God, I hate being alive. Being alive means getting it wrong. Not that I have any problem with being wrong. My government and various religions are based on that basic construct. I just get tired of the fact that life does not go on forever in ways that I can intellectually appreciate it in a body that has more defective parts than an automobile.
Two people rushed over and asked if they should call and ambulance. I said they should call retox as I pondered whether I managed to pop the tendon splice in my calf. Remembering Soldier in the Rain (the book is better, but watching Steve McQueen and Jackie Gleason work together? Are you crazy?), my only response was to give the sky a finger, which my fellow coworkers mistook for a response to their civic and humanitarian concern, and they proceeded to kick the shit out of me. Or maybe I just imagined that part.
Another of those great Korean figures that I carry around in my head like an alternative pharmacopeia to keep the mind zombies bay is this:
Saved it
for the maggots
When I type I don't think about the real suffering on this planet. I have never experienced real suffering. I've had pain, loss, disappointment, but I can't wrap my head around a planet of 6 billion people, many of whom can't even dream to get to a place where they might experience what I call my down times. If I was capable of shame, I might feel it when I think about how silly the shit is that I often complain about. Drop a building on me please. Come to Haiti.
I currently have both my legs. I can see. I can hear. I can think. And I can type whatever I want into a worldwide ether that billions of my fellow homo sapians do not have unfettered access to.
My greatest weakness (life is so oxymoronic) is having an immediate response to any personal setback where I consider how much less of life I can experience because of this or that failure of an biological architectural paradigm that is still under construction and has nothing to do with me or anything I sometimes think I understand.
Right now, two days later, my leg hurts so exquisitely that I could not do what I planned to do over the weekend. That makes no difference to anyone whose plans do not yet include the concept of a weekend, which I suspect includes about 80% of the people on the planet.
Shame on me for not being in Tennessee.