Japanese Rock Garden

I've got the two feet. I don't mean that as a measurement of anything,* I mean the things on the ends of my legs that keep them from being stumps. You know, the bits that make me a literal biped.

What I'm trying to say is there's nothing particularly particular about me, physically speaking. Two feet, a similar number of hands, each of those beset with unremarkable amounts of digits, etc. If I've got anything untoward or tucked away, it's all gone vestigial because I look like a man, a regular man. I put my pants on just like you in the morning: angry at the prospect of unavoidable death.

I don't have a story, really. This isn't a complaint. People with stories are the ones who struggle. Kids are fine, job is fine, get along pretty well with my siblings, house is in good nick, car is both fuel efficient and reliable... see, you're asleep already. You know who has a great story you really want to hear? The guy whose total number of feet does not equal two.

In all, I have the vast, modern, indulgent luxury of all my issues being existential. Is there a story there? Sure, I guess. But it's one nobody anywhere ever wants to hear. If you're not sure that's true, imagine listening to anyone else's tale of angsty woe. Are you imagining chewing your arm off to escape, or failing that, just to remind yourself that you can feel? Well, the sentiment goes both ways.

Ah, you see, context is everything, though. Do I have the self-awareness to keep my First World Problems to myself in a social setting? Eh... not really I guess, but do I have the debilitatingly crippling self-awareness to keep myself out of social settings in the first place? You bet your sweet ass I do.

This, however, this is not a social setting. This is a blog. A platform most people gave up in 2005 when MySpace became a thing. A place where citizens of the world learned to vomit long-form, before Twitter came along and taught us all to be efficient, staccato thought-bulimics. The context is that I am here to unburden myself. Not only is it allowed, let's face it, you'd be disappointed if I didn't. What else do you want, another goddamned movie review? That died as a format with Roger Ebert.

But even here, right now, I'm... happy?... to say... I've really got nothing. Kids are fine, job is fine, getting along pretty well with the siblings I can still track down, house is in good nick, car still in the garage last time I obsessive-compulsively checked. Not exactly locked down yet in the romantic department, but I'm not in any position to complain there either, even in the specialized complaint-ready arena of blog-space.

Everywhere else of course, everything is on fire all the time every day. Not literally, but close to literally. There are ways to counter the partisanship, the paranoia, the persecution-mania, the alienation, the kettledrum dread driving us all in every direction at once but somehow also forward to the cliff's edge. You're free to try compassion and understanding and patience and love, all the good Christian qualities that the people who most vocally insist on their Christianity actively repudiate, avoid and punish. But look, you've got limited resources of energy and human sanity, right? Right. So sometimes the best you can do is carve yourself a quiet space somewhere in the world and just kind of hide there. Not forever, but however long it takes: five minutes, an hour, maybe a couple of days in extreme circumstances.

Or if you're like me you can take however long it takes to bang out 600 words about absolutely nothing, with zero hyperlinks to outside events or stories in it. Yes, the next thing I'll probably do is go right back to my phone to make sure we haven't sold Guam to ISIS or some other crazy shit that seemed impossible two years ago but now just happens and we have to get our heads around. But for the minute, all I can hear is my fan humming in the background, the soft buzz of a low-energy lightbulb in the lamp over my shoulder, the fingerpad tick of my laptop keyboard and just the occasional yelp-scream outside as the coyotes corner another house-cat. Life renews itself and I fill up, ready to pour it all out, at firehose speeds, in the service of being-amongst-people again. One leg at a time.

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*[lascivious eyebrow waggle]