Monday, December 31, 2007

Of life and other vegetables.


Having recently taken the time to read my own tripe, which considering the levels of egotism that I have long believed I possessed, is not something I do as much as I should (because I am brilliant and good looking), it struck me, with a blunt and rather weighty piece of scrap metal, that I have been progressively more mediocre and maudlin in what I project into the infinity of cyberspace.

While what I contribute in bytes may never be of any real significance to the world at large, or event to a particularly small and blithe township in Hicksville, it doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t be making the effort to entertain the masses and offend the select few who have proved themselves worthy of my disdain.

I have found myself becoming increasingly wary of the dramatic, insofar that my tolerance to people taking what is essentially a grain of life, placing it on a stark white tiled surface, pointing at it frantically and screaming for all to contest, ‘it’s a mountain!’. The ongoing upheavals that existence buffets us with, while seemingly pressing and palpable, are merely the price tag on an intricate, though normally unprepossessing, Persian rug. To lose your head looking down off the rope bridges that ferry us from one mountain range of life to another means that you really aren’t looking ahead of you, which, if I may be permitted to sound condescending, is what you should be doing.

Please bear with me as take you trough the following misty landscape (these posts are fed into a social networking site, which is accessible by everyone I have ever said good morning to, hence the need for discretion). Imagine, if you will, a man who has been classically trained in the ancient arts of panic, brooding and self imposed stoicism. Now imagine, again if it so pleases you, that said protagonist in his amblings kicks open a crate filled with shiny new situations (retail value nil, durability between 3 microseconds and the rest of your life). There are really only a pair of deployable courses of action, being; either to attempt to juggle them all and walk along fretting about when on will drop on his foot and result in tarsal tunnel, or to calmly pull his life binder out, place each one of the situations under the appropriate divider and deal with them in a rational (if boring), project managed way. There are pros and cons to each.

Needless to say that the manner in which one decides to deal with the misnomers of the earthly plane define a person. Those who deem it wise to learn, develop and ultimately build from the mortar of experience, will (theoretically), lead a life worth leading. The other contingent, who prefer to lose their heads over the minutiae and focus on the irrelevant, will as a result, step into a steaming pile of fido’s best work.

God Speed.

May the New Year bring no falling anvils upon your hallowed head.

Malice

Monday, December 10, 2007

Light hearted and heavy handed

For all those of you out there who have become bogged down in the minutiae of day to day survival and as a result have resolutely taken the view that life does not move very fast and offers only enough in the way of variety to ensure that you continue paying attention, I have come to deliver tidings of hope. This does effectively mean that I get to prove you wrong, so everyone’s happy.

In the course of my sage musings on the fragrant fruit of life, the depth of the oceans of thought and the way lint accumulates in belly buttons I have been bombarded by revelations, epiphanies and the occasional consignment of pigeon poo, to the extent that I lost sight of where my closely held beliefs began and where possibility ended… but come, what does that mean to you apart from the fact that I have just wasted a minute and a half of your time on a preamble?

The problem with mankind in general and opinionated Middle Eastern males in particular is that they were never taught that they could be wrong. So the individuals comprising the world bumble along, shouldering through the myriad of obstacles that they encounter in absolute conviction that this is the only way. And why? Simply because they never stopped to consider that there could be an alternative as simple as stepping around the offending igneous formations.

I believe that everyone has a day, a moment, be it brief or prolonged, in time where something or someone happens to cause, not only a existential shift, but a desire for said shift in the being of an individual. The trick to harnessing the potential of this altering force, and this is crucial, is to be awake.

116 after that ‘that’ day, I find myself trying to reconcile what I have long held fast to and what I want to put my faith in, and just getting this far has been arduous. I want to believe that things will turn out for the best, but my ragged intestines tell me that is romantic hogwash, I need to be good to people, even those who are fleeting on the stage of my life, but my insides scream, ‘what for?’

A paradox to be sure, but one that I endure and embrace with the brightest of eyes and bushiest of tails, there is change to be had, and I want to feast upon it.

This one’s dedicated to my life catalyst, you know who you are.


May your toenails pierce not your socks.
Malice