor bastard who got caught in the laundry room in the basement below me. Drying his boxers and thinking about stocks and bonds or some shit. Maybe the last thought he ever had.

I breathe in deep, wanting to take in the pain and make it strength. Instead I discover that it hurts a bit less now.

That’s a good thing, right?

Then I notice something else. The drip drip dripping from the busted pipe has stopped. Maybe they cut the water off. Good sign. Means they don’t want me or Mr. Stocks and Bonds below me to drown. Good. Good. Good sign.

I want to go to sleep. Seems pretty retarded, I realize. Going to sleep might mean I could miss them if they yelled at me. Might end up lying here an extra hour or two just because my forty winks made me miss the first train out of here. Still…I’m fucking tired. Didn’t get a full night’s sleep because of this shit.

Might crash at Pam’s tonight. Probably for the best. She’s not the best lay I’ve had, but at least she doesn’t snore and she doesn’t smell like Jaeger and throw-up like that last chick.

Good old Pam. Always wants me no matter what I do to her or how many horrible things I say.

The sob is back. I don’t hear it this time so much as feel it crawl out of my throat like some half-dead amphibian.

Pam doesn’t want me anymore. She said that. She said, “I don’t want you anymore.” Last thing she said. Maybe not those exact words. Don’t think I was really listening, but that’s the gist of it. Told me to get the fuck out and never call her again. Yeah…like it was me that called her half the time.

But it was, wasn’t it? All those nights I was too drunk to score pussy and too wasted to drive home, my fingers hit her number like an ancient rhythm programmed into them. Just like my guitar. My songs…and Pam’s number. As much a part of me as the English language.

Phone’s probably gone. I can get another, right? I can get another, and some new fingers. But…will those fingers remember? Will they remember like the old ones did?

The sob is more of a wail this time. Again, I don’t hear it. What will I do if my fingers don’t remember anymore? I can’t think of the numbers in my head. 330-40...something…996….

God dammit, I scream, or I think I do. Only my fingers knew her number. I can’t see them, but I think those fingers are gone now. Smashed up and ruined. Never able to dial again.

I feel the wet tears on my temples, sliding down the floor beneath me. It’s good to feel something, but all I can think about right now is how much I’ve lost. I lost my guitar. Smashed in the corner, I think. I lost my hand. Busted to shit or worse. I lost Pam’s number.

I lost Pam.

I lost my Dad.

I lost my way.

I lost.

I lost.

I lost.

I scream again, my head violently rising up, smacking into the rock above me, leaving a welt I can feel but don’t give a shit about.

This is not the way this is supposed to happen! I don’t die like this! I just don’t! Some nameless shit on the news does, not me!

I DON’T DIE THIS WAY!!!

I’m crying. I can feel it in my throat and in the vibrations in my face and in the blood that comes bubbling up with each one of my sobs. I cry, and I cry and I cry. I cry until something strange starts to happen.

A part of me begins to shift away. I keep crying, but I can’t feel it so much anymore. My body is going numb, I think. I being to feel less like a man trapped under a building and more like a man watching a man trapped under a building. Watching him cry. Watching how fragile he is. How empty his life is. How alone he is and how…worthless he always was.

That man is still crying. I think that’s all he knows how to do now. His arms and legs no longer move. His chest still rises and falls with each breathe, but that’s getting slower now. Only the sobs. Only the sobs make me think he’s still alive.

I can see now. I can see the truth of his body. His left hand is mangled beyond recognition. His pinky finger is there, but the rest of it…just isn’t. His right arm is fine, but if he isn’t rescued it won’t be for long. That slab of sheetrock is cutting off his circulation. Soon he won’t be able to play…or dial…with that hand either. His ribcage is more of a mess than he thought. Three of his ribs are not only broken, but basically obliterated. How he can still talk or breathe is a mystery. And of course there’s the matter of the retaining bar piercing his liver. Any higher and it would have pierced his lung or his heart and none of this would matter. But…I think none of this really matters anyway. I think it never really did.

I snap back to attention like a kid who overslept for school. My head hits the rock again, and I feel it again. For a second I can hear the drip drip dripping again, but then that goes. I still feel the tears. Some more brick dust falls in my face and I think I hear another rumble close by. I have a quick feeling of dread before I push it away. What can another earthquake do, crush me some more?

That was fucking weird. I saw myself like I was watching a movie. I like movies. I fucking hated this one.

Am I really that bad off, or was I just hallucinating? No…I think it was all real. As real as hearing a ghost or seeing the future or a goddamn alien abduction. Out of body experience. My dad wouldn’t have believed in that, but my mom would have. Maybe she had one before the cancer took her. Fuck if I know. I wasn’t there.

I was sitting in the back of an empty school bus, letting Tina Jackson blow me while I got high. I thought about Mom, sure. I thought about her too much. So much that I had to get away. So much that I couldn’t watch her die, like Dad did.

All of a sudden, I realize something. I realize I’m still crying, but I also realize that all this time I was right.

I’m not meant for this.

I was not meant to die crushed under a building, unrecognizable and uncared for and alone. I was not meant to get a girl who loved me pregnant and then ditch her...again. I was not meant to waste my weekends talking about a record deal that will never happen and chasing tail that will never even remember my name. I was not meant to end up in this town, living a life of wasted freedom, far away from a father I was never meant to leave and a mother I was not meant to abandon on her deathbed.

I was not meant to be in that school bus that day. I was meant to be with her. With Mom. I was meant to hold her hand and tell her I loved her and tell her she did good raising me and that I’m going to go on to be something that would make her proud. And I was meant to go on…and be that something.

I don’t know what. It doesn’t matter. But it was not meant to be this.

The crying has stopped. It may be because I don’t feel it anymore, but I think it’s more because my mind has finally let go of something. I’ve finally let go of myself. I’m finally seeing the big picture. Too little, too late.

Because it really is over now. This is not where I’m meant to be, but it is, nevertheless, where I am. There will be no record deal. There will be no women lining up to be with me. There will be no Behind the Music special and there will be no Pam.

Soon I will close my eyes, if I haven’t already, and all of this will disappear. The rocks, the busted pipes, the mattress under my back and my body with it. I’ll be buried in a cheap grave some distant aunt I’ve seen twice will pay for out of pity for my father…or my father’s memory. No one will visit me. And those that walk by me will not think twice about my name. Unremarkable. Forgotten.

Something’s happening, I think. My eyes are still seeing darkness, but there are shapes beyond it. There’s also a…weight, hanging off my arms. No…it’s my arms themselves that are hanging. It’s not a mattress on my back anymore. Something harder. Like a stretcher. There are hands on my stomach, pressing where the rusty metal bar was.

Oh those hands feel so good. To be touched by someone, to have someone want to touch me…it makes me smile. I think I am smiling. I hope I am.

I let myself think then that those hands are my father’s. That he’s picking me up off the ground after I sprained my ankle playing baseball. He’ll toss me over his shoulders and tickle me until the tears turn into laughter and my pain turns into joy at how much he loves me and how much the world does.

It’s all ahead of me. All of it. I’ll be someone. I’ll be someone and someone will love me.

That girl over there will. The one I think I see out of eyes that only sort of work. I can see shapes. People standing over me. People carrying me. And a girl walking with them. She’s crying. She’s crying and she’s so beautiful.

She takes my hand in hers and I feel what’s left of my fingers begin to move. Typing something, I think. A number. She doesn’t know what it means.

Her name is Pam. She loves me.

That really does make me smile. I can tell because she smiles back.

I think I’ll sleep now. I’ll sleep and when I wake up I’ll tell Mom about the beautiful girl I met. I’ll tell her I want a guitar and I’ll tell her how I’m going to buy her a house when I’m famous.

I’ll tell her…and I’ll do it.

Because it’s all ahead of me.

Crushed

Copyright Rob White 2010

The Golden Turd

Love it when I decide to hit the gas pedal only to crash into a mailbox seconds later.

A few weeks ago I had a spark of creative inspiration. I had an idea for a new short story, actually wrote it, and prepared myself for a new era of personal creativity. So I turned back to my novel, in the works for fifteen years, raring to go.

And that's when I hit the mailbox. See, my novel is a a gargantuan, ponderous behemoth. Actually five short novels, it's a modern superhero tale about a boy with no memory, the monster that chases him, and all the weird wild adventures he gets into along the way. Sounds ridiculous because it is. By the end of it, some incredibly bad things have happened, nobody's happy and two thirds of the characters have died heroic but terrible deaths. Sounds like fun, huh?

Thing is, I just can't pull myself away from this beast. Hah. Unintended pun there (the story is called The Pull).

It's been eating away at me, demanding to be told since I doodled it out when I should have been paying attention in math class in high school. The characters started as archetypes of people I wanted to either be or be near, and like most good stories, they soon gained a life of their own and started doing things I never expected of them (the foul-mouthed, socially stunted ass kicker girl actually ends up being the true hero for much of the story).

I finished writing it...the first time...in college. It was an enormous weight off my chest, until I quickly realized that everything about it screamed 1994. The characters were often ripped straight out of a video game. The bad guys weren't fleshed out enough, except for Nick's monstrous stalker, who was so fleshed out that he (it) had lost all his mystery. The resolution was way cheesier than I intended it to be. The whole thing felt like a masterpiece buried under a layer of glitter and throwup. Lovely image, I know.

It still feels that way. I've re-written the first book four times now. The second and third three times, and I still can't get far enough in to rewrite the last two. I always throw my hands up in defeat before I get there.

The problems are the same problems I've always had. How do I retain the essence of the characters while stripping away the ridiculous? How do you maintain the relevance of a character who fights with a sword or her fists when you know damn well her assailants should all be using firearms? Even Batman get's shot from time to time. Put him in a room with 300 armed goons...he'll likely get shot a lot. I'm up against a scene now, however, where Nick and Melissa (emo amnesia kid and foul mouthed Xena woman) are literally supposed to take on an army base full of trained killers and walk out without a scratch. Oh, and they don't kill, so all of those guys have to be knocked out/disabled. See what I mean? That kind of thing worked for Superman in the 1980's. Not so much now. It makes me groan with disbelief, and I'm the one writing it.

Nick and Melissa are empowered by a force I won't get into for the sake of not spoiling it. They can do things no one else can do, yada yada yada. They've also been through some shit. Both of them are extremely emotionally traumatized individuals. Melissa was beaten by her father at age twelve, molested by her uncle even younger (who is also a major character), and flees into a life of violence and immorality. Nick is...well...no use putting the biggest spoiler in the book here. Let's just say he's not quite emotionally developed. So I have these very real people doing very unreal, cartoonish things.

I feel like I have something cool there. The bridge between the hyper real and the fantastic has always been one I love to travel. Part of the reason I love Lost so much. These are realistic characters in a fantastic environment. But...Sawyer doesn't start doing backflips and beating up The Others with his ninja skills. If he did, I would tune out.

There's a powerful emotional tale here. I just can't make myself get past the stupid. That being said, one of my favorite characters is a seven foot tall metal demon. Go figure.

Anyway, just wanted to vent...and write. I still have to write something. I hate it that I can't happily work on my magnum opus because it feels like a magnum poopus, but I still have to put finger to keyboard somehow.

Thanks for bearing with me, and any advice would be greatly appreciated. :)

The Nature of Now

Regret. It’s been the single most crippling thing in my life up to this point. Every day something pricks me like a needle, reminding me of what I should have done, what never should have happened, who I should have gotten closer to and who I should have made myself become. There have been phases in my life where I’ve been woefully incomplete, shambling around like a half-person because I simply believed that everything I had done up to that point had been wrong.

We all know that regret solves little. To spend a day mourning a past you should have had is to waste that day. We all know that the only true way to improve our situation, to achieve our dreams, is to focus on today and tomorrow instead of agonizing over yesterday.

We all know that, but most of us carry that regret with us anyway. Something happened that shouldn’t have and the voice in the back of our minds will never let us forget it.

In my case, the burden I carry is largely not over something I did, but over things I didn’t do. When I was in high school, I felt the world crushing me. All the anger and the pain and the sorrow around me (from teenagers like myself, mostly, each with their own pressing problems) made me feel as if I would be flattened under it all. That no amount of trying could ever dig me out of the sorrows of the world. Very emo of me, right?

So since the weight of the world felt as if it were on my shoulders, I decided I could do one of two things. The first was to let it crush me. To allow all the picking and anger and humiliation directed at me to break my spirit and lead me to violence, as it has so many other vulnerable young souls in our society. I could never hurt others, but I could have hurt myself.

I had another choice however. That choice was to take that world sitting on my shoulders and carry it as such. I would accept all the pain of those around me and I would turn it into strength and resolve. The resolve to one day find a way to take that pain away from them, so that they and others like them would one day have no reason to hurt me or anyone else ever again. What’s the best way to deal with a villain? You turn him into a hero.

So I spent years writing and dreaming about how the world needed to change. How the faults of society could one day be corrected and prevent hatred and ignorance and greed from ever taking hold in our youth and in our culture. In my view simplicity was the answer. So much of our vice comes from unnecessary things we step over each other to gain. Material things, which in my view translated to a waste of time and spirit. I wanted us all to live like the Native Americans of old, the tribes of primal Africa, even the early settlers in Europe and our own country. They found joy not in gain or self-empowerment, but simply in living. Yes, they had war and greed and ignorance just as we did, but underneath those things they loved life and each other in a way I find uncommon these days. Our distraction is American Idol or CSI Miami. Their distraction was a rushing waterfall or a herd of grazing buffalo. It doesn’t take a psychologist to determine which one is probably healthier for the soul.

I still believe these things just as much. My ideas have evolved. I understand the practicality, and in some cases lack-thereof of my original ideas. But I still want them. My dream, to those that don’t know this, is to one day provide a place and a way of life to those of us that want it. An escape from the seemingly inescapable trap of society as we know it. A place where the goal is not to buy a better car or sleep with a hotter girl, but to build something worth building. To live from the land and from the aid of others. To trade, not to take. To give, not to steal. To truly experience, every day what it means to be alive.

That goal has never changed, and yet for twelve years I did little to achieve it. I talked and I wrote and I dreamed, but in all that time I didn’t actually do anything. Sometimes it was because the people around me seemed to embrace their shortcomings instead of fight them. That discouraged me. Sometimes it was because I took the time to be distracted by a pursuit of one love or another that simply wasn’t meant to be. Lately it has become because I have lost everything financially and it seems that every day is a struggle to find enough money to feed my cat.

And through all of those twelve years, I have regretted. I have blamed myself for not taking my dreams, my grand resolve, and making them a reality. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, right? And yet I have not taken that step. Sure I’ve had some false starts, but I have never truly begun to walk that path.

So I blame myself for a youth wasted. Sometimes I do, at least. Sometimes I look at the years that have passed and wonder why I did not run instead of crawl. I can blame it on distraction, which is true. I can blame it on my own ignorance, of never knowing how to begin making my dream a reality, which is also true. I can also blame it on fear, of knowing that in committing to a cause, I will lose many things I will never get back. This is perhaps the truest excuse of all. But in the end, they are all simply excuses. I did not act because I did not act. If I had acted…well, I wouldn’t be here talking about it, would I?

Which has led me to an old philosophical interest of mine: The nature of destiny. Do I believe that our eventual destination in the cosmos is determined by choices we make throughout our short lives? Choices that seem important to us but are truly insignificant in the face of human history and the grand scheme of the universe? In essence, do I believe our life culminates in a crossroads, and the only choices are salvation or damnation? No. In fact, I do not.

I do believe in the benevolence of the world. By the world, I mean God. By God I mean the Tao. By The Tao I mean The Atman or Mother Earth. You see where I’m going with this. Since I believe in that benevolence, I believe that everything will turn out alright in the end. All of our suffering and pain will have been for something, and that one day mankind will earn its salvation.

The reason I believe this is because I believe that it’s already happened. It has happened, and is happening, and will happen forever. Just as the act of me writing this and you reading it is not only happening now, but has always happened.

You were always here, now, reading this.

Think about it. If this day were to play itself over and you were presented the same set of choices and circumstances that led you here, you would make them again. And again. And again. Since we do not know the future, we are in fact destined to create it.

Believe in God? Ok. Believe God knows everything? Cool. Now how does God know everything? Past, present and future? I believe that God knows everything because God IS everything. Past, present, future, creation, destruction, sorrow, joy, thought, instinct, everything…all at once.

Think of time…of destiny…not like book with a beginning a middle and end, but like a map spread out on the table. A great, endless map. See the world? There’s America and Europe and Asia. Say America is what you did yesterday, Europe is what you’re doing now, and Asia is what you will do tomorrow. When you look up close at the middle of the map, you can only see Europe. Now take a step back. Now another. See that? Now you can see America and Asia too. What does that mean? It means you’re seeing today, yesterday and tomorrow all at once because they all exist that way…all at once. This, I believe, is the way God, or any mind potentially more developed than ours, sees history. All at once.

Still want to think of your life like a story? Like a novel with a beginning and an ending? Fine. Pick up the nearest book. Open the first page and read the first word. There…you were just born. Now skip to the end and read the last word. There…you just died. Now go to the middle and read a sentence. That’s you getting married. Now…go back to the beginning. That first word is still there, exactly the same as it was the first time you read it. By reading it again, you’re reliving your birth. As you read the first page, that last page is still there, signifying your death. When we pick up a 600 page book and read page 1 for the first time, page 134 is already there. It’s already written and it already says what it will say when you eventually get to it. Just like life, the novel is already written. Past, present and future are all already there, and always have been from the beginning of…everything.

Now, do I think that means our choices mean nothing? Absolutely not. All the epic moments in our life, from our first kiss to the day some of us stand up and change the world still have to happen. Just because somebody has already written our book doesn’t mean that we have to know how it ends. In fact, we can’t. Our choices are just as real in this worldview as they are in any other. After all, don’t you root for the hero in a novel? Don’t your fear for their safety as they face great peril, even though the author already knows what happens to him or her? The ending has already been written, but the journey has yet to unfold before us.

Believing this, and reminding myself that I believe it now more than ever, has given me a measure of comfort and eased some of my regret. After all, the past has happened. It has always happened. I can never, ever change it. If I were reborn exactly as I was 29 years ago I would behave exactly as I did on the way to this point in my life.

I have always written this and you have always read it.

Therefore…tomorrow has already happened. It has always happened exactly the way it will. To me, that’s thrilling. I feel as if I’m turning the page now, dying to find out what I do next. I will make mistakes. I will help people and I will hurt them. I will encourage and I will disappoint. I will change the world…or I won’t. The point is…I will.

I will act towards my dreams because I know how I want things to happen, but when they do not happen the way I wish they had…I will take heart knowing that my current failure was always meant to be…and the successes of tomorrow will always, always be real.

So perhaps, on that map of history God is peering at right now…I’ve already fulfilled my dreams. Maybe my goals have already been reached, and the weakness I feel right now is just one small step on the road to reaching them.

I may not know what lies before me, but I have to believe that someone, somewhere does.

And I’d like to believe that someone is smiling.

The Network Television Game and Why It Doesn't Make Sense

I'm going to break off from my usual deep musings and talk about something a little more superficial: Television.

I'm not going to lie. I spend 2-3 nights a week plugged in front of the TV for an hour watching a show I'm addicted to. What are my faves?

1. Lost
2. Dexter
3. Heroes
4. Fringe
5. Prison Break

Well...I'm really just waiting for Prison Break to be over. That show stopped being cool two seasons ago. And don't even get me started about the ups and downs I've endured watching Heroes. I've heard things called "love it or hate it", but I've never experienced both in such alternating doses over a show. Get a writer and stick with them!

Anyway, I want to point out that my top 5 are all popular shows. But popular or not, every week they're getting pounded in the ratings. By what, you ask?

1. American Idol
2. Dancing With the Stars
3. CSI: Miami
4. Law and Order
5. NCIS

That's right. Those are America's top 5. That's variable in the ratings week to week, but those shows usually dominate the top 10, with my faves only occasionally peeking their heads in. Grey's Anatomy pops in pretty frequently too, but that show is really little more than a prime time soap opera.

So what's the difference between my top 5 and America's? At the risk of sounding elitist...oh to hell with it, it is elitist: Intelligence.

Reality contest programming and crime procedurals are the whopper and fries of entertainment compared to the fillet mignon of serialized drama.

For those not in the know, let me define those terms

A serialized drama used to be the norm in television back in the early days of TV. Evolved from radio dramas, these are shows that carry ongoing stories with a building mythology. Lost is the perfect example. The premise is simple: people get stranded on an island. But as the story goes on, you discover new layers of plot and new layers of mystery. The island has a monster (or does it?) There were people here before! Dead people sometimes come back to life! Injuries are healed! Every character is unknowingly connected!

Like a good mystery novel, the story keeps building and building, adding suspense and interest every week while moving towards an inevitable and exciting conclusion. Except in the case of Heroes, where the writers seem to change their minds every single season. But hey, at least they've got the idea of building tension.

Reality contest shows are defined as such: A guy or girl gets in front of an audience and performs. He's then belittled by a British judge and then America votes on him based on how cute he is. The end.

A crime procedural is a tricky beast. These shows give you the illusion of intelligent writing. The same characters are back every week, just like a serialized drama. The difference? Typically the only character development we get from them is whether their wisecracks are a little more wise and their scowls are a little...scowlier. And the crimes themselves? Easily cobbled together from pieces of classic crime stories from the past 50 years, items currently on the news, or outright rip-offs from past episodes. Just change some character names around, insert your current cast, rinse and repeat.

Very little intelligence in that second kind of show. Absolutely none in the first.

And yet America eats them up like Skittles.

Why? Simple. Because the average American doesn't like to be challenged. They don't want to think about a mystery for more than half an hour, and when they do, they want to have the answer immediately. They can't be bothered to wait an entire season to find out why The Others took Claire. They have to know now. If not...its not worth their time.

In fact, the most mystery a lot of people care for is whether the skinny blonde girl or the skinny Indian kid will be voted off American Idol. Ooh! How thrilling!

Let me paint you a picture of these "average Americans" flocking to unintelligent programming. Let's start with a woman, say a nurse. She works her butt off all day dealing with ungrateful people and coworkers that are just as pissed off as she is. When she finally gets home, she immediately orders take-out for dinner or tells her husband to go get her something, and then proceeds to sit down in front of the television.

This is her TV ritual. She immediately finds CIS or Law and Order. It doesn't matter if its a rerun. She'll barely remember if it is. When her husband gets back and after she eats, she'll do one of two things: either fall asleep within minutes or talk through the entire program. While Grissom is scowling and following the trail of some boring killer, she's ranting to her husband about how shitty her day went, how she told off her coworkers, and how much she hates her job. Occasionally she will stop, look at the TV, and say, "The janitor's the killer. I can just tell." She then goes right back to ranting about her job, her children, or her husband.

To her, television is background noise. And yet she HAS TO HAVE IT! Like people who listen to iPods while working out or those who can't stand to be in the car without music playing, she'll go nuts if she doesn't have TV to keep her from having to do the one thing she doesn't want to have to do: think.

That's right. If Lost comes on after CSI, she'll look at the TV and say something like, "I don't like this show. It doesn't make any sense," and then change the channel, perhaps to American Idol so she can occasionally comment on how much one of the contestants looks like a hussy. And she'll probably use the word "hussy" too.

Is there anything wrong with this person? Aside from being obsessed with how much her life sucks but completely unwilling to change it, no. She's a good person just like you or me. She's just more comfortable being pacified than stimulated. That's really all American Idol or CSI is. Pacification. If not, how do you think their viewers could stand to see the same damn thing for several years and several seasons of watching them?

Typically, the crappier your life is, the less you care about intellectual persuits. Serialized drama and evolving storylines have nothing to offer you because they actually demand you pay attention. Mindless tv, on the otherhand, let's you barely watch it while doing the thing you love doing most, dwelling on how much your life sucks and how it's everybody's fault but your own.

Are there those that pay rapt attention to American Idol or CSI? Absolutely. But again, these are people more interested in a bite-sized slice of entertainment than a sprawling epic. There's nothing wrong with that at all. I love the cartoons on Adult Swim. There's not a damn thing epic about those, other than how ridiculous they are.

My issue is with our networks making all of their decisions based on the gigantic chunk of TV viewers who really only use their TVs as background noise or music to lull them to sleep on their easy chairs. Every year, shows with intelligent thought or production fall by the wayside. Pushing Daisies, Jericho, Firefly, Carnivale, the list is almost endless. I'm not saying those were all masterpieces, but they did inspire their viewers to stay excited about their evolving stories long past the hour in which they viewed them.

While those shows fall, more and more reality tv creeps onto the schedule. There's not a damn bit of creativity in these shows. They really only exist to show us that we're not the only ones who's lives suck. If we can laugh at some tone-deaf teenage girl dressed in hot pink, we won't feel so bad about our own meaningless lives.

The lack of a willingness to explore creativity and philosophy (which yes, I will say shows like Lost help stimulate) is part of a much larger epidemic than I'll get into at the moment, but really, part of the reason that America is falling apart right now is because we have been coddled and our vices have been catered to for so long.

The network execs are rolling around like pigs in shit right now, gleefully signing one stupidly conceived reality show after another into primetime while cancelling one drama after another a mere six episodes after it begins. Yes, in a year or two we may be looking at nothing but American Idol and CSI on tv at night.

Is TV a lost cause? At this point, yeah, kinda. When Lost ends its run, I'll have every reason to say goodbye to my cable bill and be fine with reading and Netflix. Hell, I find today's video games to be ten times more intellectually stimulating than American Idol.

Will it be a great loss? Nah, not really. The smart ones of us truly outgrew tv years ago.

Dear God, it's been months since I've set words down on this thing. Oh I've been writing, to be sure. I think I've just been increasingly skeptical that anyone wants to hear it.

My novel is published on Kindle and has sold a couple of copies already. I've also got a free version out on fictionpress. I've off-and-on been working on a self-help book. Unfortunately my problem with that is that each day I feel different about what the world needs help with.

Right now, it seems inescapable that the economy is the worst of our woes. Funny considering that a year or two ago we all thought that nothing could possibly be worse than the war in Iraq. And before that we thought...what? That the most important concern was whether or not Ross and Rachael would end up together on Friends?

I think that's the problem, and why we're having such a hard time now. None of us were prepared for this. Few of us even knew we would ever need to be. America was invincible. Terrorists didn't take us down, and that meant nothing ever really could. And then...we began falling apart like a house of cards from the inside.

Bush and Cheney wanted us to believe that men in turbans with M-16s were the only arrow that could possibly pierce America's armor. In the meantime, we were already entering the worst housing crisis in decades, Wall Street and our banks were spending frivulously and enjoying a downward spiral that anyone with eyes in their head should have seen would end in disaster. Yeah, that party was great until the keg ran out of beer.

Obama is now in the White House. A step in the right direction, I think. I voted for the man because I've always believed that America could only truly better itself if it embraced new ideas and fresh ideology instead of hunkering down with tradition and fundementalist religion. Like an old box of corn flakes, modern American Christianity expired decades ago. Now the only people it typically benefits are those that want to ignore their responsibility to change their own world instead of let a bearded man from space do it for them, and those who want an excuse to hate their fellow man. Why are we still catering and cow-towing to a religion that finds it perfectly acceptable to passionately hate gays?

Back on topic, we ate and ate and ate until we were too fat to get off the couch. Now we're feeling a massive coronary coming on, but we're too damn big to get up and make it to the phone to call 911. America, plain and simple, is just a little too stupid to know how to save itself.

That doesn't mean we won't be saved. I think we're going to be "scared straight" by this, if only for a while. Obama does have the right idea of pushing for a cleaner, greener infrastructure. Unfortunately, he's going about it in a way that's a bit ass backwards. He's looking ahead ten years and spending money that will help us then, but what good is building a life raft that will be ready in ten years if people are already drowning?

I could be in one of two places in ten years. Contentidly working in sales and making enough money to support myself, perhaps even enough to save towards my dreams. Or...I could be homeless living in a box on Ponce De Leon. But at least I'll be watching a new generation of eco-friendly cars drive by my cardboard box!

Sad thing is, our push to "greenify" our economy may be just a bit too late. With the current state of technology, green costs money, and money is kind of a hard thing to come by now. So where is this multi-billion dollar stimulus coming from, you ask? Contrary to what the Republicans would have you believe, it's actually coming from other countries. We're borrowing from mom's purse. In this case, China's purse in particular. At our current rate of debt, our great red neighbor basically owns us, with half the other countries in the world shaing stock. Amercia is becoming everyone else's deadbeat brother that promises to pay you back but never really will.

And here comes the Catch 22. Where does China's money come from? Guess who! Yeah...trade with us. And since our industry is going under....

So basically the world is printing money with absolutely no basis in concrete assets. And our government is spending that money on roads and colleges and state parks. Good to provide a few John Does with a job, but bad for the rest of us because we can't afford to go to school and learn how to install a solar panel.

So what's really going to save us? Notice I say what, not who. Change is the only thing that can save us. Reinvention. We have to be ok with the possibility that everything we thought we could have may just have been a pipe dream. A pipe dream that was actually distracting us from the truly important things in life.

You wanted a million dollar car? You may have to learn that putting a roof over your family's head is a bit more important.

You wanted to be a rock star? You may have to readjust your viewpoint and realize that building houses for your neighbors in need is a much more admirable goal.

People need to realize that you don't have to aim for the sky. Sometimes there are better rewards right there at eye level, staring you in the face. Community, compassion and simple human need has to replace greed, entitlement and gluttony. If it doesn't...we won't be saved. This might just be it.

Rome fell. The greatest civilization in the world. We're ignorant to think that America can't too.

We're also ignorant to think that a beer and a big-screen tv playing American Idol is a better way to spend our time than an evening at the local homeless shelter dishing out soup to the needy.

Get your priorities straight America! And you just might be allright.

Couldn't make this up if I tried

I payed off my car yesterday after over four years of regular payments. I spent nearly all of the money in my bank account knocking that sucker out, and I was damn proud of myself.

Tonight I get in my car to go see a concert with Karenann. I make it to the entrance of the subdivision and...the engine dies.

Because I just payed the sucker off, I now have no money to fix it.

The irony astounds

The Passing of a Legend

I want to take some time to pay tribute to a friend, a member of my family, and a source of inspiration.

Fluffer the bunny entered that great bunny field in the sky today. He was fourteen years old.

Fourteen. That age is almost biblical in proportion when it comes to rabbits. And like Moses and Noah in the old testament, Fluffer was a lively old codger till the end of his days.

I remember sleeping on a couch in Darlene's living room with Fluffer nearby, making the most peculiar and yet adorable sound I had ever heard. Fluffer snored. I had never before in my life heard an animal snore, yet here he was with his nose pressed against the wall of his cage making a sound that seemed straight out of a cartoon.

He moved around a lot in those days, hopping about his cage and about the floor when Darlene let him out. All of the other animals seemed to hold a kind of respect...even reverence of him. I know Winter, my two year old cat, was fascinated by him. She watched him frequently, and a time or two we caught her with her arm through the cage, lightly touching Fluffer like an awed fan would reach out to touch Elvis.

And like Elvis or Noah, Fluffer has forever left his mark on us. He was the man of the house. The cutest of us, but also the most determined. His small stature did not diminish the obvious and immesurable size of his spirit. I never once saw that bunny look unhappy. Tired, maybe, but not unhappy. He held life by the horns for fourteen years. I can only hope I can one day, when I'm eighty or ninety, look age and Father Time in the eye and say, "Just one more year."

Wherever you are, my friend, I hope you're happy, and eating all the alfalfa and bunny treats you could ever want. You had as great a friend as any bunny could ever want in Darlene, and I can tell you the rest of us, fuzzy, four-legged, and otherwise, loved you more than we can say...or bark.

Rest well, bunny boy.