The rantings

Anyway there are lines of songs that keep floating in and out of my head these past few days, staying in bed and only getting up to add something to a slowly emerging portfolio of works, and wondering what I should really do. Almost as if, I’d had enough of this imaginary pilgrimage to Mecca, of facing one side and kneeling on worn knees, making a some sort of declaration, trying to prove some kind of point. But, who do you really prove points to? To yourself? Or to others? Do you earn stripes serving your country in the war, or does the war end up colouring stripes across your body, maybe someday when you’re six feet under, face covered in blood, limbs unrecognizable and strewn and scattered with a trumpet playing a mournful but heart- warming rendition of the National anthem for your dead ears to enjoy, with three shots ringing out and the flag placed solemnly across your belly…

Now how did I digress to war, I don’t know, I don’t know anything, and I’m really feeling like I should enter a confessional booth and ask a clown for penance. Maybe he’ll say, “Okay, ten jokes, two sarcastic remarks, five puns and an act of contrition”, and I’ll feel better.

Or maybe it’s just plain boredom and hanging out doesnt seem so very alluring anymore, and the encouragement of others saying “you’re doing this for art” isn’t so enticing anymore, but then if not for art then what am I doing this for, and I refuse to believe I would do something I wasn’t happy doing, I’m not that type of person, I refuse to be the person who lives life as if it were a death sentence stamped on his/her forehead, no, it must all be for something, but for what, then?

And when I talk to people who are serious and practical they tell me that my dissatisfaction is normal because I’m doing something abnormal and my senses are bound to knock me off my feet sooner or later, but I looked inside my soul this afternoon, during that perfect moment when sun hits your face and it’s orange and gorgeous and no, it’s not about a position at work, it’s not about money and it’s not about being different because when I think of it maybe there aren’t any differences in the world, only subtle alterations, maybe between smiles and frowns there are no differences, a frown is just a smile upside down, not necessarily opposites.

I finished a stupid murder mystery paperback this morning and I swallowed the story like one would swallow a live fish – I can’t believe people can write such crap when they can write about opposites and war and death sentences and make up theories that will aim to understand something broken… wouldn’t that be beautiful, to quietly aim for imperfection? Why is everyone so obsessed with being pretty and charming and adoring to the public? I don’t understand it … maybe there aren’t boring people in the world. Everyone is interesting, everyone has an interesting side, as long as they put aside the fronts they put on for the public. Fronts. Fronts, as in war fronts, and I feel like I’m peering from a hole over barbed wire, in my dirty fatigues and my gorgeous war helmet.

So. In conclusion. Should I smile and say, “Oh, it’s all so satisfying, I’m just going to Mecca, I just confessed to a clown and he gave me penance: Why did the chicken cross the road?” Or should I just admit to you that I’ve been trying to visualize all day how a turtle would look without its shell?

I’ll go with the latter.

And I have no conclusion for this.

Only to say that I can’t write anymore, and the keyboard has tricked me into pressing all the wrong keys lately, tricked me into forming all the wrong words lately, tricked me into putting together the worst sentences lately, and how do I fix it?

And yeah, how would a turtle look without its shell? Wide feet, flat back perhaps, tiny head? I think it would look adorable.