Pull up a chair beside a tall window overlooking a city bathed in the bruised light of neon midnight and smoke a bowl. Be out of orbit and swim in senseless gravity. Go into the kitchen naked, open the refrigerator, and be in deep thought. Let the glow inside the icebox be your mantra. Pick up a pen and a blowtorch and spray the walls with your novel. Figure out how to be happy. What does it take? A smile, a swimming pool, a Christmas tree, a chicken sandwich, a chainsaw.

There was a time when I had a different mindset. It was a time when I suffered more. When love was a constant combustion chamber and money was scarce, and I was always out and about getting messed up and savage. Now I am older and I have fewer friends and a better wife and a cleaner way of living. I don’t miss the way I lived, but I miss the rawness of my writing. Looking back on some old words and I can see a great difference. It’s like I used to just let all that raw emotion go. Now, I have to dig deeper, cut a little further down. It used to be I could bleed at the simple prick of a pin. Am I more guarded or tame? Am I simply boring now? I hope not. I suppose one’s creativity matures as well and perhaps I just have to work a little harder or allow myself to just feel free. It’s a Sunday in November and the sun is shining harshly and it’s going to be warm outside today which means the bugs of autumn will come alive once again. I’m sitting at my desk in my corner space in the bedroom drinking coffee as two box fans whir behind me to give me some peaceful noise. Dead silence is dangerous and delusional. The ringing in my ears will turn to voices that call my name.

I stock fruits and vegetables at a grocery store for a living. All day, most days. A big fat sweet potato had a face the other day and it told me to do a better job, move faster, work harder, that I should strip my hands to the bone. I work my ass off because laziness is just not in my genes. I don’t get paid enough. Not nearly enough. But who does? A lot of people get paid way too much. Football players come to mind. CEOs come to mind. I could spend an entire day making the list. It’s the rest of us, the seemingly less of us, that break our backs to make someone else rich. It’s all backward. Priorities are askew. It will never change in my lifetime. The no talent ass clowns get all the rewards. The rest of us get 15 cent raises, pizza, and $10 gift cards. But yet, I fight life every day. I take the punches, the scowls, the screams, the idiocy. I’m just trying to pay off some debt. My own fault. But I miss the peace and quiet of a life without the mad world standing on my neck. I just do what I do to try to get ahead… But we’ll never truly get ahead, will we? Next week the car will break down, or the roof will spring a leak, or the water heater will go out. And yet I work myself to near death. Like working any harder will get me more. I can be mediocre and still get a paycheck. So many do. In the end, it is what it is. I can’t let it kill me. It’s bananas and nothing more.

Addendum: And three and a half hours after I wrote this, our clothes dryer broke down. Go figure.

By

Aaron Echoes August