Y’know, I’ve done a lot of thinking about the way things have gone in my life, and the life of my friends and family, and even in the lives of people I see on TV or read about in books, and I have come to believe that some of us-- “us” being the whole human race-- are, according to some sort of, like, master plan--and whether this plan is good or evil, divine or satanic, I’ve never been able to figure out-- anyway, according to this master plan, some of us are destined, marked at birth, or carrying out orders delivered in the womb-- I don’t know how it’s done, I don’t pretend to understand the actual process-- but I really do believe that some of us are supposed to be sacrificed for the greater good. And when I say sacrificed, I mean sacrificed, as in dead.No, I know. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that I spend a lot of time wondering if I’m one of those scheduled for the altar. I mean, let’s face it, ritual blood sacrifice goes back to the dawn of time, it’s hard-wired into the human condition. I totally believe that it still goes on. It’s just not as obvious as it once was, you have to look to find it.
OK, let’s just start with an obvious example. Didn’t you ever wonder why, with only a few percentage points variation one way or the other, the number of traffic fatalities is the same year after year. Well, sure, of course you’re right, a thousand people one way or the other is a real and important difference--c’mon, I’m not a nihilist. I don’t mean to suggest any sort of resignation to this state of affairs, quite the contrary. I’m simply trying to point out that the number of people killed in motor-vehicle “accidents” is, relatively speaking, constant. I mean, WHY is that? What’s going on here? My question is, are these people chosen for their fates, are they, like, designated die-ers?
Now, my research--admittedly not at all scientific-- has led me to believe that those who perish in such ways have a common trait. They are the ones that are always getting everybody else’s psychic garbage dumped on them. And, so, in being sacrificed, they are, in a way, taking out the trash. Taking it out of this world and into the next.
Look, I did my growing up in an environment where there was a lot of destructive behavior going on. Self-destructive as well as other-destructive. Introversion, extroversion, whatever. Sure, I was part of it, I was deep into it, way deep. And, y’know, there were definitely some people that tried to dump their garbage on me. I mean time and again it would happen. And I’m not exaggerating to say that sometimes I really felt like I wanted to kill myself. What I didn’t realize at the time was that it was these people constantly dumping on me that made me feel that way.
Now there are some people, I believe, that can take the garbage that gets dumped on them and somehow find the energy in it and turn it around and take it for themselves and feed on it and grow. These people are transformers, they’re alchemists. Even these people though, most of the time they still end up self-destructing, it’s just that when they go out it’s with a much bigger bang. The few that don’t, the ones that manage to hold onto all that energy, they’re the ones to watch, they’re the ones that make it. Sometimes even all the way to the top. I wish I knew how they do it. I wish I could tell you their secret. But I don’t and I can’t.
I think this kind of stuff is on everybody’s mind, it’s just that most people seem to have more success in screening it out than I do. I just can’t help thinking about it. I mean, how does it all work? It seems obvious to me that there is some kind of organic process at work here. But what’s the formula? Where’s the key? I’d settle for a window even, just so I could peer in and see the workings. I don’t need to get in there and try to change things, that seems like too much to ask. At this point I just want to know.
Well, yeah, you’re right of course. I’m pretty much trespassing on religion’s turf here. This is where you’re expected to BELIEVE and that’s supposed to be enough. But I’m telling you I can’t help myself. It’s NOT enough for me. It’s all so incredibly vague. I mean you could even go so far as to say, if you want to, that my bit here, my grand theory, is specifically a Christian doctrine. Think about it. Translating Christianity into my terms, Jesus Christ is the supreme and ultimate Garbage Man. Christ will take out everyone’s trash forever! If you stop and think about it, you could even say Christ invented the whole concept of taking out the trash, of carrying the sins of this world out of this world and into the next. And it would great if he did the trick once and for all, I mean it would be really, really great. But somehow I don’t think he did. I think he showed us something, he showed us that we were living surrounded by garbage and that we needed then and still need now to keep it from piling up and suffocating us all, and even more than that he led the way with his example in showing us how its done, how to take out the trash. But the process didn’t end with him, it only began. And so everyday we still need people to take out the trash, from this world to the next. I just think that’s pretty harsh. It’s simply not fair.
Well, duh! Of course, I’d rather there were another way. Look, I’m not knocking Christ, but let’s face it, that was two-thousand years ago. Don’t you think we should have been able to come up with a better way in all that time. I mean, don’t you think that’s an awful long time to rely on the ideas of one man? C’mon, it’s the American Way to come up with something “New and Improved.” That’s what we’re all about.