"whether or not pigs fly, we're all in deep shit now!"

i don't know. i don't understand. where am i supposed to be in relation to everything else, or am i supposed to be related to anything at all? do things matter? and would it matter if they did? and why would i honestly worry myself over the question of whether anything matters, when it doesn't really matter to me? try as i may, i still can't bring myself to be an optimist in a land of rising pessimism, but i might be able to call myself a realist in a sea of illusionists. they don't care where they are, and i don't know where it is that i am at. i guess they just don't make them like they used to, and they used to not make them at all. in fact, they didn't know what they were in the first place, let alone make them that way. and i start to wonder whether reminiscing is healthy, and i remind myself that it doesn't have the RDA of fiber and all of that other doctor-recommended-nutrition-type-stuff. but it doesn't really matter. and i guess that is what my motto is starting to become, because it really doesn't matter -- it is all just antimatter. and whether or not its auntie's matter or my uncle's, it still won't effect me one way or another, unless that other way is something i don't know about, with one of those doohickey-thing-a-mijigs that always seem to turn up in order to prove somebody wrong. this is all the fault of some practical joker named Murphy who left his entire fortune, which he made in shady dealings, to a group of practical jokers whose mission it is to make life hell for the rest of us. make it worse then hell. make it like someplace even the devil wouldn't be caught dead in. maybe a hell wall-papered in awful calico or offending plaid, with a bunch of doilies, and a goldfish named Luke who is trying to make it as a stand-up comedian. and it is not that hard to believe that a fish could become a star of the improv, it's not like pigs fly -- they can't afford the cost of first class, and they'd never be caught dead in coach. so, by the time the cows come home and you've counted all your sheep, you'll realize that this world is half-hatched, half-cocked, and half-baked - all ways to say "fucked-up" without being rude and vulgar and causing all those conservatives to get worked up. and while i might not be the eternal optimist, i'm not the momentary pessimist. i am credible: i do have convictions -- grand-theft auto, extortion, larceny, reckless discharge of oil -- and i stand by them, at least until the cops arrive, and then i'm out of there - see ya!!!

Matthew William Elsbernd (c)1992

"evolution the old-fashioned way"

with what we know now, would we? and what would it be that we could know that would make us do what we didn't do before? and, can you eat a bowl of cereal without milk? -- i'm constantly bombarded by questions: questioning this, questioning that, questioning whether or not that that was really a question, or just a cleverly-disguised statement. and, by the way, how do you deal with those pesky rhetorical questions? are we supposed to just sit back and let them answer themselves? and what if they don't answer, and instead just ask again? or, in plainer english, "how deep in the cow-shit do we have to be before it ruins our jeans.? if you ask me -- and i know that you won't -- i'd say we should abolish all questions that are without answers, as well as all answers that are without questions. we already have enough information to learn, we don't need to overdose on trivia. since the world is not populated by Alex Trebek, we are all at a disadvantage, in that we have to form our answers in the actual form of answers - not questions. the society in which you answer in the form of a question, is the society in which nothing gets done unless you never do it. "just don't do it!" - and watch it all be done. but don't be a smart Alek with me. there is a lot of useless trivia out there which comes in really handy. of course it is such obscure stuff that we'll never know about it, but somebody has to - or it can't really exist. because we all know, that if a tree were to fall in an empty forest, there wouldn't be any firewood. besides, charcoal is the choice of the truly evolved man -- the truly evolved woman doesn't barbecue, she just laughs at the barbecuing man who thinks he's evolved, and orders out for pizza. and, whatever happened to the dinosaurs? did they put up their "out to lunch" signs and forget to come back? and why blame them. if they were still around, they'd only be blamed for the greenhouse effect and that hole in the ozone layer. so how do we evolve? and how do we know it when we have? is there a test we have to pass in order to get our evolutionary license? and, is evolution really one of our fundamental human rights? should it be protected under the constitution? should there be lobbyists in congress whose job it is to see to it that the common man retains his right to evolve into anything he/she wants? will it become a class issue? will the rich take away the evolution of the poor, or vice versa? and what would Darwin have had to say about this? would he have exercised his right to evolve into something else? would he have chosen to evolve into a spineless-knewt or a freckled-toad? and what would you choose to be the culmination of your personal evolution? and, ultimately, in the age of constant re-evaluation and second-guessing, is it moral to evolve? if we value the ultimate dignity of each human life, would we let people waste that right in order to evolve into a totally useless twenty-toed, three-eyed, green-tongued cross between a zebra and a humpback whale, or would we force them to stay in their evolutionary impoverishment? is there any justice for the evolved?

Matthew William Elsbernd (c)1992

"you can't really write without fear"

so, where am i going with all of these words? i need a compass so that i won't get lost in a stream of consciousness. it is too easy to lose yourself, yet not easy enough to lose those people that seem to follow you no matter where you go. some people just can't take a hint. anyway, people who write have too many fears to deal with when writing. they have to deal with the fear of getting started which is bad enough by itself. "why am i trying to write?" "who the hell is going to read this anyway?" "i'm just wasting my time!" to add to that fear, writers have the fear that they won't be able to finish what they've started. nothing is worse than a half-finished piece. half of your dreams are down in print, yet the other half is still fluttering around up in the clouds. once the author has finished writing, another fear develops "did i make it work?" "is this an effective and entertaining piece?" this is the point where the author gets to second-guess everything that has been written up to that point. every word, every mark of punctuation comes under scrutiny. the miracle of the work is lost to horror of the words. it is picked to the bones, and then fattened up again -- each time, never satisfying. but once this fear is overcome or ignored, another fear takes over: the fear that the person reading will become lost. for it is one thing for people not to appreciate or enjoy your piece because of your style or subject, but to lose an audience because of confusion, is an oppressive fear. it is the fear of losing your dream to hopelessly clouded eyes. to place your vision, with its hopes and dreams, in the dirty little hands of the reader. there is probably no getting over this last fear, because for as long as copies of the work are in existence, someone may see it, someone may read it, and someone may get lost on the way to your meaning. And it is an awfully lonely feeling sitting on the summit -- playing the part of the wise old author -- the only person who understands the words, the only person who comprehends the message, the only person who feels and cherishes the dreams. but there is no turning back -- there is only going forward in the hopes that with future works, the fears will be easier to bear.

Matthew William Elsbernd (c)1992

"it doesn't have to be love, it could just be some old cheese."

this one's for love. i'd swear that it's just another four-letter word. one of those obscene words that require parental discretion. but love is more than a word, yet, it may need some discretion. love is probably unique in that it is both repeatedly mis-diagnosed and constantly overlooked. it covers both ends of the spectrum. there is really no winning. it requires luck or patience -- probably extreme patience. some people find it dropped in their laps, and others never find it. why it is one way or the other is left up to fate, unless the person is the type who tries again and again till they get it right. but we must understand that if you do anything enough times, it will eventually work. but love is funny in that it has a high emotional toll, win or lose. even to win drains away the emotional reserves. it can become deadening to actually "win" love. sometimes it doesn't even pay to find love. it can take so much in return, that love may not be worthwhile. but it is a gamble. and we are all gambling addicts. a few-hundred returns of sadness for that one score of happiness. some are naturally better than others at it, since some are born with natural poker faces. but for those of us who aren't, what makes it worth while? what makes one person want to love and be loved by others? isn't there something better that we could all be doing? if you stop to think about the last couple of days in your life, how many hours have you spent in the actual presence of love? how long were you loved, and how long did you love? now, i am not talking about a universal "loving" feeling for everything, anything, or even special people -- i'm talking about real love: the stuff that movies and t.v. sitcoms are made of. does that total time of "love" add up to a majority of your time in those past couple of days? are we actually loved or are in the act of loving for the majority of our time? of our life? if we are, how did we get so lucky? and if we aren't, which i suspect, then why do we seek it so much? why do we risk so much in our quest for it? do we assume that love has the power to overwhelm any loss or hurt acquired in that quest? and if that is true, what happened to the tooth fairy? i remember getting more love out of the tooth fairy and her money than i get from the notion of "the quest for that eezy-queezy-feeling": that funny-feeling deep inside, that is either telling you how happy you are, or how close to launching your lunch you are. love can be like a moldy piece of bread and food poisoning, or it can be the pinnacle of life. and most people know that it is a lot easier to grow fungus on your leftovers than it is to find the mountain of life's elusive peak. and remember, while it takes practice, experience, and the ability to accept the pain of failure to scale that peak, almost everyone owns a refrigerator.

Matthew William Elsbernd (c)1992

"be careful about what you are calling strange"

well, it may seem strange, or it may not. that all depends on you, and how you deal with it. but whether or not it seems strange to you, it is. it is strange. strange. stranger than the status quo. stranger than yesterday's fiction. but strangeness is a relative idea. it depends on how strange today was and how strange you think tomorrow might become. it depends on your expectations. your mind might even be stranger than your reality, in which case, everything will seem dull and boring. but for those of us who are either tame in our expectations or else completely bizarre in what we imagine will become, strangeness takes on different, personal meanings. strange for me is much different than strange for anyone else. no one would enjoy being submersed in my "strangeness" just as i would feel choked in someone else's. the strangeness that accompanies our lives is what makes it our life. we become one with our strangeness because that strangeness is our reality: it is not the foreign-entity that it would be to someone else. our strangeness is our own. the whole concept of strangeness rests on the idea that one can step back from their life and see that it is strange: that the life which we are so accustomed to living, is actually worlds apart from that of anyone else. we must be able to appreciate the fact that we are all individuals, that we are all worlds apart in lives we would call "strange". and this is all done while keeping in mind that our lives are not really strange, just different. and that they are not really different, just our own. our own lives are something we have learned to take for granted. we have become accustomed to our senses and to our perceptions of the world, and have forgotten that there are other people and other lives. meeting people and discovering their strangeness allows us to not only learn about their lives, but also to learn about our own. we cannot really know our reality without taking a voyage into "strange" new lands, meeting "strange" new people, and encountering "strange" new ideas. our world slowly crumbles when we lose the strength that comes with freshness: the freshness of ideas and of experiences. not everything which we encounter must be strange, but if we avoid the "strange", we end up avoiding that special quality that makes us all different, yet all the same.

Matthew William Elsbernd (c)1992

"you must have missed the beginning."

this isn't a beginning, it is half-way. halfway through a mind that is clogged with too many beginnings and plenty of severe and traumatic endings. who needs beginnings when you can just get right to the middle: the stuffing of life. there is too little novelty in beginnings and their subsequent endings. all of the beginnings and the endings that are possible, have already been used and reused. but the middles -- the stuff that happens all the rest of the time -- you can never run out of them. without concern for opening remarks or come-ons, you can create an entire symphony of action, wonder, and excitement. without regards for how it will end, you can invent the gala and have it spiral out of control: with your mind one step ahead of insanity and your heart on the brink of exhaustion. the meat of things -- their internals -- will just drip from your fingers: more than abundant and extremely hardy. the middle does not need fertilizer or even water in order to sprout and grow into a masterpiece, it just needs a chance. place the seed, then sit back and watch it grow out of control. once the middle falls into place, hack off a beginning: just find the appropriate piece of the middle, and make it the head. for the ending, improvise. cap the mighty beast. put a lid on your wild creation. follow the flow of the middle until it starts to falter, then end it. try endings that are ordinarily beginnings. try endings that don't quite end it. leave the taste of anticipation, do not satiate the appetite. if you leave them to drool, wanting more, than they will return for your next middle with its begining and ending afterthoughts.

Matthew William Elsbernd (c)1992

"what would i die for?"

what would I die for? are there some things which would drive me to self-sacrifice? are there people to whom i would offer up my life for ? are there causes for which I would be a martyr? why would I or anyone die for anything or any reason? what about the dignity of our own lives ? are the lives of another worth more than ours? do we feel that our 'heroic' efforts will be immortalized and that we will be remembered forever? why should i die to further a cause? will that struggle be fufilled by my self-sacrifice? why would i even bother contemplating laying down my life? if anyone is to be a martyr, won't they be driven by an inspiration of the moment? i can look out across the world of worthy people and admirable causes, but how do i decide which is worthy or admirable enough? by choosing one over another, won't i be devalueing that other person or cause? and might that exclusion hinder or wipe clear any good that might come from my death? why profess an oath of sacrificing your life when later, when that moment comes, you may not feel the same, or enough so that you can make that final statement? what good is a death in a struggle to prevent deaths? what good is a sacrifice when you are fighting for freedom from oppression? i could admit that i might die for a cause or a person, or a group of people, but would i ? when the time came to lay my life out on that sacrificial altar, would my convictions that i hold now hold any influence over me? can i, or anyone, be driven to a self-sacrifice by the feelings that we felt once before? won't it all come down to that final conflict between those convictions we have carried with us and the spur of the moment mist of emotions that will govern whether i give my life or hold it for myself?

Matthew William Elsbernd (c)1992