Sorry, I got carried away

I would like to lose myself, in the green grass, forget my name, forget from where I come. I don't really remember all that anymore.




Do I lack spirituality, is there a gaping hole in my soul, visible to the most casual observer? One interloper seems to think so, he invited me to the promised land. He said that it was home and that it was waiting for me. Can I believe him? Would I want to? Maybe what I most desire is to be eternally homeless, shrinking away from responsibility, the painfully binding social constraints of daily interaction, the building of networks and expectations and then disappointments. The rubbing raw of the wrists against the tight rope that encircles them, an institution, a religion. You see it in their eyes... No I am not missing anything. When do I find rest? he asks. Never, I suppose. Don't you dare judge me. He laughs, you are young, younger than I am, maybe when you are older you will understand, you will realize that you are wrong. Then you will come home.



Maybe. I am generally wrong about most things and generally unwilling to realize it, losing the forest for the trees. A perfect punctuation means very little, I know this, a perfect turn of phrase, a perfectly honed knife will do the job no better than a dull edge, a blunt force. Quietly. It will go away. I don't pretend to have seen the things you have, to live in a war ravaged land. I don't want those things. Ultimately, I take refuge in my horrible, life-depleting safety. It is the American Way, no? I lack the bravery to be the ethical thing, to do what I know is morally my duty, so what? Who are you to judge me? I ask him. He laughs, I am not judging you. I don't practice religion, I won't participate in a system that would kill for its beliefs... Oh but I do. I do... We can't choose our battles just our battlefields. You would never want to see the things I have seen, to do the things I've done. No. Never. But then, what is it that I do want? Where can I live? How can life go on with so much abject misery, so much hate, so much fear? Maybe that is why he thinks I need religion. I don't. I'll just keep shouting in silence to the ocean, to the mountains, to the rocking palms and the golden grass. Throwing my body from the edge of the precipice, if only in spirit but not in body, never in body, strapped down to the limits of social decorum, to the names that have been given, and the spaces neatly marked, their edges never touch. They can't.