Freeze Pop.

And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations.
They're quite aware of what they're going through.

-David Bowie

Sometimes my thoughts get the better of me. I see this happen with my kids too, with people I love so dearly. We catastrophize little moments of the dream/ tiny flashes of a life unlived. We imagine the worst happening when it rarely does. And sometimes, when the worst really is happening: I just don’t know how the hell to outrun it. And that hurts. Just like standing and taking it all in hurts. The same as talking about it hurts, but so does keeping it all inside. It all hurts. Jesus Christ, how it all hurts so much of the time. Is that just me? Or is that some of you too?

I don’t know.

No one knows.

I get to watching the world go by and it’s humbling. At 54, I’ve led a pretty wonderful life by most accounts. Yet, I have known insufferable pain and what- at times at least- seems like endless drama. How do we cope? How do I move on to the next phase when the last one burned a massive scar across my proverbial face? Where does my resolve come from even? What convinces me to keep going when I know deep down now that my ship isn’t probably coming in. The money, the glory, the world’s eyes on my work: it ain’t happening. The band I played in long ago was as close as I’ll ever get to what so many others have achieved for real. But that was small. It was lovely but miniscule. Like so many things in life, I blinked once and it was gone, gone, gawwwwn. (Forbert).

This sick twisted world is gacking on its own puke half the time. Big old planet choking on the resurrected vomit of war. Of poverty. Of sin. Crime. Cruelty. Starvation. Disease. Natural disasters. Massive waves every now and then just rising up out of the sea and smashing into the coasts of faraway lands. Killing little people. Killing small people who are running from the goddamn thing as if they ever had a chance of dashing just ahead of it and making it to some kind of high ground in the fleeting moments before it swallows everything and everyone. It’s all bullshit in a way. Your random existence is just as flighty and uncommitted as your random exit will be. I picture myself dying a lot. Like, dying in a bed, over time, with courage and last words and all that. I don’t imagine myself running just in front of a wall of water as high as a Pennsylvania bank barn. But that is always a possibility, I guess. Maybe there is some kind of poetry in that somewhere but I’m too tired this morning to hunt it down.