Song of The City, part 2

[The Good Reverend Roger]

So, yeah, I'm sitting in my office with this impossible pile of paperwork, while the wind carries the song of The City past my office door, and the walls bulge in and out with the pulse of Tucson.

You've heard of the eye of a storm...Well, in this case, the eye is just another storm.  Useless mounds of reports nobody will ever read, EPA forms that will be filed until they turn to coal, that Goddamn ISO9000 shit dumped on me by a truly ugly and stupid auditor who has apparently stolen kd lang's hair...I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

Away from this stack is The City, which is full of its own particular brand of nonsensical horror.  Around every curve in the road lies the Sausage Creature, on every side-street a young meth addict with a malky and a head full of mad dog's shit.  A City government that means well, but is incompetent, overwhelmed police, an insane state legislature, and when THAT isn't enough, LMNO sends Mr. Chop and Mr. Scratch around with their bother-boys, to stomp up and down the underside of your stairs.  He sometimes denies this, but we know.  Oh, yes.

The City is haunted by its past, and is being slowly squashed flat by the future.  Tucson isn't built for the future, at least not any future you'd care to contemplate.  All the while, of course, the City dances.  Well, not so much of a dance as a horrible lurching and jumping, like a Mexican jumping bean that's 40 miles long, 12 miles wide, and an inch deep.  It really does this, by the way, though you can only see it when the temperature goes above 110F, and you're not wearing a hat.

The stress levels are insane, but the employment situation here is such that if you reach crush depth and buckle, within a few weeks you'll be one of those people walking¹, and in a couple of months you can get used to the joy of living under a bridge, until some other transient stabs you just for the hell of it.

Welcome to Tucson.  Welcome to the USA, for that matter.  Watch The Smiler on the TV, watch him smile and jabber about hope and change, while the whole mess goes down the shitter.  Hear the teabaggers howl their victory, even as they are foreclosed upon by the very people they support. 

Or, hell, read as old friends contract terminal butthurt over inconsequential things, and drop offline...Or on to facebook, where they will politely "like" your comments, and slowly fade away, just like the country is fading away.  The one potential refuge of critical thinking left on the whole damn internet, and half of the better posters have bailed out and fucked off to where they don't have to think as much. 

The disappointment this has caused - at least in me - is if anything worse than the horrible and toxic wasteland in which I live.  Not disappointment that they're not here to amuse me, but disappointment that they folded...An awful feeling that rationalism is, in fact, dying, even in isolated niches such as PD.  It's easier to deal with Mother Tucson than the idea that nobody is serious about having a good time, anymore.

All of this together is just another sign of the 21st century.  Too much rock, and not enough roll.  Too many monkeys arguing in the engine room of the Titanic.  Jabbering nitwits tearing down civilization while the so-called "smart monkeys" search for reasons to justify dropping back on all fours.

Well, to hell with them.  I'm still here.  I'm still blasting down that lost highway, gobbling pills and swilling shitty whiskey, and listening to Mick Jagger howl unintelligibly.  Because I know a secret, you see, and that secret is this:  The good times never stopped.  You did.  But I won't, on account of

I'M

STILL

HERE.


Or Kill Me.


¹  We're against this, of course.

[LMNO]

The good times never stopped.  You did. 

I want this on my tombstone.

[Luna]

The good times never stopped.  You did. 

I want this on my tombstone.

I want this on a T-shirt.  Nobody's going to be looking at my bloody tombstone, but, occasionally, they look at my tits.

[Phox]

FUCK. YES. 

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

I'M

STILL

HERE.

I tell myself this all the time.  I'm still here, I'm still kicking, I'm still fighting the endless fight.  You know that one Roger, the one we used to call the good fight.  Well, I can't say it's good in this day and age but by god I'm still fighting it.

I need to stop letting those false scenic lookouts on my highway distract me into wasting time just looking.  I need to stop just looking and start doing!


                       ......for the whole OP.  It is awesome!!

[Jenne]

I feel ya, Rog.  I can't get excited about people who linger via FB.  Meh.  But I've been vocal about my feelings re: that entity before.

Luna, I like your t-shirt idea.

[Adios]

It's the constant screaming Dok. Sometimes it seems to reverberate in my head, side to side, never stopping.
Some haven't given up or dropped out. Some drift away for a bit to recharge and to see if the screams will go silent.

Then we find that the screams are everywhere. Everyone is screaming, but they don't know it. Silent screams are the worst ones, and the loudest.

Their faces are twisted, mouths wide open, and they think they are smiling, even the mirror tells them they are smiling. You can tell they have seen the provacative underbelly of Tucson, but their minds refuse to accept it.

That pulse...thump...tha-thump..thump...tha-thump, they feel it in their bones. It permeates their very being and so they scream while they never realize they scream, they contort their faces and never see it.

Even as some of us attempt to seek the Deep Quiet, we feel and hear, we know the sound, and the longer we seek the quiet, the louder it becomes. We long occasionally for a time when we had never heard that sound, felt that pulse, then we see the result of that in others who deny it.

Then we come to the conclusion that it is far better to face that diseased puss leaking corpse than to seek refuge.

[Juana]

The good times never stopped.  You did. 

I want this on my tombstone.

This. Love it, Roger.

[The Wizard]

 

Really good work.