Po
Boy Views
By
Phil
LaMancusa
Miss
American Pie
Or
Ape
Talk
Simian sez: the madness can be
stopped. Counterproductive things that do you today (yes, ‘that do you’) may be the result of past inequities.
Attitudes and prejudices that people exhibit are not present at their birth; counterproductive
tendencies are a result of training that is strengthened by losing sight of the
fact that, collectively, we all have nothing in this form but our futures and
that it’s pointless not to be making the most of the short time that we have.
Okay, you’re sitting down in
your favorite chair, bone tired, after (another) full day of working your ass
off for enough dough to keep your head above water, a roof over your noggin and
the bill collectors away from your door and you say to yourself :“I guess this is just about as good as it’s
gonna get.” Question: Is it time to quit your job, join a cult, hit the
road and surrender to the futility of your existence?
Suppose you’re on your
favorite barstool, watching Jeopardy with the gang and trying to figure out
what dinner ‘s going to be, what DVD you’re gonna pop in the player before you
settle in to reruns of Frazier or Golden Girls, taking Fido out and flossing
another day away. And on that sultry, sweet smelling, siren wailing evening you
asked yourself: “When I’m frigging
eighty-five and walking some fleabag, will I wonder where my life went and what
function I served?” Question: Should you order another double, find out if
the circus is hiring or consider doing a ‘flying novena’ to Saint Expedite?
Or, say that you’re on your
morning run, after a skinny latte and bran muffin at Starbucks; looking forward
to a long shower and then off to university to earn that MBA, pull down some
serious bucks in the work place and after purchasing a cute condo, meeting the
right person and having two point six children who you’ll send to your alma
mater and blah blah blah (you know
how your mind works when you lay one Nike sole down after another on the St.
Charles streetcar tracks). Except today you’re thinking that, actually, all you are is a randomly
constructed piece of protoplasm with no apparent purpose on the planet,
destined to last X amount of time, to perish and be thrown away like that
plastic Alpine Spring Water bottle that you just threw into the garbage
receptacle; you, your loved ones and the horse that you rode in on…so much
molecular landfill.
Perhaps you’re the youngest
kid from a Seventh Ward brood walking to school in unpleasant weather trying to
forget the recurring dream of the nothingness of death; of trying to scream
when no sounds come out, of trying to run and your feet stuck in mud. Your
headphones yelling hip hop lyrics, homework undone, lunch money tight and indifferently
observing as a young girl offer herself to a man in a pickup truck. It occurs
to you that you didn’t ask to be born; and
no amount of encouragement, prescience of possibilities or glimmers of
greatness will dispel the pessimism of your ghetto gloom. You figure your tombstone
will read:”Three ways out: music; sports
or dealing drugs; he weren’t no good at none of ‘em. He’d a run away but t’weren’t
no place to go…”
How about a hundred million
people on earth that feel that life’s pleasures are fleeting and it’s miseries
pervasive; the bus driver who’ll be going to a funeral when he gets off; your
waitress raising her children on her own; the bank teller whose hours have just
been cut; the shopkeeper whose Small Business loan is defaulting; the musician
whose van was just stolen; the shop girl who just found a lump; the guy in
clown makeup who didn’t know that growing up would be like this or the veteran
school teacher that lost her savings in a bad investment. Salt in wounds that
God is supposed to be healing.
It’s “LIFE” that wakes you to a sunny day and then proceeds to mug you
with circumstances beyond your control, leaving you praying for a good case of
amnesia. It’s called non-clinical
depression when your mental levees crumble and, “Cryin’ won’t help you; prayer won’t do you no good”.
The theory is that the cause
of non-clinical depression is basically the witness of our own mortality; our
glimpse of death; the proof of our insignificance. We get it from experiences
of life that show us how powerless we really are: a physical beating; debilitating
illness; sexual abuse; bullying, teasing; hunger for food and nurturing;
unrequited love; death of someone close. Something that… kills our spirit (even
for a brief time). A dashing of our hopes for divine intervention or happy
ending that we bury and cover with a protective layer of personality or futile
diversion.
What results (?): a tendency
to become introverted; angry; aggressive, goal oriented and/or complacent? A
dependency on a higher power, sarcasm, self medication, cynicism or a philosophy
of existentialism? Insatiable appetites,
a mania for exercising, nervousness, anorexia or cruelty towards small animals
and weaker people? Doesn’t that all sound like a laundry list of the ‘human
condition’?
Question: Who gives solace to the tired,
comfort to the weak, strength to the poor; hope to the disillusioned; stature
to someone with low self esteem? Who provides poultices for life’s bruises;
lifts up the downtrodden; swings low the sweet chariot? Answer: Nobody.
Heaven, hell, reincarnation
and life after death are all hearsay. You have from this moment forward to make
your life sane and enjoyable if only you can forgive your past and put it to
bed. And then it’s just one foot in front of the other onto a better path. The monkey speaks.
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