non sequitur – Page 14

Screaming with Imperfections

Silversmiths just don’t smithy things quite the same way these days, and I can’t put my finger on why (aside from the obvious lack of a need for hand-hammered silver pieces screaming with imperfections). If I’m being perfectly frank with you, I’m unsure as to how this topic was broached in the first place; don’t machines do all of that work nowadays anyways? The only consistent demand for old-school silversmiths seems to be mostly coming from vintage retailers and collectors in the market for replicas of historical pieces–oh, and Renaissance faires, o’ course.

Now go and do your homework before I change my mind about letting you watch the Dracula movie marathon with me after dinner.

Kicking Around Church Basements

There just happens to be a bit of that element of unbridled circuitry stalling our forensic benefactors for at least one afternoon while Bobby frets over the overarching themes present in your typical Asimov novel, even though he doesn’t know the first thing about the author (or even his first name). Bobby picked that book (Bicentennial Man) for a class project and figured he’d wing it by reading the title and filling in the blanks from there. How hard could it be? He’d at least been able to see the film of the same name, because he enjoyed every piece of Robin Williams’ filmography, to the point where he had two copies of each DVD in his home, one of each to remain unopened and eventually (in his eyes, anyway) serve as a time capsule for future generations to marvel over. In actuality, they’ll most likely end up kicking around church basements for a couple decades or two before finding a new owner–a person collecting obsolete movie technology for the purpose of destroying it and filming the act. It’s highly-conceptual. You just wouldn’t understand.

Lap Scraps

Within our stricken, conflicted
human psyches
lies the power to change our circuitry or
ignore the idea
that anything could be amiss.
We are not tragic figures all,
how could we be? Well see,
there’s the rub.
We all come from tragedy
to beget tragedies of our own.
We must avert travesty
while negotiating the roiling tragedies
unique to each of us.

On that note, I went back to the well
to replenish my joy and wonder
for words and their ability
to impact our immediate universes.

*–*–*

Read a passage about red shoes
and you probably won’t be surprised
to find that a lot of people walking about
are donning red shoes.

*–*–*

Now the plan (to be quickly rendered
irrelevant if all goes well) is to encounter
the skeletal fragments of op-ed pieces
concerning the phenomenon of right-shoulder
organ grinder monkey-carrying–
notes just lying around in various
unexpected filing cabinets, I’d assume–
to cobble together a feel-good article
revolving around the presence of that
ages-old parable wherein a matchbox-sized
chubby-cheeked angel proffers ethical advice
(of course, while also embodying
the epitome of baroque cuteness).

Look at that capuchin monkey’s little face,
so expressive!
Just like a tiny person
begging for table scraps–
lap scraps at a picnic–
while they dart their eyes
and appear to be narrowly averting collision
with numerous invisible entities
at a rate of about thirty ducks per minute.

What the Why I Oughtta

I’m going for broad strokes here, don’t need no fancy-ass sophisti-ma-cated doohickey telling me why not or what for (what the why I oughtta).

Forget about all that untrustworthy noise being split and spattered as hats drop all across this great nation of ours. Am I a politician? No, I’m the version of that public servant who couldn’t be arsed into devoting so much time to such fruitless labor, only to end up making most people I know either hate or envy me just based on what I picked as my moneymaking methodology.

No, I’m a free-range consultant. No cages involved in the creation of my livelihood, I just move from place to place with a pen in hand (and hopefully some form of paper), keenly aware of my place within the echelon of idealists who couldn’t just sit by while creative liberties were being stripped away left and right through the illusion of choice that’s being perpetuated by the umpteen media concerns who mainly just seek that bottom dollar, any progress to be made coming in secondary as long as the people responsible for the immense success of these moneymaking machines are satisfied with the level of financial wherewithal gained through their various transactions aimed at creating a consumerist welfare state.

People, mostly, seem to have lost the innate ability to make something from scratch and take pride in it. Well, that’s not entirely true. People find their various outlets for pent-up creative energy, many times leading to unwanted pregnancy–or wanted, you never know. So having incredible sex, cooking a delicious meal, taking in a provocative documentary–you get the picture–are all lovely pastimes, but rarely do they get to the heart of the issue that pokes and prods us through every threshold of our very finite lives: what can I do as an individual that can be considered mine and mine alone? Sure, I make an excellent lasagna and fuck like the wind, but there just has to be more to this whole dog and pony show we all find ourselves swimming through (even though there was no prior mention of any aquatic activity whatsoever and we’re all stuck here looking like fools while we contemplate whether to strip naked, down to our skivvies, or just jump in, shoes and all).

When I was confronted with the infinite above-ground swimming pool of “reality”, I did my damnedest to avoid even dipping my toe in the water. I was and always have been a perpetual procrastinator and particular perfectionist, and I’ve learned to adjust expectations and accept when situations are out of my control. All well and good, you say, until I mention that the other 90% of all scenarios I’ve encountered have come as a result of the anxiety regarding my personal development and negotiation of this absurd pool metaphor that is becoming more and more apt the more I’m thinking about it.

I used to be perfectly content to drive headfirst into that pool for OTHER people, but when the time would invariably come to jump in there for my best interests, I would always shy away and make excuse after excuse, up to the point where just the act of making excuses became so humdrum that I didn’t even bother telling myself those convenient little mistruths. I would typically still be able to string those thoughts together, in order to satisfy questions by concerned parties (or nosy neighbors), but I’d run out of the energy to pretend to delude myself, because the only person I’d succeeded at confusing was ME!

And now none of that even matters anyway. I’m fixing to move to Albuquerque and start up a tombstone business, a good ol’ brick and mortar joint. That’ll teach ’em.

One Fine Day

There’s something so sublime
about observing and admiring
an intriguing-yet-mundane object in space
that has never failed
to lend credence to that ages-old belief,
often eloquently-stated as the following:

beauty, that relatively universal indicator of aesthetic appeal, is more or less subjective depending upon the perception of the individual/s observing the particular object or phenomenon in question.

Why, I was gazing one fine day–
surveying the park of common human consequence
(observable to very few by the naked eye)–
when my eyes rested upon a preponderance
of turtledove squadron trainers,
and as they went about their daily regimented activities,

I looked deeply into the pools of their eyes

while they continually exhibited
the inability to break out of the checkboxes
they’d been forced to occupy through one coup or another
somewhere along the line as young (or at least, younger)
men with a passion for doing things a different way
than all those other pencil-pushing types
who would be quick to declare their allegiance
to the guild of orderliness (or brotherhood
of smug rule-abiding, and also occasionally
the bean counters collective, depending on who you ask).

Not a woman in the bunch. I chalked that up
as the fairer sex’s natural disinclination toward
imposing human rules upon flighted creatures
with the ultimate goal of turning a profit.
That’s at least
what every woman I’ve ever known
has told me about the situation.

Whackadoodles

Charlie’s stifling influence couldn’t possibly affect me today, you can bet all your marbles and even some lesser mechanical components on that. I have half a mind to bust out my old soldering iron and go to town. I’ve been shopping around for motherboards to house in my new homemade personal computational device, for crunching numbers and the like. I’ve heard that there are some more sophisticated uses for them now, like finding a life partner and pissing away all your money on fake virtual coins, but that’s not my prerogative. Now food, that’s something I’m never tired of exploring. What a brave new world of culinary concoctions we’re in these days, I can’t even keep track of all these new fusion joints being put together by trendsetting chefs in the chic corners of the world. It’s just as well, I can’t afford to be jet-setting around just to try some cannoli wonton soup or petri dish gelatin dessert that costs $75 and you can’t even use a fork when eating it. Seriously, you have to just slurp it down like a jello shot. A $75 jello shot. Kids these days, I swear. We in the previous generation appear to be on our own now; the youths don’t seem to have the same kind of rapport with the common man as we do. I mean, I get it. There are more depressed and violent whackadoodles out there than ever before, and if you’re not an expert in sociolinguistics such as myself, you sure could feel like a quivering little leaf falling from the top of one of those monster eucalyptus trees. Everyone just seems to be craving personal time now. Gone are the days where I could just sit in a café and strike up a conversation; everyone is plugged into some whozit or whatzit. I don’t know, I always thought I wouldn’t turn out to be one of those stick-in-the-mud kind of guys, but now I understand the allure of the “ain’t what it used to be” paradigm. I’m just having trouble dealing with the old grouches to happen to share my viewpoint. Miserable old pricks. Well, we all have to get started on living our best lives at some point. Jeez, have I been talking this whole time? Sorry, kid. Can I have a club soda and some of that deconstructed fondue? I mean, I thought fondue was already decon–eh, forget about it. Just go ahead and put in my order. And don’t worry, I’ll tip!

Superficial

If bears could write,
would they choose that pastime
over climbing trees?
I’ll let you ponder that for a minute.

A can of whoop-ass overshadowed our biweekly WoundFest; there are only superficial injuries detailed in the most recent meeting minutes, no instances whatsoever of skin being broken. An average WoundFest should typically entail deep flesh wounds, mainly for the purpose of scaring away enthusiastic and misled newbies. The WFers are a tight-knit group, can’t have fair-weather harm-infliction hobbyists just jumping in and out all willy-nilly! What would say about WFers as a group? I’ll tell ya right now, it would make them look desperate! Soliciting the pain of complete outsiders and kicking them to the curb when they balk at the notion of losing a pint or two of blood… those despicable near-masochists need to stick with their own kind, so we don’t even broach this conversation in the first place, airing out our dirty laundry for the world to see.

Now, what these here WFers need to do, if they’re in the business of enlisting new members, is go out to the woods and rustle up a few bears. That would definitely take the unrequited writing ability off of their minds for a little bit, while practically guaranteeing worthwhile flesh wounds in the process (bloodlust is a hell of a drug). I can only imagine how excruciating it must be to possess the ability to manipulate something as complex and abstract as modern language with absolutely no ability to record it, aside from rudimentary scratch marks on tree bark that could never be appreciated as a contribution to the literary canon. At best, they’ll be confused with the cliché summer camp gouge marks left behind by horny pre-teens.