Sunday Scribblings: Real Life

Oh, I should never attempt a writing prompt when my mood is wrung out. My post for this week's Sunday Scribblings is a Charlie Brown scribble, gum on the sidewalk, seaweed soup sort of thing: it is bitter and sticky and irritable. The topic is "real life." If you want Wheaties and fun lipstick the color of a baboon's ass, don't read on:

Channeling Arthur Schopenhauer As I Reflect About Real Life

"Real life" is the bully mentality disguised as a sorority of kindred spirits: a pack of girls with watery hair, straight teeth, and expensive jeans, rolling their eyes and laughing at fat Tina, who lives in the dorm room down the hall. Girls who grow up to be women who refine their laughter to smirks, but are still ugly beneath the pretty. It is the old man in the line at the grocery store, digging for crumpled bills and exact change with shaking, gnarled hands; milk and bread and Velveeta and a pear lined up on the conveyer belt beside him. "Real life" is barn cats--Jennifer, whose missing tail is an entity without being present (horse stomped on it), Billy, with the snot globules in his eyes, and mangey Cora, whose belly is always full of babies and mice. "Real life" is the dog that gets off of the leash and darts into the busy road--in one second, the world is inverted, folded inside out from life to death--this tiny dog, still, on the road. "Real life" is the marriage of a treadmill and the heart--shoes thumping, heartbeat thumping--and yet, my cheeks aren't flushed. "Real life" is felt tip pens that dry up too quickly, ideas that dry up too quickly, dreams tucked into a pocket and forgotten until its time to do laundry, and then, it's too late. It is a legion of people whose niceness is artificial sweetner, grainy one minute, sugary the next, but ultimately, rat poison, a heart attack waiting to happen. "Real life" is child swappers, politicians that stink like anchovies, and the telemarketers that call every night, probably picking their cuticles as they ask if they can count on you for a small pledge of 30$. It is finishing the sentences for a person who stutters because you've got soccer practice at 5; it is complaining about being hungry when your last meal was a Big Mac, only a few hours ago. It is the luxury of being uninspired and believing that finding oneself creatively is critical, as important as finding a good potato during the famine or a toddler missing after the flood. "Real life" is paying the minimum on a credit card but booking that necessary knitting cruise to Mazatlan. "Real life" is whatever you want to slap on your canvas, depending on your perspective or mood--today, my picture is solid blue, but tomorrow, it could be stick people holding hands and yellow. "Real life" is realizing that inaction is as much of a choice as paying bills, writing a poem, and making enchiladas smothered in salsa verde for dinner.
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