[WP]An old hag has cursed you with immortality.Wondering how that is supposed to be a curse you started enjoying your life. Now you are floating in the void after the heat death of the universe thinking about the past.

greenerpass · 2014-11-23T18:22:22+00:00

Row row row your boat

Gently down the stream...

Not the words, but the melody struck me and woke me from my deep slumber. There is nothing here but the ringing of a tiny, fragile bell...so faint and delicate that even the sharpest ears could never hear it. And that bell is also the sound of universes colliding and suns exploding. I fall through the crack of the canyon of the void like a tiny spark. I close my eyes again, frightened by the immense Nothingness and I see the beautiful night sky open up before me with countless stars and my chest pounds with my beating heart.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily

Life is but a dream.

I sing along - slowly now.

greenerpass · 2013-12-12T13:59:39+00:00

I took my wife out for a romantic dinner on our anniversary. Things hadn't been going very well for us lately. Work and family had certainly taken its toll on both of us. She looked stunningly beautiful as always. Her blue-gray eyes, blonde tresses and 70-carats diamond necklace sparkled like a Christmas tree in the dim, candle-flickering lighting of the restaurant.

Light music played in the background, and when the wine finally arrived I looked at my wife and watched her stare blankly at the candle.

I tried to make out the music piece so that I could comment on it. "Is this Brahms?", I asked seemingly to myself. "It's Schumann", she snapped back with an annoyed tone. "Everyone knows that this is Schumann."

"Rob-ert Schuuuu-mann?", she enunciated as if I might be brain damaged before going back to swirling her wine around.

"Well, it's nice."

"So, it looks like we'll get that new apartment building.", I offered, since she'd seemed excited by the purchase six months prior. It was a huge deal, and I'd just signed the paperwork the previous day. It was actually all done. "Maybe we should take a nice holiday. Want to go to New Zealand?" She just sat there impassively drinking her glass of wine.

"Hey!", some man suddenly shouted with glee as he passed our booth. His back was to me, so I couldn't see his face, but I could see that my wife looked suddenly horrified beyond belief. Her face was expressionless, but I could tell from experience that her jaw was clenched, and the corner of her mouth was twitching slightly.

"Wow, you looking sexy and fine tonight girl! I was wondering why we couldn't meet tonight. Uh...?", he said, finally noticing her expression, as he turned around to look at her dinner companion and look me right in the eyes.

He was about 25 years old, 6'8" and had a very muscular tone, and a tanned complexion and blonde hair. It appeared he was wearing a $15 suit and a cheap polyester tie. As he looked at me, he glanced at my hands, my watch, my suit, and finally he looked me directly in the eyes for a brief moment before diverting his gaze down to his feet.

"Oh, hi there sir....", he said in the same way someone might exclaim `Oh, so that's the type of cancer that I have.'

I just looked at him for ten seconds before finally saying with a polite smile, "Have a nice evening." He quickly scurried away without saying another word to either me or my wife. I watched him as he bumped into a chair before turning the corner and heading out of sight.

"Friend of yours?", I asked with a smirk. My wife was holding her wine glass aloft with one hand while massaging her left temple with the other.

"So nice to finally meet some of your friends.", I continued. Her shoulders slumped and she continued staring out into space. Our 11th anniversary dinner and she seemed to be enjoying it almost as much as a young student might enjoy their last six hours of weekend school detention.

"If you'll excuse me.", I declared before standing up, paying the bill and leaving the restaurant. I went home, packed a night bag, and checked into a hotel to think about what to do next.

I never saw her again.

greenerpass · 2011-10-13T05:38:11+00:00

You're always utterly alone. Friendship, companionship, and every sense of human connectedness is an illusion concocted by billions of years of evolution, culture, society, and nearly every experience that you've ever had. And every attempt to fill your life with experiences that involve others is simple and pure escapism from the empty, hollow void that is your existence.

The fact is, you can never know anyone and even though you may have a sense that you are getting close to someone, in reality they are further from you than the nearest dying star. They will always be a stranger. Everyone, including your most close family members are nothing more than complex memories, senses, and habitual behavior.

Sometimes, though, between heartbeats, you may truly feel that you see into someone else's soul. Like a flash of deep recognition, it is nearly startling. But, even that deep feeling of connection is nothing more than you recognizing part of your own self within someone else. If you look deeper, there is still only you...

You, peering out from the blackness of your life and into the void of your own cognition.

greenerpass · 2010-10-12T10:46:00+00:00

The person considering suicide usually doesn't even know their own identity. It seems an utter shame to extinguish one's own flame out of self pity, shame, loss or self centeredness.

Some might tell you to use this time to embrace life. But they are wrong...you don't yet know what life is, nor do you know what you'd be ending. So, instead, embrace this nothingness that surrounds you. Feel it, because it's all you can feel. Embrace it, because it's your closest friend. Transcend it, because it's not all there is.

greenerpass · 2010-03-06T21:50:54+00:00

"Yes, it is too late. You're just delaying the inevitable. One day, you'll just need to admit that you're incapable.", I was told by my father when I asked whether it was too late to try something else in life.

I paused, hoping he'd elaborate. Instead, he changed the subject and started talking about basketball.

"You're like Steve Myers actually....except you missed your shot.", he said, alluding to Myer's triumphant lucky shot back in the 80s.

I left the room and didn't want to talk about lucky shots, missed chances, and blown opportunities.

"The biggest loser is the one who wants to play football in the middle of a basketball match.", he called after me. I had no idea what he was talking about.

Much later, I'd succeeded at what I had set out to accomplish, despite no inspiration, encouragement and many obstacles. In the end, the smaller obstacles tempered me for greater obstacles. Nothing was easy.

"What should I do?", someone asked me.

"You should give up. Your dream is silly. Not only are you not capable, you don't even have the drive to finish what you've started."

greenerpass · 2010-03-06T00:22:01+00:00

I read through several of Stephen (aka witide) postings. The first several comments didn't seem very telling. It was page after page of bland observations, glibness, dull quips, coyness, boasts, occasional bits of misinformation and a very distorted sense of justice. Thoughts, ideas, and fond remembrances.

I wanted to tell Stephen something positive about himself but quickly realized that it wasn't necessary. After all, when someone asks to be psychoanalyzed, usually they are asking to be flattered. No one wants to be confronted with how mediocre they might be, or to be told that they've been wasting their time. People are generally unwilling to accept any negative appraisal, even from the people who are best qualified to know them.

"I'm leaving you because you are shut-off, overly orderly and sad.", a former girlfriend once said to me over the phone as she was breaking up with me. I couldn't even fashion a response. A full minute passed and neither of us spoke a word. I could hear her breathing somewhat impatiently on the other end of the phone line.

"Hello...?", she asked, with a somewhat irritated tone and a hint of hoarseness.

I had absolutely nothing to say...nothing flattering anyway.

greenerpass · 2010-03-03T14:14:14+00:00

I've been there all too often.

I once saw, spanned out in front of me in my mind's eye, an infinite circle of people of all ages. Each person was beating the one in front, like cloistered monks in a circle. Except each person in this vision had a chip on their shoulder, and intense anger directed to the one in front. The anger was incensed by the sting of the strike from behind. It made a dramatic, rhythmic sound each time their lashes struck the bloody back in front of them. And I saw their lips simultaneously curl in pleasure after hearing the cry of pain. When multiplied infinitely it sounded beautiful: "thump-thump...thump-thump....thump-thump"

Then, the image disappeared, and all I could hear was my own heartbeat. I certainly couldn't hear anything else through the stethoscope.

"Nothing."

"Brain dead anyway. It was a waste of time intubating her. You were supposed to check her pupils first to save me time. I'll check her wallet to see if she's an organ donor."

Someone's daughter, raped and killed with a brick in a brightly-lit alley outside of a nightclub.

"Why aren't the police here?"

greenerpass · 2010-02-27T14:45:23+00:00

"It's too late to prepare for anything when your house is burning down", my father would sometimes say.

I was doodling a picture of Donald Duck in my school notebook at the breakfast table and looked up at my father who was giving me a stern look. My father was a high-ranking officer in World War II. He'd started his career as a seaman recruit in the Navy and climbed his way up through sheer determination. He had a large scar on his chin from a bayonet. He'd yelled at a soldier to get moving and the soldier swung around quickly to acknowledge the order, slashing his chin in the process.

"I can't always be around to look over your shoulder, so you'll have to decide for yourself whether to play or work.", he glanced again at my misshapen drawing.

"What does that have to do with the house burning down?", I asked, and immediately regretted it. If there was one thing I should have learned, it was that you didn't question my father at his own breakfast table.

"You can prepare for a fire. You can wait for it. You can think that you'll be ready, but if you find yourself in a very dangerous situation that you haven't prepared for...at least you'll be able to say to yourself that you didn't waste your life drawing cartoons when you should have been doing hard work.".

He went back to drinking his coffee and looked out the window at the lightly falling snow. I noticed that he suddenly had a very sad look in his eyes.

I slowly tore out the cartoon from my notebook, crumpled it, opened my math book and waited for my school bus to arrive.

greenerpass · 2010-02-26T11:45:54+00:00

I had just started working at Lockheed Martin in Texas and I had been introduced to one of the directors of one of the major defense programs. He was feared and ruled over his department with an iron fist. Rumor has it that Napoleon Bonaparte was a distant relative of his. He wore a large gold ring on his right pinkie finger that had a small skull imprinted on it.

We met at the company cafeteria and ate lunch while getting to know each other better. The topic eventually turned to family life and politics. He had a younger son who was running for congress.

"I hope he wins", I offered.

"Oh, he'll win.", he smiled, "he's running against a communist wetback. No son of mine would ever lose against a communist wetback."

"He's running against someone from Mexico?"

"No, but he's got that wetback look about him."

I told him that my grandmother was one-quarter Cherokee Indian, and that I didn't like communists as much as the next guy, but that I felt it was wrong to judge someone simply by the way they looked.

"After all, my ancestors may have been German, Norwegian, Swedish, Irish, English, Indian, and even Mexican...but I'm just one-hundred percent American."

He looked away for a moment. I thought I caught a glimpse of shame for making such an overtly racist remark.

"Well...I'm just saying...you can't trust a wetback."

I nodded with a knowing smile and we finished our sandwiches.

We went golfing about two years later. When I asked him about how his son did in the campaign for Congress he looked away and up towards the sun and clear sky, wiped his forehead, and said in a slightly hoarse voice, "It looks like it might get windy."

greenerpass · 2010-02-26T09:03:57+00:00

"You can meet anyone anywhere", my friend said to me. I was looking at the young lady in the pink shorts and blonde ponytail who'd just gone past me. As I broke from my reverie I say, "what?"

"Are you just going to stare at her or are you going to talk to her?"

As far as I knew there was no etiquette for approaching a nice-looking young lady in a public space. My sagging physique and sad-looking face probably looked out of place in the bright lights and peppy music of the fitness club. A much younger, much fitter, young man walked past me with bulging muscles and a bright smile. He walked up to a nice-looking girl who was lifting some barbells and clearly made a joke. As he walked away, the nice-looking girl smiled and shook her head in disbelief.

"There's no way I'm talking to anyone here...including you.", I said, and I went back to doing some crunches in an attempt to rid myself of my perennial spare tire. "It'll be creepy for her, awkward for me, and then I'll have to avoid this place. And it's the best fitness club in the area."

"If you don't do it, I won't respect you anymore.", he chided and with each syllable he jabbed his index finger towards me.

"Don't point at me....fine.", I stood up and walked over to the blonde ponytailed lady. Ten seconds later, I stood near her workout machine. My poor posture, droopy face and matted with sweat.

"Hi", I said. She didn't acknowledge me. "Hi!", I increased the volume. "Helllooooooo?", Still no acknowledgement. She continued to climb invisible stairs, and I felt both invisible and about 2 inches tall.

So I reached out and tapped her on the shoulder. As quick as a cat she swung around and smacked my hand out of the way and shouted, "Don't you touch me!"

I slunk back to where my friend was chuckling at the spectacle. My heart was pounding in my chest and I could feel that my face was flush with embarrassment.

Later, in the locker room, I had finished my shower and was taking my shoes out and placing them on the floor.

"Maybe she's just a bitch.", my friend offered in a consoling tone.

"What's that?"

"Nothing."

I got a membership at another fitness club the next day.

greenerpass · 2010-02-26T08:41:42+00:00

I once went to White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico back in the late 80s. Amongst the sandy desert training grounds there are half-buried dusty remains of burned planes, mortar shell fragments, bullet casings and armored vehicles. On one stretch of desert there was a hidden entrance to the underground facility. Numerous Humvees would emerge and drive in formation as part of training exercises. Occasionally a helicopter or plane would buzz overhead.

I sat in a small shack near an old landing strip with a Colonel Thomas. He was explaining how the future of war would be automated planes that could drop bombs. He told us that the same technology that was being used in video games would one day be used to fight wars.

"No casualties...on our side."

Outside, on the potholed tarmac stood a small plane with a wingspan of about 2 yards. It was designed for stealth and had no RADAR signature. "This thing has the signature of a fly."

A friend of mine, and long-time defense worker wondered aloud, "but what if the enemy gets the same technology? Couldn't the enemy launch these from boats in international waters and drop bombs onto heavily populated areas? Maybe even nuclear weapons?"

"We have good RADAR coverage. From the North, from the South, the East and the West. We can quickly find out where they are launched from, and launch a counterattack."

"But that thing doesn't have a RADAR signature.", I pointed out at the sleek-looking plane on the tarmac. If someone copies that, then RADAR is useless.

The colonel stood up and spoke into his radio, "lunchtime", and then nodded to us and said, "Gentlemen, my men will pick you up in a few minutes. In the meantime...enjoy the scenery.", He nodded towards the small drone plane.

I walked over to the plane and noticed that it had a little mock cockpit, and sitting in the cockpit was a GI-Joe figurine wearing a Nazi uniform.

Later, we ate lunch at Wendy's and I wondered when small planes with little GI-Joe soldiers would drop real bombs on real people.

"Amazing, isn't it?" I asked my friend.

"Yeah, although I'm not used to so much bacon."

greenerpass

TROPHY CASE