The Thing Is

image borrowed from flickr

The Thing is


The other day, I fed my 8-month old daughter a bottle. She finished it, stretched out, and fell asleep on me. I was exhausted because I'd been sick, but I just sat there and let her sleep on me. It was a perfect moment. I've noticed there's something of sacrifice that coincides with these perfect moments. They're dearly bought; otherwise, they're of no value. She woke up, eventually, and life kept going. And I won't say I 'took that moment with me.' It was over.

The thing is, I want that, those perfect moments. And it scares the shit out of me. Because life is pain, just ask Buddha. I'm a bummer, always have been. I tell jokes and people laugh, but whenever I get too close to honest, they make excuses and take off. Because it's all void, in here. Never-ending void with teeth. (My soul is, apparently, vagina dentata.) But I don't want that for my daughter. It's tiresome. Yes, life is shit. And people are shitty. And I'm kind of ready to give up the fight to try to change that because I don't really think it's a fight I can win. But I keep fighting because it's all I know how to do.

My wife cooks for our daughter -- these amazing dishes, shit I can't even pronounce. She cooks all day, and then dumps it in a food processor and purees it for our daughter. How beautiful is that? And what the fuck do I have to offer to that scenario? Hey, I wrote a poem trying to reconcile a moral life with an immoral world, and it was published in some journal nobody outside of grad. school has heard of. Whoo hoo.

But that's it. That's what you get. Some people say 'nobody's happy.' That's bullshit. Plenty of people are. I see them. They're like fucking fruit flies. Some people get rich for being idiots. Some people get away with murder. Some people have pianos dropped on them. Some people die nobly. Some people just aren't happy. Cest la vie.


Cortney Bledsoe

Posted over on his site Murder Your Darlings