Somewhere Over The Rainbow

After a somewhat cliche name related to a horrible song from an outdated musical that I never understood, I write.

I suppose in most peoples lives they have doubt. Most people question everything they are repeatedly. In modern society, as pointed out by a professional colleague from the University of London, people pop pills. But that's not what this is about. This is about the story of me. About how I hate blogging only because I inevitably post something so disdainfully personal and selfish and expect someone to come out of the woodwork with an answer and say, "Look! Hark! For this is how to live!" and attach a lengthy list of a steps towards living the perfect life. This is about how I've come to find that everything I believed in is contradictory to everything I've done.

I am a dreamer. I have always tried to stand for good and justice and love. I have tried to make the lives of those around me filled with happiness, even at my own expense. And after I had gotten excited with my own wonderfully superior ideals, I ran with them and spread them everywhere in the world.

Now it is time for Ivan the Destroyer to turn and look. From horseback he tilts his body and turns his head until the destruction comes into focus. First through his peripheral vision and then into the cones of his cornea. What a horrible aspect I have lent the world. I ran with my ideals and passed every waypoint where I might have been turned and corrected, where my damage could be undone. I ran and made all the choices opposite my ideals simply because it was "The thought of the ideals that counted" and not the practice. I have made every excuse in the book. Well, the ones that could actually get me out of the things I wanted out of. And here I am, without purpose now. Suddenly my dreams and my goals fall short because I have opposed them for so long. I lie, a living fossil clone of de Beauvoir's nihilist, constantly destroying the projects I create in order to further hate the world of men.

I have cried out against God and against the system. I have cried out against environmental circumstances. I have cried out against the very existence of man and his futility. I have never once blamed myself, truly, for all the misdeeds in the world. There are no excuses, according to Sartre. I have allowed the world of men to crumble because I have allowed my own world of ethics and morals to crumble first. With the denial of my own responsibility I have wrought pain and heartache on those I love. Or rather, those who love me.

So in conclusion, though it be ill placed and outside of your reach, I apologize most of all to you (insert foggy blur over the name here, oh Censoring committee of anonymity). I have made the excuses to myself and to my superiors, but yours is the most vile betrayal. I love with all my heart, but I have let you down. I have watched you drink yourself into a bathroom stall because of me. I have watched you follow other pursuits. I have listened to you cry from seventy miles away and taken no action towards closing that gap. I have broken your heart and your mind and destroyed the innocence you had. Your eyes hold only pain and contempt for me. Yours and the myriad of others who I have tricked into believing that I could change. Mine is a sickness of the mind.

"And then it dawned on him that all his ramblings served but one purpose: to make excuse. So he reluctantly admitted to his hypocrisy with a simple, 'Nevermind'" - From the works of Thomas the Lost and Hungover

The Past: Or How The Blog Destroyed Us

"The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents." -Nathaniel Borenstein

"In a few minutes a computer can make a mistake so great it would have taken many men many months to equal it." -Unknown

To Whom It May Concern:

By the time you are reading this, the dreams of our era will most likely have faded to dust along with our marvels. Technology will have advanced far beyond anything I could have ever dreamed of and the world will bear a very different face. It is important, however, that we retain links to the past, especially where overbearing governments and shifting world powers may seek to recreate the future on the basis of false pasts. Hence I write to you from the past so that you may glimpse at the destruction that will surely have passed and understand what lead to it.

It is the year 2007 and mankind’s existence is quickly rising to a climax. We have connected the entirety of our planet with countless invisible wires of composed of pure data in a complex pattern of 0’s and 1’s we commonly refer to as the “internet.” Essentially we have removed all physical boundaries and expanded into the vastness of space with our communications technology. Information from all across the globe can be transmitted anywhere almost instantly through “broadband” connections. Businesses and individuals have both benefited from and exploited this technology in pursuit of more gain. Greed and capitalism, similar beasts by different titles, have become a primary source of motivation for communications development especially in regard to the “internet.”

With the creation of the “internet” came the inevitable mass exodus from paper to plasma as worldwide citizens depend more and more on the “internet” and the computer as a means of journaling and personal therapy. In more recent times the web log, or “blog” as it is commonly known, has been a key source of the breakdown of the human condition and of social sense. Millions of people a day retreat from the stress and anguish of everyday life into a private world of free speech and unlimited boundaries that exists in the form of these “blogs.” Through unchallenged opinions posted for selfish benefit we have removed ourselves from the refreshing reality of skepticism and have transcended into a realm of fantasy and self destructive thought. Notions of suicide and murder go untended as they are slowly placed forth under innocent titles and “typical teenage drama.” Man finds truth in his statements only because no one sets forth to challenge him. We have all become extremists of introversion, dependent on the visible track of our thoughts to prove to ourselves how right we are and how futile our situation is. We have set forth on a path that leads only to doom.

It would not surprise me to learn that in your time we have begun again. Perhaps whoever finds this will wear a gunbelt and ride a horse, or perhaps not even speak the same language. I do not blame the complete eradication of the human race, if that is what happened, on the internet, but I do give reason to believe that it contributed to the plot. It is important though, that whoever read this remember the importance of human interaction. We are social creatures by birth and are sure to find reasonable arguments if they come only from ourselves. Our duty is to seek each other’s guidance and live accordingly that all of us may find comfort and safety and emotional relief. We are members of the human race and if we cannot help each other, then we are doomed to fail as individuals.
I pray that whoever reads this is in good health and finds themselves enlightened by this vision from the past. We have come farther than anyone dreamed of, and every decision we have made has had no promise of success. Now we have fallen into the pitfall of our decisions and are pulling the future backwards with us. If, through our arrogance and greed, we have caused trouble to befall the future generations, I beg forgiveness. It was never our intent to destroy your dreams with ours.

Sincerely,
Thomas Graham Schoonover

The Early Days - Pt. 1

“People ask me what I thought of the world back then. I didn’t think about the world. The men in it were enough. Now they’re all dead, and I’ll be joining them within the hour. I’m the last testament to a braver age, silenced by rope and trapdoor.” – Ault Pierce, 1894

“Tom never was much for patience. He was a loud mouthed bastard with an affinity for six guns, long rifles, and whiskey. ‘Bout the only good thing you could say about him is that he’s dead.” – Whiskey Sam at the funeral

My earliest memory is the gentle flow of piano music that found its way down the street to our house every night. My father was a gambler who stumbled upon a gold mine. His complaint was that it didn’t make him wealthy, but he never saw my mother for the jewel she was. My mother told me had fought in the Civil War and gotten a medal for something, though I never believed it. As gamblers go, his luck was pretty good until a hot July night when he bet the house at a poker table in Dodge. Pa was a poker man and he won, but one of his drunken compatriots let his greed get the best of him and my father ended up with a bullet in the back along with the rest of the pot. He died in the street without a friend in the world, drunk and alone. The next day my mother sold her only heirloom, a wooden brooch from Scotland that my grandmother had carried over on the boat, to buy him a decent funeral and a pine box that was more than he deserved. The preacher tossed my father’s box in the hole and said some fine words. Two days later we packed our belongings and left.

It was a deadbeat town with a name that changed most every other week. My mother took a job at the saloon, dancing with the cowboys and singing “Adam at the Gate” every Saturday night with Sheb the piano player. She sent me packing off to a one room schoolhouse during the day. Most of the other kids didn’t understand my fatherless home and I grew up mostly by myself. Regular teasing and beatings lined my lunch hours until I got big enough to throw a punch and knocked a boy three years older onto his back and made him cry. The school master didn’t like my easy manner regarding violence and sent me home. The doctor was a good friend of my mothers and took me in for an apprenticeship. Medicine was something I excelled at and when a rancher from up the valley took an interest in my mother, she dug deep into his pockets to send me to a fancy medical school back east. A week after my seventeenth birthday I got a telegram saying my mother had died.

I caught the first train home and used all the money I could get from my school things and my remaining tuition to buy her a good headstone and a nice burial. When the rancher didn’t show up I started figuring things out. After picking around town I discovered that the rancher had gotten angry with my mother and her persistence, especially regarding my education, and, in a drunken rage, had killed my mother. The whole town swore it was an accident, but I never was much for forgiving. Against the protests of my old mentor, Doc, I sold what was left of my mother’s things and bought a Colt revolver. I had never shot a gun before but on the sixty mile walk to the Hanging J Ranch, I learned all I needed to know. Somewhere around midnight I finally crept up the steps of the ranch house and into the bedroom of the unsuspecting cattle baron. The surprise on his face was paled in comparison to that of his female companion that had apparently replaced my mother. With an inexplicable hatred I squeezed the cold steel hammer back and the thundering report stole his life’s blood through an open wound in his head. The wound didn’t kill him immediately and he struggled on the floor for several minutes before his groans finally got to me and I thundered another round into his chest. I felt no remorse as I left his whore screaming naked in his bedroom and stole his money, a horse, and his silver lined hat. Through dusty towns and questionable saloons I rode, finding deeper and deeper holes to drink myself into. I was on two wanted posters by the time I walked into the Auraria camp in December, broke and reluctant to live.

My horse, rather the horse of some dead cattle baron, had died about forty miles outside of town. No one had ever taught me the rules of horse riding and the limits of the animals, so my first lesson sent me walking forty miles with a saddle and my belongings. As I walked down the boardwalk, she stepped right out of the tailor’s and right into my path. It was there that I gave up drinking and hopelessness. She had long dark hair down to her shoulders and a dark complexion that glowed in the sunlight. She was wearing a light dress and her smile slipped easily out from under her hat and parasol, coaxing the sun from its shade the moment I laid eyes on it. She was the start of the most beautiful thing in my life and I was in love with her the moment I laid eyes on her. She walked right by me on that narrow boardwalk with the simple stride of a girl who knows she’s being admired and I followed.

Three months later, after countless romantic picnics and several long evenings, it was all over. A drunken cowboy had robbed the bank and strangled the only witness. Lori’s smile was gone, her empty eyes pleading with me as I stepped into the room before a line of witnesses at the door. I laid her gentle form across my arms and carried her two blocks to the undertaker, spurs clinking against the boardwalk with every dreaded step. I sold my silver spurs and my saddle to buy her a funeral and a headstone but I didn’t stay for the funeral. The sheriff was drunk and lying in his own vomit when I arrived. He didn’t pay much heed to the deputy badge I took from the drawer and pinned on the shirt Lori had sewn for me for my birthday. I took a rifle and the sheriff’s horse and rode until the horse died from exhaustion. Then I walked until my feet were so blistered I couldn’t walk anymore and my feet were so swollen my boots wouldn’t come off. And then I crawled until I dropped face first on Death’s doorstep and fell into darkness with a mouthful of prairie dust and hate in my heart.

TO BE CONTINUED…

The Fall of Gods

"Maybe God himself is lost and needs help..." - Tom Waits

So, you say the upper hand is yours? Hah! Lest you should be so lucky! Throw whatever waves of chaos you shall, but I will find course. So tell me then, oh King of Kings, what is it you desire? What motive have you for your torments? I have walked the crossroads where your lost souls wander and have seen the pain in their eyes.Have you no mercy left? Has old age made you bitter and senile? Do you remember the days of old when you lead your people into victory and performed miracles for the eyes of men, that they would believe? And yet, what fool am I to question you? You, unlike my fellow man, have watched me commit my sins and seen the wickedness in my heart. I would deny you as your apostle, but it is simply an act of denying a shadow exists where the body remains. This is our draw. I am utterly stripped bare, naked to the very core of my moral existence where only the strongest parts of me remain. With a single invocation you could destroy that too and send my withering husk to the soil. Yet that may be a better fate than allowing the suffering that you have. Children are dying and women are starving. There are murderers who have no justice to answer to and evil doers with the blessing of kings. What times are these that you, the supposed Lover of Men, have deserted us to our own ends? Once, your son turned water to wine and was praised for his miracle. Would not a country of men be worth more?

Let it be then. I shall tell you of what has been done. While I slept you crept quietly into my presence without waking me and whispered the words of power into my ear.

“Go and do my will.” You said.

You commanded my presence and I have given it! I have sought to listen if only you would speak. I do not send messengers to you in the guise of friendship but rather I speak openly to you as though you were present with me. Yet you only hide yourself from my view and cloud my judgment with mixed messages from questionable sources. No deeds these days bear your seal, but rather the seal of men that they are responsible for their own fates. No, you have allowed a wickedness to prevail and have forgotten how to forgive yourself. The sins of our ancestors long ago in that Garden of Eden were not our own! You have forgotten what it is to love and protect.

It is with a heavy heart that I tell you that you have fallen off the pedestal of children and been replaced. In your neglect for us you have forgotten what it is to walk among men and feel as we do. Each day that we face each other and the encroaching evil, we lose more and more of ourselves. We fight a battle that we did not begin because we did not design ourselves. I do not reject you because of this, but rather I am inclined to ask again as so many have done before: will you not hear us and answer? Will you not remember what it is you so admire about us? We must fight this war with ourselves, not you. With the thought you would have solved a thousand problems that men drive their minds to insanity over. That I condemn to bitterness.

Alas, I will tell you also how we have coped. Our philosophers all agree to disagree and our religious leaders seek fame and fortune using your name. The existentialists have adopted an idea. In fact, they say, we are stronger without you, for when we learn to rely on ourselves as the sole responsibility and source of our decisions, we empower the human race and remove the crutch that is your name used as excuse. So that is how it shall be done. I cannot believe you do not exist, though perhaps it was man that killed you and we have simply not heard the news. Therefore, I will make my decisions and I will live this life in the name of those morals which I have chosen because I feel they are right and when you return from wherever you have gone, you may advise me. You cannot judge me, though, for you were seeking your own ends when I was fighting in the world you abandoned for the teachings you introduced.

Farewell, King of Kings. May your journey find you safely home.