Batshit-Insane Shrapnel

To some people I’m charming, witty, warm, open, generous, beautiful, honest, intelligent, corageous, and even loving… but when I stand in the mirror every morning and figure out which personality I’m feeling like putting on today, I realize it’s all just a few tricks of light.
It’s physical and it’s mental, often emotional. What blemishes, stupidities, and outrageous outbursts can I keep under wraps today?

Looking in the mirror, head cocked to the side: Last week when you went off on the girl at the Wal-Mart checkout counter because she said the shoes you purchased were ugly… you remember… the one where when she took your driver’s license to ID you for that blessed pack of Marlboro Medium 100’s, she told you your photo looked like a “fat Betty Boop”… c’mon, don’t be coy… you know how after you told her you sincerely hope someone one day comes along and smacks her hard enough it knocks the idiot right out of her, because that’s the only way anyone would ever give a flying fuck about her, you lobbed a shoe at her head and stormed out the automatic doors, tears streaming down your face and snot running into your mouth, gasping for breath and giving the stink eye to all of the redneck passersby…. yes, yes, yes… that moment. Well, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that… not to be too harsh or anything lovey, but… you may want to keep that shit under wraps - you big fucking can of crazy!
And that’s a typical morning pep-talk in my bathroom.

To say that at all times I feel my entire mind will explode and get pieces of batshit-insane shrapnel all over the immediate crowd infecting them later with my previous thoughts of honey dripping off the back of a spoon at Denny’s with the light from the sunrise illuminating the golden hue, signifying the most magnificient, sexual gift mother nature could have provided our humble species, is indeed an understatement.

I am a fan of the run-on sentence. Hey, at least one part of me can run for five minutes without bursting a lung and dropping dead.

Why do I always love what I’m bad at? I love writing, but I understand completely that most people who are reading this are also praying I have other talents. I am brilliant at math, but I’d rather have sex on a bed of kitchen knives and corn holders than recite the quadratic equation. I am addicted to music, but I have the attention span of a research monkey gulping a Rock Star and sporting an IV of methamphetamine, and by the time I realize I can’t sit down at the piano and immediately play Chopin’s Polonaise in C-sharp Minor, I’m fucking done with that trivial bullshit. I am an excellent public speaker, but the very notion of having to answer questions like, “Don’t you believe that your calling all Icelandic people elf-loving, ferro-silicon alloy-exporting, fishcart pushers is rude and prejudice?” from some tiny guy in women’s jeans and a shirt sporting an image of Che Guevera whom he probably couldn’t name makes me want to go dig a hole in Nebraska deep enough I could begin my own experiment regarding prairie dogs and humans co-habitating (or as my grandmother would say, ”living in sin”).

But in isolated instances I can seem good at almost anything, just a few tricks of light.