the story of one

If something horrible happens to someone horrible, well that makes sense. The crowds start cheering, it's retribution. It's poetic justice.

So the story - it should be about a wonderful person, a beautiful spirit, an innocent, getting the short end of the stick. that's the story that everyone wants to relate to... that's how the victimhood mentality is perpetuated. I don't deserve this - this pain, this torture, this being cut off in traffic. I don't deserve this. And you side with the protaganist because that somehow makes sense.

But I want my story to hit the deeper truth - all are innocent and all is undeserved. How am I going to do that? This guy is a start - tough. I like the heroes that you don't want to like. There are none with no redeeming qualities - but we turn away so easily and don't want to see what we don't want to see. I want to feel compassion for the broken man on his knees who was merciless and cruel to all those who loved him. And I like the ones whose redemptive traits will arise when you least expect it. And I want to show it all. One for each possibility? Or each possibility in one? That's the question that we'll find the answer.

This is not real

The chaos, swirling blurs of bodies, of music and laughter, and talk, roaring in and out of my ears and those clear blue eyes, looking into her wide, blue eyes, and repeating over and over, "You know this isn't real, right, you know it doesn't matter, it all doesn't mean a thing, right? It isn't real. You know that, right? This isn't real." And, desperate to make me shutup, or to assure me, the blue eyes nodded yes, over and over again, in agreement. I don't know which, I don't know if she really understood, I just hope she remembers that moment throughout her life. If it was an attempt to make me shutup, and to shut out yet another of the apparently stupid things adults say and do when they're drunk and high (and she would know) then she'll want to quash that memory whenever it pops up and she won't believe the truth of it. At least not for a long while. But I hope she remembers it when she needs to. Not too often, not all the time - and if she never has to remember it - it will mean that her life will somehow escape the path of more of those confusing and blurry nights where only she has clarity.

"This isn't happening," will be what she cries, and moans, and repeats. And she'll say it over and over again, maybe never contemplating or realizing the truth of what she says, or of what I said to her that night.

Clarity for her and for everyone around her will be what will allow her escape of having to see, say, think those things. Awareness. Again, within and around. Because everything else is contagious and infectious.