Thursday, February 26, 2004

It's a Long Long Road out of Hell

Inside the funeral home we went. Outside is a coma of white—snow everywhere, and breaths coming out in white clouds.

Warmth hits. We're inside. Our breaths are no longer white clouds.

There's comfortable furniture all around. A leather couch, a few reclining chairs. In the far left corner I see another door, and it's into where the people that work here are. Beside the door is windows; I can see computers over there. I imagine deeper in those recesses is where they embalmed her. That's where they took her naked, dead old body and gave it embalming fluid. Where they took her face and made it beautiful with makeup, layer after layer of makeup, and cosmetics. Made it beautiful, too perfect.

An old woman greeted us in, she had not a read of emotion on her. Wonder if she's just hiding it? Or is she used to it? And why does she work here? Does she want to face death. Does she think it makes her know what it'll be like? Does she like the funeral process? I didn't know, and I wouldn't. For the best. It was for the best to not know her motives for being here. It was probably the branching trails of life ending here.

An old man is beside her. Wrinkles on his face, gray hair, the signs of old age. He wore church garments. A priest, or something. Some religious man. Another person leashed in religion, for better or for worse. It made him stronger though. Strength is all that matters, it seems. Truth isn't something worth facing. The truth that God might not be what we think he is, and God might not even exist. Well, the weakest man is often the strongest; the strongest man is often the weakest. The weaker, the better, the stronger. I'd believe in what I wanted to, thank you very much.

I was here with my cousin, Matt, my mother and father, my grandma and grandpa. In the right side of the building were two doorways. One had an easel and there was a picture on it. It says her name on it. Violet. That's my great grandma, I never knew her. I did know her, but I never knew her. The woman on the picture looks old yet not too succumbed to her years. Her hair wasn't grayed in that picture. It never was. Even when she died because she couldn't breathe anymore.

Fragments of her are in my mind. Fragments that can't ever be put together, they don't match. I never knew her, I only saw her as an old, dying creature. She always had the oxygen tank hooked up to her, the clear wires of it hooked in her nose—it was a forget-me-not of smoking. From smoking, you get this. From smoking, from the nicotine, you get its addiction, its stimulant effects. And while you get stimulated, you get killed. Pleasure for the lessening of your life. What some people will give for that. What some people will give for their lives. They'll kill it away so they can feel better,

My mom smokes, still smokes. Smoking is selfish. One of the most selfish things I can say off the top of my head. Smoking is a monster. The thing that makes a monster a monster isn't how it looks, but what it does, and what you know about it. And I know about smoking. "I'm going to die anyway," my mom says when I tell her stop smoking, when I think of great grandma violet.

I'm going to die anyway.

Well, I'm the one that gets to watch it. What a fun party, I get to be there when you're suffering from what once gave you pleasure. I get to watch you die for reasons you well knew were coming, and because you "were going to die anyway." I get to see you suffer and die from something you did to yourself because you "were going to die anyway." I guess if you want to follow in grandma Violet's footsteps and kill yourself by your own designs, that's fine with me.

It's nothing different than taking a gun and putting it in your mouth and pulling the trigger. Only this gun is a cigarette. And it takes a match to light it and it needs to be used over and over again so it can work its magic. The magic that is it giving you pleasure, poisoning your lungs, and killing you. This gun just takes more time.

When will it go off? Oh, wait, you're "going to die anyway." So I guess that makes it all right, doesn't it?

Doesn't it?

We sat in the seats for a while. It was me and Matt. There were other people there, people I didn't know. They exchanged their greetings, said their condolences, went about their ways.

My parents had told me I was going to go to this service. And I wasn't going to say anything about it. So I hadn't, even though I didn't want to be here. Even though God's time was no time to me. Here I was.

We were forced into the room. The one where the easel was there on the outside, showing grandma Violet.

It was like a church in there. The rows and rows of wooden booths for people to sit in. And there she was. She was the center of it all, and the center of the entire room.

An open casket stood. There she was. Hadn't they made her look pretty? I looked at her and felt something but brushed it aside. Although I wouldn't agree she was probably in heaven, I would agree she was done suffering. She was done with the suffering she had brought on to herself by smoking. And that was good. That's all well.

Motionless. She wasn't moving. Why wasn't she moving? She was dead. It is strange to see someone who's dead when you've never seen someone dead. It was strange to see her unmoving. I wanted her to move. But she wouldn't.

I looked at her and then sat down beside my brother, my mother and father further down the wooden booth. My mother looked pained, and rightfully so. And when she walked she limped. She had fallen on her foot and injured it again.

Soon it began. The old man with the wrinkles came in. He told some people who were beside her open casket that rosary service was beginning.

What was a rosary? I had never been to one, only heard of them.

I was in for a real treat, and I didn't even know it.

He kneeled down and everyone else kneeled down. I kneeled down too. Pushing my eyes to their sides, I saw in back of me that Matt wasn't kneeling. I wondered why I was kneeling, and decided I didn't want to be kneeling. But I knew my parents would complain if I got out of kneeling.

"Holy Mary mother of God. . ."

It sounded like a swear word. Holy Mary mother of God. I had heard that somewhere else, too. I remembered.

It was in a short story by Stephen King, from the short story collection Everything's Eventual. It was called "That Feeling, the One You Can Only Say in French," I thought. I had read it many times over and liked it.

It told of a woman that was in some kind of purgatory. She went through event after event and ended up at one point and started over. Then the events went through again.

Each time the woman had deja vu, and imagined things as they happened. But she still couldn't stop it and it all ended and started over again. It was a dark, interesting story. I wrote a lot of stories like that, ones that were fragments that, in the end, added to a whole. I thought over that while the man with wrinkles continued on.

He was holding a rosary in his hands. I would have just called it a crucifixion necklace, because that's what it was. But it was a "rosary." Or so I had been told. I could tell he was counting the beads of it, going all the way around and around. I thought maybe he'd be done after one time around and I could get the hell out of here.

"—Our father, who art in heaven—"

But it wasn't like that. He kept going on and on. It was so methodical. So strategic. I didn't say a word of what he was saying, but most everyone else did. They all said it together, in one coalescing mass. I wasn't even hearing the words anymore. I was just thinking.

To the side of her open casket were flowers. They were fake flowers. I thought it all looked so fake. The flowers were bright, a mosaic of colors. Dancing on your eyes they'd leave an after trail if you looked away.

"—and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil—"

Emotions welled into me like a big balled fist. It beat on me. I didn't want to show any emotion, I wouldn't cry I wouldn't show anything. It was the way I was, I wasn't going to go away from it.

The sounds of tissues, of noses blowing. Of people crying. Why cry if she's in heaven? If she's in a better place? You selfish people.

But that was how I would feel, too. But I had never known her, I had never known her. I hadn't—

"—holy Mary mother of God—"

I didn't have many feelings for her death. In a sense she had done it, she had smoked herself to death. But it was also old age too, but I had never known her. I had only seen her when she was old, without charisma, without much emotion. Without much of anything.

I had went to the nursing home, came to her hooked up to her hissing oxygen tank. Hiss, hiss, take in oxygen, live, hiss hiss. I had hugged her, but it meant nothing, and it probably meant nothing to her other than me accepting her and she accepting me.

The nursing home scared me. It was a collection of the old, the people who were gray and would die. It was the opposite of me, I didn't want to see it. I never want to see it.

She couldn't even do anything anymore by herself. She was on pills—pill after pill. One for depression, another for arthritis. Another for this, another for that. I would have rather just died than be on the pills. And they wondered why she was depressed. If I was old and knew soon I was going to die, I would be depressed too. I would wish I was already resting and not dealing with anything anymore.

Imagine having another help you dress, eat, go to the bathroom, walk, breathe—imagine everything you take for granted, which is you as an individual, is gone. That's what it was like for her, in that nursing home.

It's funny. We live our lives, and we suffer more than we feel pleasure. It's the truth. And then, when finally we are retired from working, when finally the world seems to be going too fast for us, we're given old age. We start to die—not that we don't start dying from the minute we're born—but we really start to see changes. What is the real reason for living?

The real reason is to be remembered. To be immortal when we're really mortal and already dead.

That's what writers seek to do, even if they don't admit it. We remember others, too. There's Einstein. There's Pythagoras. There's Democritus. It goes on and on.

We live to be immortal by some other way than what we are.

So I sat there. And I thought, and wondered, and waited.

It ended finally. Many were crying. I wasn't. I was sad, but I felt she had deserved to die. She had been suffering, and it had been her time to go for a while. It was good she was gone. Good in the way that her suffering was over.

It had been a numbing thing, the rosary. But I had conquered it, just like I have to conquer everything else that comes to me.

I thought that, when I died, I'd have myself cremated. And no funeral, nothing about Jesus saved me and sent me off to heaven. Just I was dead, and that was it. No reason to make a big deal out of my death. The people who care about me will remember me, and the people who don't care will never have met me, or will forget me. Simple as that.

Simple as that.
Comments (4) | Permalink

Just a Thought that's on My Mind. . .

Well, my dad's going to make me see Passion. I think I'm going to do a whole post that ponders over why Jesus Christ means so much, and if so, if his death is overstated.

Because really, think about it. Many people have died for other people, and Jesus Christ did the same, as well as dying for what he believed.

Think of the blacks. Think of soldiers in war. Think of muslims, jews, chirstians. . .any group or peoples or people that have died for their cause. Any group of people that suffered for what they believed.

I could go off on a big rant now, but we'll save it.

Needless to say, I think the centering of Jesus Christ as a symbol means something, but I think it's rather. . .zealous, ignorant, stupid (I can't really find the right word here), to remember a man that died for what he believed.

Many people have died for what they believed.

And Jesus Christ wasn't the only person beaten for his beliefs in Christianity, and nor was he the only person subjected to large amounts of pain (we all feel pain at some point in our lives), and also, nor should he just be remembered. I see what he symoblizes: I see him as a man that died for what he believed, and (if you believe he actually did heal people, blah blah blah) what he did.

Crucifixion was a common-place way of punishment back then. Christ wasn't, obviously, the only person to die like that.

I don't see the big deal really.

One man who supposedly said he can give the gift of eternal life, and died to see it done. Supposedly.

I'd die for that too. I don't see a lot of reason in living sometimes, and I'd sure like to be remembered like Jesus Christ (pff). . .

Anyway, I just don't see anything. Jesus Christ, whatever he was and is and did and has done, was still just a man. It's obvious to see this since he died.

People who were in the concentration camps suffered just as much as, if not more than, Jesus Christ.

When Nagasaki and Hiroshima were bombed, the people who suffered radiation sickness suffered just as much as, if not more than, Jesus Christ.

The people who served in the Civil War, the Revolutionary War, World War I, World War II, the War of 1812, the Spanish American war, the Vietnam war, suffered just as much as if not more than Jesus Christ.

And all these people suffered because they had to as well as for us all.

Just like Jesus Christ supposedly did.

And this is why and what I want to say.

I don't see remembering some guy and making his death seem so grand and great when there's also other people, better and more tortured, who died just the same, in the same ways, for us.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Death is release, a bloodsoaked fan.

I feel like crap.

But you didn't need to hear that, did you?

Neither did I.

So carry on. I have nothing to say.
Comments (0) | Permalink

Just relieving stress

cocoon swoon
i don't give
a shit
these numbers
don't exist

still they stare
gotta be there
still they stare
gotta be there

you'll never grow up
to be celebrated
for your fame
you're never gonna
find your name

identity smears
handprint on my head
number's been said
social security death.

i don't give
a shit
this education
is tedius. . .meticulum. . .
doesn't teach me well.
it's hell
it's toiling on me like a bell
it's digging in me with its shell
imago buttefly we make love
because we can.

sever die leave,
gonna not give not see.
don't touch me.

long monsteclaw
nails stroke my head
whisper it's okay
and the nails go in
puncture skin
bleed then

another nail
stokes my head
goes in
punctures skin

two halves
of my brain
held on the wall
hurts me more
numbs my head
can't feel pain
already dead

panoraming out
you see my all
my brain's on a cross
my eyes are holes
i'm crucifixed by you
imago in my cocoon
stabbing through

growing wings
screaming buttefly
metamorphasize
transfixed the crucifixed eyes.
monster got me hypnotized
eyes spiral down
black hole brown
dirt deep in extinction's crowd

bury me now
sick weary hues
and baleting smooths

there's pain in my head
humdrum it said
like steel needles
rusted hinge
scraping in
my head's tilted
down in the side
tetanus shot coming in
the needle's eye
circumsized
homogenized
pasteurized

i'm a cow
black spots, white skin
my udder's being sucked sore
milking my blankness
making me dry
rusting down this time
lips O a sigh
only you and i.

a brawn machine
with an iron lung
and hands of steel
and tendrilling feet
that shimmer in the sun.
the diamond eyes full of cold
hands reach me rape me dry
sucking me inside
machine fucks my all
embryo dead i fall

i don't
give a shit
about this tedium,
meticulum, this
rot-apple-core

i don't give a shit
about the earth
that's held
in the palm
of smart asshole's hands
groped and felt up
and i can't understand

the smart ones
are the dumb ones
and the dumb ones
don't know what they know
but they know more
than the smart ones will ever know
in this rot-carcass-show
we call living on
the earth.

i don't need
no education
i don't need no
shit to hear
i'm sick of the hubrance
and the know-it-all
and the want-it-all
i see.
i want my fucking hands back
i want to be alone
i want to see nothing
and blow.
make the tangled mess i know.

the candles
on the cake
wick their flames
to my eyes
and i blow and wish
and happy birthday goodbye
dreams i said won't answer me
they're tumbleweeds in the road
that die.

fair-weather man
no more of this
i can't stand
i don't need to
understand

there are no flowers on
my brain
there are no flowers
on my grave
there are no flowers
on my chains
there i keep chanting
for the forgotten names.

i'm a slave
and i tredge along
i sing my song
and i have work to do
in the fields
time to till
the education seeds
time to till
the working seeds
time to till
the fuck-me-over seeds

time to feel nothing
but see
time to feel nothing
but be
time to do it all
but seethe
time to do nothing
but grieve
time to feel chained
and believe
time to fall down
but catch myself
with my sleeve

encouragement is far away
left to the bay on the open sea
the blue bleeding heart of the water's steed
and the squall is over and he fell in
and reason is far away
left on an airplane and is on the open air
and the squall is over and he fell down
into a building with its twin towers
and wrecked them down
they collapsed and here i'm found
under it all

feeling is here but repressed
stricken down with a knife's distress
and stabbing in my vena cava
the blood strokes the floor
with its fingers, its gropes
these death-eyed feelings fight
dead soldiers in the field of war
boom! scree! bang!
a missle hits the floor
and bang! bang! bang!
bullets rattle my core
shotten i fall down
and i swore.
i swore one needs to win.

there's tanks all around
and explosions hit me down
and bullets slug me by
and my gun quivers in my hand
falling down but i feel had.
i feel for my hand
but it's not there anymore
the fingers bleed on the floor
the parted palm is holding a gun
and i'm severed.

a hand is needed
to create
a head is needed
to know.
and i don't give a shit
about knowing
i'm dying on the floor
in this war
in this place
from being here in the gore.
i want my hand back,
my severed hand.
this head deserves to rack in pain
deserves to be hit point blank in grades.
an a+ sounds good on my report card.
but i guess you'll have to tell
them i was KIA.
and the homework was a big stave.

imago buttefly
oh it's you i see
but will not be.
and we. . .

we make love
because we can.

we do it all
because we can.
and we hold each other
hand-in-hand.
the lips are wide open.
stroken, broken.
the proboscis tears the skin.

they always win.
the imago is an ugly skin.
a fucking winged grin.
and a fucking enslaving hymn.
don't sing the fuck-over-tune.
it'll put you in its cocoon.
wrap all over you.
and you'll swoon
in a swoony sigh.

and mature inside.
till the lips open wide
like a fucking sky
that wears you high
and rapes you all the time.
and you'll finally be
an imago butterfly.
Comments (0) | Permalink

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

I Think George Bush is Homophobic

WASHINGTON - President Bush urged approval of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages on Tuesday, pushing a divisive social issue to the center of the election campaign and setting a clear policy contrast with Democratic challengers John F. Kerry and John R. Edwards.
Bush said "activist judges and local officials" from Massachusetts to San Francisco to New Mexico were trying to redefine marriage and "change the most fundamental institution of civilization" by allowing same-sex weddings. "On a matter of such importance, the voice of the people must be heard," he said.

Democrats accused Bush of pandering to right-wing supporters and tinkering with the Constitution to divert attention from his record on jobs, health care and foreign policy. "He is looking for a wedge issue to divide the American people," Kerry said.

Both Kerry and Edwards said they oppose same-sex marriages but would not support a constitutional amendment.

Banning gay marriage is a top priority for Bush's conservative supporters, particularly those among religious and family-oriented groups. But while a majority of Americans - sometimes by as much as a 2-1 margin - oppose legalizing gay marriages, Bush's move could hold political risks, particularly if voters see him as intolerant or question his self-description as a "compassionate conservative."

"The president needs to worry about fair-minded swing voters in America, not a Republican base that he has locked up," said Patrick Guerriero, executive director of Log Cabin Republicans, a gay GOP group.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who has sanctioned hundreds of gay marriages in his city, called Bush's move a "shameful" attempt to politicize the Constitution.

Mindful of the high emotions and clear differences on the issue, Bush said, "We should also conduct this difficult debate in a manner worthy of our country, without bitterness or anger."

Conservatives were delighted Bush had plunged in. "There is no more important issue for our nation than the preservation of the institution of marriage," said Kelly Shackelford, president of the Texas-based Free Market Foundation, a family advocacy group.

Momentum for a constitutional amendment has grown as San Francisco officials have performed thousands of same-sex marriages in defiance of state law barring such unions. In Massachusetts, the state's highest court has ruled that a state law falling short of allowing full-fledged marriage for gays would be unconstitutional.

Bush softened his announcement by leaving the door open for states to legalize civil unions, which homosexual rights groups say is an insufficient alternative to marriage. "The amendment should fully protect marriage while leaving the state legislatures free to make their own choices in defining legal arrangements other than marriage," said Bush, who had opposed legalizing civil unions when he was governor of Texas.


GOP lacks unity on issue

Republican officials said there was no rush to bring an amendment to the floor in the House. Some conservatives want a broader approach than Bush supports, and others oppose federalizing the issue, at least for now.

"The groups that are for a constitutional amendment are split over what it should be," said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. "We are trying to bring them all together and unify them."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from San Francisco, said she would fight any amendment. "Never before has a constitutional amendment been used to discriminate against a group of people, and we must not start now," she said.

The three GOP House members from Western New York on Tuesday voiced either opposition or coolness to the idea.

And the state's two Democratic senators, Charles E. Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton, said they are opposed.

Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds, R-Clarence, chairman of the Republican National Congressional Committee, said merely that "the debate has started in Congress and it's not one that will end today or tomorrow. I think we'll see it throughout the year."

Sources close to the GOP congressional effort said they doubted Reynolds wants to color his campaign to widen the party's control of the House with a debate over same-sex unions.

Rep. Jack Quinn, R-Hamburg, said "I believe that marriage exists only between a man and a woman, and I think the people of Western New York feel that way. But I also think that tampering with the Constitution over this is a waste of time."

Mack McKinney, a spokesman for Rep. Amo R. Houghton of Corning, said the moderate Republican is opposed to a constitutional amendment.

Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-Fairport, did not respond Tuesday to inquiries about her position.


"A sacred document'

Clinton issued a statement through her spokesman Joe Householder implying that Bush is using the controversy over same-sex unions drive a wedge into the electorate.

"I do not support amending the Constitution to address this issue," she said. "The Constitution is a sacred document and should not be used as a tool to divide the American people."

Schumer's spokesman Phil Singer said the senator supported the Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law by former President Bill Clinton in 1996, which permits states to disregard marital entitlements granted by other states.

"But Sen. Schumer does not believe that this issue belongs in the Constitution," Singer said.

---

Quote: "A few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization."

Bush said that.

That right there--for that right there I wouldn't vote for him as president. But Kerry also opposes gay marriage, too. . .

Politics are so goddamned stupid. This is the land of freedom, the land of opportunity, it's the land of "equality." In this country's constitution's first few lines, it says "all men are created equal."

Contradicting, no?

I can't believe how stupid this is getting. The gays deserve just as much as the blacks deserve just as much as the whites deserve just as much as any person on this earth does.

I'm glad I don't care and don't pay much attention to politics. . .

Marriage is freaking nothing about what sex marries what sex. And so, the people who want to marry, regardless of anything you might think, of your prejudices, of that they're not of the opposite sex, should be able to marry if they want to. They should be able to legally marry.

What marriage is about is two people living their lives together because they love one another.

It's not even a goddamned issue. . .if you're a human being and have dignity in being so, and put your stupid prejudice bullshit aside, you'll see I'm right.

But whatever.

This whole thing pisses me off immensely.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Kristallnacht

Der Wille Zur Macht

I don't even know what Der Wille Zur Macht means.

Hey, Erin, what does it mean?

I got it from the box of Xenosaga. I've always wondered what it means.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

Goldilocks Was a Goldfish.

Geometry was quite depressing today.

We got back our worksheets. Let's see here. More than half wrong wrong on each.

Wonderful Mitch wonderful.

I absolutely hate how this teacher grades on if you got the right answer to a problem or not. It'd be so much easier for me if he'd just grade on if you tried, within reason, to get an answer, but ended up making a mistake which is easily fixable.

I've said this in the past, but I'll say it again. If I had a different teacher for Geometry the class would be a lot easier. I know one person who had the teacher I have and failed, then took a different teacher in summer school and passed with flying colors.

I guess it's good that I'm being challenged in math and all, but then I again, days like today the class just ruins my day in some way.

I'm trying to stay positive, but it's not working well. I was up late last night, and I didn't really do my Chemistry, or study for my Latin test.

Yeah. It's just one great thing in school after another today it seems. First we get our midterms, and mine are terrible (which I expected, but still, looking at them just annoys me).

I got an A- in AP English, an A- in History, an F in Newspaper (I did my story this issue, they just haven't added it. My grade better go up to about a C- once they add the stuff in), I got a D in Geometry (the reason being the teacher barely grades on anything and because he only grades on tests mostly, which I've done bad on),a C in Chemistry, and I have a C- in Latin.

Latin I shold be getting an A+. I had it the first semester. I also had a B in Geometry for the first quarter of the first semester.

I hate school right now. The fact my grades are where they're at, and that I'm actually doing my homework most nights (last night's an exception; but, my load was light, and I got most of it done today before the classes anyway) isn't helping out. Why aren't my grades going up?

The C I have in Chemisty pisses me off too. I've been trying in this class. It's the same crap here again--the teacher grades on if you got your answers right on the assignments he gives. I hate that, especially considering much of this class is math that's way over my head half of the time that it's under it. Blah.

Rant rant rant.

I think I'll just shut up.

Pretty sure I'm going to do bad on my Latin test today, too.

When I was in Geometry I just wanted to be at my house, in my room, the lights off and music, soothing music playing, and me writing, escaping this stupid fucked up world.

I don't deserve what I wish for though.

Just got to tough it out. . .

I'll get over it. This post was more catharsis than anything, and I've probably made a hyperbole out of it all by now.

Okay. I'm tired but I'll make it through today.


Comments (1) | Permalink

Finger in the Hand

Identity is fresh on my mind. If you haven't seen this movie, I'd highly recommend you see it.

I can do a brief synopsis of its story. But I'll be giving away, hell, I'll give it all away; I'll say the whole story. So if you don't want it to be spoiled, then don't read ahead.

This movie is great—it's the stuff I eat up. The basis of it is ten people get stuck in a motel from varying things happening that bring them there. The beauty of it is that they end up where they're at mostly because of each other. A car gets a flat tire from one of those high-topped shoes. The car got it flat from a woman, who passed by where they were earlier, opening up her briefcase and the shoe flying out.

When the man gets out and tries to fix the flat, his wife gets out. While he's fixing up the tire, she sees her son from the window. She sits there and looks at him, and stares at him. She backs up, and then she's hit by a limo passing by.

The limo ran into her because the driver was getting a cell phone battery out of his passenger's bag and his eyes weren't on the road.

He gets out of the car when he hits her, and they get in the limo and take her to the motel they pull into. The owner of the hotel tells him to drive up to a hospital and get an ambulance (the phone wasn't working). He drives, and as he's driving, he finds the woman whose shoe was the one that caused the flat tire, causing the limo to hit the man's wife. Her car dies, and as the limo driver's passing, she gets out and waves her hands wildly so he stops and picks her up.

He drives on. She tells him that there's a flood up ahead, and no way through. He doesn't listen, saying he needs to get to the hospital no matter what. His limo gets stuck in the flood because of this, and another car is approaching. He gets out and asks the two people for their cell phone if they have one. They don't have a cell phone, so they get a lift and go back to the motel.

Soon they pull up to the motel. Then another car pulls up in a little while too. It's a police car. The officer gets out and says he has a murderer in his car, and he needs a room, it's an emergency.

From here on out, the ten people are killed one-by-one. First an actress dies, then another, another, and another.

The murderer himself is killed. The motel owner's baseball bat is lodged in his throat, and protrudes out, his head up and dead.

Then they think the motel owner was the killer. The cop says it's him and says it often.

From here, more people die. It's found out that the motel owner isn't even the motel owner. He was actually a man down on his luck who came upon the motel. He says when he came he found the real owner face down in a pie (I forget which kind, exactly) and so he put him in the freezer, and a car salesman came in and wanted a room. From there he had been the owner.

They tie him up.

It's found out soon that what's going on at the motel isn't even real. A man with the last name Rivers (his first name escapes me right now, might be good to find it) has been convicted of murdering many people at a motel years ago. He was only a child when it happened. From there on out, he had split personalities. His psyche was torn into many persons, and his psychiatrist explains that his identities are fighting each other out so only one can become Rivers.

The limo driver, who used to be a cop, comes to the forefront. Before this happened, he was looking at driver's licenses. He had found that everyone had something in common—their names were all names of states, and they had the same birthdays. Suddenly, as he's looking, he's with the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist tells Ed what's going. He gives Ed a mirror, and he looks in it and sees River's face. He asks what the hell is going on, and he's told about River's identities fighting each other, and that one of them is the one who killed all the people at the motel those years ago. And he must kill it.

Then he's back at the motel again. Paris, a whore, is in the cop's car. She finds papers of information in the cop car. It has that the murderer was a murderer, but the cop, too, is a murderer.

A scene is shown recaping how the murderers got free. It shows one of the murderers using a knife hidden in his clothes to stab through his seat and stab the cop driving the car. From there they get out, and the fake cop puts on the cop's clothes, and puts his fellow fugitive back in the back of the car.

Ed, the limo driver and ex cop, finds Paris and tells her it's going to be all right. He goes off to kill the fake cop acting as a cop, and a shootout occurs. They both end up shooting each other at once, and they fall down, Ed stooping and walking away, then falling. Paris comes over and asks him where he went, what he saw.

Paris, once a whore, had decided to go to California to grow oranges. It was what she was going to do.

Ed tells her with his dying breaths that he saw her at the orange patch. Paris tries to help Ed up, but Ed knows he's going to die, and knows he's dying, so he doesn't let her.

Paris takes a truck and is off. What comes is a very memorable scene of her driving in the truck, singing Bob Dylan's, "I Want You." These scene continues to haunt me, and is so beautiful. Whenever I hear Bob Dylan's "I Want You" I remember this scene.

It shows Paris's eyes, wet with tears, and then River's face, fat and bald, and he's singing the lyrics just like Paris, and his eyes are watery.

Since Ed had killed the personality that supposedly killed all those people at the motel those years ago, they had stayed River's execution orders, and he was being driven off to an asylum. His psychiatrist is in the car.

Paris gets to California, and is using a small rake to till her soil. As she's tilling, she finds a motel key in the ground. It says one. All throughout the movie, when someone was killed, they'd find a key with them.

Her lips start fluttering, and it's really beautiful and racy. Seeing this part made my heart race, and my whole body scream.

Paris's lips flutter, she lets out moans. She turns around. There's the kid standing there with a garden tool in his hand. The kid that had watched as his mom died in the beginning, that'd been around the whole time.

It shows quickly scenes of the various people dying again. We see him at the window as his mom gets hit with an evil smile on his face. There's him with a knife. There's him pushing a man into a car and getting hit by it. There's a music that's clanking playing as this shows, steel and cold. It bangs in a ding with each showing of the kid and how he killed.

And then it shows him by Paris. And then it shows Rivers saying, "Please don't. No."

And then his psychiatrist opens the fence of the back. He asks him what's wrong. River's face tightens. His face contorts. He puts his chained arms around the psychiatrist and kills him.

The boy puts his hand forward and kills Paris.

The car scuttles off in a desert. Screeches to a stop.

It ends with a boy whispering an old rhyme (which I need to find and put at this point).

I think what makes this movie so good is how it was the kid in the end.

This movie also gives me an interesting story idea.

How often have you thought life is a dream? Doesn't it seem like it sometime?

Putting God into this picture: what if we're just multiple personalities of God? What if everything is just his imagination?

Now implement this movie into it: what if one of them is raging for supremacy. One is fighting for control.

It's an interesting thought, isn't it?

This is the way I am. I have an intense imagination at times (as any writer should).

As I've said before, what ifs are for stories. I need to write a story about this.

Okay, enough about that movie. Just thinking about how that kid looks when he's about to kill Paris just makes me shake in a way, and relive the moment all over again.

In short, see Identity. It's absolutely worth it. At first it just seems like your run-of-the-mill horror story, but then at the end it just ascends this. As I said, I think the images of the kid being the personality that killed them all, and that end sequence showing him as he killed all the other identities, is what made this movie so memorable.

How could a kid do something like that? A pure, innocent kid?

It's because it's inside of him.

It's inside all of us.

The movie also reinforces my feeling that there's sides to everyone. Like a coin, only so much more. There's different sides of us all over. It's also good for the imagination—something I never want to die in me. It's been hooked up to an iron lung lately, but I'm nursing it back to health. I don't want it to die. I want to always feel there's something better than this banal reality out there; that there's someplace I can go in my mind to push it all away.

I've said in the past my philosophy is Naturalism. Naturalists believe life is bad. In every facet. And they often show pessimism. They don't believe in family, church, God, education, society. They only believe you live to die, and life is a bitch, and that's it.

Really, who in the world could say they're just one philosophy? I can't. Every single day I'm changing, I'm becoming different and I'm influenced and moved around. It's something uncertain, and whatever I feel like I feel like. I went through a period of time where everything seemed faded, used, gone. That was when I posted particularly depressing things, and I had a conversation on the internet with people like Josh. These conversations were long excursions of me moaning and telling how I feel, and how I see things, and how they seem purposeless and how I wonder why things have to be the way they are.

Now I'm more along a Realist edge. Realists believe life is all. It's good, bad, beautiful, wonderful, terrible, monsterous, wasteful, useless, awesome, just good really, just fine really. It goes on and on. Realist books often don't have a climax nor do they have an ending. Read something like Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. That's an example. I also remember a book by someone-or-other Crayne (sp) called Red Badge of Courage. That's a realistic novel, and is considered a classic by some. I'm thinking it's about war and so on, but I can't quite remember.

Other times lately, I'm more of a Romanticist. I am heavily in touch with whatever you want to call the need for love is. Or whatever you want to call escapism in the form of a need for physical bondage, coalescion. It may be just "young lust," to quote Pink Floyd, but whatever it is, it's what it is. And I see that.

All I know is that I'm not just one certain philosophy. It changes all the time.

I don't know much about other philosophies at this time. I plan on learning all about them, maybe taking a philosophy class in college. But I do know something about Existentialism. It says that what affects us around us is what makes us what we are. I believe in this, too, and also the notion away from this: that we'll be what we'll become no matter what touches us and affects us. I know these two things go hand-in-hand, but I see that both could be what we are. I mean, we seem to have this certain will inside us to do what we do, at times. So I think it goes both ways.

Moving on, today has been interesting. Last night I didn't write my 2,000 words, but I was so tired. I think I should be writing more of my "The Nobodies and Moana Jane" but I just don't feel like it. Tomorrow I need to force myself to write more of a story, though. I need to keep the pressure on my writing and keep it serious if I'm ever going to be a real writer, or at least a writer in my heart. But it's been pretty hard lately. I'm losing my will again in everything, but I keep pushing myself up. Right now I feel some emotion, and that's when it's good to write more of my stories. But I'd rather just sit here self-examining myself like I am now. Plus I want to keep writing entries in here (I'm writing in a text document of my own right now) and keep it and read it sometime when I'm older, just so I can remember. Remember what? Remember me. Or whatever I am now.

Tonight I feel in a simple mood, which probably is coming through in how I'm saying things. In comparison with my long post about monsters (which I turned into my newspaper column this issue) this writing isn't as eloquent or anything. Maybe it's just because I don't feel much for words today. I'm just splurging out whatever's on my mind right now and getting down my needed quota so I can go to sleep. It's probably lame like that, but what can you do. I'm dry on writing lately. It's not writer's block, it's more along the lines of I feel reality eating into me, and it won't go away and leave me alone, and I don't see any reason to fight it by writing extensively.

Or maybe it isn't like that. I don't know. How would I know? I'm too damn confused as it is. I'm just looking at my navel right now and it's really not making sense, but what can you do.

To think there used to be an umbilical cord there. To think I used to be a small little fetus. To think I was born a simple way and a simple reason.

They say birth is a miracle. They say lots of things are miracles. I beg to differ. It beggars belief to think that.

We've scientifically found how birth works. All it is is genes meshing together, the dominant ones taking dominance, and meshing together to create what soon will be a child. The cells replicate and replicate and brick by brick, nucleus by nucleus we're built. A sperm and an ovum forming together is what makes it. How is this a miracle? I don't see it. It's just chances coming together to do what nature's designed for us to do—to carry on our life in our offspring. Simple as that, easy as that, blah blah blah. It's not a miracle. Since when is a man ejaculating into a woman's vagina, and the man's sperm traveling on a great, wonderous odyssey to the woman's ovum to combine and turn to a zygote and make a fetus, then a baby, then a child, then a teen-ager, then a man, then an old man, then a dead, lifeless body, dead from its natural twirl on things, only heightened in life by the good conditions lived in? How is that a miracle? It isn't.

It's the natural way of things. A circle. It spins and spins. It's one of life's gears. It spins and spins and it keeps going over the ground it's already gone over. There's no sharp angles to it, there's no splendor in it. It's mostly what it is. And I'm fine with that. Looking at life in this light it's simple. You live. You die. It's all good, and you gather ye rosebuds while ye may.

When I think about it, I'd actually rather not know how a baby is formed and created. I'd rather have it be told that it's actually something amazing that my imagination could fashion.

Something like a baby is formed when God uses his hand on some lifeless tissue and gives it life. But I have long not believed in a God (at least, I haven't sat there and cared if there isn't one or not), and so that's not possible. With being able to know and understand things, and look them over from many angles, I've seen that it's not anything like this. The creation of a baby is simple and isn't anything amazing.

This is good and bad. It's good that I know how life is created, and it's good that I understand it. But it's not good that it's so without splendor. You see, I've always had a love for great and good things, things that aren't so humdrum and boring. And mundane. I like to hear a story well told, and I like it to be weird and multi-layered and messing with your mind. I like things to be as compelling as they can be.

And none of the world's like this. Most of it, anyway.

There's a lot of kid still in me, and I plan to never let it die. It's the kid in me that sits down here in the very first place and writes and likes it. It's the kid in me that picks up a book and reads it and enjoys it. It's the kid in me that keeps me alive more than anything else. It's not this society, it's not anything else. It's my love of innocence and my love of imagination and my love for the weird and strange and what could be but isn't that keeps me going. And at the core of this, in its fundamental eye, is writing. Writing is all of these things and much more.

The feeling of creating something, of making something that is entirely my own and isn't this humdrum reality is an enthralling feeling. The feeling that I can say fuck you to life and escape with words is a great feeling. And the feeling that I can be quiet about it and I can adapt to the way this world is is also a good feeling.

When life's about being a slave to this world and how it sees things, that's when I'll know anything that was once me has died. When it's the Silence of the Lambs, and all the lambs have been killed and shot and slain and maimed, that's when I'll know I've died. When imagination has been ripped away from me, ripped off like a tight-held piece of clothing, that's when I'll know reality has won.

When there could be when there was, when there shall be when there could.

Don't deny yourself the feelings that you most love. That you most cherish and hold and cuddle. Mine's a baby that I won't let die. Mine's a baby that's not going to be dropped. I plan on never dropping it, even as much as this world really kicks you were it hurts. I'll surround myself by things reminding me that this world isn't so bad if you can just adapt and find solace away from it in the most quiet way.

There are no flowers on your grave,
there are no chains.
There I keep chanting for the forgotten names.

What sustains thee also kills thee, stabbing in thine heart in thine vein, It wrenches forth a steel-cold hand. A machine is thine owner, and thine throne. And whereupon thee stand, thee can see it all be. And when a heart doth stop, and when it doth be unattuned, and the world a painting red smeared, let the blankness of the page be thine home. Whereupon written shall be stone. And thereupon shall be written evermore. And thereupon shall groan the dead deceased, with scorn, "evermore." And a murmur shall overturn all woe and pain, and all woe and pain shall be exhumed, whilst inhumed be thine whole.

We suck young blood. Mosquitoes we are, and leeches we be, and maggots oft we agree. Young is the lamb, and the pig, and the cherry tree. And young is the blood we breed.

Shall I suck dry the leaves? Shall I suck dry you of all beings?

Who should know but the sustainer and the killer, the thing which is. And so it is seen the existence. And shall it be? And so the existence is we.

There's other things to say. I'm just too tired to say them.

I believe it's time to sleep.
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Monday, February 23, 2004

The Aufbau Principle

So yeah. I'm reading Chemistry and this crap isn't making sense. The teacher explains it so much better than this book does.

Anyway, it's my mom's birthday today. I think everyone should hear this because my mom matters just as much as everyone else.

I've also noticed it's Aleia's birthday too (unless she put a false date down. . .) so happy B-day to her as well. I've also noticed it's Noryko's birthday too (an older member from OB) so happy B-day to him as well, even if he might not read this.

Now. I have two posts I could post. I'm considering waiting until tomorrow for the one I have, but I might just post it after this one. We'll see.

What I have here is a story I started for my mom. It's an odd story, but I'm an odd boy. Odd Sotry + Odd Boy= ?.

Whatever it equals I'll post what I have done here.

"As It Lives"

The world is a clicking clacking clamor of gears, and spinning what-you-have-its, and what-you-make-its. It spins in its gears, over—over—and over again, and meshes here and there, and speeds and slows then and on that.

A large factory building with harsh conditions and its collection of people. Here things are made, created, in quick succession with each worker's hand assembling one part of it all. And the machines that run the whole factory spin—spin—and spin. This factory, like the world, is a clicking clamor of gears, the spinning of what-you-have-its, and what-you-make-its. And it's here we find her.

She is a fresh-faced, interesting woman. Perceptive eyes, facile hands, green eyes like a thick green-walled forest. Of the young age of nineteen she thinks few know. Of the struggles she thinks few remember. But she is living this struggle right now.

In the factory, she is the one who assembles the curves on the frames. She takes the lifeless matter given to her, and changes it to resemblance of something that could go as alive. Her task is simple: she takes the aid of the machine at her disposal, directs it along its cut, and there she makes the form of a being; there's the hands—the round, oval face—the wry hands—the curving waist—the little eyes. From there, the lifeless mass is taken to another factory worker's midst. Then another. Until, come to its final stage, like Frankenstein's monster, the lifeless mass is hit by lightning—only this lightning comes from a machine.

And then and there, life is created. A new being breathes and lives. She's seen so many of them they mean nothing to her.

These now-living beings then go eternally along the conveyor belt. Inside their minds they are living a real life, and what they see in there they think is reality. But of course, it is not. They are simply living machines that are studied and are a breakthrough in science, and that is all. They move endlessly, their full lifespan, and then are thrown in a recycling machine when of no use that recycles their parts and brings those parts back to her for her to create. Then it's back to fashioning the eyes, the lungs, the body; and from there the body is brought to its varying stages of creation and given life.

She's at her home in bed right now. The alarm goes off. It's beeping, and she cups her hand over its top and pushes inward the button. It stops blearing, and tired-eyed and lethargic, she pulls herself out of bed. Her body is loose and nice from her sleep. She would rather just lie in this bed all the morning, but it is time to get up. In around an hour it is time for her to go to work, to form the frames at the factory.

Her husband stirs on his side of the bed. He mumbles, "What's for breakfast?" his mouth on his pillow.

"What would you like?" she asks, pulling herself out of the covers of the bed, taking off her pajama bottoms to go for a shower.

"Eggs and bacon sound good?"

"Okay. Guess it's bacon and eggs." And she's off into the shower. Her body, pretty and naked, is soon covered in steam as the water hits against it in torrents. She shampoos her hair, soaps her body, and gets out. A towel rapped around her, she gets it held around her and, hands free, brushes her teeth. Combs her hair.

In their room she looks out the window as she's putting on her bra. The nice light of the sun is shining through, and some trees blow in the soft, hushed wind. It seems like a good day. She puts on her work habiliments, and comes to the kitchen.

"Good morning," she says to her husband.

"Good morning."

"Still going on bacon and eggs?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. I'll get it going." She looks at the digital clock read. "Work in half an hour. I should be able to make it."

Soon the smell of sizzling bacon is scenting the air, and scrambled eggs cook on the stove. When those are done, she puts them on some plates, puts them on the kitchen table, and they sit down and eat.

"How's work at the factory going?" he asks her. He drinks from his cup of OJ and then digs into his eggs.

She swirls her fork around in her eggs, looking at their texture. Yellow and spongy. "As good as it can be."

"That's good."

"And how's work for you?" she asks, taking a forkful of eggs to her mouth, chewing it, feeling the warm sponge of the eggs.

"The same. As good as it can be." He works at a nuclear power plant.

She's eaten most of her eggs now. She swallows another mouth of the yellow warm eggs. "How's the bacon and eggs? Up to your expectations?"

"Oh yeah. The least I could expect from you, Tathrine. You know you've always been a good cook. You know that, right?" he puts his fork up in questioning, teasing manner.

"Yeah, I do."

"Well, that's good." He smiles. "No one can make them as good as you, you know."

"You sure? What about your mom?"

"My mom? Hah, that's a good one. As you know, she could cook well, but not as good as you, Tath."

"Sure you aren't lying?" her lips purse in a teasing smirk.

"Oh, sure, I'm lying. Here's the truth: you're a terrible cook. I can cook better than this." He points to his almost gone food, and his voice tinges with his hard-to-read sarcasm.

"Is that so?"

"Hah. Sure, whatever you say." He gets up, puts his plates in the sink.

"Whatever I say? Well, do you know what I say?" she says, also getting up, putting her plates in the sink, standing beside him.

"What do you say, Tath?"

"I say you couldn't cook if your life depended on it. You need me to do it."

"I guess I'd have to agree. I'm something like a loser, wouldn't you agree?"

"You sure are, Jame."

"And you know what makes me more of a loser?"

"What?"

"I couldn't do anything if my life depended on it without you. I need you to do it."

"Isn't that the truth? Where do you think you'd be without me, Jamey Honey?" They were eye-to-eye, and her eyes were full of shimmering humor, his full of the half-smile that seemed to come there.

"Probably be with my mom that's a better cook than you," he teases, letting out his ha-ha-ha funny dry laugh.

"Oh, you meanie!" she said. Their faces move in on each other. They nuzzle their noses. "You're just the meanest guy I know, you know."

"Really? Well, you're the meanest woman I know."

"Let's keep it that way, then." She turns her head a little as they come into a kiss and reads the time. As their lips left one another, she said, "Well, it's time I'm off. Have a good day, won't you? And you should be glad you get to be away from this wicked witch too."

"Hah. You have a good day too, Tath. Have fun being away from this wicked man."

She was out the door. She hears his voice from inside, just a little murmur. "My mom's still a better cook."

She smiles. She drove off in her car. Soon she is at work.

2
It is the same monotony at work for her. Sitting there all day, using the machine to make the figure etched in the lifeless mass.

While she's working she's thinking. She wishes she could have a child, but they don't allow it. Not anymore. When she had been just a little girl, they had allowed it. But now they don't. It is wide-known law now that each year the government chooses people who may have a child, and those and only those people get them. The world is now too populated for families to be procreating in a rapid level. The world is now far too weighted with humans, and so there is the law of having no children. Many people each year protest against this law, but are often punished for their show of distaste at the law to off others from doing the same.

Tath had long had the thought of taking one of these beings and raising it in secrecy as a child. But she had never acted on it, fearing the consequences. Her husband also had voiced his want of a child too. Many times they had talked over how they wanted a child and what they'd do with it. They were still young, they'd tell one another. Maybe the law would be lifted. She doubted it, and so did he. There were just too many people on the earth now, and the government wouldn't allow it. They would have illegally had a child together in secrecy, but it was the norm of the government to now make it so that wouldn't happen by gene therapy of babies being born. If they would be called to be able to have a child, they would have been sent pills which allowed them to procreate.

The thoughts went through her mind, the streets of her thoughts leading to other streets, and to alleys, and to dead ends, and to corners and sharp turns and fresh lain roads

It is lunch break. She sits. Beside her is coworker Anthrane Rin. She is a black woman, rotund but beautiful, with luscious, full lips. The lips are always the first feature noticeable on her. "So how's things for you, Tath?" she asks through her mouthfuls of food.

"Pretty good. It's mostly the same old same old, but you knew that."

"Yeah."

"How's things with you, Anth?" Tath digs in on her food, forks it in, chews, chew chews. It's so mechanical. The daily humdrum.

"Same old same old here too, I'd say. Too bad I can't lie and say things are just marvelous, and tell you it's all good. But that wouldn't be good of me, would it?" Anth let out her dainty, kind laugh.

"No, I guess it wouldn't."

Back at the machine. The gears spinning, moving, clicking. Her thoughts going. She will ask Jame about stealing one of them. See what he thinks. Because she already knows the government won't choose them. The government only chooses the rich, high class people to procreate. And that they aren't—they aren't rich at all.

When work is over, she feels the time had passed so slow. It always seems to pass slow lately. She just doesn't have the will, but tries to keep going the same. She hates how time has the way of going so slow on you. To control time would be the best. To be able to speed it up in the lame parts, slow it down in the good parts. Too bad time has that way to it where the good parts go fast, and the monotonous, miserable moments go painful slow. But what can you do. Not much. Suffer it out. Live it out.

She drove home. The only thing on her mind is what she's going to say to Jame. How she's going to approach him about stealing one of the beings and raising it. Maybe it's foolish. Right now it feels like a hope. Like a dream. It probably won't happen. But she needs to try.

She'll ask him, "You know what, Jame?"

And he'll say, "What is it, Tath?" in his kind voice.

And she'll say, "I've been thinking."

He'll say, "What've you been thinking about?"

She'll say, "Well, about stealing one of them. And raising it."

And what would he say from here. Maybe "Are you serious about this?" or maybe "You know the rules, Tath. We can't do it" or maybe "Think it's worth it, darling?" or maybe "No, we can't" or maybe something else she couldn't even think about. But whatever he said, she knew she would probably do it. She would steal the being anyway. She's sick of living her life in this humdrum world. She wants it in her own hands.

Her own hands.

She pulled into the driveway. She would ask him during bed that night, after they made love. She would let it play out as it would. Opening the door, she let out a captured breath and stepped in the house. He was already home, as usual.
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This Is the Color We Breathe

This is the color we breathe.

In our mouth it goes, through the hide of our face. Into our lungs it swirls till in our bloodstream it breeds.

The cough--the sputter--and through the man's eyes there's entrance to where he's going.

His chest is naked, his clothes torn off. His brothers stand round him. Four slugs're in his chest. Inside the tissues and cells making him up his heart's punctured. His pancreas maybe. Even his lung.

The red color permeates out of the four round entrance wounds. He moves back and forth, and writhes and sputters, and gropes and pleads.

"Give me. . .the morphine." He said, through grimacing teeth, through wide eyes, eyes whose view is soon to subside.

"Give it to him," he says, leaning next to him, wiping away blood perpetually flowing out. "Give it him. Goddamnit, give it to him."

It's injected through his legs. It takes time for it to reach his brain, where the morphine goes to the pain receptors, and kills the pain.

This isn't real, this never happened, there's no way. My mind. It's saying.

. . .There's no way. . .

It's only a movie. They're actors. Looking at the screen which is showcasing this dying man, him now calm and docile, going away, a flickering candle. It's only a movie.

But this happened, my brain says. It happened.

So this is war, this is death, this is what it is.

Looking downward on the countless millions killed, it seems like a monster. Looking at it from a panoramic view, it all seems war is a big, tough-as-nails sonofabitch that killed countless people.

But here, zoomed in on one moment, one singular time, on this screen, I see what it's really about. I see it's terrible, and horrid, and bad. But this isn't a monster.

The only monster is the human race.

The ones who fought these battles. Fought these battles over countries that only exist on maps, that're only labeled on them. Fighting over borders that don't even exist but as a line, curving here, straight there, on a map.

He's dead. They get up. They get up and they give him a burial. A proper burial in the ground. After one sits and cries, and his face is strained over seeing such a good man die. A goddamned good man dying, and there was nothing he could do. He was already gone, shot with the machine gun, the titter tatter and booming of it and then the bullets puncturing his flesh, his human, his own flesh, and driving deep in and hitting his heart, his lung, maybe his pancreas.

The others are over with one last remaining German. The one of them who can translate: "He says don't shoot me." They say: "We don't care what he says."

They drive the butts of their guns in him, in him, in him, blood yes bleed you fucker. You kiled him, you killed a good man. You killed a good man, you hear? You killed a good man, and he didn't deserve to die.

They stop. The German stands up. He shouts his words in his only way he knows to talk. His foreign tongue. That slang. The one who can translate says this is wrong. This German doesn't deserve to die.

They all point their guns at him. Over comes the man who was crying, and settles them down.

They get the German up and make him dig some holes. Holes to intern the dead, the shot, the gone. In the hole. And they'll stay there, their flesh decaying off of them, their ribs poking out, their skulls coming out, till there's nothing left. And they'll stay there.

When he's done they blindfold him. They say they should kill him. The one who can translate says: "No, it's not right." And translates what he says.

The German says: "I'm sorry about him." He's sorry he says, don't shoot.

Blindfolded, he tells him to walk 1,000 paces forward till he finds whatever he finds.

They leave him. They leave it.

And it seems so real, my mind says.

And it did happen. Something like this.

And this--this is the color we breathe.

[I decided to write this after watching Saving Private Ryan this morning. That's where I got it all from, only I gave it my own spin, of course.]
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