The next morning I began to think that maybe I was going to be okay after all. The weight on my chest lifted slightly and I felt like I could breathe again. I became convinced that that guy knew something that nobody else knew. I was sure that we happened upon each other on those two nights because he served a purpose. Never mind that I wasn’t even sure it was the same guy. Never mind that. For a time it appeared that my dark beer’d stranger had changed my life. That experience did a lot for me as far as believing goes, until it was all shot and blown to hell just a handful of months later. For that brief time I was no longer running from all the noise. I wasn’t quite a believer, but it was the first time I felt relaxed since the moment before I saw a plane flying into skyscraper.
The difference with me is that I was drinking on the Kool-Aid, not handing it out. That takes a different kind of person, and I don’t know what to make of the people who spend their lives making the Kool-Aid. Teachers and pastors and preachers and writers and economists and journalists and politicians and prophets and theorists and scientists and all the like. They spout on and on about how this paradigm is better than that one. They endlessly rant that such and such religious beliefs are the way to heaven, and such and such aren’t. Sunnis and Shiites, democrats and republicans, whatever and whatever, Amen. They’re an interesting sort, and a real dangerous one too. Are they liars? I guess if someone really believes in something then they aren’t lying, they are just mistaken. And if they really, really believe it, then I suppose they have a responsibility to share it with as many people as possible. I mean, if you really believe that eating an apple a day is the secret to a long and healthy lifestyle, then wouldn’t you try to tell as many people as possible? What if you believed that lowering taxes would improve the lives of everyone in a given political division? You’d push for change, right? And what if you thought that a certain group of people was a major threat to your lifestyle and to your loved ones? Would you kill them? And what if you believed in God? Plant someone who believes there is a God next to someone who believes there is not. Neither is a liar, but one of them is mistaken. Maybe somehow both of them are. Hell, I don’t know.
So you either run away from all these beliefs, only to realize that there is no escaping them, or you gotta take your pick—just pick a set of them and hold on for dear life. And let me assure you that when you finally decide on what you believe in, it’s going to feel good. There’s going to be plenty of reasons why you settled on what you did, and they are all going to make perfect sense. Beliefs bring with them a sense of purpose and a sense of security. They make the chaos of the world seem neat and understandable, and there’s going to be a bunch of little signs and events that happen that are really going to solidify each belief for you. Congratulations.
That’s usually the case, anyway. For me? When I finally had to start believing, I found myself running through a small town with a high-powered rifle in one hand and a dangerous set of convictions in the other. I never pegged myself as a murderer, but that’s what beliefs do to you—they mess you up. Now I know that my experience isn’t a typical one, but it brings me to one more point—people will kill for their convictions.
People will kill for them if only because they believe that beliefs are worth killing for. I sure as hell believe that to call a man mistaken over something he really believes in is about the most dangerous thing you can do. He might shrug it off or he might go to war with you. I found my safety, for a time, by running from the noise. Just be sure to call it something other than “noise.” Call it beliefs. Call it worldviews. Call it the heart. Call it a feeling.
My friend, call it whatever you need to, so long as you can get the hell out of the way when the war comes.
Lemonade Stand
It’s a lonely place. Full of a restless claustrophobia. Half a million residents in the whole state and one wouldn’t know where to find them. They hide mostly in small railroad towns that materialize every fifteen miles and vanish just as quickly as they appear, never more than a few thousand people in any of them. It’s as if the entire state is the work of some cosmic accountant who has hatched a scheme to launder people. And the wind always blows. It blows on it’s way in from the great plains, hits the Rocky Mountains, and blows on its way back out. So numb is any native to the wind’s steady whistle that the only time they register its existence is when it stops blowing. It is said that they always walk with a slight lean. If people could be simple, it would be these people. They don’t dream big because they don’t dream at all. Nobody knows anybody who has ever accomplished anything. The ones that make it out never speak of it again. Things that happen fifteen miles down the highway in the next town might as well happen in California. In Western Kentucky. Each town its own planet, and each planet its own factory of isolation. The wind blows, and as it blows it’s as if it carries a tune with that plays in the ear of every person there and in that tune they hear something that wrangles them into a deep, complacent state of being.
Silvio strolled through one of these towns and he heard the song of the wind. It annoyed him. Following the advice of old wisdoms, he used education as a path to a better life, and though he graduated and climbed the financial ladder, it was always unclear to him, in his own mind, how necessary or applicable any of it was in the very narrow niche of his eventual profession. He thought of his experience in higher education and the countless hours of time he spent trying to gather and twist endless strands of data in an attempt to prove that people with bigger butts are smarter, oldest siblings are perfectionists, middle children are more career oriented, the youngest siblings are the best listeners, people with long hair are more healthy, people with green eyes have better sex, Mormons have the least politically savvy minds, people with small feet are more likely to read, children who eat hummus are better at math, students who are bullied in school are twice as likely to volunteer for a non-profit organization, athletes who play soccer are less likely to be as smart as athletes who play tennis who all have a poor chance at being as smart as someone who doesn’t play anything. And people who are the youngest siblings with green eyes and small feet and long hair and big butts and eat hummus and are Mormon and bullied, whom, despite having good sex and solid math skills, are empirically the least likely of any single demographic to ever become the President of the United States of America—take it or leave it.
He arrived at the church, but on his way inside, Silvio noticed the old man sitting against the outside of the building with a Bible in his hands. He said, It’s a little hot out here for afternoon reading isn’t it?
The old man placed a marker in his book and looked up. I’m trying to get some sun and I wasn’t expecting company.
The old man took a measured glance of the neighborhood and church parking lot before saying, Where’d you park?
I didn’t.
Huh?
I didn’t park anywhere.
Well where’s your car?
I sold it, Silvio said.
Every structure comprising the small town was set in a neat grid of city blocks cleanly framed by concrete sidewalks wide enough for the comfort of three people to walk abreast. Despite that comfort, rare was it to see anybody walking here other than the adolescents who lacked the persuasion or the power to haggle out a ride from their older siblings and parents. Although the logic of an outsider would deem it possible, if not pleasant, to walk or bike to every location in a town of its size, for those who commuted with a purpose, the next destination was just as far as the one they had just come from—the grocery store is two miles from the junior high, which is three-point-four miles from the post office, which is one-point-eight miles from the elementary school, which is two-point-six miles away from home. Downtown was dead, and no one walked its forgotten pavement except for the ghosts of grandparents who used to drive their old, heavy coups here on weekend nights before the price of a gallon of gas was comparable to a gallon of milk, which then came to the front door by the hands of a man and the wired crates he carried. And now Silvio.
The old man said, I haven’t seen you for a couple of days.
I’ve been busy writing.
Writing?
Writing.
What have you been writing?
Stuff