The Open Matt Project

Future Marked

It's 2 AM, and I'm horny and angry and alone. This is not a good mix, my friends. I find myself making sounds like a wounded animal, and hoping desperately to jump start some cathartic tears. It's not going to happen. My awareness of how I'll soon have to get up and get it together and begin my trip to NYC is unavoidably growing.

I'm moving there. I'm going to grab my ass and throw it right into the firestorm that is my home town. Fuckin' A. I'm going to pick up my sensitive POS lifestyle and heave it into the mix. I can't wait. Can you?

I almost punched my screen in there. I am so fucking angry it doesn't even make sense to me. The amount of time and effort and whining and bitching it seems to take to get people to tier one of response - ridicule - is too much.

You think it's weird? You think it's whiney? You sit alone and hold your fears close in an effort to make them seem familiar and familial, but they are no more than reflections and shadows of our own differences. We fight the same enemy, regardless of its name.

I'm going to die. I'm going to die and I'm going to hate it, and I'm going to fight every second of its inevitable conclusion. Not because my mother did. Not because my father wants me to. Not because I'm worth it. But because I understand why I'm here, and why it is I must exist, despite all reason and rationale.

It's not dying that is hard. It's living. It's deciding that you are embarking on a course that may or may not make sense to you or anyone else, and following through on it regardless of the corresponding experience.

Indra's net. Karma. God's will. The balance of mechanism. You call the shot, I have a place in it. I'm not concerned with the territory, because I understand my place on the map. I'm not fighting it. Not anymore. I understand that regardless of my own intentions, embracing my future it wiser than resisting it. I may not have to serve, but there is no avoiding my awareness of what is to come.

I am so afraid. I want to pass the baton. I want to give up the names of my co-conspiritors and list the caches of money and information. I want to do whatever I have to do to stop the horror. I want to pass this on to the next generation. I want my children to take my mantle, which will protect them from a spectrum of misery, and carry it onwards. Maybe they'll succeed where I am sure to fail.

Maybe that is why I'm not fit. Maybe that is why I don't understand. Maybe that is the form of my cage.

Posted by Matt at December 20, 2003 02:24 AM