Saturday, May 22, 2004

Quotes from [TheDeadGuy] from write-ups 100-150 (Thank you Keith)

Let's die a romantic death together on the wings of freedom!

Digression is the root of all evil.

This is the working man's all nighter. The try to stay awake game where [Armageddon|you hope something happens] to create a level of fear that mandates being alert.

Okay, that was a cry for help. Not only am I hearing voices, they are now screaming at me and taking me out of the world of mentally orgasmic daydreams and back to the world of their own brand of pseudo-reality. Now is when I will avenge myself upon these voices that mock me.

Morning was his least favorite time of day. Those few precious moments of delirium that arrived just as his eyes opened on a new day and found that everything was out of place but that nothing had changed. Still, he was not resigned to failure. He believed in himself and he was ready at any time to greet the beauty of success. He was intelligent, attractive, personable and combed his hair regularly. There was nothing he thought he could not eventually conquer or overcome.

Those who knew him saw him as bright, witty and optimistic. Those same people rarely saw him during those first steps in the cold light of morning. They saw a man who smiled. They saw a man who helped others without any prodding. They saw a kind, thoughtful man who never forgot to return phone calls, stop and talk to friends and acquaintances on the street, or offer a carton of milk to a lonely streetwalker with a milk deficit.

She was warm, thoughtful and unnaturally giddy. Sometimes her friends and family wondered if she might be off-balance or in need of some kind of specialized medication.

"I'll try anything once, as long as it doesn't kill me.
Then again, what could possibly kill me?"

His mind became a blender filled with cherry cola. For a while, everything was a blur.

Beyond the abyss of September 11th, I begin to regain faith in the human spirit. People pulling together. More volunteers than can be put to work at the World Trade Center. More blood donors than anyone knows what to do with. 17.5 million in donations given by AOL users (almost makes me proud to be using them again).

Well, that isn't what really cheeses my steak tonight. It is the re-emergence of the ugly American after these days of solidarity and caring. Hate crimes, directed at Islamic Americans... people who are innocent Americans just like the rest of us. Okay, everyone has their collection of idiots who just don't get it. That cheeses my steak... but not as much as what else I learned today.

Profiteers. Modern day carpetbaggers. Worse. People and groups posing as charitable organizations raising money for the relief efforts. There have been numerous reports and I'm getting more. Part of the business I'm in, but that isn't important right now. People [you are sick|profiting off the pain and misery of others] and from the generosity and caring of so many Americans. Scamming money and credit card information for their own purposes in the name of charity and giving... in the shadow of events that... well, there are no terms harsh enough in the English language to call them.

Advice comes in measured doses.
The landscape is generally unkind.
You embrace it and walk along the edge.
There are so many questions.
You think you know answers.
Anger rises within the heart.
And yet no one knows what they will find.
Taking changes on the razor's edge.
Then it all dissolves.
The edge of dust.

Quiet would return in the form of blank stares and stray tears.

"I'm not so good at saying goodbye. Do you mind if we spend the rest of our lives together?"

Our town can sometimes speak to you as if you knew it from a dream. The names change but the innocent remain guilty. Their crime was their innocence and they needed to sacrifice it to remain. No one stays innocent for long. When enough time passes they become part of the landscape of guilt. One could only escape by reclaiming that innocence once again. [malevolent benefactors|Or so I have read].

Time was out of time for most people in Rancho Nuevo. They dreamed of escape. They dreamed of living in the world outside. It was a world they had heard many stories about. However, the longer you remained in town, the fewer tales you believed. This was a different world. The only song that ever played on the radio was "Taxi" by Harry Chapin. They played it over and over again. An outsider would go mad, but we were all used to it. We took solace in the absence of commercials, a horror we read about in ancient literature.

"There is more to a glass of water than just the glass and the water."

"I'm only for the looking. Try not to forget that. The things you most desire are not so easily attained."

Her tone of voice implied that my memory had failed me and disconnected my ability to recall the name by which she claimed to be known.

"Secrets always betray you, for they betray those around you by their very existence."

I could not accept her point. Nor could I openly reject it. Secrets were the only thing that made life bearable in this place. Without them, everything would be the color and consistency of granite.

When I was younger I was under the impression that once I became an adult, the world would make perfect sense and that all my questions would magically be answered by a sudden day of realization that involved becoming a grown up. However misguided that impression was, I still believed it until one day...

Every so often, into the very belly of despair, enters one who cannot spell the word or pronounce it properly.

Some people pass through life, regardless of its parameters, and greet each situation and scenario as something they must hand stamp with their own ideals. They never stop to ask themselves if the labor of the war and the losses they will incur along its path will be worth the anticipated or hoped for end. The end fails to justify the means, or even justify the stirring of a settled pot.

She perpetuated herself from place to place and life to life through her fascination with those things that not only went against the grain but destroyed the grain in the process.

"And I am still hated for who I once had been two lifetimes ago?"

"Hate is demonstrative." "Evil is not."
"You have received your desire.
Are you not glad for this?"
You pity the sound of broken glass.
Not that the broken glass has a life of its own. What it once was may have represented more. It may have been a gift at one time. It might have been symbolic. When we fail to admire broken glass we ignore its history. Anything that is broken was once something whole. Otherwise we would not notice that it is broken.
Music and laughter is the mark of everlasting hope.

Silence is louder when your legs are bare.

Even twenty years can disappear in the blink of an eye.
They had left, but her mascara kept running.
Fragments of a broken life left out in the rain.

His adventures could have been amazing
His life could have been tragic
He might have tried to dig his own grave
But then they would never have known
And neither would he
Suicide is not simple. The layers of the experience and the depths to which one must plummet are unimaginable to those who have only witnessed the act from outside a frosted window. There is much more than pulling a trigger, swallowing a handful of pills or leaping out of a tenth story window. The mind enters into a realm quite different from what you are accustomed to. Before suicide, everything in the mind was geared towards life... how to survive, what to have for dinner, whether the family can afford to go to Dickey Betts World for an exciting summer vacation. Death, perpetuated by the self, changes the direction of mind, body and soul. Memories become more pronounced. The past takes on more color. Personal history becomes more profound. The future shades itself slowly towards the black.
An act of cowardice? Really that isn't it at all. Cowardice is a cartoonist representation of what cannot be understood unless you have been there. Running away from responsibilities and failures can seem like cowardice, but suicide does not feel like running away when you are in the midst of it. It feels like standing directly in front of a solid, cold steel wall and trying to pass through it. It is based in hopelessness and rooted in the belief that the only reason to live in this world, in this frame of existence, is the hope that tomorrow represents. At the point where passing through cold steel seems easier than life everything takes on a new dimension. In the suicide's perceptions, everything else is so difficult and painful that any other option to facing life is preferable.
Suicide is a disease of the mind. It sweeps over a person when their level of frustration with their life and their self becomes overwhelming. Each new day is greeted with the belief that nothing worthwhile will happen. Many things do, but the suicidal does not recognize these. A tunnel vision has developed that overrides normal sensory procedures. A warm summer day enjoyed with friends that once might have brought laughter and pleasant memories is now seen as a momentary oasis that means nothing in the greater context.
Solitude is all that remains. There are different reasons in different individuals for the downward spiral that leads to suicide. We all process the world and our integrated versions of reality differently. That makes us all unique and worthwhile. The world truly would be worth escaping if we all saw everything in the same way. Yet, in many cases the suicide feels an overwhelming loss of control that triggers a need to take total control over his or her environment and retreat into solitude where that control is most easily entertained.
What happens to the individual at the point where the decision is made is dramatic. There is a difference between wanting to kill yourself, hoping to kill yourself and meaning to kill yourself. It is not done to attract attention or sympathy. The true suicidal is without hope, and so attention or sympathy are not motivations. All that matters is putting an end to the pain. The closer you get to the end, the more it all means and the more your heart tears itself into shreds. At the point of no return, whether it be an instant or hours, everything ceases to make sense.
To this day he remains amongst us.
He is who I am.
No regrets.
That is my story.

Popular definitions of life and endless strains of happily ever after music can pervert the mind. You begin to think that true love is about finding someone and spending your life with them. It can happen and does, but the script of life doesn't always write itself that way. When happily ever after isn't as obvious as a Hollywood ending systems can implode. That isn't because they have to. It is because our interpretations of a given situation come with preconceived notions of what "should" be. The only escape is to throw away the manual and reinterpret everything as it happens. Depression and frustration are born of expectations and outdated standards of success. You don't always choose the series of scenarios that represent a constant river in your life. Sometimes things go as planned. Sometimes they do not.
They told him everything was going to work out fine. The constant reassurances were maddening. As if they could possible know. Empty promises from people with no control over the situations in his life only increased his frustration. They did not know how strong the undertow was.
Desperation finds corrupt saviors
The walls of his kingdom were collapsing all around him. The barbarians had sacked the city and were making their way to the core of the palace. He was powerless to stop the collapse. Waves and waves of bad news poured in.
He was going to have to leave and disappear into the night himself now. His luck found him a person who was willing to help. Unfortunately, he was unable to see that she was helping him for her own reasons.
Losing faith in everything leaves one man an island
He moved from place to place and was forced to count on the less than enthusiastic charity of friends and family. He saw himself as a burden. They never realized how deep his troubles were.
There is no "reset" button in the game of life. Had there been one he would have pushed it at that point. There comes a time when one needs to burn down the house completely and start over from scratch. Otherwise the quagmire of snowballing disaster pulls you under. The undertow of life is relentless. It leads ordinary people to take desperate action. When the empire crumbles and the man stands alone, all he wants is an out, for he fears the next step is for them to tear his flesh from his body. He believes there is nothing left for him to lose. The pain becomes a burning sensation that burns deeply into the soul. When it burns too hot, vision is obscured and hope becomes a blind wino you watch being clubbed to death on the side of the road.
No journey worth taking is easy
What can lead a man to sentence himself to the ultimate penalty? To take one's own life is a last refuge from ever mounting pain. You become an island, trapped within yourself with tunnel vision focused darkly on your perceived failures. Everything becomes your fault. You think to yourself, I simply was not good enough to succeed. The world is better off without me and I am better off without it. The reassurances of those around you now become an overwhelming noise. Maybe if they had real answers it would mean something, but you are now beyond answers. There is a steel wall in front of the man and he seeks to push himself through it. He starts to write his own ending and prepares to publish it. He is alone and he will die alone. It will be days before anyone even knows. He doesn't care if they ever learn about how he shut down his own prison by walking its only inmate to the gas chamber.
If leaving is easy, coming back is harder
Ultimately he didn't worry about where death would take him. He only worried about making all the noise stop. He worried about being able to have another chance. He died the uncarved stone, having no concrete preconceived notions about the nature of death. That would soon change. The ultimate question would be asked. Did he want to move on or go back? It seemed a silly question until he was taught that there was a reason to go back. There was unfinished business and he would be given what he needed to survive and thrive this time... but they told him:
"This will be the hardest thing you will ever do." That was only the beginning of the puzzle.
You are about to die. Odd, he thought, that such a statement would be made. When he had collapsed his body on the bed he was quite sure he would never wake up. The forty-two sleeping pills had been the insurance policy. The thirty-six extra strength aspirin were to thin the blood. The liter of 151 rum he used to wash down the death cocktail was the rocket fuel to blast him clear of the world he knew and could no longer stand living in.
You are dying. The voice came from inside him and from all around him, speaking with great clarity through the screams from the shoreline.
You are trying to define what has no definition.
Give everything you can to everyone you know.
All those who exist are unique, independent universes with their own truths and their own realities.
Understand and accept this and you will know the answer.
Research was painful
Over fifty websites were used
Yielding nothing but repetitive scraps
and information from back covers of Kotzwinkle's books
Like pulling teeth
No one knows anything
It is a conspiracy.

The man never enjoyed waking up before he was damned well ready to "rise and shine." For once he was waking up without the help of an alarm clock. His eyes opened and he could clearly see the clock on the wall. What time had he collapsed the night before? He could not remember. Had he really taken all those pills and drank all that booze? Hard to remember. It seemed like a dream, but now everything was starting to come into focus. He remembered everything.
The lessons have only just begun.
The dreams began to come as he lie awake and motionless. Like vivid hallucinations of the kind no drug can provide. To dream awake in a state of paralysis is a gift as much as it is unsettling beyong the normal parameters of human life. Yet, he had no fear. Once afraid of everything, especially the sound of his own voice, fearing that anything he might say would be a mistake... he now he none of that fear. They would appear like ghosts, the figures from his dreams.
There was no way to escape the dreams and the messages they thrust upon him. They were too vivid and too real, unlike anything he had called a dream before. He knew they all meant something and they were a directory of sorts. He was to find this woman. She was a beacon of some kind, but what kind was the question. The red riders were the opposition and mocked him at every turn. The unicorn was symbolic, representing something he was to prevent from destruction. Still, he did not know how to tie the puzzle together.
He did not realize it at the time, but for the first time in years he had taken a stand and made a decision. It was the first step towards bringing light back into his life. The first time he had not turned tail and run. Even if it had been part of a "dream"...
From this moment on...
Those who you welcome into your orbit...
You will give a piece of you to them...
And a piece of their pain will be given in return...
Restoration of life isn't an accepted science. Yet, receiving a second chance at life isn't anything to be taken lightly. The noble deceased man, come back to the world he knew, knew he had to rethink everything. He had to redefine his standards of success and to reinterpret everything he had considered in the past. He had always been a shy man, retreating from any argument or controversy. Now the world he knew was different, if only because he was different.
I am the same, but I have changed.
Ties were severed clean. Those of the old guard could not understand. As much as the man kept his adventures in the afterthought a secret, he could not keep the faces from appearing on those he once called his friends. They admitted they no longer knew who he was. They called him cocky. They told him they suspected he was mentally ill because of his positive attitude towards life. He smiled and bid them farewell.
Mamma's punching bag's got a new flashlight.
Ain't it pretty?
Would it really matter to lose friends who had seen him as an easy target? Would it really matter that those who could not adjust to the new within the old would leave? It was time to burn down the house and rebuild a new empire. The old empire had been sad and tragic. The emperor had been mad, taking slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as a burden to be carried. It was time to move forward. The women he had known he no longer considered fit to tie his shoes. Was he really only fit to be a safe harbor for those who entertained the favor of other men when they were available? All that was the most unpleasant part of the horse's ass. For a while he would allow himself to go completely mad, in order to better absorb what he was capable of. He chased emptiness and revelled in it. That was his right. To date fifty women in the span of a year and not become attached to any of them. A silly cause, and yet he considered it to be atonement for his old self becoming emotionally attached to any woman who smiled in his direction.
Your ego has had its fun.
It is time to go where there is no snow
You must become more than the less you pretend to be.
"All I want is peace."
"The only peace is within the self.
There is no peace here.
Redefine peace."
"Why the quest? Why can't I have my life?"
"You gave that up
when you took your life
and accepted the wings given to you."
"I gave up nothing."
"Defiance breeds its own power."
In the words of another can be found
reason enough for your own.

"As soon as I figure out how. It is the last chance I have to find what I lost."
The world had turned into a revolving door of madness. Night after night he listened to stories that made no sense of the context of the lives that lived them.
"If this is the future, then now is the time to reclaim the past."
The past is no longer obtainable.
There is only death here.
You were not granted a second chance
in order to make the same mistakes. "That is why I will make no mistakes
this time."

Ego can only carry you so far.
Your beliefs can merely influence
the beliefs of another.
If even that.

You have promises to keep
and she has miles to go
before she sleeps.

Peace be with you
and with your kin.

She was rich and no one would ever understand why.

"You think too much like the others."

Those who listened to him casually sometimes saw a troublemaker and at other times perceived a goofball. Those who really paid attention knew that he was one of life's teachers, an older man who had experienced much in life and had a message to impart. You had to listen with your ears tuned in and your mind on full alert. It also didn't hurt to listen between the lines.
Hey baby
You're a little high strung
Stay a while
Just a little while
Stop fighting everything in sight
Stop trying to convince everyone else
Try convincing yourself
"People try too hard to be original.
That makes them all the same."
Rushing to judgment is a lot of fun. Nothing beats a brief wispy cloud of a superiority complex to pass the time. Is that all you need to make life palatable? Isn't there kind of a bad taste in your mouth that rolls around behind the tongue after you've mocked an associate for their less than critically sound taste in music, movies or fishing lures?
People are on the go today
Not much time for cooking with class
Food in a box is quick and easy
Drive-thru windows are calling your name
Stop, look and listen
Do you hear that sound?
Sounds like basil, sweet basil
And it is calling your name

Life not going your way? Add basil.

It was either a thick mist or a dense fog, he couldn't be sure which, but it kept him from looking at the watch he wasn't wearing.

"That is a bad point of view. I am here to help you. I am here to listen, understand and sometimes make sarcastic remarks that you may or may not take in the spirit in which they were intended. Notice my white hat. You don't have to be afraid."

"There is always a first time for everything. If you try to stop me I will return here and raze the bar."

"Future come to me
Baby, come to me
Can't you see?
Our love was meant to be
Just you and me
Don't you want to be?"

"Got some ruby slippers for you if you really want to go home."

"Plead insanity and you'll be out in a few years.
I'll see you then.
We'll have some laughs, you and me."

People have layers of weirdness.
These layers slowly peel away as you get to know them.
First impressions reveal only the mask
of that which they openly share with all.
Beyond the mask hide the elements that make us fragile.
In a competitive world those elements are sometimes seen as weaknesses
Sometimes people withdraw into depression and even thoughts of suicide when they decide that who they really are is incompatible with the world around them. This is often the result of not realizing that everyone has their layers of weirdness. They go to school, to work and out with friends and hide elements of themselves for fear they will be laughed at or rejected. If they never find anyone to whom they can expose their layers of weirdness, they internalize a perceived conflict with the collective reality of the outside world. Individuality is a key part of the human experience, but the need for companionship is equally strong. Very few can live on their own island and be happy.
Note: "Weirdness" is a relative term.
It is merely a reference
to what others may consider weird.
It is not a universal blanket statement.

Be careful what you wish for.
When you get it your hindsight might plague you. Relax, just do it.


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