WARNING - ACRID NON EPISODIC INTERLUDE

FAIR WARNING - ONCE AND ONCE ONLY

This posting is too acrid, long and raw.
But to the sensitive and attention deficit I say: bite my shorts.

Before you slink off to Google up some no-strain diet tips, celebrity gossip, or get rich easy secrets just bite my shorts. This posting ain't about serving up icing coated ginger snaps for the squeamish of stomach. If kittens handled with mittens is your main mode for coping with reality...

Then run and run fast.
Hit the backspace key on your browser of choice.
You won't enjoy what you are about to read.

Though you or better yet those around already carrying your emotions for you, might profit if you do. Yeah, I'm getting all preachy here. Whatever.

So bite me. If you dare, bite me.

But to do that - you gotta read this whole post end to end before you know where to sink your teeth. I dare, double dare you to even try to bite my arse. You might have the need to snap back at me for what I have to say. But do you have the guts to do it?

THE SHORT AND SKINNY OF IT

Some folks complain (not without cause!) that I talk around things too much. Take too long to get to the point. I agree, I confess my crime. Like a sociopath killer at his craft, I just can't seem to stop torturing sentence structure to death.

But I have compassion for those who prefer Cliff Notes over the original. For them, I boiled this whole post down to a few snappy slogans. Find below all the juice of this posting. Think of the list below as an excerpt from a book. A book titled "The McCrusty Remedial Reader".

This excerpt is for all of us in the slow class, that belong on the short bus. It reads like the back page of what used to be "My Weekly Reader". - the adult edition of "My Weekly Reader". 'Scuse me, just joking - this would still be the grade school edition.

Carry your own weight, pay your own freight.

Misery loves company.

Never ever ever give up.

Stay on the sunny side of life.

If you can't say anything good don't say anything at all - unless its the
hard bitter 'save your fanny' truth.

The list above explains all. You don't have to go any further unless you want to bite my shorts. Since I reside in them, you get to bite me good if you really go for it with gusto. But you gotta know my offenses to get past my defenses. And likely, you ain't got the attention span or the guts to try.

POSTING BACKSTORY

A reader's response to episode one (Demon Demerol Does The Talking) greatly affected me. Woke me up in the wee hours to inspire me to write this.

This respondent to Episode One has a bad, messy life going on.
Not a pretty backdrop for a light bedroom farce type play.
And despite all that he rolls on with a good (albeit somber) perspective on his unenviable situation.

Which (situation plus attitude) is, illustrated per excerpt done careful to maintain anonymity, this:

"Still I'm on the green side and any day on the green side is better than dirt napping.

If my friend gets better perhaps I can come visit, but for now I seem to be on a death watch.

Now talk about a bummer, everyday I have to check on him to see how he is doing since he is so orney that he wont go to assisted living. One day I am going to find him dead and that will be a bad day, lots of PTSD fears there since I'll be the last of my military circle breathing.

Still one must move forward or die, and yes there are a lot of dead people walking, first their souls, then their bodies. "

THE TIP OF THE SPEAR -IE, THE POINT OF IT ALL

Quite a well hit knock on the coffin nail's head,
when rightly my email respondent said:

"Still one must move forward or die,
and yes there are a lot of dead people walking,
first their souls, then their bodies."

NOW THE (WHIPPING) POST

A major duty of the living is to ambulate - move far and fast enough ahead of the blues that you can carry in mind and on your tongue, vividly, the memory of the best times.

It is your duty and to your benefit to move fast ahead of old storm fronts. To shine what's good of the past on your daily discourse with the living and in your tellings. Your mission in life includes serving up from the past what was savory, free of sour stink, into the present now and the anticipated future.

Else, the enlivening parts of our personal histories - the big reasons for why we bothered to put up with the many costs of living - get lost, just fade out. If you fail in this duty, all good that has gone by will fall under shadows cast by visible, physically obvious and thus auto-persistent facts of olde age, and piled up losses.

SING IT, QUEEN - WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS

Downsides? All those considerations weighing in favor of giving up? They need no champion.

They are ambient without effort.
They thrive on dank airs, dark moods of self pity.
They host themselves within immobile souls.

Regardless of the facts, and not without regard for facts like casualty counts, the living must move forward or die. And yes there are a lot of dead people walking.

GIMME THREE STEPS, GIMME THREE STEPS MISTER

Dead walkers are people who slowed down their effort to out pace by three steps of reach the dues of the blues. Walking dead are ones who dipped too long into an inviting spring, gushing with cool waters of melancholy. Went in too long for a quick dip.

SOMETIMES ALL I NEED IS THE AIR THAT I BREATHE

So, am I saying you become undead - or predead - from too-long temporary breathers, from breaks away from positive attitude exertion, by extended vacations of the soul that went bad?

Yes. Like condiments in a scuzzy bachelor's refrigerator left there too long, by attidues gone bad while on the chill.

Some (many) "pre-dead" sank into their sighs and moans and groans, into self-sorry places from whence they softly - some times abruptly - quit breathing. First quit breathing in their souls, then quit breathing in their bodies, years later.

ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE

Out in the world there exists a spirit species of fungus. For want of Latin in high school or coolege I'll just call it Sad Fungus.

It waits for a just-so, rightly fertile mind set. Grows best on sedentary, immobile logs. And folks who lay down just like them. On minds that are ripe for rot and resignation, hostile to mirth and serenity and the mobility of moving on.

No matter what, one must move forward or die.
Keep moving on or die.
Plain and simple, bears repetition.

Stay agile in the forward direction of time. Otherwise this happens: the living get an increase in the casualty count. Along with a bonus subtraction - one less vital soul to carry on the shared burdens of the living community. The ones who go on despite knowing the score. The score is up for all to see on the flashing stadium board, a count of who's alive and keeping on, paying it forward into the community, and a count of who's gone off to the sidelines to wait it out until they die.

ONE, TWO BUCKLE MY (DANCING/MOURNING) SHOES

One less of the vital living amongst us is not much, but it does count for a lot. A decision to give up and die by pouting counts as one more stone in the rucksack. Another weight to be carried by others still carrying on. More to put up with by those who must not stop, who will not stop, who cannot, yet, let themselves stop adapting and overcoming. Surviving with grace.

Decide to stop living too soon, before your time and guess what? C'mon. You know. Others then pay for your mileage. Your distance on the road to the ferryman. Your road tolls so to speak.

DON'T PAY THE FERRYMAN

There is no "not paying" the tolls.
No refusals are allowed.
There's just no "not going" the full distance on the road to the ferryman's dock.
And you know the boatman of whom I speak, don't lie to any of us.

Your bill to live in this world gets paid one way or another, by somebody. Whether to participate or wait it out, either way, must pay. Might be you that pays in full the rent for your use of a life; lucky us all if so. And these are costs due well ahead of the ferryman's price for a ride to a place of rest.

For a guidebook covering that ride, that final section of your soul's itinerary, don't ask me what I know. Go find a chaplain of your choice. Quickly.

One of the many things I am sure as hell for certain that I don't know, is if a Purgatory exists or not. I ain't got no dog in that theological fight. But the idea of Purgatory has merit, for me. If only tales of Purgatory were true and not this fool's wish for comfort. If Purgatory exists then likely you would pay your own invoice for your time on the road. Maybe with interest.

Then others need not pay any karma on your behalf except by foolish choice only. I suspect any griefs paid on your behalf would go unposted to your book, get lost by bad practices of karmic accounting (btw, if you think good bookkeepers aren't worth their salt, you ain't seen much gangster cinema; everybody, both mobsters and Feds, are after the accountant who disappeared with the books).

Question is: will you pull your own weight and then some up to your end, or not?
Carry on with aplomb; or pass on the weight of your days onto someone else's back.

SPILL THE WINE; DIG THAT GIRL

I say take a pass on them on them.
A pass on those who too soon give up.

Pass by those who want to ride their final distance on the backs of others as tired or more than they. Pass by on those who secretly want to ride royal, on a palanquin, with bearers drawn from the carry-on living. Let someone else transport them up to the final finish line, the ferryman's portal gate.

I originally said not pass by but pass water on them - ie, piss on them. But I've reconsidered since first writing this and revised this posting. You however may wish not to pass by, but to pass your water - your choice. If the latter, I say then we drink good wine and it on to them whut gives the ghost up long before their appointed time of physical death, pass them a share of the wine by passing water on their grave.

IN A HALL OF MIRRORS, YOU LOOK AT YOURSELF MOSTLY

I felt, and to myself said much the same (the latter - pass water on 'em) as I put many of my father's trouble-pebbles of memory into my ruckus sack. That was after we lowered his oh-so-self-sorry behind into the ground.

Or put what was left of him down, him being found alone and three days dead in his flop house room. His end was the fruit of consistent work. An ardent application of his 62 years of too-wasted living had long been focused on achieving a sad, solitary end.

KNOCEK KNOCK KNOCKING ON HEAVEN'S DOOR

My father is an example of one who gave up and became a walking dead man many years before he passed on. And only at the very end did his remorse overtake his sneering disdain for others who had not suffered as much as he had. How could they have felt more hurt than he? Only if he himself had made sure of it. He decided to wait to die, long before the very end of a long self centered life. In the very end, he suspected - he knew - he had ridden too hard too long on the backs of others. A little too late for his life to profit by, sadly. Too much water under the bridge and too much sleeping under bridges, no joke.

PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF

Oh, I can hear it now - Hey dude blogger authorman, maybe you should heal your inner child and lighten up a bit. Walk light, as they used to say in the ironworker trade.

Yeah - I ought to lighten up. Lighten up by lightening my own ruckus sack of troubled carry-stones. By taking out many of those I carry that are not my own. Start trading some heavy memories in for a lighter bauble; not jewelery, rather something that plays music in a major chord. Barter for something more worth the cost to carry, good for me and others too.

COOK, FEED THEYSELF

To live better by living on my own counsel, that would be a good thing. Chef, eat the stuff you cook. OK then. That would mean I carry on by carrying my own load more completely, a much better thing.

And if I do I would not so offend others with so many of my recent bemoanings. I try to make them entertaining and funny, or just memorable. But sometimes I wonder what the heck I have to complain about. Not much at all.

And if I do eat my own cooking, live by my own wisdom, then I should profit. I'd lessen my chances for dropping out ahead of my due time. Be less likely to leave an indebted legacy behind me. Much unlike current our federal government's fiscal practices whose price our grandchildren will be shouldering for a very long time.

NO MATTER WHERE YOU GO - THERE YOU ARE, DUDE

OK then, I ought to start with me. Let others do their own deadwalking, or memory bearing. Or palanquin bearing - every one for themselves and their own choices.

Yes there are a lot of dead people walking.
First their souls, then their bodies.
They quit breathing, first in soul.
I see them, rambling through the neighborhood, as I work to pull weeds inside my own backyard.

Crustily and ridiculously yours truly
From Across Cardiac County Line Road,

James Sullivan