.

Well, I barely remember my own name, and I almost grew a full beard, but I’m finally back from the “quick” jaunt down the street to grab a paper and coffee. Yes, leave it to me to run out of coffee on National Coffee Day.

This young girl was in there, high school age, who probably lives on her own or something, judging by how much she works. She’s a sweetheart, I mean that, I feel bad for her always being in there. Sometimes she’ll see me in my chef’s pants when I’m just getting off work and she’ll run a hand through her hair… I can tell she notices people’s idiosyncrasies.
But today I went in there it she was, ho hum, another customer, I want no part of any of this. Right before I go up to the counter with my stuff, this one-foot-in-the-grave type old dude stumbles in and orders like 20 lottery tickets. I’m surprised Indiana even has taxes, with how much money people blow on the lottery. She’s out of certain tickets, so he opts for different ones, as if there’s some big difference… they might as well just stamp “Dumba**” on your forehead the second you buy one of those things. It takes the girl forever, and she at most half-annunciates any of her words, with a sort of porcelain, glazed-over look in her eyes. She gets up to me and I complain about the price of the coffee and she just sort of giggles. I tell her they’re out of like two of the five sizes and she’s like, Oh yeah, I’ll go fill those in a second, very laid back.
I realize that this is a crappy job this girl works, but one that I utilize every day. To me this job is more important than police chief, a position which makes headline news today. But then, I’m an anarchist. I’ve just never seen what would happen if there were no cops… with them, we still have wars, rapists getting paroled to make room for weed dealers, brutality on the streets, ever noticed that?
As I’m parting, since I’m sort of dumb, and sleep-deprived, I make some comment about the change I got. I might as well have asked this girl about nuclear physics.
I still remember working at the Kroger lil’ gas station… it was almost an insufferable job for the un-stoned. Under the reefer, I’d end up talking in vampire voices, and making people laugh — night and day.
We’re getting to the point in our country where the question becomes — not, Should weed be legal, but, When, and where, should the average person be stoned. For one thing, marijuana prevents cancer. It’s a plant in the ground. Go figure. Nothing is more conducive to cancer, I doubt with a couple notable exceptions like coal mining, than working in a Speedway gas station. You’re cramped, so you get poor circulation, you’re one of the biggest tobacco vendors in the area (although sadly Indiana is absurdly stocked with tobacco vendors), and I doubt there’s any food in there that isn’t processed. Marijuana becomes an humanitarian antidote, in such a situation.
I work as a line cook. I cannot do my jobs stoned. At my jobs, there is more than one thing going on at a time; it involves a constant application of prioritization and critical thinking, and I learned the hard way that marijuana just makes you ease up, when sometimes easing up is not the immediate objective. Marijuana makes you content, like, looking at the plumage of a peacock for all of eternity. It’s not very helpful toward a corporate tycoon’s ability to sell a product, or an image, hence, probably, its long-time illegality.
For whatever reason, I wait a long time at a gas station, I’m not that bummed (especially since that girl isn’t too bad to look at, sorry, if I’m to be punished for that comment I have full faith that said punishment will come), I wait a long time for food in a restaurant, I, and I think anybody, gets a little antsy. Ironically, I think, being a host or hostess stoned is pretty feasible, given some Visine. I cannot speak to waiting tables, because that is a very hard job I happen to not be good at. I’m not a good fake-smiler. So if I tried to wait tables stoned, I could probably smile all the time, make people feel good, but then would I forget about certain tables, walk right past them? I have a feeling.
Marijuana aids repetition; it makes repetition seem less repetitive. I guess, repetition is a factor in everybody’s life, to an extent, but I personally try to minimize it in mine.

You are a force greater than me,

I should have known it a while ago.
.
Now I am in arbitrary crime,
Causing horrors in passers by,
As anyone in my situation would do.

The will is there

Among the populace
To turn our faculties,
Our butterflies to buzzards,
And we index when this happens,
People set back their own lifetimes,
Nothing more,
Nothing less.

Can you purify

What was in the past made false?
Where so many said,
The cloudy days will dampen your spirit,
The sounds of factories and motors
Will lay waste to your thoughts,
Can we still find that rhythm down there,
That crest of divinity
Made to buzz so wildly with rare abandon
That others,
Frail ones,
Don’t see?
.
And sure,
We revert to world-loathing
On a basis of money-pushing,
But we’re better than that,
We’re better than cynicism,
Stasis,
Complaint.
.
But beggars can’t be choosers…
Those of us braced psychotically
In a search for life
Cannot be indignant
When we find it,
Cannot fault the source,
Even if it was a source
Who first gave us death.

Eventually all charm and magic go out of a situation, and the enterprise becomes machinated. Fear takes over, in the mind that notices the dwindling of general good will. It becomes the objective to simply avoid disaster, rather than imbue light and kindness. In a society that’s already dangerous, the suspicion of impending disaster tends to be heightened.

This is, basically, what can make people question whether there is a purpose to life — the sort of cold and rote, repetitive activities a society must orchestrate. Yet, it is also these organized aspects, theoretically, that keep us from being beasts, that give us structure.
The primary mistake, it seems, is looking for an ultimate end of goodness within life, having not to do with temporary self-expression, which is righteous, but continual reward, which is imaginary.

So finally,

I’ve found my inner reaches,
My inner song,
And if I were to follow it to its full destination,
It would take me to Chicago,
To the middle of all the action,
To all the colors and lights,
Where the only wrong is indolence,
Where buxom young women shrug and giggle
In black t shirts,
And hostel attendants inflect and tug their “o’”s
Over the phone,
And life is breathed in
Of itself,
Each unfolding moment
Suspended in the collective patience
Of those who have braved the winters,
Braved the local news and the
Regressive caricatures,
Knowing that card in their back pocket,
The mauve splendor of a moment.

If we reach elation,

Never say that it was easy,
Or that it was meant all along,
.
Because we’re not just two fibres,
And all along our paths were beset by opposition,
Quagmires through which unflagging discernment
Went to dispel other deluges which
At present
We mutually care not to discuss.

One galvanized artist

Undergoes a tremendous amount of fear
Under a veritable boulder of vision,
And in studying this we will see how
Only through true realization of self
Will sustained, constant and reliable entities in life
Manifest themselves,
And when we save ourselves,
We save others too,
Whether or not that was actually our original intention.

I wonder what it takes to touch her hand

And see how her heart feeds her ergonomics,
Sun-scorched vision re-calibrating and doling its own cruelty,
Wading through human realizations
Juggling animal needs.
.
Common good will is logical, not pure:
So on her way to realization of her own overture,
She will sift and specify,
Honing in and
Dancing
.
With the miser’s intensity.
In your helix is the same old thing,
And truth straddles you into desperation
As a necessary part of the day.

I can see her now,

Sitting happily
In a moment she hadn’t foreseen,
Taken by inclinations so minute
To be unmistakably her own,
Her own sins
That she swats at
Because to become them
Is to kill their embryonic song,
Decadent indulgence the only way.