Lost Resort Day Two, Part One: Slow Rising The mythic demands of restoration are taking their brutal toll on the emotional state of our sequestered innocence. Such a seemingly benign set of circumstances. Whiling away the while. Tools of an obsolete trade. An incision through the tender tendons of discretionary allegiance. Filed down to the barest of minimums. Packed to the roof and sent off amid a firestorm of verbal misunderstandings...to fend for their down-and-out selves. Everything has been systematically smoothed down. Taken to negligible extremes. Removed from the equation. For its own good. And the children run harder and harder...towards a forest that disappears before their yearning eyes. You might think you'll never understand these thoughts which I am taking time to commit. But you'd be wrong. They are not without precedent. Shelved beside the simplicity of a rainstorm. Offering the same options. You can take shelter. Or shrug it off and cover your head. Or just dance around like an idiot and dig the soaking. The only thing you can never do is shake your fist at the clouds. What would you ever possibly serve to gain? I am waking to a new day. I have fallen hopelessly in love with an angel I'll never hold to my shoulder. She visits in missing moments, those clearings in the fog, when I take up the cause of every beaten down derelict whose jagged path I've happened to cross. With hands on my hip and chin to the wind. I've saved the tribes with names we never bothered to pronounce. I've flown with monkeys and sat at the side of kings. I was the one who whispered into the ear of the greatest leader this country has ever known. I rode shotgun on a century's misguided journey through the barriers of speakeasy undercurrents. But I was left behind. Forgotten. Left to my own devious devices. I am nothing more than the ghost of a wounded empire. Everywhere you turn, in all those darkened alleys, beneath the pealed layers of progress, that's where you'll find a part of me. But I have pulled my great trick. Existing far into the depths of obsolete relevance. Skulking off into the far corners of time as the gathered crowd waited patiently for the smoke to clear. One of those off-the-cuff, up-my-sleeve type performances. Executed with a certain daring, and no insignificant amount of misanthropic bravado. Allowances made in spite of better well-being. Perfection takes many forms. All our great minds escaped through the trap doors when nobody thought to look, at the precise point of our greatest need -- a scientific method to their madness. Shrouded in fool's gold and a ticker-tape fallout parade. But I am speaking out of turn. I must take more care. The walls are surrounding me in silent insurrection. I can't think my way out. I must resolve myself to this reality...grab it by the throat, for everything its got. I can see the bandits joining forces. I can feel a bad storm forming on the horizon. In my bones. The same ones that have weathered a million times worse. So give me your best shot. I'll be waiting. I'll be ready. And more than willing. I'm running out of words. Repeating myself like some poorly tended record. Skipping along those notes we just couldn't bring ourselves to move beyond. Scripting my categorical denials. Refusals that blur the lines between simple ignorance and all-out resistance. I can hear the buzzing beneath the floral-printed paper. I could tear up the floorboards but I'd just find another set of unkempt footnotes. It's not worth the damage to my fingernails. There's more than enough dirt to go around. So I climb out of bed with a headache and a thought that the world might have ended some time during the night. The light streaming through the curtains seems other-worldly. Much too bright for this polluted sky to let through. But I am just seeing things. A floodlight painting the terrain with disturbing, all-too-clear intentions. Better lay low for a while. Order some of that room service. Get a few cups of coffee in the old system. Listen to the chorus of snaps and cracks as I rise to the occasion of this new day. ~ ~ ~ Continue reading "Lost Resort" Questions? Comments? Send them to Daily_Editor@hotmail.com. Copyright 2001 © Belowthefold.net