With Eyes that Glitter Like Scars

Citizens, bitterness is a simple pill to swallow.

It’s easy to tell yourself that everyone else is wrong, that the world is mad, that all that remains is for the last humanoid to turn out the lights and close the door on the long glorious history of mankind. It’s easy to look down on your neighbors and look to every word for conflict or confirmation. It’s easy to disengage, disregard, and disappear behind a brittle shell of scorn.

We of the White Linen Pants Collective reject the simple path. Where you would walk up the paved path beside handrails and water fountains, we would scramble over rocks and scrub. We are not without respect for ease and effiency. But we love life in all its unexpected magnificence too much to drift through it as a gum wrapper in an alley. The map is not the territory, and the mountain neither path nor peak.

Look to your enemy for prophecy and purpose. Who opposes you grants a gift. Learn the best from your worst. All life reaches for the very fire that will one day consume it.

Compassion and forgiveness are a warrior’s arts, requiring the most serious discipline and clarity. Wield not only the sword that brings death, but the sword that brings life.

Keep Your Cliff’s Notes, We Want the Whole Thing Gone

Citizens, we of the Collective challenge your pallid notions of story. “Should’ve” is no more than “didn’t” writ large and shouted down to drown out your fear of failure.

Write what calls to you. Sing your heart’s song, and if the notes you strike stand beside the bars let them. Convention is gathering to wait silence’s fall. Break your bones for ink. Scrawl with mad abandon on the walls and they will crumble to dust.  Build cities of light, lust, and ether where they stood. And kiss your creation goodbye on the instant it’s born.

Every story starts in medias res. The figured wheel turns and we see the revolution in part. Let a thousand errors bloom! Ride into the guns of staid tradition. Fall on your face and stand up laughing at all you’ve learned.

Drive your cart and plow over the bones of the dead. Yesterday falls that tomorrow may rise. Teeter on the brink of that vast mad abyss, and should you fall know that the bottom rises to greet you.

Your Mother’s Horrible Soup, Served in a Shrew’s Skull

Citizens, there was once a brave young soldier determined to serve his country well. He volunteered the day after the first clone bomb went off and filled Cincinnati with thousands of Adam Sandlers. Like the rest of us, he’d cried in helpless horror as the pride of Ohio fell victim to that terrible scourge. And then he swore he’d do everything he could to make sure that would never happen again.

He fought the Taliban in Hyderabad, the Neo-Guelphs in Belgium, and the Kiwanis in Modesto. He served with bravery, distinction, and a gusto none of his elders could match. He won medals and commedations for his baking and bayoneting. 

But one day, while he was clearing a street in Bakersfield with his platoon,  he met someone. A very sweet, special, sexy someone. She wore a cute little Teflon combat apron with Hello Kitty logos all over it, and her name was Jackie. She was a professional mime degrader, trained in the art of pelting street performers with rotten fruit. (She specialized in mango, pineapple, and durian.) 

Jackie and Barfolomew fell in love. The romance of Bakersfield, the quivering of her bosom, the trembling of his stubbly earlobes – it was too much for their young, passionate hearts. They tumbled into each others’ arms and made sweaty, smelly love amid the submachine guns. After a prolonged courtship, they were married under a banyan tree with only the moon and stars as witness.

She took a job as a hula dancer. He took a job as a cottage cheese voyeur, and a second job pricing free samples. But life was hard for our young heroes. They could barely make ends meet, even their own. They lived in a greenhouse on top of a grain silo next to a photography studio. They bought groceries in a secondhand store and clothes from a video-game dealer. They even recycled coconuts for her work uniform. 

Foreclosure came as a shock to them. They rented the greenhouse. They owned little more than the clothes on his back. They borrowed their friends’ stolen cars and ran them on wishes and corn oil. So when the bank’s officials evicted them and took everything they didn’t own, they were sad. Sad as Dutchmen without their third-hand wig collections. Sad as Saracens.

But they were in love, citizens. So they didn’t need any noodle pudding or pumpkin tarts to writhe in with erotic abandon. They moved into a complex of discarded oatmeal cannisters and scissor handles, where they lived happily ever after until they both succumbed to mouth cancer after a long battle and many shiny shoes.