Good Use of White Space

[More personal observations - no insights to provide today]

I am standing in the middle of the cool, wet woods and I am lost. I don't remember where I came from and don't care where I'm going. My face is flushed. My sneakers are soaking wet and covered with mud. Trickles of water flow down the hill from this morning's rain. My thoughts are waterlogged. Yet, I am in my element. Alone but not lonely. Wishing for what I haven't got. Thinking FHMS thoughts.

Read the online news. Headline from independent.ie: "'Blue-eyed whites' to blame for global crash". Here it comes. The world is flush with anger. Needs someone to blame. I smell the fear and anger on the air. Are the barbarians ready to rush the gates? Can I keep hiding in the woods?

I am a dying breed, knew it from birth, almost. Saw the trends in the news when I was a toddler looking through the bars of my crib. Stark reality. No stork deliveries for me. Cue up Lula da Silva of Brasil: "This was a crisis fostered and boosted by the irrational behaviour of people who were white and blue-eyed, who before the crisis they looked like they knew everything about economics, but now have demonstrated they know nothing about economics. The part of humanity that is responsible should be the part that pays for the crisis." I knew the day would come when Europeans no longer mattered. The Japanese and Chinese would exert their millennia of wisdom-borne influence eventually. Patience is a virtue that cannot be seen in quarterly reports. Quiet diplomacy has stronger roots than missile-laden threats that disappear into the stratosphere.

I have no vested interest in the future. Others must sort through the piles of historic documents to figure out which old solutions apply to "new" but rehashed problems.

My days are clearly numbered. 15,015 left on the countdown clock in front of me. I have nothing left to offer. Served up on a whiteboard (the modern equivalent of the sage's slate) what little wisdom I had to give my students/ customers - they must figure out for themselves what to do with the words they heard from me, which I only heard from others myself and did not bring forth purely out of my imagination. Socratic, Platonic and Confucian ideas will overrule anything I have to say, now and evermore*.

[*Ode to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven"]

If someone must pay for the future, it won't be me. I have no children to sacrifice on the altars of world debt. I have no hope of grandchildren to pay off government loans. The world belongs to me no more.

Like Max Von Sydow's character in the movie, "Flash Gordon," I am bored and want a planet to play with. Alas, my world is not the size of a planetary body. Instead, I have a couple of cats to play with, a female human companion with whom I ward off complete boredom, and unpaved woods in which to walk off my societal fat.

I miss freedom. Or at least that one brief moment that flashed in front of my eyes when I was younger and gave me the idea that the universe was mine to conquer. The world does not belong to me. I have no burning desire. I am not the gladiator in the arena fighting to the death for his freedom. My spirit burns like the candle beside me, flickering this way and that, never fully aware that its life is at the whim of a puff of air from another. A car wreck. A suicide bomber in a tourist district. A tornado. Happenchance or on purpose, it doesn't matter. I am not free. I am a human being and will not escape from that reality. My life is not mine. It belongs to this planet.

I was not a child prodigy. I am not the child of prodigies. I am the product of families that value years of formal education as a measure of success on the climb up the career ladder of citizenship. Conform to the norm. Participate in the community. Sine qua non.

I wish I had more to offer but my cornucopia is empty. I have given it all away. You can ask to take more if you like but the milk cow has run dry. Feel free to take the cow. I can chew on tree bark. The trappings of society are stacked up around me but if the society they reflect does not reflect who I want to be, then you can take these, too - the sports memorabilia, old schoolbooks, unopened plastic model kits, outdated world globe, stuffed toys, nonworking computers and unpublished papers. Even you body part pre-grave robbers will want my flesh and bones when I'm officially dead and gone. No matter. As I said, I don't belong to me. Never have been free.

There's wisdom in these words. I can almost see it. If only my thoughts weren't so petty. For instance, an email friend of mine told me that the only thing she could say about my writing is that it's a good use of white space. So I turned her into a character in my last book, Belle, a juvenile delinquent who grew up to be a grifter. A girl broke up with me when she was 15 and I was 16. So I waited 30 years to break up with her via email and turned our emails into part of my last book. In both cases, I succumbed to writer's revenge. So much for high ideals. But then again, my inner being is a person who likes to have fun, even at the cost of friendship. I have written about that too many times to want to remember. I have warned people away from me many a time only to have them fly too close into the flames and get burned in these words. My ego may be marred but it is my ego and I'll protect it at any cost, even if its genetic heritage goes to the grave while my body parts go to the open market.

Writing is such sweet sorrow - revenge is a dish best served cold and with relish. Like I've said, my buddies in the underworld know me better than myself. Their nickname for me, if I haven't told you already, is "The Elephant" 'cause I've got a memory I can't forget. The pen is mightier than the sword only when you use it like acupuncture and hit the right spots. Cultures have long memories, too, but that doesn't concern me, only you. Beware the words of world leaders - they speak volumes and sway world opinion like willows in the wind. After all, it's not global warming you have to worry about - it's who has the power to warm the world - like sitting in a pot slowly coming to a boil, you don't know it's too hot until it's too late. Someone's going to get burned. Hope you know how to take care of your own. Don't say you haven't been warned.

I'm going to keep sitting here in my meditative position and laugh while you keep running errands in your SUVs and trading high-sulfur coal for oil. What's that saying? He who laughs last knew when to take the deepest breath.