I really feel like I should be able to better express more of my thoughts. Maybe it’s delusional to think that I have something important to say, or maybe it’s actually true, but I don’t think I can be the one to judge that. All I can really do is spill it out and let what happens happen.
There’s something intangible that bounces around inside my head every day. Something that feels like if I could actually grasp it completely, express it properly, transmit it, that it would change things. I don’t know what it would change, but it would be better. Better than the monotony of floating in place, unable to move forward or progress, but just strafe side to side, dodging bullets and dodging tragedies; taking shrapnel when I misstep. Strafe was a good strategy in Medal of Honor Frontline, but in life it really doesn’t help.
The only thing I can think to do is to just dump my thoughts like a landfill and sift through it later. Like any dump, there’ll be lots of dirty diapers and old Chinese food, but there’ll be the occasional end table you can clean up and put in the basement next to that beat up leather sofa. Will today be an end table day? Will today be more shitty diapers? I have no idea. I don’t expect to ever know.
All I expect is that my mind continues to evacuate in the hopes that there’s something to set me apart from the other trash. Could it be wishful thinking that I’m not like every other piece of refuse in the landfill? Could I really be the prince of the trash pile? I think that’s the best most of us will do. Not because we aren’t capable of anything, but because at best this life is full of waste and garbage, and no matter how much we work, we die and rot like the old Chinese food at the base of the pile.
I don’t mean it in a bad way, I just mean it in a “nobody is above the rules” kind of way. Like, none of us will ever escape the grip of aging and dying, of sickness and disease. We will all do things we are ashamed and embarrassed of, things we regret, things that will hound us with guilt as long as we live. So even if you do your damnedest, you’re still in that trash heap with the rest of us.
So maybe prince of the pile isn’t so bad. It’s like yelling “look at me! I’m fucked up too!” while you perch on a discarded mannequin leg, wearing your crown of old, blackened coffee filters. Tissue box shoes. Christmas ribbon bow tie.
But fuck, can you see far from the top of the heap.
Did you know the story of lemmings jumping from cliffs in mass suicide is bullshit? It had been a myth for a long time, but you know what solidified it in the hearts of man? A 1958 Disney movie where they forced a fake lemming death plunge, killing hundreds of lemmings in the process to get a shot for the nature film.
Trash is trash. People are trash. We shit and piss and expel nasty fluids and die and rot. You can’t be more than human, because that’s all you really are in the end. So at best, you build your throne from the battered igloo cooler with no lid, and some beat up fabric you found (not the fabric with the oil on it, the fabric with the tomato stains. Red is regal) and you promenade on high, where your excrement rolls downhill and doesn’t interfere with your pomp and circumstance.
Endless hills of refuse. Endless princes and princesses, kings and queens, dukes and duchesses.
This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a thing. It’s only bad if you can’t accept that your an animal like all the other mongooses and muskrats. But just like those mongooses and muskrats, you can allow yourself to frolic and play. They don’t care that they piss and shit and expel nasty fluids, because they’re animals. Just like you.
Maybe not just like you, because you seem to have a problem accepting it. But once you stop bullshitting yourself and just own up to the ridiculousness of trying to rise above the laws of nature, and stop hiding your shame, then maybe you can frolic with the bunnies and baby kittens. Well, before the kittens become cats and eat the bunnies.
The world isn’t nice and friendly, it just is. The world is. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it’s not out to get you or reward you, it’s just carrying on as if you don’t exist.
With no one watching you or caring about your actions, you are free to do whatever makes you happy. So climb atop your personal trash heap and claim your throne! Proclaim law over the land! Just don’t try to convince yourself that your crown is made of gold and not cherry picked bits of refuse.