Everything, a Muffled Silence

Everyone I know is fake.
Well, that’s an exaggeration
I came up with on those blue swings
down by the lake last summer.
Remember? You were there.
I remember thinking you weren’t fake.
But I can’t help but feel this way
at least sometimes, when the sky is dark
and a million points of light shine on me
and everything is a muffled silence.

The Song of a Song

It was the sound of a voice
It was the edge of a cloud
It was the rise of a mountain
It was the voice of the voiceless
It was the turn of a tide
It was the page of a book
It was the run of a relay
It was the breath of the breathless
It was the bark of a dog
It was the note of a friend
It was the key of a padlock
It was the life of the lifeless
It was the taste of a meal
It was the throne of a Queen
It was the red of a flower
It was the sense of the senseless
It was the thing of a thing
It was the song of a song

Prose Adaptation: "What the Hell"

(Based off of What the Hell)

Early one morning, I ate breakfast with my usual rapidity, having woken up just in the nick of time to shower, inhale my food, and drive to school. Finding parking was going to be hell, but I guess that’s what I was bargaining with for my extra (and quite sacred) fifteen minutes of sleep. My shower lasted 7 minutes, a bit longer than necessary, but of course one cannot so easily turn away from a nice hot shower. I applied the necessary cosmetics (deodorant, cologne), and entered the kitchen where my Mom was awake and washing dishes. The bread maker droned on at regular intervals in the corner, and the morning news chirped away from a distance.

“Good morning,” she said pleasantly. The bread machine whirred.

“Mm.” I grunted, only half awake. It seemed like the thing to say, or rather, the thing to brutishly expostulate. Heaven forbid I make pleasant conversation with my own mother before school.

I poured myself a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats, with their tendency both to please and disgust. They were the ultimate breakfast chimera, and I wondered how the board meeting had gone at their proposal some years ago. “Mr. Hamilton, we really like your idea, but two sides of frosting? We need something that the kids will like, but we need something their parents will buy, too.” And poor Mr. Hamilton never realized his dream of a doubly frosted mini-wheat.

As my mind drifted, the television was there to catch it. A story came on about a man who broke into a house, raped an 11 year old girl while her parents slept, and ran away. My initial reaction, I’m sorry to say, was indifference. Terrible things like that happen so frequently, how can we do anything but distance ourselves from them? But that was just my initial reaction. Then I saw the description of the man. I didn't catch the majority of it because my eyes were held fast by the top line: age: 18-20.

I realized that my birthday was coming up in a few days. 18. One of the big years. One of the years that my peers at school used to start buying cigarettes, or playboy magazines, or things from TV infomercials, or lotto tickets. I was interested in none of those things, as would be expected if you knew me. But even more, I was uninterested because I was struggling with the realization that, in a few day’s time, I could plausibly fit the profile of a rapist. A murderer. A thief. Any number of names you could give, and I could feasibly fit the profile of any of them.

Somewhere, a man my age had raped an 11 year old girl, and left her with the weight of that reality. And I, waiting to turn 18, was horrified.

Volleyball

When my brother and I were young, he and I would play volleyball using a somewhat flat soccer ball and the clothesline. It was a coveted activity that we would return to over and over again on lazy summer days. His court was made up of the corner of the shed, two of the posts that held up the deck, and an empty milk carton, triangulated to make a rectangle longer from side to side. Mine was marked by the corner of the cement patch (which I had to avoid gingerly to prevent stubbed toes and scuffed feet, summertime being synonymous with bare feet) and another milk carton. My court was a rectangle longer from front to back, and many times discussion would turn to the advantages or disadvantages of each court, but being stubborn as boys are, we never switched or even rotated.

I remember one particular dispute, which dealt with a potentially game-changing point. I had battled my brother back and forth for this last point, straining every muscle, conjuring every ounce of swiftness and dexterity I could until-

“Yes!” I screamed. My brother had failed to return the ball. In fact, he hadn’t even made an attempt.

“That was under,” he said calmly, picking up the ball and readying himself for another serve. He required only one more point to take the whole game.

After my initial shock at his call, we went back and forth, me saying it was over, him saying under, never once reaching what anyone would call a shouting match as one might expect boys our age to do (he and I were both trying, I now realize, to embody our stoic and often composed father). I laughed the issue aside – obviously he was crazy. And I had the last word, calling on my religious sensibilities. “We’ll see when we get to heaven. You’ll see.”

He “won” the game, and after a few days things were back to normal – or as normal as they could be. After that fateful game, our dad hit the ball with the lawnmower blade.

Villainy

Today I discovered how villains are made
I'll tell you the secret at night
Complacency strikes from all corners of Earth
But it's false and it's fake and you'll see it's not right

They realize good has no purpose
When they see that there's no greater cause
In time if you're looking you'll see it as well
The good men receive no applause

Today I discovered how villains are made
So tell me where I can apply
And if there's a waiting list I'm sure I can hold
Just give me a call and we'll give it a try

Re: Belief, Hypocricy

Ryston asked in his comment to Belief:

I also wanted to ask you a question that might inspire a rant of it's own. What is your position on hypocrisy?

For those of you who have memorized my entire works, you'll probably realize that my history on hypocrisy is somewhat disjointed. One post that sums this up well is Resolutions, a post I made at the beginning of the 2007 year (or, rather, the end of the 2006 year). Having gotten over my first breakup a few months prior, I was in the midst of a period of redefinition/rediscovery from which I formed the person I am today. (That statement carries much less weight once you realize that it is applicable at all points of life)

As part of these revelations, I sought to eradicate from my life all aspects of hypocricy, to reestablish myself as a source of credibility and uniformity. In reading the post you'll see that in the midst of writing it, I had a change of heart and turned it completely upside down backwards and on it's head.

I reasoned that as a leader (that's how I perceived myself at the time) I couldn't afford to be double checking and self checking every thought that crossed my mind, every word I said. As a leader (I cringe to type it) it was my job to inspire, to incite action, to put people on the pages who hadn't been there before.

It fizzled out. Life overcame my dreams and ambitions, and I was left living it (albeit happily). Of course, tragedy gives us pause, and once again I am left alone in the proverbial relationship world, left alone to my thoughts. Once again I must redefine myself, and this time, with no one left to lead, I must first find a role to fill, a person to be.

Where does that leave us with hypocricy? Well, at the moment I'd have to say that a moment of redefinition is the ABSOLUTE WORST TIME EVER to be disingenuous. With that said, there's no telling where that will leave me six months from now...

And I know Ryston was probably thinking of other things when he asked that question, but in order to enter into the debate in any further depth, I had to first establish those basics.

In a future post I will address the question perhaps a bit more literally, asking such questions as "can/should a smoker lecture against smoking? can/should a pedophile preacher spread the Word of God? can/should I and many others bother realizing "hard lines" that we ourselves do not adhere to?"

All good questions that I'm a bit too exhausted to answer right now, though the answers are there.

Thanks for reading, Ryston, and for commenting.