The most disappointing thing to learn in life is that no one important is evil. There are no sadistic step-mothers, cackling madmen, or Illuminati. There is no one you can strike down, no one deserving of a pivotal comeuppance. The problem can’t be solved with a well placed punch, a choice bullet. All the small arms in the world, wielded by the brave, the true, the pure, could never turn evil on its head. Stomping on a few snake heads has no more effect than grinding egg shells into egg shell dust. It is not something that can be cleansed through force, or principles, or even at all. It’s just how the garden grows.
I know that very few people will read this. It won’t reach the eyes of anyone in who has the power to change the course of things, if such a person even does exist. I look through the glass and I see people in pain, many clinging to all they have left, a finger to point with. They were told that you can cut the head off a snake. What else is there to hold on to but that–life didn’t have to be this way so it doesn’t have to stay this way. I do feel sorry for them but perhaps not sorry enough.
An old man once pointed a gun at me. He was pissed about a million things and I was a million and two. He accused me of being desperate, out for myself, ignorant, scared, and spoke about the devil. I had knocked on his door to talk to him about a cause I knew was doomed to fail, on its face just a piece of the puzzle but for me symbolic of so much, of everything, of the future I want for this world. I was using this task as a pretense, an excuse to talk to people, to look them in the eye, to hear their story, to understand why it was this way. He saw me as part of the world, perhaps believed that I served the devil. One might say I was wrongly accused but in some important ways that man was right about me. I am lost and human, and when I face what I really believe in my heart, that dark hopelessness, it frightens me. I cannot face it for long, and I always turn away, to delight in something small. Distract myself, convince myself that I’m doing something other than waiting.
Perhaps I should care more, enough to believe, and perhaps that belief would be enough to turn the tide, to let me be part of a solution. I can’t though. I can’t convince myself. I can’t even conceptualize that in good faith. I feel the physiological cues that I am holding in my mind an idea I don’t believe in, the same that exist when I lie to another. My sin is that I have come to accept all of it. I love it. It’s a masterpiece. I admire how the parts of life fit together, suffering included. It wouldn’t be complete without that. My sin is that I think I understand. I think I’m not deluded, that I see some kind of plain truth, take pride in that recognition. Intellectually I know it can’t be the case. There is too much I haven’t experienced. I know I must be ignorant of too much to be justified in this feeling. No earthly creature could. I know this but I also recognize what I feel, a victorious stillness, the same feeling I get after solving a puzzle at long last. And it’s always there, underneath everything else I am, like some persistent basement puddle.
This part of me disgusts another part of me, the part that opines about ought. I know right from wrong. I’ve studied it every way I could manage. An actual good person wouldn’t be satisfied, would always try to help, would never choose rest. But I do. And I’m sorry, though in a way that isn’t remorseful. Given a choice, I would have it all happen the same way again. It was luck but I was one of the ones it worked out for. Don’t dare touch those dice again. I wanted something particular, a feeling, this feeling and–and I’ve been carrying it with me for years. It doesn’t weigh a thing. And now, I’m going to give in and let myself feel it. Having got what I came for, I’ll wait. I’ll let life turn me as it would, reflect what glints glance my way, wait for my turn to be still. If they do come for me, strike me down, maybe rip that feeling away, it still won’t change a thing. I now recognize what I am. It is nothing important and one of many. One of the scales on the snake.
saltednotion 