The Point of No Return

Many times I have thought about these guys. While sitting on the beach sippin' our margueritas, there's a REAL WAR  going on out there! Yet we butter up and bitch about the most trivial things ... licking a salty tequila-ed glass inebriated and unscathed.
What is it like to be a soldier and warrior?  Disciplined, focused, goal oriented and mission-minded? Trained to kill !   Eventually, though, returning to civilian life.
 Do you ever really return?
 I, for one, am going to hold out hope in a debt of gratitude, and pray for their return. At least for a little while, until I become the enemy. Then,  I'll probably butter-up like a bitch again, and prepare my best slimy civilian shitball  defense.   Don't wanna get my neck snapped, ya know!

Why Aren't You Sad?

   

 Naivety's interlude with crappy people can be painfully menacing.  Greedy,... lazy,... weaselly....selfish  and unrepentant ...they can sometimes showcase the darker side of humanity.

      My neighbor  waved her mail at me with a toothy wide smile that I had never seen on her before,  and walked toward me  in an elated stride. I wondered what merciful miracle might have been given the poor wretch,  as she rarely approached me without a frown and a cigarette,  and reeking of Mad Dog 20/20.  Today...though was different.  It was jubilee!  Her cheesy dentured smile  made me question my eyesight  "Maybe this is her 'un'-evil sister or something?":...I thought for a second.  But, no,  ...it was her alright. Waving a letter from her pile of bounced check notices and an ultra thick OPRAH magazine which she let fall to the ground.
  " My Aunt died!  My Aunt died!"...she exclaimed to me,  as she got close enough to show me her letter.  "  And this is the check from my inheritance!".     I stood a little bewildered and confused at her lack of regret for her Aunt's passing, and wondered if she had  counted the days ...farting into her tattered LazyBoy recliner with a bottle of ripple in hand,. ..waiting ....in some strange , sweet anticipation ...eager for her poor Auntie's imminent death.

    Another of my neighbors down the street,  was casually  making his way down the road. One hand in his pocket with his chin facing the sun,  ...he was smiling happily,  and walking with a bounce in his knees ,...his face pleasurably absorbing the wonderfully warm Florida  sun.  I saw that he was wearing a cast on his arm.  "What happened!?!"  ,  I asked him ...concerned that maybe he burned his hand on a fryer,  or that the pit-bull next door finally got a piece of him.  His smile was radiant,  relaxed,  and beaming!  "I crushed my two fingers at work!"..  he told me.   "I'll probably never be able to use'em again!"...he explained,  with the smile now growing from slight smirk ...and becoming ear-to-ear.

     "Where was his pain?"   "Why did he seem so happy?"...my initial instincts wondered. And I began to understand that he was in "no-more-work-insurance-collection-possible-disability-and -liability-settlement"  ..mode.
There is a school for this,  which many of us have never attended. It was obvious that he was intent on getting his PhD.

    There was a side of me that understood his mindset. I realized that his injury had allowed him to become a 'walkin' man"!
 In his own mind,  he had just been freed from  prison and a certain life sentence. It is a sentence we are all serving for our illusion of freedom. The harder we work for a living ,  the more we begin to understand this basic American paradoxical truth  :
                                       
        ' In order to be free in this society,  we must become a slave to it!'

       And I recalled with guilty conscience the many times I had wished a hurricane on our small town,  just so I  could get a few free days off from  work.   Billions and billions of dollars in property damage,  homes filled with loving memories wiped away, the potential for innocent lives to be  lost....just so I could get an extra day off!  Selfish bastard.

   

I have come to understand,  but not condone, ...this strange sickness that seems to consume the heart of a man...and often festers within my own.  If the innocence in my naivety has been tempted,  it must leave long enough to take notice,  and then hope for a chance to return.

       

Personality Conflict

It's not your choice!    After a while,  the program has been written. Thoughts that enter the waiting room  that is the temporary holding place in your mind....
    Some are harmoniously Hoovered and instantly etched into engrams.   Others are quickly  rejected or  begrudgingly held.  Met with a hesitant reception.  Gathered and sojourned,.... then allowed to slip  away into oblivion.
   Foreigners!   Abstract to your patterns of thinking,  they could not find a home here.

What is important to you has been defined and determined by your developed personality.  Artist, math genius, or bank robber?   A playful mind filled with jokes to tell?   Or one of wit and wisdom?   A confident man will often disregard the peripherals and lodge pertinent information for instant retrieval! A caring one will gather these peripherals and assess their affect on others. The psychopath sees only his  world and remains within it. .  The empath starts from a world outside of himself.

It is "personality" which proscribes what stays, or what goes...when passing through the sifter that is one's own mind.  Through common threads of association, or repetition....what enters can be captured and kept..   But what truly becomes the heart of the man.....what permeates each softened cell and changes it's structure....is a matter of his formed (or malformed) character and personality.

                                                                                                                                             elrok

Hypocritical Oaf

There he stands.  Right in  front of you,  as a grey garbled wisp of muffled mush is released from his lips. Somewhere...somewhere...in the long-wasted patience of your relationship with him ,...he has lost credibility with you. Now...his words... however emphatic,  are a low noisy hum.  They mean absolutely nothing !

The hypocrite!  There he goes again!  Touting his morality...Spewing his "holier than thou "... diatribal crap!  Every sinner he paints with a scarlet letter...he paints on himself !   Yet there he sits,  ...as he sloshes his beer to his lips and full-body scans another lady half his age.

If she looks at him....she is HOT!  If she snubs him,  she is a SLUT!   He calls another one "fat"...as he squirms in his barstool and jostles his beer-belly over his belt buckle. What a hypocrite!   What an oaf!    An obvious truth in your relationship  that can't be denied!

Maybe everyone has their moment...when after a hundred or so  obnoxiously opinionated  statements,  they stumble across one that is blunderingly beautiful! Or maybe there is a genius to this hypocritical character,  that I have somehow missed.

But suddenly,...as I accidentally tuned in and recalled a friendship that in ages past,  seemingly warranted my learned attention...he started making SENSE!  I stopped myself to wonder... " Have I descended  to the level of my  neanderthal friend?!  "   The PURE and unadulterated LOGIC of his typecasts and condescensions!  What IS this that I am hearing from this 'hypocritical oaf' turned modern day Socrates!?
 He is the pot, calling the kettle black!  And I began to realize a simple truth:    Sometimes,  obnoxious idiots hold within them a capacity for clarity and simple reality...unencumbered by tact, ethics, ..or even hypocrisy!

     "Just because it is the 'pot'  calling the kettle black....does not mean the 'pot' is wrong! "   -elrok