by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com
He was the King Of “Mediocre Environments”.
At School he excelled intellectually so he was hated –
By the ones who gossiped with rapier tongues,
By the ones who kicked pigskins around a field.
Then he got an office job & was good at his job there too.
Again they hated him for that.
He was punished by being given two jobs work.
Then he had to do the brain work of his manager –
All without extra pay.
Of course he had his unhealthy distractions –
But they are “too stock” to mention.
Yes you could say he was “The King Of Mediocre Environments”.
He’s spent his whole life up until then in them.
Of course he was quite stoic – he created a rolling ‘private universe’ of hobbies.
This helped him literally survive while swimming amongst the mediocrity-swamps.
This allowed him to keep sitting next to those that hated him so.
At thirty-five he couldn’t take it no more.
Or should I say his mind couldn’t take it no more.
So he quit the “official mediocre workplaces” –
The places where everyone works in big cities.
They are too heartbreakingly dull to even describe.
He retired to a form of ‘unofficial mediocrity’.
To places where he could indulge his ‘private universes’ more.
Perhaps ‘retire’ is the wrong word.
It was more that he felt he had three choices:
Stay & become a 100% Calcified Urban Zombie, Stay & ‘Die Suddenly’, Leave & ‘Avoid Death’.
So he chose the latter option – a kind of ‘hollow victory’ you might say.
Sadly there was an option that did not appear & he now could not take:
“Thrive by backing your intelligence & skills wisely – go it alone”.
You see he had swam around as a “King of Mediocrity” too long.
That swamp had by now ontologically pruned off all branches of ‘tree freedom’.
All that was left was to enter this slow life kind of “alternate-life state”.
Sadly – like practically all the others like him – he had left his run too late.
“The Swamp” very much has its own distinct immovable ‘sociological event horizon’.
So anyway back to our man – recall he chose to ‘live imperfectly’ and not stay to be a zombie or die.
It was like a half-pie-stolen Thoreau-like “Walden, Life In The Woods” situation.
The details of which are again too stock & dull to delineate.
You see for all his talent –
He underestimated the long-term effects of swimming among the choking weeds of mediocrity.
Living amongst those that casually hated him in those urban low level passive aggressive hellscapes.
He was not alone – not by any measure.
He was both a distinct minority but also not ‘rare’ in absolute terms.
Almost all the truly talented fall into these murderous weeds.
In fact the ones you do see are a false version of the true ones that are all sifted out.
Once in a blue moon of course someone like him slips through the veil un-reproducibly.
I have a theory about those like this that aren’t swamp-fakes but genuinely rise up like Icarus:
It is a mixture of chance, natural confidence, & pigheaded ‘will’ –
And I am tempted to say that all three are of an a-priori nature.
And I am ok with being accused of ‘thinking like Schopenhauer’.
Of course a big part of me rebels against my own theory.
No one likes to admit he does not have a-priori confidence and iron will.
No one really wants to admit to being unlucky.
For no one wants to admit to being ‘trapped forever’,
No matter how thick his life’s ‘prison walls’ may be.
For once all this is truly admitted deeply and psychicly –
Surely this is when a man ends it all – must end it all.
….BUT………………………………………………..
Sometimes despite all this – he was able to lift his spirits above the swamp’s natural abyss.
Yes – he knew there was a songbird of true redemption soaring from mediocrity’s foul swamps.
But he also knew the last man to write about seeing it is now long gone.
These were his idle thoughts on swimming in mediocre swamps & crawling out half-alive.
Perhaps what the wags that occupied the recesses of his mind said was true.
Perhaps he was really just ‘Shoppin’ with Schopenhauer’ (again).
But that thought sounded far too glib and enjoyable for his liking.
Schopenhauer wouldn’t like it like that – he thought.
Come to think of it – neither would Bukowski either – he again thought.
And while swamp-swimming at mediocrity’s inlets It’s ok to have ‘anti-heroes’ –
If not a bloody requirement!
After all me thinking like this might just be the only thing that was now keeping me alive.
Yes he did enjoy listening to his inner thoughts – he was indeed his own audience.
And somehow he stayed alive long enough to once write his unique ‘swamp filled’ story.
And not long before he drew his last breath he did conjecturise,
Was I finally able to leave ‘The Swamp’ behind?
Was my redemption always going to happen?.
Well If Earth isn’t hell then it can’t be identically equal to the ‘bad side of hades’ – can it?
While one is still drawing breath on this mortal coil –
It must be possible to crawl out of even the most both viscous and vicious swamp.
What would Schopenhauer say to that?
He might disagree.
I know that oh dear Bukowski would agree.
Buk did say that life was all about how well you wade through the effluent,
And not how well you avoid it.
They are fine words indeed, I think.
And now I can finally leave ‘the swamp’ that I thought I had already long go left.
For it is true – ‘you cannot wrap your arms around a memory’.
Anton Martin Smith Writer 