Out of All That Battle Smoke, Along Comes this American Child

Everyday I think about stupid shit. That’s true freedom right there. I get up in the morning and I pull myself together. Shorts, t-shirt, socks, work boots. Rite Guard. Crest. Unibrow. Neck beard. Then I kiss people goodbye if there are any around, say so-long, head out into the world.

My commute is a straight shot along one road. There is one lane going west and there is one heading east. I go west to make money, I go east to go home. On the road I drift from thought to thought, from idea to memory, from memory to fear, and then back around again to some new avenue. Often I return to a song in my head. Sometimes I land back on a face from the past. Someone I once laughed with or sweated alongside. Someone I once talked to about stuff. Now they are gone. Not dead yet, but dead enough for me, I guess.

Birds swoop across the road. Last minute crows on a roadkill are so unafraid of me. They challenge my Honda. They let me know that I annoy them with my bullshit passing over this possum. The crows have been sucking on this poor bastard’s guts all morning. That is also, as far as I can tell, a form of real time liberty.

Sometimes I listen to a podcast on my small bluetooth speaker. I jam it between the windshield and the dashboard and it sort of wedges into a locked place. If I slam the brakes I guess it would probably take my face off. Time will tell.

I listen to this one NY Times podcast a lot. ‘The Daily’. It’s good. Half hour half-deep dives into current events. The host is a pro. The guests are all Times staffers and they know how to podcast talk. The edits slip by unnoticed. It’s the real deal.

I listened the other day as I was driving west to a recap of this little sort of rebellion invasion that a guy from a private Russian army threw together last weekend. The whole story is baked. Basically, this private army general took his thousands of troops and turned on his mother country and drove towards Moscow with, what appears to have been, very real intentions of causing some shit. Something about it is off though. Mostly because the dude that was in charge of the thing called it before they even hit the city limits. And also the fact that he is still alive. But I think he won’t be alive too long. The Russian government don’t play. They poison you. They come after you and they get you if they want to.

That kind of thing probably goes on here in America too, but we are a bit too busy to notice it. Rebellions are happening all the time, if you think about it. Kids down at the elementary school with AR-15s. Disgruntled warehouse workers shooting up the place. White cops beating the snot out of innocent black people. Karens all up in your iPhone face/ neck veins bulging/ spittle caking on your screen.

They hold back for as long as they can.

But then they unzip themselves out of that tight hot skin, and step into the light.

“FUCK YOU, N****R!,” they belt.

And then we are invaded.

And then we go to work.

_____

To be a United States citizen or resident or whatever, these days, is confusing. You may think - after my intro up there- that I am about to launch into a liberal tirade and that would be fair to guess that. But I’m not.