It’s too easy to look back and point your finger. I could do that any time of any day and I could make it sound very slick and pretty. But lately, I’m finding cynicism a little too easy to master. It gets boring. Doesn’t take much to get out the stainless steel machete and cut something apart.

There’s no need to applaud yourself after you’ve been witty in tearing something down– we can all do that. There’s more of a challenge in being a hopeless romantic. An idealist. To be able to smile slowly so that you can feel the sugar in the corners of your lips. I’m finding myself past my teenage years. The acidity is draining out somewhere.

Maybe I’m getting old. Maybe I’m starting to want babies and settle down on a farm or something. But I don’t feel any older than maybe four. Of course, that doesn’t mean I don’t want the farm, because I do want the farm.

Anyway, I’m possibly derailing from the subject right now. What this all boils down to, as far as I can figure it out, is I think I just don’t have the adolescent middle finger anymore. It’s too goddamn easy at this point to be an asshole, and it has been revealed as nothing more than a mediocre way of making the time go by. It’s more enticing to make shit creek an ideal. Don’t you think?

P.S. That doesn’t mean I can’t ever pick up that machete again, when circumstance begs for it.

December 10, 2004