Misanthropic Meanderings

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Location: California, United States

See the title? There you go.

Sunday, July 30, 2006

The Puzzle Factor

I love a good mystery. I'm enthralled with mystery movies, mystery books, hell, I'll take a few quick word puzzles. Thanks to The Hallmark Channel, I get to watch tons of mysteries on rerun, but even better, first run movies with veteran pros. How can I resist John Larroquette? Or that dude from the Mod Squad as a retired PI who helps the Mystery Woman Bookshop owner solve murders. Great old campaigners who used to be hot stuff stars, showing up on made for tv stuff. I love it. 7th freakin' heaven. They can all act and don't look so damn pretty their face has forgotten how to be interesting. My only complaint, I'd prefer it wasn't murder. How about a good dognapping story?

Friday, July 28, 2006

Red Calf

As I have now joined a war generation, something I never, ever wanted to have happen, I 've noticed something. Maybe you have too. Most of those who call for wars, who direct it's policies, are old men. Why do old men craft situations that get young men killed? What's the purpose of destruction for those who face the grave? Old men hoard wealth & power, turning prejudices and inequalities into tools for gain. In the middle of their schemes & plots, young people get killed. Maybe religious wars and territory wars are our leaders' fears of the grave? It sure seems like they think commiting this craziness will stave off their own death somehow. Perhaps we need very young people in charge who might reduce all of this to extreme sports contests instead.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Policies of Escalation

As I sit here, people are dying in conflicts all over africa & the middle east. I doubt those dying understand the why of it all any more or less than those doing the killing. Little groups of people murdering people in horrible ways at the behest of even smaller groups of people-called leaders-with agendas that don't match up to the rhetoric they feed the masses. Right now, Israel, has declared anyone still in South Lebanon a "terrorist". Somewhere in South Lebanon, a young man grips a rifle or aims a short range missile, fighting an enemy who's been an enemy his entire young life. Somewhere, an IDF soldier prepares to be on the ground, going door to door or ready to drop a bomb payload, on an enemy that thinks he & his country shouldn't exist.

Each side has valid reasons to mistrust the other. Each side is complicit in the deaths of innocents. Instead of being drawn to find a way of peace and cohabitation, each side has chosen a war of escalation. When one does an evil, the other tries to do a greater evil. The bodies, often of children, mount higher and higher on each side. Fear has increased, hate has increased. Money pours in from allies on both sides, the attacks keep coming and the bodycount grows. Supposedly, escalation will make the other side sicken of war. Civilians will be so dispirited, they'll call for their governments to settle and be rid of all extremists.

After all this time, the people want peace, but how can there be peace without safety? How can there be safety, without peace? So each side keeps attacking, hostilities escalate and people die. Neither side, despite the constant attacks, is willing to commit the real level of atrocities that can really make the world sick of war. So they keep chipping at each other, bit by bit. Civilian by civilian. And slowly, they lose each chance at peace to extremists. What a world.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Human

We're very fragile, you know. If nothings ever happened, you may not know that. In fact, you may strut around, secure in the knowledge that you know what's going on. You'll survive the little shocks and jars that an average life brings, probably take a real long, slow, scenic route to the big dirt nap with everything intact. We want to feel, to live, to simply exist and be human. Even when we don't know what human means, we know when we feel it. Then something affects you. You feel more like a sentient suit. You move, you're here but your nerves don't carry any messages that mean anything. Where's the proof you're a living thing, the barest twinge of connection between you and the rest of creation? What is "you", exactly?

Always be careful to not just move through space. Live conciously, with as much emotion as you can muster the bravery to show. People can take that from you, they can even reduce who you are in your mind until you're not sure if you're an animal or a cheap cardboard puppet being used in pantomimes. Being dull and empty is no way to go through existence, no matter how safe it seems.

You owe it to yourself to stay fully, cognizantly human, every day of your life. Stretch and live within your skin. Feel passionately, and don't ever apologize for it. Taste things at extremes and revel in the newness of sensation as you relearn "fire" and "ice". Most importantly, accept who you are, flaws and all. You never have to stay the same, in fact, that's impossible, but you don't have to despise yourself. Love every weakness, become strangers with shame, while you marvel at how amazing it is you get to sit here at all. We don't have to be gods, rampaging attention whores of embodied need; we get to be human, needing, yet still capable of living.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Thinking Through Gauze Wrappers

Happy Saturday Night, folks! It's a lovely summer's eve, the roommate and the cat are home, all's well with the world. I am in a very rare state for me, friggin' drunk. I'll be lucky to get through this without typos. No big deal, we all get a buzz on from time to time. But why? We dull our senses with one chemical, sharpen them with another. How did we develop a love for an altered state of conciousness, much less find so many damn ways to do it? Our emotions are blunted things, never able to hurt us, never about to cut through the bullshit that keeps us little isolated beings. Moving is hard, as our bodies either slow down or speed up, out of our control, thanks to little chemicals. It loosens our tongues, it binds common sense, we love the freedom it brings until we're addicted and need to kick the habit. I'd rather be out drinking with friends, so I'm here, at home, posting on sauce. We're confusing little monkeys, aren't we? Even if we were all psychic, we wouldn't be able to communicate a thing to each other. I better go quaff another bit 'o beer.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Kiss me with the kisses of your mouth

I want a kiss. Not a peck, a buss, some diffident passing of lip to flesh. These things barely count as an acknowledgement that another person is next to you. I miss the investigation of senses in a long , passionate kiss. I miss being drunk on another's taste, touch & smell. There is sex, not that hard to get if I want it, but this is not sex. At times, it's even better. It's the one thing I miss.

Monday, July 10, 2006

6.26.06

There’s been a death in my circle, a person removed by genetic heritage & time. Worse yet, I didn't find out about it until 4th of July. A macabre sort of independence, a notification of liberation from a failing body. Death is the mandatory conclusion to life. It happens in a million ways, without mercy or judgment. Death is nothing to be surprised about. And yet, I can't tell if the knife through my heart at my friend's loss is all the more sharp because I was surprised. He wasn't supposed to die of cancer. He was supposed to recover, like he did that last time he was deathly ill. Then the next thing we'd hear from him would be a barely legible scrawl on a postcard about the latest foreign land he was in. And how beautiful the girls were.

The sharpness could be guilt. I love my friends. I admit to loving carelessly, completely, without any matured sense. The last I spoke to him, his voice on the phone was a little child's. “This is what my mom died of. I’ve got the same thing.” 'I don't want to die' was in every thread of that conversation. If there was anything I could do to make the world a different place so he wouldn't feel so small and helpless, I would have done it. And I'd hardly have called us close. My partner & I had every intention of visiting him this year, a surprise visit to bolster his spirits (and maybe even say goodbye). Time was against us. We wouldn't have made it back to NYC before Thanksgiving without a dramatic shift in fortunes.

I miss him already. I'd been missing his usual emails of terrible jokes since May, now I know the last ones from April are all I'll have of him. I'll miss his ridiculous collection of political buttons and his über-democrat beliefs. Most of what I'll miss is his unwavering belief that no matter what, no matter how pissed he'd make me when we worked together, no matter how long it took for us to get back to him-we were always friends. Open generosity like that is rare in this modern world.

I don't know what death is. Is it an end or a doorway? A judgment time or call to rest? I don't care. I haven't loved life as much as others, even though I value it. But I can say there are some I would give life to at the expense of others. So many people commit evils and live while others, who've done no harm, die young. I believe what is, is but it gives cold comfort right now. Douglas, you will be missed.