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WAYNE’S WORDS
Volume 3 Number 20
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You know, I am tempted to just re-post WAYNE’S WORDS - Volume 3 Number 14 – BLANK. If you have not read it – you may if you like. It is to the right in the Archives under June 2009.

I just don’t have anything for you. Maybe I have given it all. Maybe I tried really hard to entertain and now have just run out of steam and you have grown bored with me. Hell, maybe you have been reading another blog on the side and realize you like it a lot more than mine. I don’t know, all that crap happens more often than not these days.

My mind is so scattered.

At the best of times, my emotions are flat.

My heart is hollow.

God, this sounds bleak.

I guess I just need a good pep talk, some sage advice or even an enthusiastic “attaboy!”

“It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories... The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think… I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something… That there's some good in this world… and it's worth fighting for.”₁

“The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place. It will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. … nobody is going to hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit, it is about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much can you take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!” ₂

“Sometimes, the things that may or may not be true are the things that a man needs to believe in the most: that people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power, mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and … that love, true love, never dies… Doesn’t matter if they are true or not. A man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in.” ₃

“If you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, you become something else entirely.” ₄

“It's not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you.” ₅

“Our choices are what make us who we are. We always have the choice to do what's right.” ₆

“I believe there's a hero in all of us that keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble, and finally allows us to die with pride, even though sometimes we have to be steady and give up the thing we want the most. Even our dreams.” ₇

“Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?” ₈

That helps… some.

Until Next Time,

Wayne

1. Sam: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
2. Rocky: Rocky Balboa
3. Hub: Secondhand Lions
4. Henri Ducard: Batman Begins
5. Rachel Dawes: Batman Begins
6. Peter Parker: Spiderman 3
7. May Parker: Spiderman 2
8. Clarence: It's a Wonderful Life

I'm Freakin' Out, Man!

WAYNE’S WORDS
Volume 3 Number 19
I'm Freakin' Out, Man!

I am truly losing my mind. I am going crazy. Nutso. My brain pan is leaking essential fluids. Almost completely off my nut. I am just losin’ it. Ask my shrink, I am sure she would be glad to corroborate this.

My not-so-sudden and inevitable drop into Lidsville does not come from the sources many of you think. The loss of my love certainly adds to it. And my psychosis is definitely amplified by the return of my son’s disrespectful behavior. Both of those, however, pale in significance when compared to that which is driving me to the loony bin. My hair is getting even thinner because I am ripping it out by the handful.

The malady from which I suffer seems to be chronic and it has daily flare ups which result in intense panic attacks. The psycho flares generally happen later in the day as I am driving home. My mind starts backtracking over the day. Trying to remember where I have been - more importantly, where I have driven. I start wondering if I was going the speed limit or if I made a complete stop behind the line before turning or if I entered the intersection just a tad too late.

It is these damned red light cameras!

In all actuality, I do NOT have a fundamental problem with them. They are just tools that law enforcement is using. LCPD cannot have an officer at every traffic signal pulling over bozos that do not know their colors. These cameras are a lot like radar guns were in the 70’s. I remember people complaining about them when they came into wide use – again just a tool.

I actually drive pretty close to the speed limit. I am generally quite knowledgeable about red meaning stop and green meaning go. I am very good at applying the aforementioned knowledge. I am a pretty courteous driver. You know, just like in my non-automotive life: I am a nice guy. Sure, I occasionally get very irritated when someone is driving like a moron. Of course I make vehicular mistakes. But, generally, I abide by the rules of the road.

It is not the fact that they are in use that bugs me. It is the uncertainty about whether I will be getting a ticket for a hundred bucks or not. If there was indeed a police officer at the intersection and I was going too fast, or didn’t stop then turn, or was in the intersection when I was not supposed to be I would hear sirens, I would be pulled over, I would get a ticket. Done. I would pull away a bit pissed off, but I would have a ticket. With these cameras it is a waiting game. I believe it is like 10 days. (Ask Chris from my office. He knows.) It is that waiting that kills me.

Any infraction of the red light rules by me is going to be in that very slight, gray area if it occurs at all. I stop behind the line on red, give it a two to four second count before pulling forward. But did I stop far enough behind the line? Of do they mean nose of car behind the line and not wheels behind the line? Is it only a stop if you cut off your engine and sit for a couple of hours? I also find myself praying to the traffic gods to just turn the damned light red before I get there so I can just rest easy. Being first or second in line at a red assures that you will not be speeding through the intersection and that you will be going through when it is green.

When I am coming up to a green light, I feel that there is a point of no return. Once past that point it is more dangerous to stop than to go through even if it turns yellow. I saw a pick up truck the other day go past that point. The light turned yellow and what did the driver do? He jammed the brakes to the floor and brought the truck to a screeching, skidding stop. I do not think that is safe or acceptable. I cannot and will not do that.

It was fifteen minutes until five this past Tuesday morning and I turned left at a RLC (red light camera) intersection. I know I was in the intersection when the light was yellow, but I don’t remember when I entered it. Was it still green? Was I past the point of no return? Was I going too fast? I just plain do not remember. And I have to wait for ten days to find out. My stupid mind thinks about events just like that one everyday. It tries to retrace all of my driving from that day to see if I made a mistake. If I drove to my office and from my office, it would be easy. I drive all day long and trying to recreate the route would look 100 times worse than one of those stupid FAMILY CIRCUS comics where they show where “Jeffy” has been all day with that dumb dotted line behind him.

Waiting for ten days to see if I am getting a ticket or not is just going to send me to the rubber room. Why can’t these things be more like the Moral Statute Machine in Demolition Man. “John Spartan, you are fined one credit for a violation of the Verbal Morality Statute.” Except ours would spit a ticket out of your car’s CD player slot and say “John Spartan, you are fined one hundred credits for a violation of the RLC Intersection Statute.” At least you would know right then. Plus, I have found that depending on the USPS (especially in Las Cruces) is futile. Since the fines are so damned steep, maybe they could FedEx the tickets to us. That would be ALMOST immediate.

Anyway, if you pass an accident scene and it is my car smashed into a bridge abutment, just know it finally happened and I finally snapped – I finally lost it. Speak highly of me and tell the driver of the hearse to run a few of the reds in memorial. Crap… they get to anyway. Oh well.

Until Next Time,

Wayne

Dark

WAYNE’S WORDS
Volume 3 Number 18
Dark

Have you ever felt like, regardless of what you do, you just don’t belong where you are? That, even though this is your home, it is totally foreign to you or, more precisely, you are totally foreign to it?

“Earth. Terra Firma. Seems forever it's filled my thoughts, been my goal. And now... I'm here.”

“I figured Earth would freak out and it's delivered in spades, on time, thirty minutes or less.”

“Family traditions. They're supposed to bring us together... and make everything... normal. But things have changed. And we don't get to close our eyes and pretend they haven't. And everyone is telling me... how different I am. They're right. But they don't have a clue why. They can't know.”

4:32 am - August 1, 2009.

I just closed the garage after coming home from one of my infamous “middle-of-the-night-I’m-not-sleepy” drives. It started with me deciding to return a movie. As I dropped the DVD in the slot at Hollywood Video, I heard the road beckon.

I used to take these drives to clear my head. This time my there is no need for that. Now, after a long, long time of everything rattling around in there, it all makes perfect sense and I once again think clearly – for the most part.

As I start my journey, I actually use a little bit of common sense and pick south on Highway 28 as my direction. The reasons are two-fold. One: if I drive east, west or north I may not stop until tomorrow and I have to be back for a BBQ. And B: south on 28 is the way the Boy and I used to go to and from El Paso every weekend when I lived down there. Sentimental. Why does south keep me from driving into oblivion? I guess that southern border stops me and veering east into Texas is not at all palatable at this point.

As I leave the lights of Las Cruces and Mesilla behind, the night enshrouds my conveyance like a velvety, black blanket with not much more than my headlights cutting through it. To add to the blackness, I have opted for no radio this time. No music that hides in its melodies and lyrics messages of heartbreak or anguish. No news of how the world, which has been turning for our eternity, is now coming to a grinding halt. Even Coast-to-Coast AM, with its program on premonitions and knowing, will not be filling my car with auditory illumination. I have had enough of all of it. For now it is just the sound of my breath, the four-cylinder drone of the Suzuki’s engine, the hum of the tires caressing the road and the dark night.

Adding to the lack of noise is my cell phone lying on the seat next to me. On past excursions like this one, the Samsung would chime loudly and light up the car’s interior with texts of concern and worry. Now it lies dormant in the seat like a tiny, hibernating, electronic animal awaiting the first signs of spring.

As I continue south, I come to the pecan orchards. My headlights cast strange shadows behind the overhanging branches. In this light they look like giant claws trying to snatch me out of my car. I experience a short “mind-wandering” of the ensuing battle between the wooden fingers and me. They have me in a stranglehold and I cut and slice at them with a lock-blade knife from my glove box. I am unsure if I am making any headway against the pecan goliaths: the flight of fancy dissipates with no resolution as I exit the orchard.

As I wind my way down 28, I pass through the tiny, Southern New Mexico “towns.” They are all sleeping. The roads are desolate. I suddenly get extremely cold and have to turn the heater on. It blows hot air on me the rest of the night. I wonder what would happen if I never went back. Would I end up being a fable of someone who rode off to meet his destiny or just a news blurb about some guy found dead at a rest stop with no real explanation of why he was there? No matter how sane I feel these types of strange thoughts enter my brain while I am out in the night. They are not fatalistic. They are more just script treatments for my own internal motion pictures.

I begin to pass one of the multiple cornfields on my trip. The stalks are higher than I am. About midway through, I stop the car, turn it off and walk to the edge of the field. God, it is quiet out here. The air does not seem to be moving even on a molecular level. I swear that I can hear the corn stalks growing. It is so quiet that the ping of the engine cooling in the night air hits my ears like a nuclear blast. The quiet is deafening. It is serene. It is haunting. As I stand there listening to the nothing I feel a strange tingle on my neck. I don’t know why, but it is time to go.

I get back on the road and back to the heat of the car. I really do not know why I am so cold. My mind tells me half-jokingly that it is a disturbance in “the force” and that somewhere something is happening. My mind is an idiot. Of course something is happening somewhere. I tell my mind that all I can do is be aware of the disturbance – there is nothing I can do about it.

I am exiting the serenity of the countryside and, as I get closer to El Paso, I thank the night stars that my reflexes haven’t completely diminished as I have aged. I end up needing them to dodge a couple of apparent drunk drivers veering into my lane. It is so creepy down here. While I am at a red light on Doniphan I watch and listen to a drug transaction take place at the gas pumps at a Circle K. I bite my lip just before saying something. Choose your battles. The light turns green.

It is also dirty down here. I have to relieve myself so I pull into an all night gas station. It is a franchise so you would figure on some standards of cleanliness. Not so much. It is actually not a whole lot better than a place in Colorado that the Boy and I refer to as “The Filthy Acorn.” You probably get the picture. There is an oddity in the bathroom (besides me of course). Amid all the grime and nastiness there is this framed picture screwed to the wall. It is a lame, discount-store print of some wild flowers. It is not even hung straight. I stare at it for a while. I look around at the disgusting bathroom. Then I stare at the flowers again. I cannot make sense of it. It confounds me.

I decide to head back to Cruces on I-10. It is not the quiet countryside, but it has its own meditative qualities. The engine and the tires make a different kind of music on the highway. They have a higher pitch and it is quite calming. The pitch lowers as I slow down to pass the aftermath of a vehicular altercation between a semi and a pick-up. Black and whites are already on the scene. There is no reason for me to stop.

As I regain speed, my mind wanders again. It doesn’t reel and kick and scream about the past like it used to. Now it thinks of the future. All it comes up with the entire way back to town is that the future is as black as this night. I sarcastically tell my mind that it is really cranking out the lovely thoughts. Idiot. My mind calms me down and speaks to me. It tells me that I used to see the future as light. I had feelings of what was going to happen - what I wanted to happen. Due to change, that light has turned to darkness. My mind guarantees that I will see light again. It assures me that the blackness of the future is not doom. The blackness is just… unknown.

Until Next Time,

Wayne