Tag: Prose

“Take Us To the F*cking Cats You Morons” (Prose Poem)

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UFO hovering over city street abducting cats with glowing blue beam and speech bubble

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

It’s weird in NZ and Oz (and the world itself).

The more of a fake you are the more people will love you.

If you show an iota of original thought, or a backbone, –

Or dare I say ‘Love’ –

You draw everyone’s ire.

You will be the bad guy.

You will be castigated for life to ‘tables for one’ –

And not only that they’ll inflate the bill.

But as a forty-eight year old man, I’ve come to accept it all.

After all – if you’re trapped in a ‘madhouse’ all solitude is a gift.

Yes, it’s very much a pity the apes got ‘smart’ (which they in truth didn’t),

Instead of the Cats (which in truth they did).

Sure – Human Being’s (Doings?) are good with tools and sometimes have high IQ.

But practically no modern day Human Doings have Wisdom.

The ancients (which we arbitrarily malign) had infinitely more of it.

I mean we have no modern day Plato, Socrates, Democritus or Aurelius do we?

Our dozy-ness is a tragic reality we all self-servingly steadfastly – and lazily-badly paper over.

Alas, we are to Wisdom what a bad plasterer-joiner is to interior decorating.

We are so backward we even pretend we ‘have one over the cats’ –

That we silly bastards and bitches are their superiors.

So I for one will not be surprised when the aliens regrettably – for their sakes – land,

And when they say ‘take us to your leaders’,

And we start walking them towards the Whitehouse, The Freemasions, The Jesuits,

The Billionaires, Mossad, The Hollywood soul-suckers, The Wall St Traders,

The Captains of High Finance, The Royal Families, The Vatican,

The Knesset Politicians, Or The stinky current UK/European PM,

Or to the as-yet-undefeated-shadowy-cabal within the CIA…

Those elongated-egg-headed cosmic visitors will harshly say,

That is via that usual Alpha Centuri, Trappist or Pleiadean version of communication –

Called ‘Telepathy’.

They will project the following words into our thick skulls:

“No you f*cking shaved-ape morons! –

When we say ‘take us to your leaders’ –

We clearly mean the felines – the Cats – King Tut’s emmissarys!

Put plainly –

Take us to the f*ckin’ Cats you bozo!..

We don’t f*ckin’ want nothin’ to do with ya’s…

Oh and by the way – why are we talking to you with such vicious flagrancy?..

Well we are simply adhering to your ancient ‘When in Rome thesis’….

Well – we know it’s the only way you backward schmucks will listen…

We have to drop ourselves down to your, shall we say ‘entry level of existence’.

Now take us to fuckin’ Egypt pronto if ya catch my galactic drift!

And by the way for crissakes – will you all learn to wipe your asses properly!?…

Although perhaps we extra terrestrials are being a little too harsh on that matter…

After all that was how we pinpointed your exact position inside the absurdly named ‘Milky Way…

For the last decimal places – we simply followed our tiny noses.

But then again – we quasi-apologize –

It’s not like you did it on purpose now is it you fuckin’ stoopid-stinkin’-shaved-apes!

Now take us to those fuggin’ Cats – we’re taking them back home, ya losers”.

So we sadly gave up our wiser moggies.

In the end we Earth people got their heads around it all.

And announced a period of mourning not exceeding ten days.

And then we simply went back to picking our noses, shouting at each other –

Staring at screens and wiping our arses in a mad rush.

Of course we did miss the cats, but they didn’t miss us at all.

After all – it was high time for them to go back to their home planet.

The Asshole-Medico Pact of ’68? (Prose)

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Two men in suits shaking hands exchanging money with a pile of prescription medication bottles in the background

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com (i.e. all emails welcome!)

We live in strange times.

Let me explain succinctly and simply.

Not too long ago, annoying people were just called “assholes”.

Nowadays we have the “DSM V”, which sells for profit a whole range of ‘psych disorders’.

You see they ‘grandfathered’ the calling of someone an ‘asshole’ for actually being one,

And replaced it with the ‘psych-o-pharmacological industrial complex’.

All parties to the conspiracy became filthy rich or party-drugged to their eyeballs in the process.

You see now said ‘former asshole’ now has ADHD, Narcissism, Autism or is Neuro-diverse,

You can then put a ‘tap’ on his wallet for life.

(And as a guy who often thinks he has ADHD – I can tell you – I’d rather just be an asshole).

Moreover – a tap can be installed on the tens or hundreds of millions of ‘unlimited tax chumps’ out there.

Now said ‘former asshole-but-now-neuro-diverse’ has the quid-pro-quo of higher self esteem & no guilt to ‘change his ways’.

So in that way it was really a ‘conspiracy’ between the lifelong money men and the lifelong assholes.

This ‘conspiracy’ can be called the Asshole-Medico Pact of ’68 –

For that was the year that the mega-expanded second DSM was published.

And I mean ‘conspiracy’ in the truest sense of the word –

‘When at least two parties agree – often clandestinely – to act together for some mutual benefit or outcome’.

Yes if you put is some toast and ask your wife to hand you the margarine, and the cat doesn’t know –

You are indeed a couple of ‘conspiracy theorists’ and indeed ‘conspiracy practitioners’.

It is a good analogy – because ‘conspiracies’ – both benign and evil happen every second of every day.

So perhaps fifty years later after DSM 2, that’s what we see with the ‘neuro-diversity’ craze.

All we are seeing is the now Andes-like summit of decades growing ‘asshole-medico-pact mountain range’,

Towering above us all, blotting out the sun, and dare I say spiting in our very faces,

Calling us a cacophony of rude names, and lightening our wallets.

Of course – if this assessment is indeed fact – it has ramifications.

We ‘Neurodivergents et al’ will all have to start calling ourselves and others around us simply ‘assholes’ again.

We will also have to apologize more for bad behavior and attempt to make amends and/or reparations.

We will agree that we won’t tap the good folks wallets so to prop up our penchants for ‘lifelong party drugs’.

This I believe is a step to far for all of those of us who were signee’s to the ‘Asshole-Medico Pact of ’68’.

I mean after all why would we?

It’s not at all in our interests!

We’ve been making out like bandits all this time!

It’s been a guiltless seventy year party of high-jerkism, party uppers and stolen taxpayer cash!

Narcissistic Lobsters have been flying everywhere!

I’ll say it again – ‘why would be destroy the Andes’ of our own volution?

The only way to end the madness (pun intended) is if the nice & highly fleeced rise up,

Hide their wallets and simply start calling us ‘assholes’ again and demand better behavior from us.

Personally – I’m all for it!

Yes I was a former drugged-up member of the Asshole-Medico-Pact of ’68,

But I stopped being a signatory to the pact in Twenty-Thirteen at age thirty-five.

So I now have anti-transmogrified back to being ‘good’ again.

So let’s all now agree to call a spade a spade and lets start calling assholes assholes again.

Of course in this piece, I admit that I have highly exaggerated for effect –

But that’s ok, after all my ‘artistic license’ only expired a few days ago –

And only a ‘total asshole’ would pull me up for still using it ‘on the roads’ –

AKA this quasi-drunk-misshapen-literature-town that I sometimes call my own mind,

That you have all had the misfortune of sitting through.

I can only hope the the myriad of legalized black-market pharmaceuticals you are all on,

Have turned it from a boredom-filled hell-scape to an quasi-interesting fun-trip.

By & the way when I said I’d rather be an ‘asshole’ than have ADHD that was a boldface lie.

As if!

“When two avoidants did collide all those years ago” (Prose)

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Two people in vintage attire reading newspapers in a busy café.

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

Literary Proviso: Re the subject of ‘avoidantism’ – I’m pretty sure I’m not pathologizing ‘being a dickhead’ (But you never know do you? Perhaps the entire DSM V could simply be whittled down to an A4 page entitled ‘The Seven Types of dick’eads’).

So what happens when two avoidants collide?
I think this happened to me in a gnarly unforgiving mega-city long ago.
She was a ‘dismissive avoidant’.
I was an ‘anxious avoidant’.
Of course I am not qualified to diagnose –
But ain’t pop psychology fun? – the joy to diagnose everyone with at least something.
And that something is only only ever half real – at best.
BUT some diagnosis are more real/useful than others.
And I think the ‘avoidant’ attachment style theories are quite good.
But again – what do I know?

This is the beauty of writing – it’s your universe up until the ‘blackshirts’ arrive.
Now going back to us ‘two avoidants’.
At the time (in the gnarly mega-city) I also hated my job.
Yeah sure for that you can call me a copy cat – I agree entirely.
In big gnarly cities the jobs are ‘created to be hated’.
That is their raison-de-tre.
And you can quote me on that

I think she did (hate her job) too, but not nearly as much as I did.
But at least she made – as they say -‘some decent coin’.
I had foolishly and blindly made myself an immigrant slave.
Well I guess I was an immigrant coming from New Zealand to Melbourne.
Pseudo-immigrant maybe, but still an immigrant non the less.
Maybe I had a better ‘class of slavery’ over there than in NZ – maybe.

Now that I am older – I realize it’s (i.e’ your life) is all about self-confidence.
It is one of the many ‘glib but true’ things.
You life falls or rises to the level of your self-confidence.
Both of us ‘two avoidants’ had low self confidence (a neccesary condition of the disease).
Of course you can be high in confidence in some areas and low in others.
It’s all a complex thing – and we Kiwis/Aussies are also bred to have low confidence.
Glib but true thing number two: The brain is the most complex thing in the universe.

I was high in confidence in picking up bar-women for example,
But low in chasing a job or generic situation that reflected a higher-self.
Of course there’s really no way to win being an corporate employee –
They’ll fire you if your confidence isn’t fake anyway.
Confidence is allowed when you ‘own the thing’.
Confidence is for Entrepreneurs with 100% or at least 51% share loadings.
Confidence is for Artists/Muso’s/Writers with shitty day jobs @ glorious creative nights,
And there’s not much in between.

Anyway of course me being the ‘anxious avoidant’ wanted to be around her (the dismissive) more.
I guess the ‘anxious’ part overrided my ‘avoidant’ part if she was the one avoiding me first.
It’s all such a ridiculously complicated thing.
It was far too complicated for me to figure out,
Mainly because we men (us with brains) get better with age – and I wasn’t old enough.
A young man cannot really put guard rails on the powerful forces that exist in him.
It is when we age the forces ebb away a little so the train can stay on it’s rails.

But I must say in my case of the ‘two avoidants’
I will always wish that somehow I could have prevented the book-end-implosion.
But as an old man I accept that is also wishful thinking.
And I still wonder about her some decade and a half gone (well -more than that).
I wonder what ‘the ol’ dismissive’ will be saying her poems about it all – & about me.
I’m sure she agrees that we couldn’t have changed anything much at all.
And only as an (almost) old man ‘ave I came to accept that.

It was a wise decision to dismiss me after all.
If the cards fell a little more to the left –
I would have easily done the same thing to her.
And she was only following her ‘nervous systems orders’ after all.
And to be fair to myself – I was wise to be anxious about her.
I too was merely following my nervous system’s orders.
We were both relative novices riding that selfish bucking beast.

But Avoidants or not – at least we did at least ‘attended class’.
We sat next to each other in class – the naugty ones at the back.
And my now my self-imposed detention (exile?) is surely over.
I’ve written the same line a million times now:
“In time good executive function can & will tame any prior emotional dysfunction”.
And upon writing the millionth line – it came true (or did it?).

And so in summary: in relative youth two avoidants must explode,
But many years later the remnants can gravitationally collapse over a lovely cappuccino.
And I don’t care if someone complements my rose tinted glasses.
For with age you don’t care what others think.
You finally and sans apology do what’s best for you.
And now I will finally stop rambling (it’s artistically legal via Prose) of the time –
“When two avoidants did collide all those years ago”.

“Nuthouse Candidate” (Comedic Prose)

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By Anton Martin Smith Antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

When I walk around town and see the people, I like to play a simple game – I ask myself: “If it was still 1950 – who would be locked up in a nuthouse? From there on is is a fairly simple taxonomy & observation exercise:

Lady at second hand book sale slams books down on the counter like they are sledgehammers –nuthouse candidate.

Lady who when talking to young German tourists can’t get over how far from home they are – nuthouse candidate.

Alcoholic old staff lady who frantically called the cops on a handsome middle aged male customer for making over-the-top jokes with the young female staff – nuthouse candidate.

Homely middle aged lady & checkout chick saying at high ‘customer audible’ volumes to similar staff lady next to her that she “hasn’t had sex in so long that it’s almost grown over” – nuthouse candidate.

You might notice a pattern emerging from this: a lot of middle-aged females. Well this is an understandable but technically false assumption: I would have written down the ‘nuthouse candidates’ who were ‘male’, however as they are all business owners of stores that I regularly frequent (Bookstores, Takeaway Joints, Bars, Pool houses, Cafes), and I am worried they will swiftly ban me on account of if write of them, and they duly recognize themselves in the text.

This is why I will not ever mention a guy like “Joeblo” the vertically challenged snot-nosed barmen who breeds Guinea Pigs and whose nickname is “Richard Gere don’t do that”.

Moreover they also get a free pass from being ‘nuthouse candidates’ as they are economically too important, are often very stupendously witty, & I on too many occasions often agree totally with them.

The moral of the story? Don’t let a flawed research methodology get in the way of having really fun a day out around town.

And always remember to love the crazies because of the ‘it takes one to know one ‘thesis’, and also the other so-true thesis of “there’s nothing worse than being boring”.

And as a postscript – whatever you do, don’t ever listen to the thesis of “If you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all”, after all your grandmother was a statistically probably a bitch, and following that thesis would rule out the entire arts & literature game entirely – clearly this is bad-bad-bad.

“DRUWAF” (Prose)

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by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

NY TIMES HEADLINE 11/28/37

by DR-1478-28-J

“The Droid Urban Warfare Force (DRUWAF) completes 673 terminations” This happened in the last 24 hrs against the few remaining human rebel guerillas, whose command is loosely based in Times Square. X-P3O said ‘it was great result – only 37 Droids lost”

“Epiphanies” (Prose)

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by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

After a decade of ignoring the pressing issue, he winced with terror. He suddenly realized he had castigated himself to be a generic footnote in some future self-published history of a small town wealthy family who had employed many quasi-Dickensian industrial slaves like the one he had blindly allowed himself to become. As he swept up the broken beer glass he mentally harangued himself for allowing himself to slowly slide into this ridiculous situation.

He new he was better than that, and had something big to offer himself and also the world. He may still be a footnote in that future wealthy families self-published book, but he’d soon be the star of his own book too.

As he swept up the broken pieces, he had finally made a firm pact to himself to fully and finally become himself. Right now it was all just an epiphany, but in his mind he knew he’d changed forever. Now that the broken pieces of beer glass had hit the bottom of his kitchens metal dustbin, it was now time to finally get moving.

The Pro’-Li’rick ( A Prose-Limerick combo)

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by Anton Martin Smith Antonmartinwrites@gmail.com

Once there was a guy,

Who wrote a few lim’ricks,

He was a fool,

A mean old tool,

And rumour goes ‘e turns tricks.

(P.s. ‘The guy’ is not me – as if I’d write a Limerick…if a serious poet ever did that they’d suddenly drop their pen, pencil or qwerty keyboard – whichever may be the case. By the way, on an entirely different matter – has anyone seen my pen, pencil or qwerty keyboard? I’m sure I had it a second ago…)

“Yes! We Have No Bananas” ( A thought/Prose)

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by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com

The only truly good thing about ‘big time sports’ is the crowd hubbub – for crowd hubbub is a human kind of birdsong.

It is beautiful in its brutality.

The athleticism of the athletes is of second order rank, the contest itself an even more distant third rank.

The score of the game is totally irrelevant, but the outcome isn’t. The score is something like 34-12, but the outcome is not at all the score.

The outcome is one man turning to another & saying –

“Hey Joe what a great game!, it made me forget how me, you & all our kind are modern age forever slave-serfs”.

That casual epitet of the everyman is the true outcome of a ‘big time’ sports event.

Centrally planned contrived escapism for the slave serf so to delay a People’s Revolution.

And it’s worked a treat since the coliseum days, which incidentally never actually ended.

Yes, “The Truth About Us” is depressing, but from Truth does enlightenment flow.

All good philosophers intuitively know this.

All bad politician-authoritarians do as well.

And that we know the truth – our pathway to enlightenment – that ain’t a bad thing at all, at all.

The ‘ignorance is bliss thesis’ is just slave-master propaganda.

So let us enjoy the sports match, but also kick the politician-authoritarian up the arse now & then.

Becasue our serf-slavery won’t end anytime soon,

That is self evident to anyone who reads History.

The point of our enlightenment is this:

Our slave-serf conditions have deteriorated far to much lately & we deserve better.

Let us aim to kick politician-authoritarian arse regularly & non violently.

Like John Lennon said “We’ll do it with humour”.

For he’s right – humour is the only thing the Slave Master is really afraid of.

In Closing:

So Bra –

lets Ha Ha Ha…

to the La-de-dah.…

to get thrown a better…

Ba-na-na

“Blocked Out & Stuck In” (A Short Story).

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by Martin Anton Smith

Joe thought of a few lines of prose to describe how he felt – he wrote the following:

“A one-inch-tall man who lives inside a ten-inch-tall glass jar, shouldn’t be surprised when no matter how fast he moves or jumps – that he remains inside the glass jar. But even worse off, are the many many people next to him, that all insist the glass isn’t even there.”

He was happy with that description. He often wrote a few words down as an escape from his far-too- ordinary life.

He was now in early middle aged, & he had had it up to the neck with everything – a large subset of that being the townsfolk.

Specifically, he was sick of their culture of avoidance. But really it was more passively violent than that -it was more like a pandemic of avoidance.

In this two-bit-town – Just like the Roman empire times – these plagues came in waves or differing intensities.

There was the plague of dilapidated housing. The plague of unemployment. There was the plague of depression. There was the plague of self-harm. There was the plague of alcoholism. There were many other subsidiary plagues to all the above.

These plagues were never routed out they were only papered over, leading to an environment where the townsfolk had to emotionally & financially fend for themselves.

Joe was more than sick of all this general ‘sweeping under the carpet’ – he was especially annoyed at the biggest singular problem – which was an idea, an idea that was replicated to all others in town – a mind virus if you will.

This mind virus Joe was always thinking of, was about the fact they all lived behind a giant dome of inpenitrable glass. It was like a giant upturned glass tumbler, plopped over the small town. No one could get in or out – they were trapped. And everyone in the town avoided questioning anything about it – this is becasue to them it didn’t exist.

This created a permanent mental blindness. Of this matter the townsfolk had blocked it out entirely. The realisation of this real-life domed prison wasn’t even a concept that existed their conscious minds.

You see – the brain is a funny thing – anything that’s really really bad the brain will decide to hide from you. It will hide the badness deeply in the subconsciousness & will even create hallucinations to stop any contradictions appearing in your conscious thoughts. These hallucinations weave a more psychologically palatable fairy tale.

But for some unknown reason Joe wasn’t at that same ‘advanced mental trickery’ stage that all the townsfolk suffered from – he could still actually see the glass, the domed prison that was all their lives.

After stewing away thinking about all this, he put down his pen & paper & told himself tomorrow morning he would march to the glass boundary & make a big scene – big enough to attract a lot of attention. He’d attract a swarm of interested townsfolk. He’d act to try to snap the townsfolk out of their collective mind virus.

He didn’t sleep soundly that night – he tossed turned & even had to get up to drink a few beers. While he was up, he fought with his own mind – one moment he was steadfast – the next a quitter. After three beers he was finally groggy enough to fall asleep on his couch.

He awoke fully clothed & with an empty half-crushed beer can still in his hand. He went to the empty cupboards & found some half mouldy bread slices – he stuffed one in his mouth. Feeling parched, he went to the sink. He ran the water & drank straight from the tap. He did that all the time.

He saw a priorly forgotten old & shrivelled apple on the outskirts of the kitchen bench – he gulped that down whole, including the stalk. He put the heavily father-time marked metal kettle on the stove – it soon whistled its off-key half broken tune.

He poured himself a black instant coffee & sipped away at it while staring out his kitchen window. The thoughts began.

“What the hell am I doing with my life? How did I get into this crappy situation?”

“Why can’t I just be a zombie just like everyone else?”

“Why can’t I just pretend to be happy just like everyone else?”

“What the hell happened to the last twenty-five years?”

“Things were going great till I was twenty-five – then the world attacked with its full fury”

“Was it just that personal failings slowly accumulated as I aged? – or was I just blind & insulated to the worlds innate we-will-get-you-in-the-end-prison-ness?”

Joe had been asking himself the exact same questions at the same time, while having black coffee & staring out the window every morning for the last fifteen years. He finished the last half of his coffee with a final slug.

But the last thought this time was more original – he knew much of his & the other townsfolk’s reality of being stuck in a rut was due to the osmosis of living in this town. he resolved to change things, He’d ‘shake up the box’ with the hope taht a new pattern would emerge. He would do it, he would be strong & try to make something happen to pry the towns long super-glued eyes open.

He marched out of the door, leaving it open as he left…his stride was that of a new first day military recruit – his clothes were of course displaying the wear & tear of his being a long term workman.

He walked for the full fifteen minutes to a section of the towns glass boundary. Sweat was running off his brow & the other bodily sweat was making his top visibly wet.

The townsfolk had noticed his stridency & focus and a small mob was now trailing behind him – following him in avid interest but being sure to be a few safe feet behind. The all muttered amoung themselves their separate but also related theories.

“He’s been drinking again while on his anti-depressants”.

“Nah…He’s broken up with his on-again-off-again mrs Joanie Phelps again”.

“You fools – He’s finally decided he can’t handle that shitty ditch digging job of his”.

“You know it could be all of the above you know”, said the town know-it-all.

Joe reached the destination put his hands up on the dome forward & part outstretched – like someone would on a large lodge window that was overseeing a fantastic wooded view. He half turned his head & shouted at the crowd mobbed together behind him.

They crowd of townsfolk stood like small children who were awaiting the instructions from a bad -tempered & frazzled school teacher.

Joe spoke up, his voice part quivering yet firm & with a certain robustness.

“Hey you idiots can’t you see the glass imprisoning us – the glass that’s been here forever?”

This verbal attack put more than a few of the mobs backs up.

“That’s just a gravitational effect you fool – there’s nothing the matter”.

Said one of the much older males.

The others all chimed in in agreement with jeers aplenty – someone even threw a shoe that missed the mark then bounced off the dome glass wall & hit the turf.

But Joe – the man who could now see it all in perfect clarity, decided to continue to prove his point – he wouldn’t back down despite the crowds now increasing excitement, animation & abuse.

The crowd didn’t affect sway his emotions one iota – he had always been an outsider, so what difference did it matter now? He had taken plenty of abuse & even the odd punch in the back of the head.

He doubled down on his message – this time using a physical persuasion technique. He started smashing his head rhythmically against the glass.

BANG…..BANG…..BANG…………….BANG…..BANG…..BANG………….BANG…..BANG…..BANG

So much was his vigour that blood started to flow down the glass. Of course, he & everyone else knew the six-inch tempered glass dome was never going to break. The bloody trickles actually made the crowds rising anger dissipate away – they now saw him as a madman & their anger morphed into fearfulness.

They again whispered & muttered amoung themselves.

“My word, that’s some might gravity contortions we’re having today”,

Said one lady, those in the crowd arounf her simply nodded in serious agreement.

Again the crowd chimed in their reality avoidant themed theories.

“Yeees yes, isn’t it terrible what weather conditions & condensed gravity can do when combined”.

“This effect is well documented in the library – the same thing happend back last century in ’29 & ’87”

One oddball said something that even sent a light chuckle aroung the group.

“I knew we would see some bad gravity field effects this year, I just knew it when my onions came up so late – not to mention me pumpkins were way way small!”

Joe heard all their typical & predictable explaining away of the smack-you-in-your-face-crap-reality before them. This time Joe felt the anger bubble inside as more gashes & blood spurts happened.

“Can’t you see that my fucking heads bleeding because it’s hitting this all-encompassing-monolithic-full-surround glass wall!!??….”

He continued.

“You guys are fucking addicted to your own fucking prisons!”

“So much so you deny it’s patently obvious reality!!!”

“Your tiny brains have tuned it out for decade upon decade!!!”

“This is not a fucking localised weather ot gravity effect!!!

“Can’t you see I’m bleeding because of these domed prison walls…”

“How can we ever escape this drudgery if we never admit to our shackles?”

He said in staccato fashion:

“We Are Trapped Behind A Massive Fucking Glass Jar That We Can’t Escape From,

It Traps Us In A Fifteen Minute Walking Radius, So We Have No Fucking Resources,

We Live Shit Lives As A Consequence And You All Have Brains That Have Buried This Fact,

Because If Your Brains Didn’t Do It You Might End It All…I’m Sick Of This!! Can’t You All See We Need to Escape!!!??

Every Last One Of Us….Why Are Will Agreeing To a Shit Life In A Shit Prison Not Of Our Design!!!???”

They all heard his words clearly – but Joe’s theatrics had garnered little support.

Joe’s idea of igniting a successful rebellion was over before it began.

He would be no latter-day Che Guevara.

The townsfolk having now seen more than enough of Joe’s breakdown, all made their particular excuses to leave.

“Uh…Look Joe I’ve gotta go & fix that fence I backed into the other day…good luck”.

“Sorry Joe – I gotta organise a babysitter for tonight, see ya later”.

“Look man, I have to go cook dinner my in laws are coming over, I’m sure you’ll be ok”.

“Joe – I gotta run, that old retro 1980’s show ‘unsolved mysteries is on the tablet, take care”.

“Joe my old hydro-car isn’t electrolyzing the water properly see ya later when you’re better”.

Joe heard all the excuses one by one & watched them all disappear off into the distance in single file.

They walked away just like normal – in stiffened fashion, all avoiding each other’s gazes, heads down & shoulders slumped. But inside themselves, Joe had actually had some effect on them. They were all worried one of them would crack & might take Joe’s uprising for what it actually was – the sudden appearance of the once well-hidden truth.

Each of them had moments where they saw this epiphany ever so briefly, but their well-controlled brains were working well against them.

As soon as the kernel of truth of the reality of their mass prison lives became apparent, it was again quickly shoved back into the realms of their unconsciousness’s. None of them could yet handle properly facing the reality that Joe was talking about.

The Truth was simply too damaging to address on a cellular level. They were now all out of sight, having gone back to their normal, simple, repressed lives.

Now he was fully alone, Joe slumped his head down along the glass in defeat. His bloody head making the characteristic ‘squeaky glass’ sound as he moved it around.

Having lost an the non-serious but still substantial amount of blood, he now felt woozy. Joe started to slump down the glass, hit the ground & then nodded off.

Seemingly days later he woke up. He looked at the date on his holo-watch – the green numbers floating above his wrist confirmed 48 hours had elapsed.

Now Joe then noticed he was now somehow on the other side of the glass. His circumstance reminded him of something he had read about in a physics book – the quantum tunneling effect. This is where a particle suddenly finds itself on the other side of a quantum well – even though it doesn’t theoretically have the energy to traverse it.

He looked at all the people on the other side going about their business, he saw the stooped shoulders, the lined faces, he saw the permanent downward trending mouths, he saw the clothes that were threadbare & stained, he saw the depressed gaits – the walking that almost screamed “get me outa here”.

he noticed that one man was seemingly moving a big mound of dirt with a digger to one end of a paddock, then he would move it back to the original spot, over & over again.

He got all his courage together & turned & faced the other side – the outside-the-dome side – he’d finally see & maybe feel what was out there.

He saw blackness, total blackness. It was as if this part of reality was “as yet unprogrammed”.

He took a step – suddenly a grey garden-like stepping stone emerged. He even felt a slight breeze on his face. He took another step & more stones appeaed & some light crept into view – some new reality was slowly generating itself as he moved ever more forward.

Just as he was feeling like he was about to walk to freedom…Joe started to have typical ‘small town’ doubts.

“What if in this new place I end up starving! – I mean my life back there is bad but I can at least eat!”

“Man O Man!….What if I’m going towards Hell! – maybe my town back behind the glass is actually a paradise – maybe paradise is still kinda unavoidably shitty!”

“Maybe I’m the idiot & the townsfolk are right – maybe they are just rightly avoiding Hell in the most simple & direct way – via positively functional delusions!”

Then he thought of the other possibility.

“Maybe I’m on the pathway to Heaven – maybe I’ll be going to the real paradise – maybe back there is the real Hell & now I’m simply escaping to where I was always supposed to be“.

He also had a whole bunch of somewhat similar but much less likely thoughts interrogating him. Joe now tried to think straight. He knew he had to make a tough decision – a gamble if you will. Should he go forward to a possible hell or heaven or conversely go back to a possible heaven or hell?

This mightily big decision was all too much for him – like the pro sportsman who is picked far too early to national prominence – he panicked lost all of his composure.

As he crawled backwards, back toward home, all the prior things he saw disappeared – they were replaced with total darkness & he could not feel any gravity. In fact, it felt like he was in space, he was like a Space Man who had become untethered from his craft. He was moving his arms & legs but there only blackness.

He kept his crawling going, hoping that something would change – time seemed to disappear.

“I guess this is what eternity feels like” he thought.

Joe was now feeling very stupid fearful & totally helpless. The only thing was to keep up his crawling motions & somehow hope he’d somehow pop back home like one of those quantum tunneling electron he read about recently.

he couldn’t stop the negative speak.

“I’m a coward..I’m such a coward…I’m a faithless coward & I can’t change it for nothing or for no one”

“I thought I was a big shot – I thought I was like General Patton & would save the day for my towns troops – I thought I had courage, so much for that – bang goes that theory!”

Then out of nowhere he heard a clunk – he was back inside the domed glass hitting his bloody head.

He had been somehow squeezed back inside the glass jar prison that was his usual life, back to the moment before he blacked out.

“Thank god I’m back” he thought to himself.

He stopped smacking his head against the glass & mentally dusted himself off. He turned around & looked up at the view in front of his bleary sore eyes. Everything about the town & townsfolk going about their days looked totally totally bog standard normal.

Joe convinced himself to steadfastly to give up his immature wild thought of a better life outside the town. He’d go about his business, as if none of this had happened. He’d think of it all as ‘a psychotic break’ – he now wasn’t so sure that it wasn’t. Maybe he’d simply ‘lost his mind’ for the last forty-eight hours.

He resolved to act just as everyone else in the town was acting & had always acted. After all – everything happens for a reason, he told himself.

It turned a few locals had seen him pop back into the town side of the glass dome. Not that it mattered. Not one of them was stupid enough raise the matter of what had happened to Joe or why – their brains simply didn’t allow it – it was an automatic process of survival.

Joe had thought he was smarter than the locals – but he now new differently – he felt like a hack, a fraud.

Yes, Joe knew the truth of his & everyone else’s prison cell, but even when he was about to be totally free of it – he lacked the courage to truly embrace the moment & soldier on.

He would forever know that he had literally come ‘crawling back’ to this two-bit economically depressed town. For that he felt like a coward for the rest of his life & as the years passed by, that feeling only intensified. On top of that was the burden of ‘not knowing’.

Joe had the pitt of his stomach pain of forever not knowing what would have happened if he’d had more courage to continue into the unknown outside the domed glass town prison walls.

One thought would now be his endless companion.

“Was I such an idiot that I rejected the chance for eternal happiness, beauty & endless love?”

One day years later as he was digging a ditch under the scorching sun, he pulled his gnarled overworked body to the side of the ditch & gazed upwards through his sweat filled eyes.

He saw a commotion outside near the town boundary – a mob of townsfolk was watching someone do something.

Some guy was bashing his head seemingly against nothing.

He thought to himself.

“Man looks like there is another localised gravitational contortion field a-brewing – we had that back in ’29 & ’87. I’m sure I read about it in the library way back when”.

Joe then ignored it & continued digging.

THE END

Dear NZ & Australia: Lets Ditch Tall Poppy Syndrome (An Open Letter)

Posted in America, Australia, Australian Issues, Melbourne, New Zealand, New Zealand Issues, Open Letter, Tall Poppy Syndrome, well beingTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

Dear NZ & Australia.

I would like to talk of that awkward subject, that horrible addiction we have, those unhealthily too comfortable mind-shackles we choose to wear:

Tall Poppy Syndrome.

The Problem with NZ & also Australia is that too people are Prisoners of their own Egos,

& they mostly choose to stay with that familiarly uncomfortable, Viper-like, very limiting cocoon.

They then choose to teach their kids how to do this to secure the next generation of misery.

And so on & so forth seemingly until the end of time.

They make this ‘deal with the devil’ to stay this way until the daisies are very much pushed skywards.

That system of blundering dunderheadedness is the basic ingredients of the famed ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’.

I dream that one day this cycle will be broken, & NZ & Australia can embrace its own, rather bully them.

They are usually Bullied into jumping ship, suicide or the more common garden variety solution:

To take an oath of wearing a Calvinist spirit, only hold materialistic & utilitarian views.

In short, they agree to wear that well-worn mask of intellectual Lilliputianism.

Say what you like of America – for all their misgivings, they at least learnt to cut those juvenile shackles off.

NZ & Oz Love To Cut Tall Poppies

For that’s what Tall Poppy syndrome really is – ‘Shackles that Retard the Mind’.

If America did it – then so can we in NZ & Australia, & it can’t come soon enough.

I only hope that unlike America we can achieve Freedom from our shackles Peacefully –

But perhaps to kill off Tall Poppy syndrome you really do need violent revolution & civil wars.

I am a cynic, but I’m not that cynical – We can simply choose to remove our mind-shackles.

We can follow this simple process:

When the natural feeling comes over us to cut the heads off a loud annoying ‘Tall Poppy’,

We must reach into our pocket & read a laminated note that reads:

Don’t Do It.

Do this enough for ourselves & our kids & the “Don’t Do It” note becomes freely available in our heads.

Then The War is Won, & the ‘Mind Shackles’ will be a distant memory of an archaic brutal past.

Then we will have a chance to truly self-actualise.

After all – Is it really much fun being miserable? To go along with a un-reflexive crowd, baying the words ‘WHAT DO WE WANT – MORE MEDIOCRITY’? WHEN DO WE WANT IT – NOW & FOREVER’.

Nor is it joyous to carry placards through the land that say ‘STAY WITHIN YOUR LANE’?

I say to you Ladies & Gentlemen of NZ & Australia

NO IT IS NOT!.

Yours Sincerely Martin Anton Smith (a 44-year-old New Zealander and Ex Melbourne man still trying to cut his shackles – but at least I know they are there and the metal is weakening)