Game Friday: Saviors and the Saved

We've got a toe dipped into December now. Hope everything is going well for you!

For us northern folks, winter is creeping in. We saw our first snowflakes in the mountains last weekend.

The game today is answering a delving question: Growing up, were you more likely to fantasize about being the savior or the saved? Were you the one rushing headlong into danger, or the one swept away by that one person perfectly tuned to your needs? And did those fantasies cross into your dreams about love?

For me, I was definitely in the savior camp. I imagined all sorts of fierce trouble to grapple with and overcome. Interestingly, I always expected to pay a price. To sacrifice for the rescue. I wasn't the untouchable Superman who never was really at personal risk.

The construct did carry into my love wistfulness in a curious way. I was drawn to the notion of a haunted girl. Isolated. Alone. In quiet misery. I would be the one able to see, understand, and lift her from that darkness. I realize now that in the end, I wanted to be saved in return. By showing who I was and proving that I would do whatever it takes, regardless of the cost, I would earn my own understanding and intense loyalty. I wonder if something is similar for the saved types. Do they imagine turning around and rescuing their saviors? Let's hear your stories in comments!

Wavelength

legs serpentine
smooth against
not smooth
portrait fingers
tracing undulations
    and rising

back bending
shivering against
clawed sweat
tosses tearing
rainbow bodies
    and rising

willow roots
drowsing love
in smoking
dangerous soil
heat planted
    and rising

The Third Floor

I dreamed about the house again. Especially, the third floor. Why is it always the third floor? The first floor has the door, that much is obvious. But it also is the beginning. The shake of inside versus outside. And the inside is wrong. And then there are stairs. So curious a thing. You might hesitate at the top of stairs before running down. If you need to run down. Stairs are so close to falling. Controlled falling, actually. One little freefall, and you catch yourself. Two little freefalls, and you catch yourself. What if you don't catch yourself? Because on the second floor there is fear. Thicker than the first floor. I feel it in the walls. Like something is sliding through the lumber. It might pour from the ceiling to block the door behind me. It might wet my terrors underfoot. It might bleed into the frame of any window I choose to see. But most of all, I feel the almost. The evil not yet here, but close. The watching. Just a few short steps from now. Like my razor's edge of control is a mercy it can rip away. And because it doesn't rip it away, it laughs. But on the third floor, it's different. So very different. The third floor is inside the inside. So not the door. The outside world no longer coherent, far from the maze to the meat grinder door where reality is bloodied and pulped. My heart is beating on the third floor. Hard. The almost is so close. No farther than a neck kiss when you already feel the breath. The walls breathe with something not insane. Something trapped and tired and stewed to tranquil hate. But only while it sleeps. And it doesn't want to sleep anymore. Two sets of stairs from the third floor are no escape. A cliff is no escape. It's just a trade of deaths, one for another. A slivery hot death smashing into ground. A howling, scrambling death when your mind can no longer stay. But I hold it together on the third floor. I endure. The gnawing terror stops just before bone. I walk and endure, and curiously often, I go back.

Twittering

For anyone on Twitter, I'm branching out! If you'd like to follow each other, my user name is ClarityofNight, and you can find me HERE.

There will be some content only available there (in addition to general nonsense). I'm also cooking up something I'm calling Machine Gun Poetry just for the Twitter format. It's a series of single words followed by the culmination in all caps. Here's an example:

restless russet chattering sandpaper veins bending bare clicks abandoned FOREST



See you over there!

Thanks for Giving

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, EVERYONE!!

Beer Philosophers #4: You're a Chicken

"I saw an interesting news story today."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. They're doing a study on whether chickens are unhappy when they're raised in cages to lay eggs."

"I wonder what it feels like to lay an egg."

"Remember when you ate all that popcorn?"

"Oh."

"Anyway, they're wondering if the chickens essentially go insane."

"Chickens always look kind of insane to me. Making their heads go like this. Like this. Like this."

"The animal rights people are screaming that farmers pack nine chickens in a cage. They can't move or spread their wings."

"...and they scratch. And scratch. And scratch."

"Dude. Sit down. You're freaking me out."

"Sorry."

"The farmers, on the other hand, claim the chickens dig it. Very calm and comfortable. Because the chickens are caged right after birth. They never know anything different. Kind of cozy."

"Awww. I like cozy."

"Dude. Seriously."

"Sorry."

"Here's the important part. Are you listening? Think about getting into that cage. Think about how important that precise moment is."

"I'm thinking that's the moment I run."

"You're standing in line with all those newly hatched chicks. Farmer comes along and onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnine. That's it. Game over. You're whole universe mapped out in the count of nine."

"I suppose you can't trade anybody off later."

"Nope."

"I'd probably get the guy who farts."

"Exactly! Nine bodies shoulder to shoulder. Up close and personal."

"I guess I wouldn't get the 'guy' who farts. Male chickens don't lay eggs, right?"

"You might totally luck out and get some super cool chickens to hang with. You could rag on the boss. 'Stick this one in your omelet, asshole!' Or, you could get eight of the most stupid, evil, grotesque chickens that ever graced a McNugget."

"I don't want to be a chicken."

"Not if you have to live in a cage, man."

"Amen."

"But then again, are we so different? We only meet who we're going to meet, and that's it. More than nine, yes. But most of us stop trying after a while, don't we?"

"I stopped with you."

"And our cage is just a lot harder to see."