RUMINATIONS: aural abuse
Urgh. The neighbors are having a party tonight, and loudly replaying the same damn song about snitches, bitches, fake gucci, and… sharkbites? I don’t know really, it’s hard to tell through the autotune and reverb off the brick buildings and train tracks. It’s hard to focus, since it’s coming from next door AND across the street. It’s like being locked inside the trunk of a car with a stupid-loud rattling stereo, except I’m inside my own home, rattling off the walls and trying not to go mad… six eggs today though. Hallelujahs and small graces. Someday maybe we’ll bring the studio sound system over and drown out the autotune noise with Carmina Burana and folk songs and take a turn at being obnoxious? Meantime, pass me another pint please… because now they’re fighting loudly over something, and luckily it’s all words and enticements to swing, come to blows… and I hope it blows over, and hope to the sky that they’re not armed. I’m grateful for this brick house, even if it’s just an unfinished shell, and stay away from the windows. I’m on edge.
A kid threw a pencil through my front wheel on my ride home today… there were a group of kids hanging out on a front porch on California Ave, and a cop SUV parked on the cross street at the corner. I’m not proud to say I reflexively flipped them off over my shoulder. I have three crowns and endured six months of painful dental work for a bad bike accident that involved something getting stuck in my front wheel and launching me face first into the emergency room… but I felt bad about my reaction- they’re just kids, and my gesture didn’t do anything to change their perceptions about the world in a positive way. That number two lead sailed cleanly through my spokes. They should take up archery, or at least darts. I was a few blocks away and still trying to get home, and all the better things I could have done or said came flooding in.
A fresh yellow pencil, the sharp point visible as it bounced on the pavement has so much power and potential, much like those kids if they were to focus and have the right guidance and more opportunities and weren’t instead weighed down by the weight of a thousand problems not of their making, but very much making up their world. I wish I’d turned around and tried to tell them that… that projectiles will only get them as far as whomever the cops had up against the fence across the street from them… but if they can learn to use words and reason, to sharpen their minds like the fine point on the school supplies their mom probably just got them that they were flinging away, they might have a shot at getting real power in a rigged world, at getting a leg-up in the struggle… that words and a focused mind have so much potential… but I get it. The deck is stacked and it’s hard to care or keep trying, a lot of days. Some days you’re just mad. Some days, you want to throw something.
But it was a good reminder for me too… to try not to act reflexively out of anger or fear and instead to really think instead of just reacting? I’m really trying to make things better and not focus on how much is wrong, but it’s hard to keep your head up and eyes on the right sometimes.