Big Hard Sun

In the great big history of the world a lot of stuff has happened. People do bad things to each other. I know of a web site that has photographs of dead guys from the First World War, including the dead rape victim, that have been "forbidden" for some time, that is proof positive that we can do some pretty outrageous things to one another and somehow figure it's alright.

I'm pretty much a putz. My mind doesn't go for conspiracies or secrets. It doesn't look for clues. I was recently told that my blog and I are "in our own little world" and that is very very true. Willfully so, I guess. The world washes by like a river and if I see a colorful stone I try to pull it up. Because of that I miss the tsunami once in a while - but hey - I get a lot of pretty rocks. So sue me.

I am quite sure that a hundred years after I'm dead there will be lies told and people treating each other shabby and murders happening and wars just like it happened a hundred years before I was born and way before that. And I'm sure I did my own shabby things along the way. I know I have - though not the killing part. I don't look for the story and I'd make a terrible newspaper reporter. My instincts lead me back inside, and I live in my head probably close to 24/7. So a lot of stuff can go on and I'm usually oblivious. And most of the time I remain oblivious even when the spotlights are set up and the dead body is bathed in white. Also I am not very sentimental about most things, and what I am sentimental about I try very hard to keep to myself.

And keeping to myself can be a problem. Sometimes it comes off as callousness, and sometimes it comes off as being aloof. I don't wish people ill - usually. And sometimes I'm more embarrassed for the person who did something really mean and stupid than anything else. I think that's because, having done some incredibly mean and outrageously stupid things myself, I remember what it was like to be so deeply mortified you wanted to just crawl into a hole and pee yourself to death. And I feel bad for the guy who is going to be feeling that somewhere up the road. It's living hell.

Which brings me to the issue of the guy who doesn't feel mortified or embarrassed or ripped apart by decency and conscience. A lot of folks I know - okay maybe everybody but me and six other people - use that as a reasonable measuring stick to determine whether or not someone is redeemable or not. If there is no display of conscience, if there is no change, if there is a refusal to make up for something, the person in question gets to have the label "jerk" - or worse - and that's pretty much that. But still and all / and all and still / even if I've been the one "wronged" (which in my world is pretty hard to do since I'm usually so out of it I probably don't notice I've been insulted), I have a hard time getting to that place, and am often the last person to realize that YOU are the Farco Barnes Head who killed my dog after all!

What I'm saying is that, sometimes, the pain you're about to cause yourself when and if your conscience breaks in - if it's real - is going to be pretty close to the torture you're probably exactly in line for. And that's going to be pretty Farcoing miserable in spades. It's happened to me and I wouldn't wish it on anybody.

The world. It ain't pretty. And there are - it would seem - good reasons to be in one's own little world after all. Because the bigger world out there can sure be one huge king-sized Farco.