Real Man

Sitting on the edge of the sea ice, that place where land, and sea and sky meet in some sort of cosmic union, would seem the kind of place where deep contemplation would be appropriate.  I suppose usually it is, but then your mind can get filled with dryer lint just as easily.  The problem is, like trying to figure where the land ends or the sky begins, you can’t tell what’s the good stuff and what’s drivel without orientation.

I suppose the same problem happens in dreams too.  You wake with some earth trembling conception but its too dark or the floor is to cold to get up and write it down.  Or if you really have the fortitude to get up, like you might if you really felt so cold and your mustache was frozen to your lower lip that you had to close the window or die of hypothermia ‘cause it was still autumn and you hadn’t unboxed the down comforter yet, or at least that’s your excuse, and you scribble down the great notion in three a.m. cryptic cipher.  But arise the light of day and that proverbial light seems to have washed this wonder of the imagination into some sort of indiscernible melted marshmallow.

That’s the problem with thinking.

So anyway, at this point, the one that is surreal, whether maybe on sea ice or maybe on land or maybe you are floating on a hard white sky or maybe just dreaming you are awake you might think about being an American, or the IRS, or maybe God, or Gay Marriage.  There are no Fish and Wild Thought regulations.  It is open season on everything you might wish to hunt down and no moral dilemma on torturing them ‘till they scream and bleed from your twisting their little shy bodies in contortions that make you shiver from anticipation.  Part of the test is to see how long they live under your evil magnifying glass.  To see how long it takes ‘till they burst in flames.

Following this allusion, a real man, takes the charred remains and binds them in paper, mounts the trophy for the derision of his peers.  They gleefully pick and prod effecting not the already diminished prize but the once thought immutable soul of the seeker who dared them to laugh.