Fresh and Pure from Southern California Date Friday, April 26, 2024 - 03:02 PM PST Topic Rant I once knew a fascinating example of how wrong society can go, the way it goes about purging humanity, and leaving a husk of broken ideals and mish-mashed morals. You, and many others like you can observe or have observed people, places, and things that epitomize the failures of the human mind- the corpse left after the hellfire and storm. You and many others may posses just such qualities, irksome maladies that infect you for life, cling to your mind and body like a cancer, and seep puss and hate wherever you walk. This is a life I know and live, day by day, without tears, and without mercy. But specifically, in this instance, I observed (rather than participated) where the world went wrong, and what excrement it left behind. I viewed this person at first as just that- a human, possessing potential, life, goals, stubble, and spirit. This, and so much more, is what a person can be. And, I suppose that is why, when experience and chance shifted my view of this individual, it was so striking. That so many things, so many qualities and possibilities, the likes of which I cannot and will not try to describe, just whispered away. The humanity, the essence of man, was blown away like a faint scent- perfume, perhaps- and replaced by the shell of man's undoing. I was consumed so much with my dislike of this walking, striking, hate filled symbol at first, that I could not see how disparaging and saddening it all made me feel. It is not until this very moment that the utter failure that this creature represents has truly made me falter in my steps, and cease being distracted by my own opinions. Opinions it seems, are some how fundamentally different from feelings, and I know this from life itself. But I don't understand it, I don't see the schism of emotion and thought with the clarity of poets and thinkers before me. This troubles me. I want to feel something beyond the logic of my own distrust of man, to taste the hatred, and not decipher it. But my thoughts are too consuming, and I simply wilt, tired with effort and deflated of ego and breath, and quit the whole affair. I know in my heart, and mostly in my head, that giving up even in the face of atrocities such as this makes me a step closer to the loathsome beasts I see around me on city streets, and appropriately despise. But it can't be helped. I can't be helped. This is not a message of sadness. I am not crawling into a ball and weeping. I don't seek a single touch of comfort. I don't feel tormented by my knowledge, my magnetism, to these things inside people, these hearts of darkness, to borrow a term- quite the contrary. I feel alive, more alive than ever before, and more fit to live this life. Existence is not a burden, and I am no pack animal even if it were. I am, in essence, merely myself. I possess all the failures of life's great experiment. I possess all the variables and controls that anyone else does. Perspective has merely put me in the face of a dark spotlight, a negative energy I can neither respect nor escape. And it is with no regret, and no faltering of spirit or determination, that I welcome my debut. Shine on me I cry, and I mean it. I won't cry for you, and I won't cry behind your back in fear of you- I am empowered in the least pretentious form, by all of this. We may not be perfect, we are not, and heaven is no equalizer. We are alive because we are terrible, because we have scarred a planet and a people, and our own sisters, and flesh. That which does not kill us makes us stronger is an adage I know now, seeing hell itself manifested in flesh, is true. Because I feel alive. I don't kid myself with thinking I'm above the suffering, or that I've somehow earned the fact that I am not a sickness like they are: because I am. I really am. And it feels damned good. I fester with mirth. I infect with optimism. I cry for joy, and for conjunctive stress. I rot for you. I rot for me. Taste my sweat- I am bitter. It's the taste of fermentation. Life is not a great cavalcade of feet crushing our fresh pink bodies into newborn wine; existence already took care of that. Life is a cask, and I swell and strengthen in it's death, it's heat, it woody pain, and it's tannin scented élan vital. I rot for life. This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=729