Bright light streamed in through the chalky windows. My bare feet felt the dry concrete. The white warehouse walls smelled like paint. I heard their footsteps and realized that they were me. The figures surrounded me, wearing my face, and pinched in each hand was a lit cigarette. I recognized the smell just as something touched my back and it hurt, sizzled. As I turned I could hear the people behind me rush forward and then more hissing as they burned my arms and shoulders.

Coming to America

A family defined by its persecution (England, Presbyterians), in its absence, it began to persecute itself. We fled our country and then fled our family and many of us fled our selves by drinking. Or stealing horses and being hanged.

Some strange defiance

Have you ever had to spend long amounts of time with someone that is intolerable?

I try to set the stage with the agenda I have prepared: criticism, things that we may need to focus upon or to change, and a statement of values and some direction. During this process I encounter acknowledgement with a side of, 'that is how it has and always will be.' Next, assurance that those things are difficult to change and perhaps we will get to them. And finally a redirection from what is valuable and where we might go and instead into a history that spans at least five years, a series of events that no one is interested in revisiting, programs that have been abandoned and forgotten.

I put forth a question and I am met with an agenda. A long diatribe that recounts a litany of perceived missteps. I decide to interrogate that line of conversation and ultimately I am told, 'well, I am meeting with those stakeholders and we are putting together a project.' And, 'this stakeholder is very interested in resuscitating these abandoned dalliances so that I might waste my time plowing a fetid field.'

This is all served up with a sideways glance and a grin. As though this person knows something that no one else seems to. And, the tone it is delivered with reminds me of an old cartoon character that is about to run into a wall painted with a black circle, proclaiming, 'I'm going in there! Watch me!' A shrill, presumptuous, saccharine delivery of each riposte and retort.

I would like to study this person, to build up a thesis and eventually make the case for a formal disorder, something that would help future humans avoid this fate. And, a regimen that might help someone who exists this way receive help and guidance from people who care about them. On the other hand I am tempted to abandon them and see how many times they try to dive into the circle, how many teeth they lose, to time the duration that they remain unconscious and to measure the amount of blood that seeps out of their self-inflicted head wound.