Confronted with candor and cold hard facts the beast relented. The beast offered apology. “I am sorry for my behavior.”
Our hero was taken aback.
Victory can happen. The persistent dagger is sometimes more potent than the sharpest sword.
—
Thus ends the current installment of The Invisible Battle.
I am listening to “Waitin’ For A Superman” on $40 headphones I purchased at an outlet mall.
I visit a place called City Creek the Mormon Church erected in the middle of downtown Salt Lake City. I find comfort and a disquieted mind in the sky-touching ceilings, the smooth futuristic flow and the glass, everywhere the glass. I am worshipping in a hypercapitalist cathedral simply by stepping into the place. I ooh and aah at the displays and the diamonds and the fountain. This place is only futuristic to 14-year-old me. To 32-year-old me it is simply uncomfortable present.
Jeff Buckley’s “Last Goodbye” is rich and haunting through the $40 headphones from a brand called Skull Candy.
I am now listening to “Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth).” When I was a teenager I thought the song was meant to make one’s teeth hurt (which would mean the anesthesia wasn’t working I suppose). I believe I clung to this myth because Alan Nichols, a guy who could actually play some Metallica songs (or at least a couple of cool riffs) on guitar said so. Even now I imagine I feel my teeth ache to Cliff Burton’s distorted bass solo (take one).
I am sitting in a living room watching a one-hour video of logs burning in a fireplace.
I attend a rally at the Utah capitol building. The rally is for clean air. Many persons are wearing masks. Basic masks, gas masks, respirator masks.
I am living in the future. The air is too toxic for our present-day lungs. Reality is too much for our fragile bodies and psyches. Our fireplaces must be safe pixelations.
He heard invectives never hurled. He railed against an enemy of his own making.
He felt an irrepressible urge to delineate his many accomplishments. Since the urge was irrepressible, he didn’t repress it. He told of his feats and victories and how amazing they must have sounded to anyone who could not read above a third-grade level.
He had no logic on which to rely for a win so he whined and demeaned and belittled and puffed himself up until he couldn’t even remember he was blowing his own house down.
He was asked a question. He was challenged. And he heard a vile, personal affront.
He fought the invisible battle and we all waited for his rage to subside as we went about the work of being successful.
I walk through the curtain of another year.
I sit and listen to Reflektor and find apposite poignancy.
Just before the curtain, I experienced the all-too-common occurrence of fear and rejection. A certain type of person, a certain group of persons, almost always operate in a mode of oppression and insecure narcissism. Those persons have honed a homing system that targets innovation and inquiry. Those persons cannot handle interrogatives and change. They feel stupid and see the weakness of their arguments in your inquisitiveness. Instead of letting go and drifting in the currents of wisdom and growth, they build dams of ignorance to stop the flow. They fear an unceasing tide of knowledge may erode ignorance and the old ways. So they buttress their own conservative quotidian tedium with these barricades of naysaying and imputations.
I found my own current blocked just days before balls dropped across the world. I raged and raged and saw the barrier more adamant than before. It would not crack before my force. This was a barrier erected prior to my existence and one that only the slower more patient river of time would destroy. So my stream of passion diverted into the darkened and potential-filled ocean of the New Year. I joined the new current smoothly, the deluge of spirits making easier this flow over ephemeral obstacles.
I know I will find more narrow straits, more dams, more dam builders (and dam fools) and other unforeseen blockades along the way. But I will not be resisted. I will rage when I need to rage. And I will trickle and flow steadily and assured of my purpose when necessary.
You might want to bring an umbrella.
-JPR
I did manage to get up enough courage to attend the Comedy Roadkill open mic last week.
The place was mainly comedians and a few girl/boyfriends.
My set did what I sort of expected it to do. It got a few laughs, got a few groans and got a few uninterrupted moments of silence.
I’m back!
The Joseph Richards Show 