Wednesday, October 9, 2013

” It is enough if you don’t freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don’t claw at your insides. If your back isn’t broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes can see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why?”
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

On the other hand…

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.”

- Henry David Thoreau.

I guess it is all about perception. How one chooses to look and see and to interpret the things that come into each of our worlds.

Perhaps George Carlin explained it best: “Reminds me of something my third-grade teacher said to us. She said, “You show me a tropical fruit and I’ll show you a cocksucker from Guatemala.”

All of this...

“Right now, as you read this, someone somewhere is gettin ready to hang himself” - George Carlin.

Well, George may be right. Let’s face it, there are a lot of pretty desperate people out there that might take some comfort in the idea of the rope, at least in theory.

Never having wrapped it around the neck and hopped off the stool, I can’t speak with authority on the subject. But there’s much to be said for anything that will make the voices stop and it’s all pretty much a matter of degree. Some run or work out, some eat, some drink or drug. Unfortunately, those activities usually come to an end and the voices start up again.

You know the voices, the ones that scream that you’re behind on the mortgage, that the car needs new tires, that you’re losing your job, that your father has cancer… And so you do what you need to do – pump iron or smoke weed or go shopping- to keep the rope at bay…

Me? I’m gonna write. I’m going to write right here. Whenever I need to. Whatever I need to. And it matters not if anyone ever reads these things. It is enough to simply write.