Keeping a healthy lifestyle, maintaining focus on the essentials, and finding some peace and serenity in the seasons of life... life will be calmer... the days will move more gently. God willing.

I'm still working on recognizing sarcasm, but I'm getting disturbingly good at recognizing rage, contempt, condescension, smugness, conceit, and pity.

Last night one restaurant was literally dripping with tension. The why is not clear, but the signals made more sense.

I utterly missed one episode of sarcasm until this morning. If I'm going to continue living in the South, I need to improve my indirect communication. 

I've got to find a place in this world. Life has become too dangerous since I peeled away the chemical layer that disguised the brokenness beneath. And now the world has this intensity as the lies become more clear. I can feel the anger of the people in the world. I can thier contempt. All the fairy tales fade away. From time to time it's brutal. 

I wonder how Artstick is doing. I really hope she still has some say in this world. Reality comes crashing down hard. I'm going to need a few rocks to hold onto. The past is never far. If I'm not careful, it will crush me like a bug. 

Cents

I'm like a bad penny. People are like, if we just shine it up, it will be ok. Too valuable to toss. Too ugly to like. Course, pennies lose any more value, and they will get destroyed.

Living in a family is a lot like having a job. The company goes through good times and bad. Every now and then you seek a rebrand, but the reputation still sticks. Everyone has a role and a place. Titles, even. Periodically someone is in danger of losing thier job, but then management realizes the price of terminating the contract. There's plenty of politics and maneuvering. Posturing. Power plays. Sometimes someone doesnt get the memo. 

I need to be careful. My job security is low. I can't afford a reorganization. We're going to have to cut costs. But if I keep overhead low, avoid outlays, who knows, I just might make it. On thin ice with corporate. But who knows... I keep my head down and I cross those t's and dot the i's, I might be alive and safe come new years... so long as reception stops answering the phone and AP prioritizes... maybe this outfit will still be around... 

But if the press people get too creative, corporate might come down hard. Let's all repeat the company line, someone is visiting from upstairs...

We ain't got no cents around here.

When people prefer pretty lies to ugly truth, facts because a matter of mutual agreement.

Reality is what happens when people look away.

Time and space allows for rekindling

When something dies...

Sometimes the end of one dream

Involves an internal dying

A fading into distance...

And yet, sometimes people won't let go of something that is dead.

They clutch it like Halloween candy,

Thinking that if they just hold tightly enough

And pretend

And make believe that nothing happened,

And fill in lies about the past,

That maybe, just maybe

That damn dream will get up and walk...

Like the resurrection.

But then time passes.

Thier tightly clutched hands press so tightly 

That they obliterate whats left.

What's dead stays dead.

And lies, no matter how comforting they may be

Fail to change the past.

Fail to change the present.

Fail, in fact, to kill the very future that may have been instead.

Sometimes hate does not heal.

Sometimes the contempt passed around like party favors simply poisons what good will remains.

It simply is a doubling down

That multiplies the disconnect.

And people rush to drive each other away

And they rejoice in their coldness and disdain,

Self appointed heroes and martyrs.

As if by destroying each other, they destroy their divisions.

Building thier anger with their lies.

And so begins another day.

Welcome to America. So long as the picture is pretty, the substance can vary.

Sometimes life events give me psychological whiplash. People moving in so many directions. Time and space grant more clarity. The noise fades and nothing remains but those memories. Little glimpses of connections between people, actions, and emotions. The sensation of sleepwalking is replaced by an edge so sharp. 

Reality seems like a dance of spectors, people moving and chanting. All the right words at all the right times and so long as we're moving in time, the narrative can be selected like multiple choice. But the moment a dancer falls out of step, the mirage melts away.