And here we are, being public with our affections and our effections, with our heavy words lightly thrown, and our ripples on endless seas. Here we are poetic in our anonymity, and violent in our conspicuousness.
We are proud of our convictions. We chant and yell, and scream into a darkness, where we hope someone will read them, and we hope someone will say something, leave their emblazoned icon of submission, approval, or anger on our words, and we will be connecting.
Here we warn you, do your homework, and do not think we have not. We are smarter than you. And you should know this. You depend on us, you see us everyday, and we look, so…. wrecked. With slouching steps, and dragging feet, silent and blank looks as we listen and we try to comprehend what it is you want, even when you do not know what it is you want. And we have bags under our eyes, from sleepless nights, and sleepless days. From doing our best to find a way in this murky, delusional, society. From the hours we spend writing our last papers, to get the A to keep the scholarship, to stay in school, to get away from this job, and be able to do nothing that relates to you. From the children we take care of, whether our own, or our friends, so that they can go work a pole for you for the next six hours. From the houses that we live in, just enough shelter, just enough to keep us reasonably warm, and reasonably dry. From the books we read, and the stories we hear, from the constant prattle of the uninformed.
These are where our tired expressions, and our migraines come from.
And when you talk to me, like I am stupid, when you try to argue with me in the aisle of a bookstore, and tell me about an author whose books I have read, every last one, and when you try to draw me into a debate on healthcare, and when you try to talk to me, using big words in the wrong places, do not think that I do not know, that you are a moron. The thought, that I am thinking, that is making my face go blank, and look slightly like I care, is the question that I want to ask you and all your kind, “What about me, makes you think you can talk to me like this?” and I know the answer, it is not me, it is the position I am in.
Never-the-less...
I start analyzing myself, trying to find what it is about my appearance, about my mannerisms, about the courtesy I show in speaking with you, anything that is telling you that you should and will, and then my thoughts trail off, and I think about people from the past who never knew me, but act like you. The people who have met me once, who looked at my bookcases never, who thought enough to speak with forked tongues and malicious intents, people who only think, they never know, people who scrap together their own meager existence from feeding on rumors, and who will never ask anyone face-to-face what is true and what is not. And the irony always is that I never heard the same back. I never had a thing to say, or an idea about you. I heard about you, but I never knew you, so I never had anything to say. And I know that people made words out of my silences, and out of my non-shows, and my turned down invites. And this isn’t about a specific person, it is about a whole group, it is about all of us and how we somehow operate. And you and I, and we are all liars. We are all told and we are all tellers of stories, and we are all formers of opinions, and we are all so fired up when we should just be trying to get to know each other, and if we do not know we should endeavor to say so, to say that we have only had that one bad run in, and that it doesn’t count because of the substances. And we should try to figure out what we have in common, and we should be chill, we should be really chill….
And so that was where my head was when the guy in the dockers and the button-up shirt, with the blazer with the stitches coming out in the sleeves, was standing over me, with a look of bitter victory because I had nothing to say. And I stood, in that most pivotal of moments, and I looked at him, and I reached down and I handed him his book, without ever leaving his face, and I stood there for a moment, and then I walked away. And I realized that is what I always do, when the prattle starts, when the idiotic comes out to illustrate, and when all I can do, is turn my brain off and imagine a distant field and a euphoric notion of childhood, I walk away. It is not worth blows, and the sneaking in corners, and the silent stabs at backs we do not recognize.
And it is your loss, and it is all our losses, and it is very sad, that I have never hit back.
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