hazy

It’s catching up to me. There’s an ominous feeling. The closest thing that relates is the increased humidity and wet smell of a thunderstorm. I can’t see it like the dark clouds on the horizon, but there’s a weight to it.

The haze—the only name for it I can think of—used to come quite often in high school. It was around longer then too. In college the haze came less frequently. The drink may have ebbed its effects. For the year I was moving furniture it only came around two or three times. It’s caught up to me a few times already in the last couple months.

It comes with a feeling of distance from myself. Like going through the motions, or floating with a current. It’s hard to focus. I read less and watch more television or movies. I eat too much or too little. The headaches are worse and I sleep less. Thoughts are jumbled and flow into one another. It’s harder to be around people. Everything is less interesting. And then, after a few days, it’s gone.

It’s easier to handle them now. Generally people don’t notice it and I only mention it to a few. People don’t typically care to know, but I can still feel when it’s around. It comes around when I’m too busy, too tired, too caught up in everything else. I just need time to think. Time to sit, read, decompress, and find myself again.

Maybe it builds up and makes guys buy overpriced transportation in their middle-age. Maybe it’s why middle-aged women stereotypically buy worthless things. Is it the haze they’re trying to distract themselves from? That feeling that they’re too far away from where they should be? Do they hope to compensate for the disconnect?

Will it come and go until I pass on? Does everyone get their own form of the haze? Is this the price we pay for breaking out of the natural line? Is the defiance of nature coming back to haunt us? Sparking the necessity of drugs that alter how we think, feel, and act?

imminent

Where will I be when the world around me crumbles? It’s only a matter of time before our way of life shatters around us. We can’t sustain it much longer. I don’t know what the breaking point is, but it can’t be far off. The politicians allow the corporations to run mostly everything. Conglomeration is the norm and becoming even more common. There is no end to the power these corporations feel entitled to.

Corporations exploit any resource and all of their labor in order to turn an ever-higher profit. The economy looks good from the outside in the form of high margins and big gains, but how long will the luster of exploitation last? Those that can stand up to them remain complacent and unaffected. They ignore what’s going around them or have been failed by the system in being too ignorant to understand it. The pursuit of profit should never govern moral decisions.

Upper and lower classes are separating. There used to be a vibrant middle class on which the elite balanced. Now they have eaten away at that middle class, making more and more of them working poor. How will they keep from falling? The rich are becoming richer with the help of to government, all the while the poor fall farther into poverty behind the turned shoulder of that same government. In the name of efficiency and capitalism, the poor are being bled to death.

Our health is worse than ever. We are getting cancer, heart disease, and any number of lifestyle-related illnesses in larger numbers. Vast swatches of this country will live a short life than their foreign counterparts, while waving the flag of the best country on earth. Millions of insured citizens are pushed into crushing debt while millions of others are denied because of profit-cutting “preexisting conditions.” Profit squeezed from the sick to pad the wallets of the powerful.

The government, voted to represent the people, is ignoring the popular opinions of their constituents in favor of corporate interests. The parties bicker and attack each other while generating suffocating policies. We are falling behind in every category of import, including education, health, finances, and foreign policy. The majority of an annual budget goes to an overextended military in unwelcoming lands defending an unpopular empire.

Across the globe we’re seen as consuming exponentially more than anyone else, invading a country for their lucrative resources, and being a population of ignorant racists. Our motives for preemptive war were unjust and illegal. Our corporations rape the lands of the less powerful and if any of them stand up our government pressures them until they concede to the corporate giants.

Corporations and the government have paid millions and pushed hard against the almost indisputable science of the pending global catastrophe. They have delayed our advances and halted legislation while putting us decades behind where we should be. Millions will die when the earth loses it’s incredible ability to heal itself. We will pass the breaking point and the population will grow beyond our crop yields and economies will fail.

The fight to find profit in the global disaster is sparking a new wave of consumerism. The buying of things to save us from our own consumerism is a paradox that will destroy our way of life. Too many are holding on to their wasteful ways too long. Even more don’t see the error of their ways at all.

So I ask, where will I be? Will I already be passed on? Will I be too elderly to truly feel the pain? Will I know someone starving to death and not be able to help? Will my friends and I go bankrupt in the second coming of the Great Depression? Will I leave a dying planet to my children? Will I be forced to defend my home as the rest of the world wages war with it’s sole superpower in a fight of its resources? Will nations rise up against our imperialism on the nightly news? Will I always live surrounded by a vague looming fear of an unknown, ambiguous, and imaginary enemy?

fitting

I can only see her feet from under the changing room door. She’s trying on jeans. We ended up here because the weather got colder than expected. With the store closing at nine-thirty, we pulled into parking at quarter after. We made it just in time. She made quick work of the selection. She had four possibles before I knew what was going on.

I find myself staring at her toes as they hop in and out of each pair without really looking at them. It’s only been seven months and she’s already my favorite. It’s too easy. It’s almost as though things simplify when she’s around. It’s almost disconcerting. I’ve lost control over my affection for her. My being with her is a complete fluke.

She’s goofy. She entertains herself easily. She entertains me constantly, which is unusual. She makes me laugh. Being around her is effortless. She’s easy to talk to. She listens to even the most random of my ramblings. She has yet to make even a subtle effort to push me into her ideal mold. I can’t help but think I’m finally back in the black in my Karma account.

She fits in with my friends. The distance doesn’t seem an obstacle. My parents adore her. Her family is great company. They have stories and commentary that make everything more interesting. Whether it’s friends or family, I’ve received only compliments on what amounts to blind luck.

She steps out sporting the third pair. She glances over at the couch where I’m sitting and her eyes flicker with a smirk. She turns to the mirrors and assesses the fit. She turns back toward the fitting room and kicks her left leg behind her slightly with a small hop. The door closes again behind her. I realize I’m smiling. I can’t help it.

Delectable, desirable, dazzling, delicate, delicious.

appendage

As he runs by, I only catch a glimpse of his arm. I turn and see his elbow where the prosthetics attach. He has some forearm below the the elbow because he’s able to hold it at ninety degrees like his left. I haven’t been close, even in proximity, to someone with prosthetic appendages. A dozens of questions, scenarios, and visuals flood my mind.

Did he lose his arm in injury? Was it lost while battling a disease? Was it a small wound that became infected? Did he have it sliced off in an accident? Was it blown off with explosives? Did he lose it during a war? Is he ashamed of it, or does he wear it as a badge of honor? How long has it been missing? Does he still get phantom pains? How dexterous is he with the two-pronged hook that has replaced his hand? Does he wish the arm was still there? Does he joke about it at parties? How long was he in the hospital and rehabilitation? How many people avert their eyes when they notice it?

He has been through more pain than I hope I ever will. My arm went through a window and the other was broken, but both were very much attached. The pain of the broken arm faded almost immediately after the bone was set. The pain of the laceration was intense until the repairing surgery and then faded to a sore throbbing within a few weeks. Are those anything close to the physical pain of losing a limb? Emotionally, the trauma of being without an arm is something I can’t even fathom.

He passed me in less than a second, but as I walked to my office and rode the elevator, I could only think of how lucky I’ve been. How lucky it was that my wrist injury didn’t end up worse. That, aside from some numbness, stiffness, and a small loss of dexterity, I still have a fully functioning right hand. Without that bit of luck, the injury could have been worse or the wound infected, and I could be jogging through downtown as the eyes of everyone I passed darted in every direction but mine.