Making faces at dogs.

People run around, and it seems funny. But it's not funny. And the gas fumes from the remains of vegetation and once-living creatures drifts into my logic, and all former certainties are up for grabs. I am out of shape but I have stared down death. I completely demolished a man who attacked me yesterday. I've not a scratch nor ache to show for it; he's a mess. It was instinct, bullet time, survival, not caring nor feeling any fear at all. I think he saw it in my eyes, the emptiness. I've given my time, my sincere efforts, and my heart to a girl who feels sorry for herself and forgets to say a simple thanks because she is tired. I had a marriage like that. I left with my left foot on a low cloud.

I am not concerned. Chemicals keep me a robot for now. I still miss Christine Deemer from the 6th grade; I miss Nicola; I miss my wife. I am not sad even though I should be. Don't comment with comforts for me, don't be fake. If it's an insight and not a comfort, be my guest. I was pulled into this world already screaming and shell-shocked. The wide eyed look you saw that seemed so aware? It was fear. I tear into a decaf coffee careful to throw the cup into a proper garbage bin. I have to live outside squalor to live at all. I feel like a fully grown gorilla on a chain. The chain could be a simple thread if I imagined it to be. I could destroy this world around me, the one who has stared at me all my life and made monkey faces at me, so clever and cruel. Me, I look at the faces of children and adults and feel like I'm making faces at dogs. Blank happy grins. Eagerness without understanding.

I love so much and it is so painful that I end up hating everything. But this is not who I am. I am kind, kinder than you, you idiots. I wish I'd simply float away and start the game over again, with fewer bullies and fewer nonsentient people. There is an old record store not far from here where I may go in search of Jacques Brel. There is a pool nearby too. Maybe I can put the two together and bring the past to a close and tuck the future sweetly into bed; maybe I can finish a novel; maybe there is kryptonite and adamantium and positronic brains. Hell, I don't know. But you don't either. Don't give me suggestions. Whatever you have thought I have thought till it made me sick. I must be on my sixth lifetime by now and unaware because I don't know anydifferent. I must be different, made of straw with a huge heart and brain and lashed to a pole suspended above eternity like Tuor in Angband. And you want to see my teeth when I smile.