bird

It was always easy. I could create a personality depending on those around me. I could switch between them as easily as trading masks. For some I listened to country music, others heard hard rock. Sometimes I was obsessed with female conquest; other times I barely even mentioned girls. With some people I watched dramatic films with various plot lines and strong characters; with others I sat through shallow romantic comedies.

Some girlfriends saw an adoring puppy, more saw an emotionally-distant asshole. Friends could see an opinionated smart ass or an apolitical moron, ignorant of current events. Different facets were emphasized with different friends. All the sides were there, all the time, but depending on the environment, some were polished and some were rough, chipped, or unfinished. I used to spend days in relative solitude, taking the time to reorganize, reconnect with, and process everything going on around me. I found relief in the quiet, in not having to impress or perform. I don’t do that now.

I used to spend time with people I felt superior to. People that were more socially awkward, dumber, less interesting, uglier, more naive, or less mature. Now I take time with those that tend to expand my horizons, challenge me, or make me think. Things are more engaging and satisfying. My tastes have changed.

I found sets of friends that I feel comfortable around. I don’t feel as strained. Most are interested in the same things or add to conversations about topics I enjoy discussing. Around them, I can follow insight with stupidity. I don’t have to dumb things down or talk above me. They are entertaining. I’ve tried to form closer friendships, but can’t tell if they’re getting to know me or one of the acts I’ve been putting on for so long.

My sarcasm is more insulting. I care less about being offensive and more about myself. It’s become harder to let people in. I talk too much and say almost nothing. It’s hard to see through the fog of stupidity, lack of forethought, and disrespect. I’m always tired. I distance myself from most everything. I close off and push things back toward superficial when I feel uncomfortable. I work with people I don’t like, live with people I don’t really know, and hang out with some people I don’t necessarily want to hang out with. I have opinions about things I don’t care about. I make loud absurd comments about things that don’t effect me.

I don’t spend as much time by myself; sometimes I’m afraid to. I’ve become lost in the different sides if a personality that I can’t be sure is mine. Am I doing what I should be doing? Am I with the people I should be with? Am I paying attention to things that are important or just things that are popular? Am I really listening? Is everything as hopeless I make it seem? Why is it so much easier to talk about things that don’t matter? Why is it so much harder to do things I should be doing than things I don’t care about? Am I geographically where I want to be?

For almost two miles, the gray Buick has been behind me in the left lane, just far enough back that I can’t comfortably switch lanes in front of it. It had been going a few miles faster than I, but slowed down to my speed, staying between six and ten feet off my left bumper. I’m gaining on a red Jeep, and quickly. My first reaction is to yell at the driver to my left. To call him any number of derogatory names he can’t hear, make loud gestures he can’t see, and make a scene within the confines of my own car for my own benefit.

Maybe he’s having a distracting conversation with his passenger. Maybe he’s not using cruise control because of traffic further behind. Maybe he’s just another member of the vast majority of motorists, driving with impressive inattentiveness. Maybe he’s a gigantic asshole, with few friends and a child that hates him. Maybe he just came out of a pack of particularly inconsiderate drivers and is in a horrible mood. My yelling or gesturing for him to pass would do nothing but annoy my passengers.

I speed up slightly, signal, and cut in front of him, knowing the space is too tight. He slows down, then speeds up in order to tailgate, and flicks me off for a full thirty seconds. I pass the Jeep, pull back to the right lane, and watch him emphatically pass on my left. Along side me, he slows, but I can’t see him, only his passenger gesturing for him to calm down and trying not to glance my direction. He passes and is quickly far ahead of me. Then I can’t see him at all.

Why was my first urge so hostile? I don’t care either way. I’m not in a hurry and the change in position wouldn’t alter my arrival time significantly, if at all. I look into the back seat, where one passenger is sleeping, by appearances, uncomfortably, then over to my other passenger, going through what looks like receipts and in her own world of organization. I doubt they were paying attention to the jerk passing me.

They won’t sympathize or pet my ego with comments of how big an asshole he was or how smartly I handled the situation. The conversation will quickly shift to something less or more pressing and the whole thing forgotten. They don’t care that for less than five miles out of three hundred fifty, I was dealing with a douchebag. I don’t need them to. I don’t think.

infirm

The sun is already a half hour below the horizon. The sky’s pale blue has been replaced by blackness. The streetlights are spaced about one to a block and form yellow hazy patches on the ground beneath them. Patches of darkness and black shadows try to infiltrate those patches. The street is bare, only just recently finished after months of construction. Most of the traffic still avoids it because drivers are unaware of its completion.

The air is chilled, but still a few weeks from frigid. Leaves are scattered under shrubs and large trees and all over the sidewalk. They shatter between my shoes and the concrete. The cool wind blows lightly against my exposed cheeks. The music in my headphones drowns out the hum of metropolitan noise. I’m far from downtown and I’ve already walked a half-mile from the main traffic route, but it’s there.

I continue walking, an even stride, consumed in the music, and my thoughts drift. It smells like cold mud, or stacks of fresh sod after a frost. It smells slightly of decay, a cool mustiness that reminds me of my grandmother’s basement. I pass the rows of construction barricades, the orange flashing lights blinking in coordination with one another. There are plastic, reflector-trap wrapped orange barrels and large road closure signs stowed at the side of two of the streets.

After passing the brightly lit main intersection, it seems darker still. The only light comes from the streetlights and the dim glow of lights inside the houses I pass. Up ahead, about a quarter mile, a figure appears to be standing still on the sidewalk. If it’s moving—I can’t tell from this distance—it’s moving very slowly. It’s between two streetlights, making it harder to see. It’s probably someone waiting for his or her dog. Waiting to grab hold of the leavings through a plastic bag and walk back to the warmth of a nearby house.

I’m gaining on the figure. I can’t tell if it’s walking in the direction I am, or just very slowly in the opposite. With the dim light, I can’t be sure if it’s a man or a woman. I can see that his or her walking is hitched. It’s slow, with short steps. He or she is pushing something. It looks to be a small cart. A car approaches from behind me. Its headlights spray light ahead of me. My shadow darkens and I can see the back of the figure.

His hair is disheveled, going in every direction and he wears a flannel shirt, far too thin for the temperature of the night. I’m within a few blocks now. His pace is arduously slow, only a few inches with each step, and appears painful. His shoulders are uneven, the left dipping about four inches lower and his back is curved to accommodate. The only sound is the light scraping of his Velcro shoes against the pavement and the rhythmic squeaking of his cart’s tires.

It feels colder. His halted gait forces a sense of unease. My mind wanders to the empty stares from wheelchairs parked in the lobby of every retirement community I’ve ever been in. I used to move furniture into and out of places like this. The air is stale, sanitary, and smells manufactured. The carpet is too clean, the hall too quiet, and there is ominously still. The nurses are friendly, but guarded. Security and office help are disgruntled and aggressive. I can feel the boredom; the feeling of waiting for the end is almost tactile.

I can feel the sidewalk under my feet, then the asphalt as I cross another street, but I’m not there. I can see the faces of the almost-dead men and women as they watch me roll furniture past them. The excitement of a new neighbor or the mild mourning of another, soon to be forgotten, partner in cards, are glints in their otherwise prosaic eyes. Their flesh, worn and stretched on their frames, drapes over their deteriorated joints and musculature.

The man is only a few feet ahead now and approaching a patch of yellow light from a streetlight close by. His hair is only slightly grayed, but greasy and unkempt. The cart holds groceries, about what would fit in two paper bags. I cut left a few feet to pass him quickly. I realize my heart is racing and I’m breathing quickly. Though unintentional, I have this reaction often when around the men or women like him. I have no reason to feel this way, but it’s as if their helplessness overwhelms me.

He is just a man, a very old man, who likely goes about his day with great difficulty. It will be decades before I will reach a similar point. He’s probably knowledgeable and friendly, but his pace and failing body make me uneasy. I still see the lobby filled with old men and women. Assisted living communities make me exceedingly uncomfortable. The thought of being so reliant turns my stomach. The unease of walking into those sterile buildings filters through my body as I step past him on the grass.

It’s irrational to fear death or attack or accidents or other events either against all odds or definitively certain. It’s irrational to fear age and the failing of one’s body as well, but I still do. I see the twilight of my twilight in the feeble eyes of those in wheelchairs. I taste the stale air and smell the musty medical surrounding as I pass this man.

Probably, it took him hours to go to and return from the grocery store. I could stop and help, but I don’t know what assistance I could offer. I’m past him now. I can’t hear the scraping of his soles and my heart is beating at a normal rate. By the time I enter my room the thought of him has almost faded, but for the images of imaginary women and men, sitting in their white rooms, watching me place their furniture, which just hours before was extracted from their homes, in the last room they will likely occupy. Those images don’t fade for another hour or so.

cinema

Surrounded by a hundred odd strangers, massive figures projected on the screen in front of me, aurally swimming in thumping noise, sharing the same perspective, the one given to me by the director, yet drawing different conclusions and opinions from anyone around. The smells of popcorn, cleansing agent, candy, and the man in front of me diffuse around me. Each stranger is reduced to a glowing outline.

The experience cannot be matched. The largest home theaters give you the large picture and the organ-vibrating acoustics, but still can’t match it. Those around you in a theater of your own making are too similar. Their thoughts during the film will parallel yours. The film can be paused, for drinks, snacks, or the restroom. The sound is loud, but without the vast expanse of a theater, it is not the same experience. Because of the familiar surroundings, conversation and comments spray out.

A film is ideated, produced, and distributed to be seen as a whole. It is meant to be an experience, supplied by a director and his team of producers, crew, actors, editors and hundreds of others. It is their telling, their perspective, and their recreation of a vision. Movies are becoming more and more realistic, more money is spent on them, and the theaters that show them are exponentially larger, but at their core, they’re still pure entertainment. But something’s changed.

DVDs have destroyed the theater. They have eroded conventions and attacked societal manners. A child is brought up with films at their fingertips. They ask inane questions and their parents answer them. They have conversations throughout. When they enter a theater, their habits are not altered. They don’t see a difference. They don’t separate a social event from one in their homes. They have no respect for the hundreds of others around them. They see them as strangers, but they aren’t seen as strangers sharing their experience, which is what they are. The movie has become about them and thus the experience is lost.

There were a set of guidelines before home theaters manifested. One should not talk openly during a film, but whispers and private conference are acceptable. There were no cell phones or pagers. Children were brought, but this was before ratings. All movies were designed for the masses. Their messages were universal and children were welcomed into the experience, no matter how annoying they may be. But those unwritten rules, those assumed norms, are disintegrating.

A film this past weekend reminded attendees to silence their cell phones several times. The film was rated R and billed as horror. The audience, a very small one, laughed at ridiculous parts and made comments during lulls. It was part of the experience. A shared joke among a dozen people who will never meet again. The film was dismal, but entertaining, and the audience was respectful to the necessary degree. The audience was enjoyable, but this is becoming rare.

Another film, seen at a discount theater, had only one reminder to silence cell phones. The theater was filled with over four hundred attendees. The film, a western of varying levels of drama, was quite good. The audience, for the most part was respectful and attentive. A cell phone ring went off well into the film. It rang for almost a full minute as an inattentive moron searched through his coat and finally muted the digital distraction. There wasn’t even an attempt at a quiet apology to those around him.

Two people behind me, to my right, were speaking conversationally throughout the first half of the movie. The girlfriend, young son, or wife was turned in my direction, his/her foot on the seat beside me, asking plot-related, but simple questions as if she were standing in a line for concessions. His/her questions were answered by her associate in a loud whisper with his hand angled against his mouth, ineffectively blocking his oral interference. They only stopped after I commented.

Silencing your cell phone and respecting the rest of the audience should be understood, but habits are formed in the comfort of one’s home and consideration is no longer passed between generations. We have lost simple decency and theaters are a glaring example. I follow the simple guidelines of going to a film. I am little distraction to other audience members.

I sit here, on the balcony, overlooking hundreds of people, with no one in the row directly in front of me. I stretch my leg to the arm of the seat in front and place my foot on its back. The screen is blank as more people file in. This film is also restricted, but this, as always, didn’t stop dozens of people lining up outside. A woman enters the row ahead of my companions and myself. She no doubt asked to be excused at the end of the row, but as she passes the seat below mine, she utters, “this is a theater, not your living room,” in a tone that reflects general disdain for our age and postures.

I want to stop her, to reply to her off-handed remark. I wanted to say, “If this were my living room, people like you wouldn’t be here and we’d all be happy. A courteous person would realize we were only making ourselves comfortable while the row ahead of us was empty. They would notice how quickly we accommodated their arrival and not make disrespectful remarks.”

But I don’t. She would fume, and apply any number of assumptions to my response. She would remain upset, start an argument, or have her husband defend her. Whatever the case, her experience would be deterred, and I choose to avoid it. I respect her enough to realize she’s just acting on previous notions and generalizations. If only she could muster the same.

Half through the movie, a child no older than a year begins to cry after a series of gunshots. I guess it’s just part of the new cinematic experience.

zompires

He’s sitting across the table from me. There’s a woman next to him. Her face is nondescript. He’s ogling me, as you would a sixteen ounce T-bone. It seems fitting. I’m paid handsomely as what amounts to a mobile blood bank. He pays cash to drain a pint or so every month. He has quite a few like me to keep him satisfied. I don’t know why I know that. There are more like him in the background.

I got the thirst, or something like that, from a cheesy plastic toy shaped like a cyclone with a green base. There’s a small plunger next to the static vortex with the cartoon eyes and giant smile. I don’t know how I know that either.

The bar has a few levels, one more like a set of apartments, one similar to a restaurant, and another, the first floor, appearing as any other bar outside a city center would. We’re in the restaurant area. He reaches across the table with his left arm. I grab it quickly and take a mouth-sized chunk out of the inside of his forearm. It’s squishy and slimy. his face twists to one of horror. the woman next to him is somehow gone now.

...everything fades to darkness.

When the images come back, I’m on the other side of the same table, or one just like it, and there’s a woman in the booth behind me leaning over my shoulder. She rubs her cheeks along mine and her hair falls over me. I hear her breathing heavily. I turn toward her, and in a raspy voice that’s not my own, say “bite me and I kill you,” fully expecting to make good on the threat. The group of zombies, or vampires, or zompires have taken me in.

There are dozens of these zompires around me, stuffing flesh into their respective maws, biting their victims, some willingly giving themselves up to it, violently, tearing muscle off the bones of those that struggle. I converse with them easily, but I’m helping those that fight them. how do I know that?

...the images fade again.

I’m in the hallway upstairs. There are gunshots coming from downstairs, or behind me, or in the room to my right, or everywhere at once. Bodies of the first set of zompires and those that fight them are scattered about the floor and some lay in morbid positions on the stairs. All hell’s broken loose. David Boreanaz is down the hall with what appears to be some form of machine gun, firing erratically.

I step back, and to my right, into what was a bedroom, now a large bathroom. I grab onto a large sheet of plastic, foggy and thick, and spin toward the corner, using the plastic to shield me from the fighting around me.

Ryan Pinkston, from Punk’d, is using some sort of fan and odd ninja-looking moves to subdue the zompires. A kid, who looks only in his late teens, in a Wisconsin Badger sweatshirt is fighting with silver stakes. He seems to be directly out of a Blade film. Blood sprays and spatters across the plastic shield, the walls, and onto my shoes.

Those fighting the zompires capture one. They have him lying, restrained, on newspapers in one of the rooms. They’ve injected some sort of serum. His arm is pulsing, green, hissing, and oozing to the point it appears to be falling off. he’s screaming in agony. I step back and grab the handle of the door.

...every thing’s black.

I walk into a bathroom, checking my appearance. the cyclone toy is on the shelf under the mirror. The view pulls back, and I see myself, my reflection, and a large portion of the bathroom. The walls are layered in grime, brown with mold, and covered in many layers of dust. Pan down to the bathtub and shower, covered in filth. A body crouches inside the tub, wrapped in a brown-stained shower curtain. It’s still. Blood lines the edge of the tub and smears the curtain.

...pan out...

With a hitch in my breath, I wake up in darkness. Sweat has soaked the pillow casing and it turns cold as I twist my head and roll to the other side of the bed. four in the morning. My breathing is short and my heart’s racing. I lean over, flip on the light, and write down pieces of an already fading set of random synapse-bursts, interpreted as imagery, cross-referenced to memory.

halloween

There is no single holiday that better exemplifies our self-isolation than Halloween. I personally walk past a hundred some houses on the way to work and I know nothing of their residents. The neighbors have done nothing to introduce themselves. Their children run erratically around our house, but I have never received more than a passing nod or “hello” from any of them. There are thousands of people wandering throughout the downtown, but no cordial greetings.

Instead, conversations are held through messenger programs, telephone conversations, or emails, if at all. Distrust and paranoia run rampant with local news and media sensationalizing and embellishing anything that may land them better ratings. People avoid the bus, certain shopping centers, certain neighborhoods, and any number of other places. The fear is palpable. I’m not immune. I feel unease passing the homeless or any large group of anyone that appears out of place.

It’s a detriment to everyone. More drugs needed, more security desired, and more freedoms forfeited in favor of over-arching protection. We used to leave doors unlocked fearlessly, but that, apparently, was before thieves began infiltrating homes. Anyone misunderstood or outside of our desired norms is segregated, stigmatized, demonized, and looked on with condescension. We protect our kids from millions of possible threats based on elaborate reports that are exaggerated close to the point of being outright lies.

A search on Google for “poisonous candy halloween children” renders over seven hundred thousand items. There was never any instance of a child receiving tainted or poisoned candy by a madman doling death randomly. The only reported case was a father murdering his own child. But, this story emerges every year as a “scoop” or “breaking news” on any news station desperate for ideas. Abductions by masked assailants are just as unlikely, but just as news-worthy. Is it possible? Could it happen? How do you protect your child? Can your neighbors be trusted?

With the sense of community eroded or completely demolished, we’re left with untrustworthy neighbors and surrounded by insanity. Children walk, chaperoned, a few blocks in either direction, to fill their plastic bags/containers/pillow cases with as many high-calorie, nutrition-free consumables possible. That candy is checked, distributed, and eaten too quickly all over the fattest nation on the globe. The times vary by community, but are all typically before dark because it’s understood that darkness brings the crazy people out of their dens of horror.

October thirty-first was, at it’s core, a time for community. A time where entire towns celebrated a long-standing, though misplaced, tradition of harvest, ancestry, and renewal. We’ve lost that. Not only have we lost the original ties to the earth through candy manufacturers’ blunt-force campaigns and card printers over-saturation, but we’ve lost the togetherness. The trick-or-treating has been reduced to a practice of untrusting parents to appease their greedy fat kids, understood and facilitated by other untrusting parents and friendly neighbors too tied to the past to notice a difference.

Only after all sense of camaraderie has dissolved, can someone stand at the refrigerator at the office and make a statement like, “it’s such a ridiculous holiday anyway. I mean, walking in the freezing cold to strangers houses for candy?” Yes, office drone, you are walking to strangers houses for candy. That is what it’s been reduced to.

It is a shell of the Pagan holiday it once was, celebrated throughout societies as a night when the place of their ancestors was closest the living world. A night when they could dress as demons and ghosts to calm those restless dead. A night celebrating the harvest and the sustenance that it brought. A night of bonfires, costumes, and community. It was a night of relaxation and bonfires and ghost stories and entertainment.

Now it’s a four-hour block of daylight determined by committee to be the safest, where your child gleefully dresses as a comic book hero, children’s show character, or G-rated demon. He or she strolls three feet in front of you around the block, filling his or her receptacle with as many branded items of unhealthy as he or she can from strangers you’ve never spoken to or visited. It falls near a weekend where your female friends and daughters can dress in her sluttiest and drink themselves to retardation. It’s surrounded by a hundred different movie marathons and holiday-oriented episodes of sitcoms or dramas, filled with trite themes and ridiculous costumes.

That’s what it’s become. It is empty and shallow. Much like ourselves, but without the pills or things to buy to fill its void.