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Blogfest 2005 - Oct 8, 2006 - Printable Version
- Blame it on the Full Moon
by Mark Faulk
I don't know....sometimes things just don't FEEL right. It's like...well, I like to pretend that the feelings just come out of nowhere, for no apparent reason, and that when the time comes, they'll fade....with no required action on my part, except the most basic act of humankind: survival. Other times, I blame it on "external events beyond my control," you know, like the current international political climate, or my increasing frustration over the lack of integrity and the ever-escalating scope of greed that has permeated our national conscience. Or maybe it's the petty day-to-day stuff just accumulating like straws on a proverbial camel's back, slowly dragging me down, mentally and emotionally. But that's not really it. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty to be depressed about there: our elected officials seem to have given up any pretense of caring about America...about doing what's right...about us, and have instead succumbed to their own selfish greed and sold their collective souls to the Devil. And if it turns out that there IS no Devil? Doesn't matter, they've created their own cauldren of sin, lust, and gluttony...their very own personal hell...in our Nation's Capitol.
And today, or should I say tomorrow, North Korea has just conducted another nuclear bomb test, saying gleefully "we have found our happiness." Think about that. I guess it's true. Happiness really is a warm gun. Oddly, it's Sunday night here in the good old Midwestern US, but North Korea blew up a nuclear bomb....on Monday morning. There's something appropriately surreal about that. And while we continue to wage war on a country that DIDN'T have nuclear bombs to test, we tentatively discuss "sanctions" against North Korea. Again, there's something appropriately surreal about that.
But that's not what's making me feel melancholy right now....or maybe it is, I'm not even sure. Maybe it's reading the daily reports and shared views and neverending stream of news on the email thread I share with the "Dirty Dozen," those rogue advocates who fight for...hope for...pray for...struggle for...some kind of positive change in how we treat our citizens, some kind of reawakening of our country's moral standards. It's an interesting group, one that includes a few names that most of my readers would recognize, a group that is honestly as diverse in our political views as our nation itself. It's a group that truly represents what our country SHOULD stand for...people of every party, every faith, and covering every inch of geographic and economic ground imaginable, working together to do what's right...working for the greater good. As a group, we tend to sometimes feel as if we're trapped on a roller coaster ride together. We make some progress in this quixotic quest to "fix" our stock market, and by extension, maybe make our entire country a little more livable for those who need it the most....and then....our elected officials, our government, and...more specifically, those who OWN them...do something else to make us realize just how difficult this task is. We have at least one partcipant who advocates just taking them all out and lining them up in front of a firing squad (metaphorically speaking, of course...I think anyway), and there's another guy I talk to who wants to torture them, one at a time, using methods that I'm pretty certain DON'T bear the Geneva Convention Seal of Approval...and I KNOW he's serious.
But you know, as satisfying as all those things sometimes sound to me, that's not what's bothering me right now. No, this feeling comes from the inside, from somewhere way deep down in that place where very few people have been allowed to venture, a place that I even avoid as much as humanly possible. It's an emotional dumping ground, a graveyard where all of the things that are just too painful to deal with openly....all of the scars, plus every single heartbreak, disappointment, painful secret, and more than a couple of still unhealed wounds are piled into one place. I sometimes imagine that it looks a lot like the city dump that I used to visit with my Grandfather when I was little, piled high with things that seemed to be useless refuse that was rightfully cleared out of the "house" and hauled off, but were in reality just unwanted memories cleaned out of millions of peoples troubled psyches and buried as far away as humanly possible.
Unfortunately though, out of sight isn't always out of mind, and in my case, it's often just the opposite...out of sight is dead center in my mind...a graveyard of not-forgotten memories, things that I've loved and lost (or maybe never even had), decisions that I may or may not regret (but that grow into towering infernos of regret in retrospect), decisions that were never mine to make....and on and on and on.
And on.
And so, I live with the feelings as best I can...and I ride the roller coaster of emotions that every one of us share (that is, if we're honest about it, at the very least, to ourselves), and I try to just survive the tremors and traumas...the little underground nuclear tests that seem to randomly go off in my head and heart...and most importantly, I look for things to blame, so I don't have to deal with whatever the REAL reasons that I feel...feel...WHATEVER it is I'm feeling right now, at this very moment.
Someone told me that the full moon was this weekend, and I went outside and stood and looked at it for the longest time, wondering if maybe THAT was the source of my problems, of the country's problems....of the entire world's problems.
That's it....we'll blame it on the full moon.
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