Wired For Noise

An old friend asked me the other day what happened to my blog. I used to be raw and open, and that was what kept her coming back for more. Though I’m not exactly writing fluff and glitter about weight loss pills or boob jobs, it’s true that I’m not as free flowing as I once was. I’d like to think that I’ve polished up my raw rants into something of value, but the truth is probably more that I hide a little more now that I used to. When I first began blogging I was on a private site, not flung out in the wilds of the internet. I was naive, I would have never imagined that anything I wrote would be taken and used.

Now I know better, I know that I can’t  share every little detail with the world. That being raw only leaves me vulnerable. And that there is always someone ready to strip your words apart and use them against you. So I became more selective, quiet, and as a result lost what she first fell in love with me for.

Tonight I decided to dig back through the old blog, the one that almost no one can access. The one that I should update more often as it connects me with my closest friends. I read through old rants, arguments, moments when being right meant more than hurting other people’s feelings and I couldn’t see past my own nose. In hopes of getting a little of that energy, that rawness back I picked a few posts that I wanted to share. Not all at once, of course, but scattered here and there. Here is one that I wrote back in 2005, at about 3 AM, after watching Hotel Rwanda and being absolutely horrified.

  Can’t sleep, monsters will get me……………..

Oh Mother, give me strength, courage, and wisdom to live my life so that others made know peace.

Do you believe in monsters?

They are real, and more frightening than we could ever imagine. But the don’t live under our beds or in our closets. They are everywhere, we meet them everyday and don’t even know it. They don’t have green skin, or 6 eyes, or sharp fangs. They look just like you and me, they were born the same way we were, they breath our air, our blood courses through their veins. So how do we know if they are a monster? Sometimes, its far too easy to see. For some, though, they don’t see it until its too late. You see, monsters don’t bother themselves with giving children nightmares or breaking things in the middle of the night. They don’t stay up late making noises on the window, or loosening bolts in your car, or burning out light bulbs.

What do monsters do? They slaughter people by the millions. They march out waving guns in the air, chanting slogans, and telling everyone that they are doing their god’s will. Then they set people on fire who are still alive, rip babies from their mother’s arms and tear them apart, beat old men to death, rape women, shoot machine guns at orphans, blow up cars, burn down houses, mutilate every living thing they come across. All the while preaching that their god said it was ok. Why? Because of skin color, or religion, or lifestyle, or some other insanely trivial thing that they think is so damn important. They can’t see that we all come from the same source, they can’t see that there is really no difference between any of us, they can’t see that we are all humans. They are blinded by ignorance, by hatred, by fear. Their own insecurities have taken hold and numbed them from any feeling of empathy or love. They couldn’t feel real, true, honest love for another human being even if they tried. They’re too busy making lists and putting people on this list or that.

Monsters. Fueled by hatred and their own ignorance they march on in one guise or another. Waving banners of self righteousness they flood the streets, leaving behind only the smell of death. They take what they want, kill what they don’t, and march on towards greener pastures.

But there are monsters who try to be subtle too. They wave flags and sing songs of peace, when all they really want is peace for themselves. They pretend to be saviors, but they are still monsters. Even worse because they lie about who they are, deceiving us into thinking that they will kill the monster. Are when the beast is slain they take its place and impose their own version of terror upon us but for the same damn reasons. And those who cannot fight, those who cannot march, they still seek out ways to kill us. They sit in soft chairs, smoking expensive cigars, drinking wine and write laws that strip other humans of their basic rights and freedoms. Or they give money and support to the monsters at large, and in return wield power over who will and won’t be torn asunder by the creature. They chant their slogans, proclaim their goodness because so and so said it was true, or it was written in some book somewhere, or they see the proof in this or that. Yet they are monsters all the same.

And you are a monster. And so am I. We read the newspaper or we watch TV and we see the monsters and we sigh and make empty comments about how tragic it all is, then we turn our backs and finish what we were doing as if it is nothing. Why, because it is not happening in our own back yards? Because the dead bodies are not blocking our streets and the smell is not permeating our air so we need not bother ourselves with it? Because we do not go to sleep at night to the sound of gunfire and bombs exploding, or spend our days in fear of what will happen next, because its them and not us so we need do no more than make a few sad remarks to friends. Gods know I do it too. I sit here tonight, shaking, tears pouring, unable to shut my eyes for the images I know I will see. And tomorrow? Tomorrow I will get up, go about my day, and go to sleep at the end having done nothing meaningful to those who need it most. By next week I will have forgotten the mix of sorrow and rage that I feel tonight, by next month I will barely understand my own rambling words.

“All that evil needs to succeed is for good men to do nothing.”

There are a million excuses, if not more. No time, no money, no where to start. Too much that needs to be fixed, not enough to begin. Most causes that take our money either keep it for themselves or are as useless as we are to help. And so the monster trudges on, killing and crippling not just our bodies but also our souls. By the end of it all of us will have hearts rotted by pollution and souls burnt to ash. By the end there will be no human beings left who know how to feel love to empathy or regret or forgiveness. The human race is a race of monsters, a blight on this planet. It would be better if we did erupt into war, end this now. Give the planet a few moments peace that it has sorely missed in the last hundred thousand years. Since the first caveman picked up a stick and hit another caveman with it, there has only been fleeting moments of peace. We are a worthless excuse for an evolutionary experiment, a mistake that has grown out of hand, a cancer. We are a cancer, speeding faster and faster, destroying our host body and every cell that we come near.

And now I will stumble off to bed, images of dead bodies flash every time I close my eyes. I can hear the echoes of gunshots and screams. I think if I tried I could smell the rotting flesh.

[tags]blogging, writing[/tags]

Related Reading:

Writing Down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within

On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

Grant Writing For Dummies