Am I The Only One?

There is something floating around in the air, and I cannot quite describe what it could be. Rage! Could it be rage? Desperation! Could it be desperation? Healing! No, it couldn’t be that! Paranoia! Blasted, speak that word no more! Does rage flush my face and paint it red? Does desperation make my heart feel like it is beating out of my chest? I look around, and everyone’s eyes are wide in the wonder of what tomorrow holds. Is that the look of healing, paranoia, or some other word that my tongue cannot remember? We already know what the answer is, I believe. Don’t we? Or am I the only one?

By the time this life is over, everyone will have Oscars on their mantle piece, and I’m not talking about hot dogs. Some trophies will say best lead. Some will say best supporting. Some will be in the acknowledgement of writing. Some praises will be for cinematography while other admirations will be for directing and producing. On the inside of all of us, the confident scaredy cat puts on a brave display while we try to act like things are normal when things are far from it. Your lips speak sacrilege if you think today’s life is normal. I propose a better question for your listening ear! Have things ever been normal? Madness, I say! People speak, breathe, and think pure madness! So many things are shifting. The plates are hot, I tell you, hot! Do you feel this happening or am I the only one?

I have been a constant for so long that I probably would not know how to respond to being a variable. The couple of times I was the variable, I sloshed potential pay dirt around in my pan in hopes of finding at least one gold nugget or a couple golden flakes to cash in. The only thing I found was dirty water, wrinkled fingers, cold feet, and a tempest fever. I am careful to stare down at the past through pictures and rub my finger over the frozen scars. I am hopeful to look to my future when me and my family drink milk and honey from golden grails and hear the harps of angels glorious. I walk around, observe, and enjoy the present as my intuition prods me with a bent fork. This feeling seems so familiar, like I’ve lived this moment in other parallels shadowing this one. My subconscious is not of this realm. I’ve had deja vu so many times that I don’t recognize that nostalgic feeling anymore. Does this dissociation make sense or am I the only one?

One would think we were all on the borderline of insanity, to take in difficult questions and not fully answer them before moving to the next problematic scenario. Do I take things too seriously? Better yet! Do I take the wrong things too seriously? Do I take the right things not seriously enough? Should I dream while my eyes are open or am I wasting my days away with lukewarm water and stale bread? Are some people blessed with gifts and talents and will die without ever being able to use them? God forbid! I will not stand for it, I tell you! So where do we go from here? Where do we not go from here? Why are you smiling? Why are you frowning? Why are you happy? Why are you sad? Why are you thinking? What are you thinking? If you want to change your life then why don’t you? Do you ask yourself at least one of these questions once a week or am I the only one?

I was reading Crime and Punishment the other day while lying on the couch. The room was completely silent. I started to hear what sounded like a light buzzing followed by a *tap tap tap* emanating from a west side window that faces the sun in the afternoon. Without flinching a muscle or lifting myself off the couch to investigate, I remained focused on my book and kept reading my sentences from left to right. My mind had deducted the nonessential clues and solved the mystery. A wasp had trapped itself between the blind and the window. He was doing everything he could to make it to the beautiful nature that existed on the other side of the clear pane. A day passed, the same sound. Another day passed, the buzz buzz buzz of miniscule wings followed by the *tap tap tap* of a hard headed creature thudding against a thin window. This sound would occasionally resonate in the air, and I let it do so for an entire week. My mind tickled me and asked, are you really going to keep this angry wasp hostage from his army of other angry wasps? The honest answer was that I was too benevolent to put it out of its misery, and I was too selfish to free it from its prison. It is not my fault he was designed to be a pretentious pest with a sharp stinger. Do you understand the situation or am I the only one?

As the seconds turned to minutes, minutes to hours, hours to days, and days to a full week, the sound became weaker and more faint. I consciously knew the wasp was there, no fault to myself, and I knew there was no way he was going to be able to escape his cage. They say struggle is nature’s way of survival. What is human’s way of survival? That same struggle? Fighting? Arguing? War? Becoming a narcissist? Revolution? Giving up? Giving in? Ignoring the issue? Finding a distraction? Assimilating? Doubting? Confusion? Misinformation? I walked to the window where he was trapped and carefully lifted one of the panes. I knew if the wasp had any fighting energy left inside his crunchy exoskeleton then he was going to attack me like a Peregrine Falcon, but he did not. The wasp looked at me, I looked at him, and his antennas rubbed the air around him. He was too tired to fly or climb. I knew how he felt. I mean, in a parabolic way, don’t we all know how he feels or felt, or am I the only one?

I walked to the kitchen, grabbled the fly swatter (Southern slang for winged creature killer), and tip toed back to the blind. I slowly inserted the flappy end of the wand into the window and coaxed the wasp to crawl onto the flexible platform that had killed so many of his friends. I found myself chuckling at the situation because I found it paradoxical to be using an instrument of damnation for an instrument of salvation. Thirty-two steps later, I released the wasp back into the outside world. My good intentions granted him entrance to a place where he had fought so hard to be. When I sit on the couch and continue to read, I catch myself listening for the rapid buzzing of fragile wings followed by the *tap tap tap* even though I know that my mind should know better. The sound of the wasp bouncing between the blind and my window haunts me. Am I on the borderline of madness or are all of us already there? My mind shifts, my perception expands, and I realize all of us are caught between an earth and an afterlife.

Do you sometimes feel like this or am I the only one?

(Cue this bit of free ear candy below! It is from one of my many life soundtracks! Most of you will probably hate it, but oh well, it’s my blog, not yours, so I can embed whatever I want! Stay Safe, everyone! Much love!)