Tragicomedy

So it was a few days ago. I was standing on a soggy lawn (two days previously a downpour had crippled this Small Canadian Town) and it hit me. Well, I can't say it hit me. It had been nibbling at me all weekend. The world is fucking huge--you know what I mean: that particular, subjective feeling that bitchslaps your fragile sense of self-esteem every once in a while. It's like: stop marveling at your own thoughts--it's been done. You're not original. You're not tall. Not particularly funny. That is: not special. And you know what else? Nobody really gives a shit. During most moments anyway. A thought experiment: recall the most powerful orgasm you've ever had (for the kids: it's kind of like when you have to pee, but it comes out as a sneeze). Did you--at any point during, before or immediately after--give a passing thought to Six degrees of Separation (also known as "Small World!")? It's OK; I didn't either. You worship at the altar of continuous creation only when bored. And you're only seized by spasms of barbed ideas shooting up out of the unconscious at the worst possible moments.

So that's what hit me, and then I went for a walk, except the street was covered by people standing shoulder-to-shoulder. I went back inside, but all the seats and all the tables and all the ledges and the floors were covered by beer empties, or crushed cans, or cigarrette butts, upright bongs, toppled bongs. The air outside pregnant with sweat-pheromones and sticky with human spittle. The air inside reeked of fermentation and plugged-up toilets and sinks. Everyone was either numb or out or sprawled: not a standing primate in the bunch. Windows open to rooftops with no stars or clouds or moons visible: only smoke drifting from the fireworks exploding--negative images in the sky, streaks across vision and then fading to nothing as I close my eyes. The only respite came from a fish head I found: a totemic object, perfectly severed at the level of the brain stem--eyes piercing and omnidirectional; mouth twisted in permanent scowl, scales an interesting texture after recoiling from leathery skin, and finally a smell to coat my hands and not come out, even through the blasts of cooking furnace smoke, or waves of muddy earth smell without warmth kicked up by a stuck truck, through the staleness of the beers the morning after, and especially through the stink of a drunk wet dog (mixture of vomit, natural odor, and mineral-stocked bathwater).

Consider: "Any belief system that can be accepted on faith alone can also be dismissed on faith alone."