I'm so small.
For reasons I can't define, today has maintained a
theme. The theme was “neighbors.” I move to the middle of nowhere,
already exists a neighbor. I stay for a year or two, several more move
in. You've been told to “love thy neighbor.” Depending on which side of
the fence you sit, you might be the Ned Flanders, or the Homer Simpson.
What
does it mean for me to call myself small? I'm a distant memory in the
mind of a college acquaintance. I'm a petty fool with indignant statuses
to be written off as though they were inscribed on toilet paper. I'm 1
in several billion who may or may not die in some horrifying way
tomorrow or lend himself to the infectious chain that takes down someone
else. I'm the conscious blip, delirious with ideas of free will, taking
infinitely ironic stabs at immortality with every new goal and mangled
sentiment.
The smallest speck of dirt in your eye can irritate
indefinitely. The smallest bump on your skin can engorge and get
infected. The smallest comment of encouragement or scorn can imprint on
one who overhears. I'll watch 6 seasons of a show and replay one scene
or one line for years. What does it mean to be small? It's an
opportunity to persist and move in many directions. Tardigrades can live
basically everywhere, including in the vacuum of space.
I am
small. I don't feel small. In fact, I feel like I have an over-sized
impact on the lives of people I interact with. I feel people remember
me, especially when they don't want to. I think how trashy reality
television is perceived by me is how people hate-fuck ideas about and
from me in their own lives.
All the world's entertainment and
horrible examples of how to conduct your life haunt, taunt, and flaunt
how much attention and money their branding and berating can garner. The
language to escape and justify is an inexhaustible well. I think I
share in the egomania which for surely nefarious reasons is compelling
by default. Insofar as you aren't interested in yourself, that is. Crazy
tiger people, like burnt Jersey trash, mean nothing to fellow egoists.
For
the power and purpose of my self-delusions, what's the end, or even the
current goal? Why do I practically salivate at the prospect of opening
my social circle to people I know want nothing to do with me? Why do I
want 100 invitations, gas or flights paid, to be turned down by those
who never signed on? Why do I want to reduce myself to an annoying
little stain on the mind of people who know I look down on them and
resent for not manifesting beyond formative memories described by some
smug Oprah's book club blurb advocating for everyone you meet to be a
brick in your humble-bragging home about where you're at in life?
Do
I need to always be in that opposition space? Do I need to keep
jettisoning myself away from the “past” and carry on as if the future
won't be the reshuffling reanimated corpse with different players? Do I
turn off, genuinely enjoy doing nothing more than trying to have
everything at that point? Do I wish the speck of dirt memory to matter
to them as much as their, seemingly positive, impression left on me? Am I
just in the business of turning a lot of shit into a much happier and
hopeful story than could ever exist?
I suppose, I know what
happens when I act like that's true. I know who I turn into. I know the
impact of my words and behavior significantly faster and with more
credible blame. My impact doesn't come with a butterfly-effect
convolution meandering the winds of meaning. I know I don't feel right,
or think something akin to karma is going to “get me.”
I like to
minimize. I don't wish to erase, but I like to keep in context. I like
to find the hundredth iteration or true nascent point to a sentiment
that made you feel light and bright all day, but is basic as hell. I
want to find the utility or point. I want you to use your anger, or
disregard it. I want you to contemplate and build on your trauma, or
just be quiet and suffer irresponsibly until we're forced to deal with
you. I want to fluidly believe each step of my life is a “simple” act of
putting the right shapes in the right holes, and not unleash a torrent
of half-baked philosophy, anxiety, and tattered hatred imploring to be
understood. I try to not feel my hands and wrists as I contemplate
countless redundant incidents of manual slavery that belay the comforts
of my existence.
Little can be understood. Little fits in many
baskets. Big is open to endless interpretation and remixing. Little can
pop right out of existence the moment you try to get too hard a grasp of
it. Little decisions you make early about who you want to be and how
you're going to understand the world compound. The little idea remains
the same, and all you can't control is what spins out. Little acts to
remind yourself of who you are and how you're oriented keep you true.
Little negotiations in your foundation invite cracks. Little plays to
ignorance incite death.
I'm a small collection of ideas in a
small state on a small spot of land. I make small amounts of money which
let me buy up the small tools it takes to dig small holes, walk small
paths, and dream for ever more small comforts. I wouldn't invite my
Confederate and Trump flag waving neighbors, and yet, they've carried
out small favors and offered to help me in my small endeavors. How big
of them.
If “the universe,” what have you, ever had a reason to
slow me down, it would be for the same fear that my worst impulses would
take over with the right momentum and influence. I'm different. It's a
small difference that has compounded over time into something beyond me.
It can get bigger and wily. I want the world filled with people better
than me, better than having been crafted by the selfishness and
indulgence, and better than begging for death amidst abundance. I pursue
a future I can't conceive as the last interesting story to unfold. I
don't want to shed the characteristics that make me small. I want to
recognize and respect what they turn into unchecked or ignored.
I
make small decisions over time until something big exists as order or
chaos. I watch my creations as though they had been there all along or
were inevitable. I see what work is left to be done, move a stone, dig a
hole, and huff a new engine fume. I keep inviting. I keep celebrating. I
keep posting the world's weakest landscaping pictures of the inches we
add. I watch my language evolve into more “we” sentiments. I wonder what
we will resolve to as the world continues to burn. I wonder if when
I've crossed over some superficial mental or cultivated environmental
line I'll forget about what drove me there. We'll have so much left to
do and think about.
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