The Soundbooth Chronicles Part II: Firing pin salvation
His name summons nothing.
Death seems to be one part of the human condition that we avoid like the same plague that will eventually erase our physical presence of this cursed sphere of intolerance and evolution. All that will remain throughout the vast spaces of time is our bones, and possibly a few scraps of flesh, dried out, sinewy, and pulled tight over the structure which once kept our soul from flying free. Imprisonment, it seems, is a birthright. The moment we enter this world, whatever your definition of life is, we are trapped. The system merely acts as enforcement. Ever notice how ominous a charred ribcage is? Something about those points, so even, yet disheveled. Bones pointing up to the sky, who knows what secrets were held in the heart that has long been lost to the Vortex.
Our flesh and bone is our dismal oubliette.
Why then, is death mourned? Simple. Because humans are selfish animals. We would rather keep someone around who is miserable, sick, unwanted, etc, than to just put them out of there misery. Why? because in addition to being selfish, we as a species are sadistic, unpredictable, erratic, cruel, pious, arrogant, and just as miserable as those we condemn. All of this wrapped in a disgusting peach colored wrapping, spiced with a pompous, holier then thou attitude just about sums up the human condition. Take a look at the judicial system. Life is now a more dire sentence than death.
That about sums it up.
I only had a few classes with him, and my encounters were brief. Even though we both went to the same elementary school, and we didn't even live that far away, he was still a year older than me, and face it, when you are in the first ten years of your life, that counts. He smoked, hung out with the delinquents, drank, did drugs, etc. Everything that I was forbidden to get involved with. By the time we both reached high school, I didn't even remember that we shared the same roots. All I can remember is the sterling silver ring he used to wear on his thumb. I knew he made it himself, even before I became DC's jewelry master. I recognized the crushed agate mixed with azure epoxy inlay. As subsequent weeks rolled on sitting across from him in Spanish class I could tell the inlay was too shallow, as the colorful stones just kept falling out.
Apparently, the pretty crushed stones were not the only thing falling out of his life. In addition to the agate, coral, and malachite shards, the life of our friend was spiraling down as well. Dashed hopes, confusion, drugs, and stone, all falling down on the hallways of a trashy high school in Castle Rock, Colorado.
I wish I could build up a better climax, a better story, but I can’t. In the middle of the week, in the middle of a dismal biology class, I got the news that the above mentioned student took his own life with a shotgun that morning.
So that was it. No memorials, no vigils, no formal announcement. Just the rumor from the local police that his head was blown completely away, and only his brain stem remained. Red is everything, the wall, the floor, the soul.
Understand though, that this was in the age before school shootings became a quarterly occurrence. Back then, shootings were done in a bedroom either late at night or early in the morning, typically in combination with high school anxiety and generous self medication.
Hours later I got on the bus and listened to some stoner chic crying about her best friend.
The next day, the story thread was a ghost. I am sure that if he was a star athlete he would have been woken from the dead on an hourly basis by cries of mournful cheerleaders begging for his return. The only tragedy in the world is when a promising young quarterback gets cut down at seventeen. White and Christian only should apply.
Sympathy is still a few years behind the civil rights movement.
In the eyes of the press you are either WASP or you are roadkill. Do not let them tell you otherwise.
In the past decade, I have been on a slow journey downward. I remember looking in those shiny bronze tinted windows as I would drive by seeing a German sports car. Now I see a fucking bus. I am not sure if I have progressed or regressed. I am at a point in my life where nothing makes any sense and I sit at family gatherings silent, or babbling about the economy or work, petrified that someone will ask a question about me, and who I am. And I am terrified that my secret will be out. You see, all I can do is talk about external things, there is nothing inside. I have successfully killed my soul, and burned all that once may have been good inside to charred rubble, and I am scared to death to share my empty shell with friends and family. I am sure for outsiders I seem strange, at least a bit eccentric. I probably come across as extremely transparent, and as someone who just spends too much time alone. Very true, and mission accomplished. I do not want to be seen as the complete wreck that I am inside.
School shootings and various mayhem. There is nobody around me that even cares, we are all so burned out on faking national sympathy. Nine eleven died so long ago people, let’s try to move on.
The ring sits on my shelf, it looks at me every night, every morning. Tragic, really, a life shared, or a life ignored, you tell me.
On the other side? I will be there.
Patient Saint
Death seems to be one part of the human condition that we avoid like the same plague that will eventually erase our physical presence of this cursed sphere of intolerance and evolution. All that will remain throughout the vast spaces of time is our bones, and possibly a few scraps of flesh, dried out, sinewy, and pulled tight over the structure which once kept our soul from flying free. Imprisonment, it seems, is a birthright. The moment we enter this world, whatever your definition of life is, we are trapped. The system merely acts as enforcement. Ever notice how ominous a charred ribcage is? Something about those points, so even, yet disheveled. Bones pointing up to the sky, who knows what secrets were held in the heart that has long been lost to the Vortex.
Our flesh and bone is our dismal oubliette.
Why then, is death mourned? Simple. Because humans are selfish animals. We would rather keep someone around who is miserable, sick, unwanted, etc, than to just put them out of there misery. Why? because in addition to being selfish, we as a species are sadistic, unpredictable, erratic, cruel, pious, arrogant, and just as miserable as those we condemn. All of this wrapped in a disgusting peach colored wrapping, spiced with a pompous, holier then thou attitude just about sums up the human condition. Take a look at the judicial system. Life is now a more dire sentence than death.
That about sums it up.
I only had a few classes with him, and my encounters were brief. Even though we both went to the same elementary school, and we didn't even live that far away, he was still a year older than me, and face it, when you are in the first ten years of your life, that counts. He smoked, hung out with the delinquents, drank, did drugs, etc. Everything that I was forbidden to get involved with. By the time we both reached high school, I didn't even remember that we shared the same roots. All I can remember is the sterling silver ring he used to wear on his thumb. I knew he made it himself, even before I became DC's jewelry master. I recognized the crushed agate mixed with azure epoxy inlay. As subsequent weeks rolled on sitting across from him in Spanish class I could tell the inlay was too shallow, as the colorful stones just kept falling out.
Apparently, the pretty crushed stones were not the only thing falling out of his life. In addition to the agate, coral, and malachite shards, the life of our friend was spiraling down as well. Dashed hopes, confusion, drugs, and stone, all falling down on the hallways of a trashy high school in Castle Rock, Colorado.
I wish I could build up a better climax, a better story, but I can’t. In the middle of the week, in the middle of a dismal biology class, I got the news that the above mentioned student took his own life with a shotgun that morning.
So that was it. No memorials, no vigils, no formal announcement. Just the rumor from the local police that his head was blown completely away, and only his brain stem remained. Red is everything, the wall, the floor, the soul.
Understand though, that this was in the age before school shootings became a quarterly occurrence. Back then, shootings were done in a bedroom either late at night or early in the morning, typically in combination with high school anxiety and generous self medication.
Hours later I got on the bus and listened to some stoner chic crying about her best friend.
The next day, the story thread was a ghost. I am sure that if he was a star athlete he would have been woken from the dead on an hourly basis by cries of mournful cheerleaders begging for his return. The only tragedy in the world is when a promising young quarterback gets cut down at seventeen. White and Christian only should apply.
Sympathy is still a few years behind the civil rights movement.
In the eyes of the press you are either WASP or you are roadkill. Do not let them tell you otherwise.
In the past decade, I have been on a slow journey downward. I remember looking in those shiny bronze tinted windows as I would drive by seeing a German sports car. Now I see a fucking bus. I am not sure if I have progressed or regressed. I am at a point in my life where nothing makes any sense and I sit at family gatherings silent, or babbling about the economy or work, petrified that someone will ask a question about me, and who I am. And I am terrified that my secret will be out. You see, all I can do is talk about external things, there is nothing inside. I have successfully killed my soul, and burned all that once may have been good inside to charred rubble, and I am scared to death to share my empty shell with friends and family. I am sure for outsiders I seem strange, at least a bit eccentric. I probably come across as extremely transparent, and as someone who just spends too much time alone. Very true, and mission accomplished. I do not want to be seen as the complete wreck that I am inside.
School shootings and various mayhem. There is nobody around me that even cares, we are all so burned out on faking national sympathy. Nine eleven died so long ago people, let’s try to move on.
The ring sits on my shelf, it looks at me every night, every morning. Tragic, really, a life shared, or a life ignored, you tell me.
On the other side? I will be there.
Patient Saint