A Blunt Instrument

Sometimes the feeling that I am standing stock still in the middle of an eight lane highway is overwhelming.
I remember in high school being simultaneously incarcerated in my routine and my fears of the unknown. I couldn't leave, I couldn't budge. I didn't feel like I ever effected any kind of change, and the seasons moved, the earth turned, the plants and my nails and my hair grew and I could keep time that way, but otherwise, the world marked its days with blood and guts and screams and fires and paint and songs and running and action action action!

I remember this feeling, when I hit nineteen or so, that finally the blocks were gone, and I was moving, really moving, leaving that gorgeous, billowing cloud of dust behind me, and making tracks. I felt like I was in the cars, driving the cars, and not only that, but I had a fucking destination, and after that, I had another place to go, and I always had something to do, and I almost had to rush, but there was a minute or so, here and there, where I could pause, take a breath, taste the air, and remind myself why I was burning burning burning through all the time in the world. Around then, I threw out every watch I owned.
I still don't carry one. My cell phone is a clock, and I hate it.

It feels as though my life has come to a screeching halt.
I recede.
I pull back.
I am sequestered in this immobile state where there is nothing else to do but watch the clock, and shuffle around, attempting to make progress. I feel so ineffectual sometimes, I want to destroy everything around me just to remind myself that what I do actually matters.

In floods the nihilism. I put the informers on the bedside table, and somewhere in the sweat-soaked night, I thumb through and let my own personal deity (Mr. B.E.E.) sing a song of succumbing.
Give up.
Put away your passion.
Take up the weapons of your immaterial life.
Realize your insignificance and take another
blood racing tablet.
Know this,
there is nothing in this life you will ever do
with more impact
than peeling an orange.
So soak your eyes in tears
cut your fingers to ribbons
take a bottle of what have you
and amp up your cause
so at least when you dig your fingernails
under the skin
you can pretend you're really hurting it.


When I rise, the sun is different. The street slaps back the soles of my shoes, and I feel the wriggling underneath the concrete. But is it just the plants growing? My nails? My hair?
The days melting like icicles, drip drip dripping away, and crashing to the ground another week. It lies in front of me, splintered on the sidewalk, reflecting light and refracting time. The sun passes behind a cloud and all the beauty of the crystalline ice is gone. Its just dirty fragments hurled against the ground.
I choke on it a little, but I eat the orange.