Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Out of the Void

The other day I got stuck only thinking in rhymes. Having a song part trapped in your head on repeat is awful, but this was a travesty. I started to feel guilty about this after a bit of time. As if this was some sort of gift I should be using. Putting these rhymes to prose, at least. Eventually I came out of it. I don't remember exactly when but I remember being overjoyed that I could think normally again. To have my thoughts belong to me and nobody else. Rhymes became loathsome to me. After having them forced into my conscious I couldn't stand them at all. I suppose I'm biased but that's the way it was. "Shelly," I'd say to my wife Karen, "why don't we throw out all those Dr Seuss books? The man was an utter fool." Response was given in the form of a stare over the brim of her glasses, never really stopping motion on the clothes she was hemming. Admittedly it was a strange request. I hadn't told her of my cognitive troubles from earlier, so it just seemed like I was jealous of a children's book author. I think he was also famous as a voodoo priest, but most people remember him from writing those colorful rhyming books. You would think I eventually calmed down about the whole thing, and you would think right. Too bad eventually ended up being about 7 years later. I was furious with my own mind the whole time for taunting me, until I met someone who only spoke in rhymes. I realized that there are very few instances where someone does not have a worse, yet related, issue. That didn't mean my own struggle with keeping my mind free of wanton poetry was meaningless, I simply found peace in the evidence of communal suffering.

Therein lies a topic I became addicted to. I say addiction but it felt more like compulsion. My innards would creep around my body and squirm if they didn't get their way. "Complain about people cutting in line!" They'd shriek at me with their slopping and stirring. "Talk about how the best things in life are still low-grade piles of rat shit." They'd bellow from deep in the chambers of my heart and subsections of my large intestine. And I'd appease them the only way I know how: Getting on my weathered soap box and projecting a mist of vitriol onto anyone unlucky enough to be in my incredible vocal range. In a way I added to the very suffering I was madly barking about. Everyone had already come to the same realization as I had. We're all suffering together. They didn't need me vomiting diatribe in their direction. I was a modernized Bible audiobook that nobody had purchased.

And I'd trudge home after a long day, satisfied. Imagine that. I was content that I was doing good work. I was more foolish than that fucking clown Seuss. The bastard got me. I've only my wonderful Karen to thank for damming me. I'd walk through the door, begin round 5 or 6 or 7 of my unwanted sermon, and she'd give me that wonderful glare as she sewed or knitted or tinkered or whatever her beautiful little hands were doing. Eventuality got to me again, and after enough piercing eyes and dismissive love, I wound down from a speaker-on-high to one of the accepting people of the masses. You don't always need to strive to be above the torment and punishment and dissatisfaction. Not when you've got brothers and sisters that are holding your hand through the rain. When you've got cousins who know all your pain. We all float together, and we know that we circle the drain.

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