Posts tagged Life
What would happen if we had never changed a thing.
And your friends grew up faster than you,
Got successful.
Told you to keep it up;
‘Good comes to those who work.’
You get to know a man, and deep down there’s something bothering him real bad, and maybe you never find out what it is, but it’s what makes him do like he does, it’s what makes him look like he’s got secrets in his eyes. And you tell him, ‘Calm down, calm down, take it easy now.’ Or you ask him, ‘How come you keep doing the same crazy things over and over again, when you know they’re just going to get you in trouble again?’ Only you know there’s no sense arguing with him, on account of it’s the thing inside that’s making him go. It says, ‘Jump,’ he jumps. It says ‘Steal,’ he steals. It says, ‘Cry,’ he cries. Unless he dies young, though, or unless he gets everything all his way and nothing big goes wrong, that thing inside of him is going to run down like a wind-up toy. You’re working in the prison laundry next to this man. You’ve known him twenty years. You’re working along, and all of a sudden you hear this click from him. You turn to look at him. He’s stopped working. He’s all calmed down. He looks real dumb. He looks real sweet. You look in his eyes, and the secrets are gone. He can’t even tell you his own name right then. He goes back to work, but he’ll never be the same. That thing that bothered him so will never click on again. It’s dead, it’s DEAD. And that part of that man’s life where he had to be a certain crazy way, that’s DONE.
Jump to one time, late one night, driving between Nowhere, Wyoming, and WhoKnowsWhere, Montana, when Seth says how being born makes your parents God. You owe them your life, and they can control you.
“Then puberty makes you Satan,” he says, “just because you want something better.
I can’t go outside,
I’m afraid I won’t make it home.
I’m alive, but I’m sinking in.
But nothing is all right, alright?
When you’re an addict, you can go without feeling anything except drunk or stoned or hungry. Still, when you compare this to other feelings, to sadness, anger, fear, worry, despair, and depression, well, an addiction no longer looks so bad. It looks like a very viable option.
Some days, they last longer than others.
Tuesday I had a really good day. Really good days aren’t something I come across all that often, so I kind of enjoyed it. I got to spend time with a person who is totally awesome, and I brought her to the farm, so I got to visit one of the few places on the surface of this planet where I honestly enjoy going. The problem with good days, however, is not only that they tend to be few and far between, but also that I KNOW that they are few and far between. And as a result, all day I have felt like Stanley Hudson at the end of Pretzel Day:
“Only 364 more days…until the next pretzel day.”
What I wanted to say is, you know, when you’re a kid, they tell you it’s all “Grow up. Get a job. Get married. Get a house. Have a kid, and that’s it.”
But the truth is, the world is so much stranger than that. And so much darker. And so much madder.
And so much better.
I don’t think I could ever settle down. I have known too much of the depths of life already, and I would prefer anything to an anticlimax.
…a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
