The lawn is waiting for its last manicure appointment of the year. There was frost on the lawn this morning, an elegant silver sheen punctuated by birch leaves lazily cast from a neighbor's tree. Still morning air, frigid and brisk, catches my breath like comic dialog balloons
around my head. There are so many thoughts. My head is encircled in a fog.
The deck stain is scratched and scuffed, and is only a year old. There are things to maintain. Entropy to resist. But not now. I just don't want to. I could break open a laptop and work on something for the Man, but that's not satisfying either. The air feels good, freezing slightly as I inhale. My bare feet burn from the cold of the sugar frosted deck.
Maybe I'll mow later when it warms up. Maybe not. Maybe I'll sleep instead. I'd rather sleep. Its been one of those nights as a parent when you have to earn your title. Sick kids vomiting their way to new sheets and a surprise load of midnight laundry. Awake more than asleep, I
can't feel anything. Not exhaustion, not pain, not love. Not even my feet, which should be bright red with cold by now.
I have these two choices. One I'd do for the neighbors, not me, the other for me and not the neighbors. I'm thinking I'll nap. Let the association fine me for not having the grass cut, or for having cars parked in the driveway and not in the garage. There is something stupid and
rebellious about my refusal to cooperate.
My mind skips back to a day last summer when my friend Hunter pulled into the driveway to find me cleaning my minivan to Rage Against The Machine. I'm armor-alling the dash, vacuuming the floor, cleaning fingerprints from the side windows, all to a background chorus of "fuck you I won't do what you tell me". Hunter saw me and broke into a fit of laughter, saying this was not exactly the revolution they had in mind. Sure I saw the irony. But it wasn't like Bullet In Your Head was muzak or anything... Yet. Now, however I realize the truth of that moment, not the irony.
I imagine a day 85 years ago when my great grandfather sat in a trench in France during WWI, a third of his company dead from mustard gas. The bodies still unable to be properly attended lying around. Guys he knew. He spoke good , but not perfect English. As an immigrant, it was not his first thought. Arabic was. He was a long way from either home... Lebanon or America, but by choice. The still morning air there would have been unsettling, like the eye of a
hurricane, or that moment before a storm breaks, but he wanted it this way. The injustice. The murder. The rape. It had to stop. People had to pay. He came to America and enlisted for the opportunity to fight against his oppressors. When the Turks sided with the Germans, it was clear he had to leave. He could make a bayonet just as gruesome a weapon as they did. But he wasn't catching babies on them like those bastards. Whose God could condone such an act? He was supposed to stay and take it. Agree to be cowed. Allow the rapes. Look away from the abuses.
"Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me."
He left it all behind and standing in a damp trench in the middle of the European Theater, he'd seen more death than he could have ever imagined. It would haunt him for the rest of his days. Except there were just Germans. No Turks. Same side. Same score to settle. And it was hard living. Hot and cold, hungry, unclean. Scarred by shrapnel, cold and silence. He felt worse for it all , now better. Damp trenches freezing your feet in the morning dew.
Would the 'association' fine me for my sloth? Would I pay up? Listen? Repent?
"Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me."
These associations are not tossing anyone on a bayonet. They aren't evil. They are formed with people who are seemingly normal. Formed with best-practice ideas on structure and function. Forms with a large predatory bird as its logo, oddly reminiscent of the Third Reich. Form with. With Form. Conform.
That's asking me to be like everyone else, for the sake of everyone else. A terrific bit of circular logic, since each person, their snowflake soul a divine original work, must homogenize to a lowest common denominator. Everyone. Casting away that which is divine for that which is less urbane. Suburban.
Its not that these people don't have souls, its just easier to keep them hidden, like everyone else who keeps theirs hidden. Its easier to dislike and hate people like this. To snicker about their lawn edging or catch someone's kid on a bayonet. You just aren't real if you hide
your humanity. Your fears, loves, hopes. Hide them, the society says. Seem normal. Average. Blend in.
"Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me."
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