allmostrelevant

When I’m driving and come up to an intersection where a man who has fallen on hard times is standing with a cardboard sign, I make sure I stop the car in such a way that the blind spot where the windshield meets the door is blocking my face, so he can’t make eye contact with me. I’m not a bad person, am I? I just don’t like getting dirt on my shoes — you can’t wash shoes.

I went over to a friend’s house to work on a project. He let me in and had to use the bathroom so i took off my shoes and he scurried away. I forgot to bring my backpack in and my shoes are already off. I slip one on without tying it and hop down the stairs to my car and get my back pack. I forgot it was so heavy. My leg starts to get tired as I hop up the stairs with the heavy pack. I make it back inside, set the back pack down, fling off my shoe, and start fanning myself. I’m breathing hard and sweating. My friend comes out of the bathroom. I explain, and he says I’m stupid and inefficient. He doesn’t understand I’m really just that lazy.

I had an emotionally crushing dream on a balcony that I was a kid who had visual hallucinations and couldn’t control it. I would look out through the gaps in the railing at the city lights in the distance, and the stars. One of them would begin to oscillate up and down, or left to right, starting slow, and then dragging the other stars near it on its oscillating course as if there were some sort of resonant frequency in which the stars moved. I stared in amazement as the spectacle grew. Bright lights of blues, greens, and reds swept across the sky; tumbling, gyrating, climbing in the synchronized and syncopated patterns of my mind, and then the sky reverted to darkness. A father figure, or possibly a shrink, constantly had to tell me this spectacular lights show was all in my head, and nothing was real. I looked out into the sky again with conviction. I knew it wasn’t all in my head, I could see the lights — there it is again, see? One of the stars began to oscillate, conducting the surrounding symphony of lights to awaken in gradual stages from the shroud of the night and coalesce in a dancing rhythmic display of vibrant energy. The lights felt close; a part of me. It was me and the lights; nothing else. A hand weighed upon my shoulder. A burdened voice, like an overflowing jar, told me I was imagining this — all of this: it isn’t real. I looked upon the night sky again. I began to heave thick tears. I reached forward into the night sky, dark now, but instead fell to my knees. I watched for the lights. I was alone. Not even the heavy hand of the truthful man touched me. In despairing convulsions on sore knees I resisted the urge to go back inside, and instead waited for what mattered; waited for the lights.

At the doctor’s getting the cast off my wrist for my newly healed thumb, the doctor asked me how it felt. I flopped around my limp wrist back and forth for a bit in amazement of how weak and thin it was and I told him, “it feels… dead.” He was quick to say “We don’t use that word here.” I thought I’d just unknowingly cursed, but realized I didn’t, and in the time it took me to verify that, I noticed that I’d said the one taboo word of hospitals. My socially inconsiderate self didn’t really think it was a big deal, but my non-confrontational self blushed and didn’t want anything to do with a frustrated/annoyed/perturbed doctor.

About 5 years later I would learn what the word “taboo” means during a discussion with my best friend that had me nodding and smiling, pretending to know; and that was the third or fourth time in that short span of a few weeks the word came up in conversation and I pretended to know what it meant. I went home and googled “taboo definition” and learned… to hide my mistakes.