Post by Sydney Michael Cross on Jan 26, 2010 21:56:06 GMT -5
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and she's holding on my
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An ocean of oddities flooded the world, Sydney had learned early on. People were concerned about global warming, or being smited by a god if they didn't do what they were supposed to. But what they should have worried about were themselves. It wasn't just the crazy people, either, who needed to be kept closely watched. It was also the people so dedicated to one religion, they prayed instead of accepting chemo. It was the lovesick goons who followed each other from hip to hip, tracing maps and songs, meant to tattoo an eternity of words into the other. But then they got old and their kids went to college and they were left with nothing to talk about. They lay in bed beside each other, wondering what kind of things they would say if they could keep up the map, wondering if they could spend their life with someone else, they would. It wasn't the suicidal teens who wanted to drag down everyone they could as one final fuck you cadenza to the world, or the drug addicts whimpering in the side alleys, too burnt out to wonder what would happen if they could just put the heroin aside for a moment and breathe. No, people didn't need to worry about those dregs of humanity. The only reason they even spared them a thought was to feel good about themselves. If they thought about how absolutely lucky they were, maybe they could spend the rest of their lives happy.
But something else Sydney had noticed was that those were the people who ended up dying alone of some rich people sickness. The kind that didn't have a cure or treatment and only affected those people in their old age. It was the kind of life Sydney would hate to damn himself to. Don't take life too seriously. You'd never get out alive. It was a funny quote, a paradox, even, that Sydney had picked up in New York. At first it was contradictory, funny and a little bit of a joke. But if you wanted to get out of life alive, you needed to be alive in the first place. To go living meant to die doing something you loved. And thinking about the phrase a bit longer led to the conclusion that maybe it wasn't the crazy people who were crazy. They were just living. If you couldn't go out in a blaze that made people turn around and look, who were you? If you didn't have the guts to yell, "I'm going to hell, and loving it!" as loud as you could, who were you really? If you fought for your life, groveled for it in your last seconds, that meant you had regrets, and that meant you'd never been truly happy. But if you could die with a wide smile and a fuck you printed on your forehead, maybe you were truly happy. It didn't matter that you didn't have a job or a family, or anywhere to stay. Those were all material, all considered assets to being successful in the human eye. Sometimes they were even fake and unreal, impossible to achieve. But happiness was as real as the sun. Blinding, warming and so real it hurt.
As Sydney passed under the large skylight in the center of the mall, a stranger in a strange place, the watery light of his metaphor ran over him, long blue tendrils, choked from the winter clouds, looking as happy as a rich person buying their content. So maybe happiness wasn't a noun. You couldn't compare happiness to the sun, because it burned, or it fell cold to a nation starved of heat. It was a primitive hunger for happiness, dating farther back than money or jewelry. And sometimes Sydney wondered what was so wrong with announcing a stream of swears over the intercom. If it made people look, made him happy to be noticed, than what was the problem? Sydney was starving for adventure, for the split second of 'no fear' which caused him to shout the frowned upon. No one was ever truly happy until they were dying and clutching onto that last emotion, that satisfaction that they weren't worthless, that maybe someone would have their name held close as a memory. Maybe it was bad, maybe it was good. But your name wasn't dying with you.
NOT DONE, but I'm sleepy. I'll add more and edit tomorrow....
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heart like a hand grenade
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