Pathogen

I'm not a fan of shopping carts. They're a cumbersome, noisy way to carry things, but they do give me something to lean on and a feeling of purpose as I'm shopping. It's a weekly chore, and a ritual walk down memory lane. Take olives, for example. You were a conoisseur of olives, eyes closed you could tell a Kalamata from a Koroneiki...

"Good morning, sir. Anything I can help you with?" a grocery store stocker asks me, with only a hint of suspicion. It isn't an idle question. Under Emergency Decision Directive 462 of 2036, all "persons employed in direct contact with the public" were deputised agents of the Centers for Disease Control. I am being scrutinized.

Look sane. Look calm, I tell myself.

"Nope, just browsing olives," I smile. Sanely, if such is possible.

"Try the brown ones, they're good with feta," she replies, with just a hint of a wink. Inside my head, you're rolling your eyes.

"Thanks." I don't try the brown ones (they're crap) but instead make my way down the aisle marked "Ethnic Foods". You used to be amused by this area you once referred to as the "Ghetto". All the Jewish food and German food and Indian food reserved in their own special aisle, safely cordoned off from Spam and orange juice and potatoes.

"But potatoes are an Irish food, aren't they?" you'd say mockingly. "Shouldn't they be here too?"

"Along with the whiskey," I say out loud. Oops. Sane people don't talk to themselves. I quickly grab the first thing I can find (a box of microwavable goat curry, I think) and stuff it into my cart. Nothing says crazy and confused like talking to onself and pushing an empty cart around the store for half an hour. I suppose I shouldn't be terribly worried, all these new CDC deputies did receive proper training and were hopefully able to distinguish true Paraloia infectees from the rest of us daft, mildy crazy people out in the world. Hell, how could anyone be truly sane these days - everyone had lost someone, or many someones. Three hundred million dead worldwide, fifty million here in the U.S. alone. All from a prion tinier than the tiniest virus.

I turn my mind to something else, anything else, and keep walking. I wonder, as I stroll past the bread, how many times you stood here, deciding between seven-grain and whole-wheat-with-oats. I feel close to you right now, knowing that I'm occupying the same spot you once did. I catch a whiff of your perfume from somewhere in my memory. There is bread in my basket now, as if some part of me is making me do all the normal tasks that I can't deal with at the moment. Survival mechanism, perhaps? We do now live in an age when crazy is fatal.

They call it the "Punch". It's the quick shot in the arm one is given upon suspicion of carrying the Paraloia prion. It's a powerful paralytic agent, administered as soon as possible to stop the carrier from breathing - Paraloia (or, the Crazies, as it is often called) is extremely contagious. The victim is then bagged and sent away for inceneration, the ashes sealed in a chamber deep within the earth's crust. Somewhere in that process, they die.

You were one of the first victims. You walked in front of a car. Just left your desk in the middle of work and walked right into traffic.

I head towards the liquor aisle, looking for something to get me through the rest of the day. I pick up a bottle of cheap wine and head towards the vegetables.

"Two-buck chuck? Seriously? Honestly, if you're going to drink, at least get something good. Live a little," you mock at me.

"Well, its not like I'm exactly rolling in it anymore. Gets hard on only one income," I say, this time to myself, and pat myself on the back for my prudence. There are now three items in my cart - I'm making progress on my shopping list and still appear to be deliberate and clear headed to the spies and cameras all about me. Confusion is a big giveaway that one is infected, and the CDC takes no chances. I wasn't kidding when I said this disease was highly contagious. Houston, Texas, Bangor, Maine, and Santa Fe, New Mexico are inhabited now only by ghosts and will remain that way for centuries.

"I'm sorry," you say in the back of my head.

"Not your fault," I say, deliberately.

"Are we arguing in public again? You know, I really don't like it when we do that. And yeah, it is my fault."

"Don't say that, don't even begin to say that," I mutter under my breath, hoping you'll be quiet for just a moment. Hoping I can stop thinking about the journal I found months after your death...

I walk about for a bit, unable to remember what exactly I came into this store for in the first place. There was a list, I'm sure, but it's long gone. I left it back in the spice aisle, where the cinnamon and the sage conspired together to smell just like you. I head back there, aware that I am truly being watched. Hell of a time to be thinking about you, when for so long I had ignored so much that had should have been obvious. You were sick, dear, but not with Paraloia.

"You read it, didn't you?" you say. Yeah, I had. After much debate, and almost tossing the damn thing into the fire, I read it. I read of your long descent into madness, hidden in the pages of your notebook and behind the smiling face you always presented to the world. Schizophrenia ran in your family, but you'd sworn you'd dodged that bullet. You hadn't, and when people - people we knew and loved - started going mad and dying all around us, you...simply checked out yourself. You couldn't help it. But I could have stopped it, had I known. Had I not dismissed a thousand little signals telling me that something was amiss. Had I just...

I need to go. I've been wondering through this store with the same three things in my cart for the better part of an hour. I'm sure you think I'm crazy, too, and maybe I am.

"Um, sir, are you ok?"

"Just a bit of a cold. Going to check out now and get some rest."

"You do that," the store manager says, keeping his distance.

I head towards the check out lane. Inside, you're scolding my lack of discretion.

"I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE!" I scream, inside my head, or out, I'm uncertain. I'm not even certain that I care.

Mothers in line with me are walking away with their children. I'm being stared at from a thousand different directions. I think I'm done for.

"Sir, please step away from the cart."

"But I CAN'T."

It's the small things that kill us. Whether it's random stray proteins that barely qualify as life, or memories, or guilt. The small things.

"Punch him," a voice says, and I feel a dull thud hit my arm. Not as painful as I had expected.

I let go of the shopping cart and fall to the ground, growing colder as the full impact of the drugs takes hold of my system. I don't know what will happen exactly from here on out, but either way, I know one thing.

I won't be carrying you with me any more.

"It gets better...doesn't it?"

The year after the suicide of bullying victim Phoebe Prince has given me a lot of time to reflect on the subject. I have rather a lot to say on the subject, and who is to blame, and all the whys and hows of what brings a person to contemplate suicide. It's a topic that still pushes my angry button, even decades after I left my own bullies behind, at least physically. Anger, at missing out on the childhood I _should_ have had. Anger, that so many others who shared my experiences didn't make it out alive. And a blinding fury at those I blame more than the bullies themselves, those school adminstrators, teachers, and parents who persist in sweeping this problem under the rug.

I suppose it's easy to ignore, if not for all the dead children.

I guess, given my own insider's view of the topic, I've let this get to me more than I perhaps should. But, having been there (I was the school pick-on from early elementary school until high school, when I started getting into fights and we moved to California) I can say that what happens to someone in those shoes - the isolation, the shame, and the feelings absolute worthlessness can color their existence for many years to come. I know that my own struggles with depression, and an early flirtation with alcoholism and suicide stem directly from those experiences. It's easy for anyone, especially a child, to absorb all of the loathing that is directed their way. In other words, they come to believe the lie and allow it to write the script for the rest of their lives. I hate to think of all the wasted potential, all the good that these young people might have done had they not gone through what they had.

I suppose that there are some things about my experiences that aren't so bad - my move to Indio, and the sheer and utter amazement that I was treated...just like anyone else. It took a long time to not go into a classroom and feel like out of place, but you know...eventually I did. And was amazingly contented and happy to be just another student. Not to mention that my experiences have taught me more than enough about Humility and Compassion, which in Taoist thought are two of the three elements that make up a happy and long life. And, for that matter, I was not without friends and allies during my time in Illinios - my own experiences were probably much milder than many.

For anyone who's being bullied now, and to answer my own question - it does get better - if you let it. What you're hearing from the other students is a lie. I know it's an easy thing to say, but I've been there and I've come out the other side. It's good there, and you'll find people who will love you for who you are. I hope that you learn to love yourselves just as much. Don't be afraid to reach out to your family. And never, ever be ashamed. Because what is happening to you isn't your fault. You were put into this role, not for anything you have done wrong, but just because the others are looking for someone, anyone to pick on - you were just the unlucky SOB who got pushed into the job. Just be your best self, in spite of them. Learn from your experiences and treat everyone with compassion. Even the bullies. If you can love yourself and reject their lies, it will get better, that I promise.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

“There was a stairwell, and there was a group of writers, and there was a college called UCSD, in a town called San Diego. It was the end of the world...”

I suppose I can be forgiven for borrowing from Kander and Ebb. It’s appropriate, in this nostalgic mood I’ve found myself. I don’t think they’d mind, really. If they’d have been there, they’d have loved it, too.

I was a newly minted high school graduate, getting the highly-unofficial-tour of campus from an old friend who had already been there a few years (who shall be referred to, for the sake of prudence, as Daar). I had already taken the official orientation and amused myself at the Stewart Collection of Corporate Art (yes, I’m editorializing here) that was sprinkled haphazardly around campus, a fragile effort by the esteemed fathers of the university to state “We gots culture, too! Just look at our competely non-funtional life sized marble statue of a drinking fountain! Pause to admire the grandeur of the blue nylon netting cutting a jagged line through the eucalyptus grove! Oxford’s got nothing on us!” Though I will admit the imitation-Stonehenge was kinda cool. And it was there that Daar proposed that I should see something “really cool”. So I followed, finding myself in a building stairwell, filled top-to-bottom with writing. Not graffitti in the traditional large-scale, vaguely-Gangsta sense, but real writing. Poetry. Stories. Conversations. The occasional bit of art, from the serious to the silly. It was the sort of thing that couldn’t be taken in as a whole, but in small bits, these varied and miraculous jewels of script, signed with strange pseudonyms. Flute. Psymon. Silver Ring. They had their own code words for everything – the campus patrols (Yellow Jackets) and, more importantly, themselves. There were, I found, known as the Peeps. There was a culture and an etiquette that went along with the writing there. In those walls, friendships had been formed, loves had been found and lost. I was enthralled. I could have spent hours there, days even…

And soon enough, I would. Summer turned to Fall, bringing me to campus full time. I would spend every spare moment there, in those wells (as I had discovered, in my explorations of campus, there were many). Probably more spare time than I should have, perhaps, but soon I picked up a pen of my own and joined the ranks of writers past. The walls had remained untouched for a few years. I was writing alone. Some of my first efforts (including a damn good version of The Scream, I must say) had been lost almost as soon as they were created, as I hadn’t discovered the magic of Permanent Markers. Still, I was content to write my bad poetry in the shelter the anonymity of the Walls provided. But then, towards the end of November, something magical happened.

Someone wrote me back.

I was awestruck. Beautiful, spidery, and wonderously female writing, answering my clumsy hand. Funny thing is, I met the writer, Nightwing, within minutes (literally) of this discovery, commencing one of the more interesting nights of my life, in which I was introduced to H.P. Lovecraft and some of the better artists of 80's era Goth ;). Soon enough, there were others, and even a few of the old-timers began making an appearance. The Walls were back in business. New tales joined the old. I fell in love, twice and in the space of months, on those walls. It was a delicious experience, in part because it was illicit (no one’s really supposed to write on walls, are they?), and in part because, in those days before texting and constant facebook updates, we could keep up with our circle of friends in ways that wouldn’t dreamed up for many, many years. I found myself drawn there several times a day, a foreshadowing of the Blackberry-addicted masses that would follow in later times.

The first paint-over was unexpected and tragic.

And an annoyance. After all, my clumsy attempts at asking out the woman who would later become my first wife had just been painted over! I would have to work up the courage to ask her out in person. Soon enough, it seems, we had worked out a bit of an unofficial arrangement with the university. Though it was never put into words, we found by experience which wells were free for our use, and which weren’t. In time, people came and went. I left university for various reasons. Nightwing departed not long after I did. Dark Hand (my first wife) would hold down the fort for three more years, introducing many newcomers to the wells. In time…things changed. New Peeps came and went. The administration began painting over the efforts of these newcomers, and tragically, even painted over the oldest wells, those we thought would have been perpetually spared as some small monument to who we had been. But like all the good and bad in life, nothing lasts forever.

Nothing gold can stay.

It’s been twenty years. Time passes so slowly that you don’t even notice it, creeping upon you like a thief, stealing things here and there, small things that you don’t even notice at first until you’re left with an empty house and a set of keys. I suppose that, in the grand scheme of things we should appreciate what we have while we have it. It shouldn’t matter that my words, or hers, or his, or theirs, are lost forever under a sea of white paint. That they existed, even for a brief flash of time, should give us comfort. That we could build a world of our own, crafted of ink and paint, in a sea of post-adolescent madness, is a great accomplishment that few can claim. But still, I miss what it was, and could have been.

Auf wiedersehen.

- Ian Werther

http://www.planetmind.net/peeps/

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4402866498

Post-script - I should note that, for those readers who know me now, that the above is written out of respect for a period from my past, and in no way implies that I don't like the life I have now - indeed, while it has some serious challenges, it is in many ways much richer and more fulfilling that the life I was living then. Just sayin'.

On Writer's Block

Once upon a time, there was just paper and a pen. No keyboads, no bright shiny monitor, no cpu fan whirring along with the music from your ipod. Just a single-hand interface on a permanent surface. They used sand or a razor blade for the mistakes, and later something called White-Out, which smelled something akin to burnt rubber tires. A line struck through the offending passage was an acceptable if not completely ideal alternative. Cut-and-paste simply wasn’t an option unless one wished to, well, cut and paste. It was low cost and the ultimate in portable – it didn’t need batteries and could be taken anywhere. It could even be used in candlelight. The only problem was the page itself. It liked to stare. It was very confrontational, this page. It would stare, white and unmarred, challenging the operator to write something profound and, preferably, soon. Many have stood for years in front of the page, the page glaring back and demanding tribute. It was the downfall more than one great writer, this page, and no doubt why so many of that profession turned to alcohol as they cracked under the pressure.

Then we invented computers.

Now, the writer’s task was so much easier. Paragraphs and chapters could be shuffled back and forth like a deck of cards. Backspace replaced White-Out. There was spellcheck. We could, we were informed, pour Jack Daniels down the drain and rejoice in the marvel that technology had presented us. Nothing could be further from the truth. For you see, the page was still there, blank as ever. Worse still, the page now had a buddy. He was known as the cursor. He was more impatient than the page, who sat Buddha-like and waited for the emptiness to be filled. He was very impatient, this cursor, he liked to blink in all his foot-tapping glory as the writer struggled to find something, anything to make him stop. Liquor store profits skyrocketed.

I suppose in the future some great mind will invent something for truly helpful for those of us who produce the written word. Perhaps they can solve the age-old problem of writer’s block and pull the great opening lines from our head and present them to us on a silver platter. Perhaps the great struggle between writer and page will cease and there will be love, harmony, and understanding. Maybe even world peace.

Until then, pass me the scotch. ;)