DARK EASTER

The news and current events and recent incidents in my life have me in a peaceful state of soul but macabre state of mind.

Is that even possible, to be at peace in spirit and also to be wallowing in the black recesses of the brain?

Yes, say I.

I'm not thrashing about in the back of my psyche-- I'm content to let my mind wander into awful, horrific possibilities. I'm not in any pain-- rather, I'm numb.

I keep hearing about this Terri Schiavo, and how a bunch of people who don't even know her want to prop her up and parade her around, like it was the third movie in the highly lucrative Weekend At Bernie's franchise. And I'm totally shocked that, given the simpering glad-handedness that this country seems to be embracing, the courts haven't given in, despite President George W. Nixon trying his darnedest to interfere with the very sanctimonies that he has earlier tried to defend.

I hate to say it, but I hope they let her husband, who has suffered through all of this, smother her with a pillow, like The Chief did to MacMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Not because I'm a cold-hearted sadist, but because she has been dead all of this time and nothing will bring her back.

If these idiots who are protesting and duct-taping their mouths with the word LIFE scrawled across it are so fucking fond of this poor vegetable, then why don't they pool their church-tithing money together and erect some sort of statue? It'll last longer, and maybe they can capture the dazed, soulless stare on Shiavo's face in bronze, for all posterity... that is, if they really give a fuck about her in the first place.

On a darker note...

Every time I hear about school shootings, I end up sympathizing (at first) with the shooter. Yes, it sucks, it's sick, and it's wrong. But the reason why I identify with the shooters, and not the victims, is because I was this close to being a school shooter myself. The only things that spared my fate were (1) not having the balls to get a gun, and (2) the fact that some girls thought I was cute.

However, I loathed myself enough to wish death and mayhem upon my classmates at one time.

It was relatively easy for me to get access to a gun when I was a kid. I grew up in the 'hood, where obtaining weapons was easier than getting liquor or drugs. Thankfully, I never went down that route.

Reading up on the details of the shootings in Minnesota, I thought of (uh-oh, say those who feel it coming) some song lyrics.

There's a song by a band whose names rhymes with Dove, recorded in the '60's, and the lyrics never made much sense to me, despite my fondness for the tune in question. It's called "Live And Let Live" and the person who wrote the song explained the lyrics like this:


"We were in the studio. I passed out, slobbered on my pants, and woke up. It had crystallized. I wrote about it."


That's all he offered in the way of a dissertation.

The lyrics go like this (please bear with me):


Oh the snot has caked against my pants
It has turned into crystal
There's a bluebird sitting on a branch
I guess I'll take my pistol
I've got it in my hand
Because he's on my land

And so the story ended
Do you know it oh so well
But should you need, I'll tell you
The end end end end end end end end
And...


So far, nothing relevant to the topic I've chosen, right? Read on:


Yes I see you sitting on the couch
I recognize your artillery
I have seen you many times before
Once when I was an Indian
And I was on my land
Why can't you understand?


The shooter was a Native-American, and the shootings were on a reservation. I imagined that the shooter, after killing his policeman grandfather and taking the car and the guns, was thinking these types of things in his mind.


I guess I'll take my pistol
I've got it in my hand
Because he's on my land
Why can't you understand?


The shooter admired Nazism, but he also was proud of being a Native-American. The kid was plain confused. Just look at his picture in the papers-- does that look like the face of a killer?

Evidently, yes.

Of course, my initial sympathy turns to contempt, as I realize that not everyone in this kid's position has to do what he did. The title of the song "Live And Let Live" should've been this kid's motto, but instead he chose to embrace destruction.

He made a choice, and even if he was deemed too young to make choices, he made one anyway. It was a really really bad choice.

More lyrics from that song:


Served my time
Served it well
You made my soul
a cell

Write the rules
In the sky
Then ask your leaders
Why?


No good in asking our leaders "why", because they have no answers. They'd rather start wars and try to pass legislation to let drooling invalids linger on. They'd rather tell gay couples what they can or cannot do with their lives while insisting that states have the rights to pass the laws they want to pass.

They write the rules in the sky, while they stand on someone else's land, and they wonder why a young Indian boy with his soul in a cell has taken his pistol in hand, with snot caked on his pants as he wakes from a delirious dream...

Yes, it's a stretch, connecting Bummer Of Love sentiments with mass murder, but I am only following my guts here.

I cannot divorce myself from my bleak impulses. Yesterday, after "taking out the trash", I went to a friend's blog and read someone's comment that was directed to me. It was in reference to a movie about the Old West starring the heartthrob star of Pirates Of The Carribbean. The commenter called me out by name and ranted about how they hated movies about Indians calling the Western settlers by a certain epithet.

Notice the Native-American connotations...

Of course, I responded in an evil manner... then I tried to post again and apologize for my sentiments. My apology sounded less than sincere. I was suspecting that the poster was none other than my "pal", the one whose picture is posted on the old blog URL.

I try and I try, but the evil is inside of me. It's inside of all of us, to varying degrees. It was inside the mind of a teenage boy who acted upon it. It is in the minds of the world leaders who appoint people like Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank. And the millions who support our leaders as they bomb women and children into oblivion? They support evil indirectly. The blood is not on their hands, because if it were then maybe they'd think twice about blowing the cradle of civilization back to Kingdom Come.

No, those who voted for President George W. Nixon can sleep at nights, knowing that they don't have to witness the horror of military occupation, children being mowed down by transportation vehicles who cannot afford to stop lest they discover that the child running towards their truck is carrying a bomb, homes being raided in a search for "weapons of mass destruction" that have never turned up...

I grew up in a city where the cops wouldn't come into the housing projects because the gangsters who lived there would shoot out the lights and snipe the pigs one by one-- they had to send the CRASH unit into the Pacoima projects instead.

I grew up in a town where I saw people beaten to a pulp almost weekly in front of the bar next to my grandfather's house; where girls gave up the pussy for crack and junkies aching for a fix went up in flames in the backseat of a car; where my uncle died of a stab wound in front of his own house, after the paramedics took an hour and a half to get to him...

I feel like I grew up in a war zone. It has tainted me.

I have come to conclude that this nation is the real weapon of mass destruction. We are the destroyers, the "stupid fucking white men" (among other colors) who rape and pillage the earth time and time again.

This will all pass, to be sure, but it leaves me with little hope.

Luckily, I believe in hope. Luckily, I'm a naive dreamer who sees the silver lining in the dark cloud. In fact, that aphoristic cloud is symbolic of my very nature: darkness surrounded by a sheen of light. They co-exist, and they resemble a sort-of Marxist contradiction where two opposites cannot thrive without the other.

The temptation to give into negativity wouldn't be such a burden if it weren't for the fact that, sometimes, we humans get satisfaction out of being cruel, mean, and hostile. One minute I can be loving and giving, and the next minute I want to make someone pay for perceived slights.

All that must change. In the past, I used humor to balance my hate and anger, but I guess I haven't been very humorous lately. Fortunately, my old friend J, whom I love more than life and who has known me since we were both toothless second-graders, told me to watch Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back for some perspective on my recent blog woes. There was one scene in particular that she wanted me to watch, and sure enough it made me burst into uncontrollable laughter, the kind of laughter that I often employ in self-defense, against the horrors of The Modern Age.

All I got to say is: "ALL YOU MOTHERFUCKERS ARE GONNA PAY! YOU ARE THE ONES WHO ARE THE BALL-LICKERS!!"

Thanks, J. That movie made me chuckle. I'm gonna watch it again tonight.

Maybe Easter won't be so dark after all. Hell, maybe I'll even rent The Passion Of The Christ and take some of Bill's Window Pane acid to pass the time.