*Simply: Real Live Shit.
My aim: to illuminate dark corners, twist the meaning, wring the juice from plain terms and phrases. Daily life is pushed away, in order to turn down the bed covers, to expose desires and needs. Meandering in dreamy musing, I melt away the candle that I made.
Now, I am drained dry. I cannot see past the heat-devils shimmering on the road ahead of me. Run aground by bullshit and the people who wallow in it.
Often, we run into people that are immersed in pettiness, silliness, and other time-wasting pursuits that offer nothing to the greater good.
Moreover, they are not content to leave the joyful and the busy alone. They are not pleased until they dump upon strangers.
Those little discontent creatures of the day. Seeking for bystanders, unsuspecting people behind them in the line. Weary people at the train stop, only dreaming of going home, in order to start the day anew in a matter of hours.
They are our neighbors who will interrupt our brief reveries while we water the thirsty plants in the evening, their shadows blotting out the remaining rays of the day.
They call on on the phone as we draw a bath, inserting themselves in the only silent 30 minutes we have craved out of an interminable day.
But they do not have a problem. Just these tiny little pesky gnat size worries or useless gossip about people we do not care about or even wish to.
This tide of their ill-placed worries lap away at our feet, wearing us away to featureless remnants of ourselves.
Left worn, we have no strength to lend to our real friends with real issues. People who we love that are dealing with RLS. Real live shit, real problems.
Friends who are working two shitty jobs, to try to keep their homes out of foreclosures. Friends who are in foreclosure. Friends who are scrambling to keep normalcy in their lives.
Some have illnesses, parental problems, kids out of control.
Others have plenty of material goods yet they are heartbroken and bereft. Struggling with pain, working through depression. Just needing to be held by friendly arms or embraced by loving ears.
But these are are comrades-in-arms, our aides-de-camp. Road dogs, running buddies, shelter in the storm, our Rocks of Gibraltar.
When we needed them, they were there.
Now, where are we? Mired in the self-created drama of those who are emotional parasites. Infecting us, mutating our compassion.
I grabbed my verbal bug spray and did a fumigation, for I saw I had nothing left for those who deserve me. Those who have shown me that I matter to them.
My apologies have been sent. My barriers have been re-fortified.
I wish the same for those of you who have been besieged by people who do not understand their so-called problems pale in comparison to RLS.
