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Post by FullFrontalBuddha on Jan 6, 2010 23:05:10 GMT -5
People don't want to know the truth. The don't want to hear it, they don't want to see it, and they certainly don't want to believe it. And they don't want you to hear it, see it, say it or believe it either. That's worse than encountering the truth themselves. People want to believe in a comforting lie. Even a lie that makes them uncomfortable is acceptable, because you can learn to live with almost anything, as long as it's on your own terms. An undeniable truth, a painful truth...no way. Little truths are minor transgressions, and are mostly considered somewhat palatable. The big truths are off-limits, the answers to the unanswerable, matters of true import are not spoken of.
You've probably heard the expression "Don't talk about religion, politics or money", well that leaves sports, sex and the weather. Maybe knitting, food and books, too. Even those can verge on the dangerous if the topics start bordering on someone's world view. You can still be friends with someone who likes a different team than you, or if you're sufficiently open-minded (in a self-congratulatory way), with someone of a different sexual orientation and it's no big thing to get along with a person who enjoys rainy days, but on some deeper level, you hold some measure of contempt for them, secretly despising them as sub-human or defective for holding what to you, is clearly an idiotic point of view.
We all wage these little wars daily, holding a line or retreating as the situation demands or what our personal tolerance level will allow. Some battles aren't worth fighting, and some are just too much for us to take. How else would you explain the 87 year-old house wife that snaps and beats her husband to death with a toilet seat for leaving that self-same toilet seat up one too many times?
Truths that just can't be accepted. This was one of those truths.
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Post by FullFrontalBuddha on Jan 6, 2010 23:06:48 GMT -5
His name was Nathan. He was my friend's brother, and I knew him when we were growing up. He was a little weird, hyper-active maybe. Not stupid or anything, just... kind of a little off. I guess they'd call that ADHD or some other bullshit now, give him some pills and put him in a "special needs" class and move on to the next kid.
I think he died when we were teenagers, but I'm not sure. How do you ask your friend that question? "Hey man, it's been a long time. How are you? How's the family? Hey...didn't your brother die?" There's no good way to ask that. It's not like forgetting someone's name, or missing a birthday. It's someone's life and the passage of years have erased it from your memory as surely as you will one day, in turn be erased yourself. It's a truth to face, or a truth to be ignored, depending on how you want to approach it.
What do you do when you're a problem solver and you come across problems that you can't solve? Little ones or big ones, sooner or later you're going to encounter something that either can't be solved, or at the very least, that you can't solve by yourself, if at all. Does that mean that you're no good at your job, or is it just an indication that you're human?
Unique, just like everybody else.
We all strive to greater or lesser extents to make our mark, (or in some cases, to leave no trace). To find a way to say "I too, once was here." I think I read that once and it made me wonder how I was going about saying that to eternity. That I, too, was here. Mostly, I think eternity can go f.uck itself because I have a hard enough time just making it through the day sometimes. Never mind leaving an indelible mark of my own for posterity.
And then all this crazy sh!t happened.
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Post by FullFrontalBuddha on Jan 6, 2010 23:07:29 GMT -5
We were drawn to the little one. There was a something unique about it. There was a resonance that we flocked to, and it could communicate with us when the vast multitude of the others weren't even aware of our existence. We were in the same place as they were, but we interacted differently. We could affect their world but they seemed to scarcely know that ours existed and for the most part, we were content for things to remain that way.
Until we discovered the little one.
Which of us found the other first is uncertain, but very quickly we were all aware of its presence. It was akin to a very bright object in an otherwise monotone background. And not only could we sense it, it could sense us, which was nearly unprecedented. The rapport between us developed quickly, and soon it was more of a game than a challenge for each to interpret what the other intended. There were missteps on both sides, but a fluid and intuitive method of communication evolved naturally, as if it had always been there, just never realized. A skill that was known, but never used because there was never any reason to use it.
Nothing had changed for so long, and now something different had been introduced to our world. Something only the oldest of us had ever experienced. Something new.
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Post by FullFrontalBuddha on Jan 6, 2010 23:07:54 GMT -5
The day the call came, everything was about as normal as it ever was; hectic, but in a controlled way and everyone knew what their job was. Whether or not they were actually doing their job or not depended entirely on the individual in question, but that's pretty much always the case. They were good people and they knew their business; military backgrounds, some ex-police or private security, an assortment of techies to make all of our fancy equipment work, or at least show us how to use it to be more effective at our jobs. Information has always been a commodity, and never more so than now, in a world where we're so innundated with information on every conceivable subject that sorting it isn't just important, it's vital.
We all knew that there was something wrong when nothing went wrong, but we didn't know what it meant. We had started joking about it already, calling it "The day that nothing happened". Like I said before, we were waiting for the other shoe to drop and we were sure it was going to. We just didn't know how or when, but I think that on some level, all of us knew that when it did, it was going to be bad.
It was bad. We have whole groups of people, equipment and programs to sift information. Software that flags keywords or phrases in communications chatter, picks up suspicious financial activity, travel plans and the like. After churning through mountains of raw data, these programs, people and equipment spit out likely potential problems. Many of which come to nothing, but some you never hear about because we get there first and the problem is averted before it gets a chance to snowball into a major disaster.
I was at my desk, basically just doing busy work when I got a call to assemble my team. The brains had come up with a likely cause for the "non-event" and it was time for us to have a look, up close and personal with the culprit.
"Excuse me, sir or ma'am. Everyone reported having a perfect day, with no problems whatsoever and we'd like you to come with us an explain yourself."
That's the kind of scenario that was running through my head, because I had no idea how this was going to play out. Part of me had a suspicion that we were being purposely mislead by a curious set of innocuous events in order to distract us from what was actually going on, but another part of me had no idea what to expect whatsoever.
That was the part of me that was right. The "culprit" was a little girl.
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Post by FullFrontalBuddha on Jan 6, 2010 23:08:10 GMT -5
Lots of people think that they know what's really going on in the world. That things are controlled by corporations, special interests, shadowy government groups, illuminati, even aliens.
To some extent, they're right, but not in the way that they think. Not the alien part, they don't control anything. They don't have any real influence.
Just kidding.
It's more like how things work in your job; you've got a boss that tells you what to do, and your boss has someone that tells them what to do and so on, up the line until you get to the president of the company, or the owner, stockholders, whatever.
But even those people have people that they have to answer to, even if it's just their mistress as she ties them up and beats the crap out of them, because they so richly deserve it. Nevermind that that's the only way they can really get off.
But I digress, I was trying to tell you about how things work. It's one of those truths I mentioned before. One of those truths that's off-limits because it's more than you want to know. Maybe it's more than you should know. It's more than I want to know on most days.
There's things that you forget, but then there's other things that, once you've learned them, you can't unlearn them. Well, short of severe brain-damage, or death and even the death bit is a little iffy. Possibly a drug or alcohol-induced haze will ease your worried mind somewhat, but you've got to sober up some time, even if you're determined.
This was another one of those things that I wished I could get drunk or high enough to un-learn, but that wasn't going to happen any time soon.
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Post by FullFrontalBuddha on Jan 6, 2010 23:08:33 GMT -5
My best friend died when I was 18. He was 21.
The night before he died, we went to a concert together. It was a great show, we had second row seats, the two of us got wrecked. We had a great time at the concert, listening to music, meeting girls. Generally just being "young and dumb and full of...", well you know the expression.
We were out late, so the next day I slept in. I was woken by a phone call. It was my friend's mother. She told me he had "had an accident". He had a heart-attack and died. I found out later, that it was more like 3 heart attacks and that his mother had to watch as the doctors and nurses tried to save him. She watched helplessly as her baby died.
I was stunned by this news, I didn't know how to react. I felt like someone had hit me in the head with a baseball bat. I mumbled something like "Oh my god. I'm sorry." She said that she knew I was his friend and that I would want to know. I thanked her for telling me and then hung up the phone. I didn't know what to do. I called my girl friend, crying and told her the news and asked her what I should do. She told me to go over to his house, so I called another friend and told him, and asked him to come with me.
When I got to the house, I was greeted at the door by his brother-in-law and his sister. Both of them were crying and they hugged me. The same thing with his mother. I don't remember much after that. I think that we sat around talking about him and his mother was already thinking about practicalities, like memorial services and things like that. She told me that she didn't want to have a somber memorial for him and that she wanted us to come over wearing tie-dyes and have a party, because that would be the best way to honor his memory. So when the time came, that's what we did. We threw a party for him and a few friends and family got together and we remembered him. His mom even asked me if there was anything of his that I wanted, to help me remember him. I didn't really want anything, but I knew that it would make her feel better in some small way, so I let her give me a couple of CDs that were favorites of his that I liked too.
That was a little over 20 years ago. For a long time, I still had the ticket stub from the concert we went to, and his CDs that his mom gave me, but they're gone now. Lost in a move or something. And every year, for at least the first 10 years or so, I would faithfully remember the day that my friend died and take a little time on the anniversary of his death to remember him. Take some time to miss him and think about things we did together, jokes we told, whatever. Keep him alive in some small way.
I don't know when it first happened, but the time came when the day that he died went by, and I was too busy with the things in my life to stop and think about him and what his friendship and his loss had meant to me. I'd remember the next day, or later on in the month and feel bad about forgetting, but at least I still thought about my friend.
But little by little, he was being forgotten and that was like him dying all over again.
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Post by FullFrontalBuddha on Jan 28, 2010 22:56:20 GMT -5
As she sat on the front steps of her house, Miranda could hear her parents inside yelling at each other. It seemed like they did that alot lately. She didn't know why they were fighting, just that she didn't like it when they did and that she wished that they would stop.
Sometimes, she would go to her room and cry when they were fighting, hoping that they would stop and come tell her everything was alright and that they wouldn't fight anymore.
They never did though, not even once. She wasn't even sure if they knew that she was in there crying.
Miranda would play quietly in her room for hours at a time and neither of her parents ever came in to check on her, to see if she was OK or if she wanted anything. Oh sure, sometimes her mom would call her to tell her that they were going out shopping or something. Occasionally, her dad would come home from work, and if he wasn't too tired, he would take her outside and push her on the swing or watch her ride her bike. But that didn't happen very often. They spent so much time fighting, Miranda felt like they hardly knew she even existed.
It was like they had forgotten that she was there.
At least she still had her friends. They always paid attention to her, she didn't even have to call them, they were just there. She only had to think about them, and there they were, ready to play with her. They remembered her.
If only her parents could be more like them. Her friends didn't fight or make her cry. If only everybody could be more like them.
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Post by FullFrontalBuddha on Dec 20, 2012 8:24:25 GMT -5
We all started as a kind of psychic echo, or maybe shadow is a better comparison. Cast by things, events that had occurred, characteristics remembered, eventually, imprints of what had been. An existence of our own, independent of what gave rise to us in the first place.
And then gradually, we were forgotten.
Still we persist, like some after image that you get when you stare into the light for too long. This is our strength, and our curse. We linger whether we would or no, tied by a tenuous connection to something we never really were in the first place. A pale imitation, a dimly recalled melody from a forgotten song, played in the wrong key.
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Post by FullFrontalBuddha on Dec 20, 2012 8:25:46 GMT -5
Miranda knew that her friends could help. They could make her parents stop fighting. They could make everyone stop fighting. If she could get her friends to work together, then with their help, everyone would work together and there would be no more fighting ever again.
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Post by FullFrontalBuddha on Dec 28, 2012 9:02:55 GMT -5
As my team and I pulled up to the house, the only thing that kept repeating in my head was "How could it be a little girl that caused this?" along with "Everyone had a good day for once, what's wrong with that? Why do we need to do anything, we should just leave well enough alone."
There had been no further 'incidents' since the initial one, but all of the high muckety-mucks were running around like someone had kicked an anthill. Actions needed to be taken, this situation needed to be controlled, examined and ultimately, used for our own advantage. That was the real reason we were here; not because there was a problem, but because there was no problem and we weren't the ones calling the shots on that play. The people in charge didn't like that, they didn't like that at all.
It was a normal, middle-class neighborhood in Staten Island, not too far from St. John's College. Just a short drive from the Ferry, and we were there. There was a girl's bike and a few toys scattered about the front yard, that was somewhat in need of a bit of landscaping, but all in all a cozy little place. The kind of house you'd like to grow up in.
That air of tranquility was about to be shattered, and nothing was ever going to be the same again.
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