This Post Makes No Sense

As a person, the most difficult thing to work with, the most complex thing to understand, the most mysterious riddle to spend one's life hopelessly trying to solve… is another person.

I've also found that the closer I get to another person, the more difficult I find the experience, but it's not because the person I'm close to becomes somehow more difficult to work with due to some kind of "familiarity breeds contempt" principle, but more because the necessity to accomplish the impossible with that person becomes ever more pressing the closer we become.

But this closeness breeds a great deal of frustration as we misunderstand and are misunderstood over and over again.  We're offended, insulted, disrespected, and forgotten about over and over again, and all of it is because of this incredible drive to fully work with, understand, and solve the riddle for, each other.  This is an impossible task, which, as a result of its constant failure, causes no end of heartache, frustration, misdirected anger, and the fog of loneliness.

And yet: friendships happen.  Romance happens.  Marriages happen.  People do crazy things – like fall in love – and get hurt, sometimes deeply, by the very same people we've made ourselves vulnerable to.

Why?

I'd rather be abused by a warm body than be locked inside my frozen loneliness.  That's why.

But opening my soul to a person who is so easily frustrated and offended by my inability to understand him is terrifying.  What if he finds me to be inadequate?  What if I don't measure up to whatever I'm supposed to be according to all the commercials on TV filled with gorgeous, happy people with perfect lives thanks to that miracle shampoo that doesn't seem to give me the same shine they have?

But as terrifying as it might be to show my actual soul to him, with its broken, scared-to-death, and desperate need to be loved, it is just as scary to imagine my life so intimately tied to another person.

You see, there are things about my life right now that I love.  I can spend my money the way I want.  I can go out on the town if I want.  I can seek out casual companionship to fulfill needs without having to try to understand someone deeply.

But there are things about my life right now that I hate.  The night is dark and long, and my bed feels so empty when I curl up under the covers.  When I cry, I cry alone.  When the world is big and I am small, I can only bury my face in my arms and crouch down behind my door to pretend it's all going to be OK.

I want unconditional love.  But I want my freedom.  There doesn't seem to be a way to have both.

I'll get a dog.

I Love You

Heart to heart, hand in hand, in love on life's hard road,

With broken, beaten, shattered, shaken hopes and dreams untold.

Still we stumble forward, heavy steps we take, we two.

But through the raging thunder stroke: forever, I love you.

Face to face, with anger twisted, crumbling to destruction

You crush all until I fall to ceaseless verbal fluxion.

Still I watch my life unravel, still bereft and rue

Yet, through tears I whisper softly, "Darling, I love you."

Whether I lay cherished in your love and warm embrace

Whether I lay at your feet in pieces by your grace

Whether you come near to kiss, or beat me black and blue

Deep inside my open wounds, sweetheart, I love you.

When I say I'm yours alone, I mean I'm your possession,

My life, my will, my peace, my all is yours.  No reservation.

So use me, hate me, hit me, kill me, I give my life to you,

And from my corpse, if that's your will, my darling, I love you.

The Rain

I sit in the rain.

The rain renews the earth.

Grass sprouts from the thirsty ground

Satisfied with the life-giving water falling from rolling clouds.

All is well.  The darkness gives life.

So I sit, eyes cast down

In the rain.

I sit in the rain.

"Seek the silver lining," they say.

Behind the clouds, the sun still shines

Spreading its warmth somewhere in its glow.

Somewhere else, the light shines.

So I sit, lightless, cold,

In the rain.

I sit in the rain.

Shivering, I wish for warmth.

But I choose to stay where wind howls,

Where drizzly mist obscures my face and pain.

Sunshine's language I know not.

Life is too familiar

In the rain.

I sit in the rain.

This is my life now.

Though warmth is a choice away,

I'm so cold that I can't feel my legs to stand.

Even if I choose to move toward it,

Here I sit, eyes cast down

In the rain.

Musings from Work

#FrankHerfort

Thankfully, there are no open stairs in my workplace.  All the stairs in the building are tucked snugly behind doors, in narrow hallways, or otherwise concealed away from the main area where I, and my myriad coworkers, labour in order to produce wealth.  Not our own wealth, mind you.  No, we are neither emperors nor gods.  Wealth, it seems, belongs to the wealthy, and thus, it is they for whom we toil, receiving with thanks the price they pay for the priceless hours of our lives.

As I say, I'm grateful that there are no open staircases.  If there were, it would be possible to look from on high down onto this place.  From such a vantage point, one would see all the more clearly the drudgery that makes all too real the damnable phrase "day in; day out".  Here we sit, attention fixed to a lifeless machine before us, displaying information on a dimly lit screen about men and women who remain relevant to us only for the few moments we interact with them through the telephone.  From above, one would see us leashed by headsets to our desks, hearing the demands of people who never see our faces, and whose faces we never see.  Row on row, we would seem as drones, with faces blurring together, obscuring our individual identity even more than the faceless servitude we give those who demand our service.

 

A curious thing, these call centers are.  On the one hand, those who deal with large corporations demand the ability to interact with humans rather than machines.  But when they do, they seldom behave as if they are speaking with human beings.  Separating the face and the voice creates a void through which nothing passes but electrical impulses racing at the speed of light through wires – or even the air itself – into our ears, and back from our mouths through the same void back into their ears.

Yet they say, "I don't want to talk to a machine!"

You are talking to a machine, sir or ma'am.  Your telephone, be it a device on your desk or a device in your pocket has neither flesh nor blood, to say nothing of the lacking soul or moral judgment.  That device – that machine – in turn is speaking to a computer server – another machine – which is firing an electrical version of your voice to a machine here in this place of toil, which sends it to the machine currently perched on my head.

You only think you're speaking to a human being.  You aren't.  If you were, you'd likely speak very differently than you do.  You would speak as to a human being.  Instead, you speak as to a lifeless, soulless, utterly impotent machine.

And if there were open staircases here, one would see us all, toiling here as if we were machines, being treated as machines, faithfully producing wealth as machines, and slowly – oh so slowly – becoming that very thing which the people whose voices we electrically hear demand not to talk to.

Of course, I don't wish to seem ungrateful.  I am neither poverty-stricken nor tied to this place as a form of self-identification.  I merely recognize that, though this is my source of income – a mere pittance compared to the untold riches I bring to my employer – I maintain my own humanity outside this place.  I do not live here.  I work here.  I live out there, where people see my face.  I live where people see more than a disembodied voice, where smiles can be contagious, hands can be held, arms can embrace, and the intricacies of a flick of fingers, a wink in the eye, or a nod of the head communicate so much more, and where love is expressed in a far truer way.

I live where I am not a machine.  I am human.