A Sunrise I Never Want To See Again - Three Years Ago Today

Three years ago today, my best friend killed himself. If I'd been a better friend, he'd still be alive. He called me two weeks before he died, wanting to talk about some problems he had. I rescheduled because something that I thought was more important came up. I never got the chance to see him again. 

Rob was my best friend. He was there every time I needed him. I failed to be there when he needed me. This is something I will carry always with me. This is shame beyond that which I thought I'd ever know. 

I used to believe myself to be a good, decent man. I still think I am in most respects. I think I do what's right. But I've forfeited my right to claim to be the man I want to be. No matter what I accomplish in the rest of my years, I have to subtract what Rob might have accomplished. Maybe I couldn't have saved him. Maybe it's hubris to think that I could have. But I'll die believing that I could have, and not a day has gone by in the past three years without feeling the weight of my failure.

I believe in personal responsibility. I believe that I am as responsible for the consequences of my failure to act as I am for the consequences of my actions. How can I not? It's in my DNA. It's who I am. I failed in my responsibilities once. I'll never have the opportunity to fix that failure. 

A part of me wishes this would get easier, but I don't deserve it. At least I'm alive to carry this burden. At least I'm alive to keep trying to be the man I want to be.

---

About a year ago, I started working on a novel, The Sound Of Winter. It is a work of fiction, but it's intensely personal; the plot and characters may be fictional, but it's very much fueled by the grief, the anger, and the regret. It will be dedicated to Rob. 

The Sound Of Winter tells the story of a group of friends that, after their friend dies, they decide to take his ashes on a cross-country trip to do all the things he had wanted to do before he died. They end up at Burning Man, where they place his ashes in the Temple as the last act of the story. The prologue is below; it is set the morning after the effigy burn, near the chronological end of the story. The story is then told as a series of flashbacks, as if the protagonist were telling the story to someone else afterwards (so if it seems as if he's addressing someone specifically, he is; the identity of the person he's telling the story to will be revealed later in the book.)

I will finish this novel before the fourth anniversary of his passing. My pen is the only way I have to honor Robert Maner.

Today, as all days, I miss you, my brother.

The Sound of Winter

By Ben Bjostad

The Sound Of Winter by Ben Bjostad is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://poeticphoenix.blogspot.com

Prologue

Mind strong, Body strong

Try to find equilibrium

Head straight, screwed on

Been screwed up for too long

I don't want to lean on the waves

I watch the storm evaporate

I think of you in starry skies

I keep you so alive

Let's walk through the fire together

Disappear in the golden sands

It's all in your face I see you break

It's like the sound of winter

The bleeding love, the silent escape

You've got to hang on to yourself

It's like the sound of winter

(Bush-The Sound of Winter)

                This is the beginning of the end of the beginning, or it’s the beginning of the beginning of the end. I don’t know for sure. The future is a darker place than it has ever been before, but I find myself mostly at peace with the shadows, or maybe it’s just that I’ve had to overcome my fear as I’ve learned to accept the two most painful words in the English language.

                If only. If only…

                Autumn has always been my favorite season. The world inexorably begins to ebb, seeking a frozen sleep before the bloom of dawn. As I face my own autumn, the metaphor no longer appeals to me the way it once did. I’m self-cognizant enough to realize that I am not now where I thought I’d be at twenty, and that I can’t imagine where I might be at forty. It doesn’t matter; in my bones, I feel the chill. Winter is coming.

                A ribbon of light creeps over the mountains, and the fire at my back seems somehow less warm, less bright than it was before. Laughter erupts as the artist and his friends chuck more wood into the furnace, and a fresh shower of sparks cascades across the air. To our left, the embers of the Man smolder and crackle; the orgiastic display of the night is slowly dying out as sunrise approaches. Winter is coming.

                A girl I’ve never met puts her hand on my shoulder and when I turn, she hands me a beer, the top already popped off. She smiles, squeezes my shoulder, and floats back to the cluster surrounding the “Timestar,” the metal sculpture currently being stoked by a merry band of pyromaniacs. No words are needed; I take a sip of the beer, light a cigarette, and watch the ribbon of light grow closer, brighter, inching its way into the present.

                Ash walks up and grabs my lighter out of my hand before I could put it in my pocket. We stand in companionable silence for a minute. “He should have been here,” I say quietly, never taking my eyes off the horizon.

                “He is,” Ash says. “He’s been with us every step of the journey.” He lights a cigarette and hands the lighter back; quietly, Bane and Sam walk over from the crowd around the flames. The four of us stand in silence, watching the sun slowly approach, coming back to the reality of the last day of summer. The crowd behind us begins to quiet, humans becoming, reverently greeting the sun. All things come to an end, no matter how much we want to remain in this moment forever, free of everything but the killing burdens of memory.

                I stub out my cigarette in an Altoids tin and slip the tin into my pocket, then shove my hands into the pockets of my jacket for warmth. The sun inches over the horizon, and the night fades to scattered shadows that falter and fade as the fire sparks up. He should have been here I think to myself. I can’t summon the simple faith of Sam, nor the hard-minded realism of Bane; I’m stuck in the middle, wanting desperately to believe that something, some energy, some spirit, some piece of Matty remains with us on this journey. Why did we do this if not for him? I know what awaits me upon my return, the sacrifices we have made to get this far.

                This is the last sacrifice I can make for Matty Wilkins.

                I’ve forfeited my right to anything more.

                It is only the idea that somehow, somewhere, Matty is watching this, watching us, which makes this an act of sacrifice and not indulgence. We should have made this journey years ago, tried harder to hold onto the torch. Have we learned anything? Or will this last act of summer become meaningless as we allow the autumn leaves to wall us off from each other once again?

                This city of light seems subdued by the sun as it rises above the mountain wall protecting us from the real world somewhere out beyond. We each have our own reasons to greet the sun, to emerge from the burn, our chrysalis and redemption.

                I don’t want to emerge. I want to stay in this moment, in the here and now, forever.

                I hear yelling behind us; as if to challenge the supremacy of the daystar, the artists are chucking wood into the sculpture/furnace as fast as they can, and fresh showers of stars explode out of the vents, ashes raining down into the tray mounted on its teeter-totter base.  The bearded man from whose mind the sculpture sprang  has a maniacal grin, cigar clenched between his teeth, appearing determined to use up all the wood they brought to fuel the fire before the sun rises high enough to leave no doubt that burn night is over. Sparks flash higher and higher, but the sun is winning the battle. Everything we have wrought, the fire and the light, cannot challenge the natural rhythm of the stars. We can only hold it at bay for a while.

                The last piece of wood clanks off the edge of the sculpture; laughing, the artist picks it up and throws again, sinking the piece of wood into the furnace. The sculpture sparks for a few more minutes, but the battle is over. In twos and threes, the crowd begins to fade away, trudging back to the city that surrounds us, leaving an empty desert behind.

                “He should have been here,” I say again. This time, Ash just nods. We need no words; as one, we begin to walk back toward the city of light, magic dissipated by the onslaught of the dawn.

#

                It’s been six weeks since I killed my best friend.

                I didn’t pull the trigger. I wasn’t even there. I know, intellectually, that I didn’t kill him; I know that sentence is melodramatic. You can tell me that he made the decision himself, that there was nothing I could have done. You can cite all the suicide statistics and platitudes you goddamn well want to, but that won’t help me sleep at night. I should have known. I should have been there for him, the way he was always there for me.

                It’s been six weeks since Matty Wilkins blew the top of his head, his mind, and his soul all over the ceiling and door of his stepdad’s garage. 

#

                Immortality has a time limit. We were once invincible, but when dawn came, so did the toll for the nights when we were kings and gods. We believed in a future greater than ourselves, a future in which we would rearrange the stars to carve out our names in the fabric of the universe itself. We were the outcasts, the homeless, the lonely. We were beautiful.

                We would sit on the roofs of houses or in cars on long rides or in the food court at the mall, talking about photography and physics, novels and politics, hip-hop and hallucinogens. We were gonzo intellectuals and suburban wannabe gangsters, as comfortable arguing over Dylan Thomas as we were selling ecstacy in the corner of a club. We’d sleep our way through dead end jobs and rendezvous at night in front of a pair of turntables, dancing, screaming, dropping another hit of X or another tenstrip of acid, celebrating the angels and demons of our youth. Do a line to get through the dawn, make the long drive to the afterparty, hook up with someone, pass out, wake up, and repeat the process.

                It was in this way that we bonded. It was in this way that we became a family, a tribe, fiercely loyal and bound by chains of iron and gold.

                Later on, we were doing a lot less X and a lot more crystal meth. We became DJs and promoters. We hustled. Flip took the rap for a busted deal and went to prison. Ray-Ray joined the Army to get his head on straight. We’d almost all flunked out of college. None of us could hold a job.

                Sara went to rehab so often we renamed her Detox. Too many of us did. Not enough of us got clean.

                Somehow, we all made it through those days. Somehow, we survived.

                The stars still shine in the same places as they always have. A decade later, the fire has died out for so many of us. Immortality is a forgotten word.

                We burned so bright, suns that we thought would never go nova, but every fire must someday die. We thought they never would. As we got our lives in order, had kids and went back to college and found careers, we slowly drifted apart. Under the harsh light of the dawn, our frailties were unmasked; we were judged and found wanting, titans cast back down to Earth.

                Doc Clue was murdered in 2006 in a parking garage at school, a botched robbery, wrong place, wrong time. RJ contracted HIV and died of kidney failure a year later. Splendor, after four stints in rehab, finally got her shit straight and was working as a paralegal; they never found the man who raped and murdered her as she was running in Piedmont Park. Brenda, who had once been Brandon, died in a housefire; the autopsy showed she was unconscious when the fire consumed her, a few too many oxycotin, a faulty wire setting her trailer home aflame.

                We thought we made it through, but fate has a long memory. Destiny was hiding in the long grass, waiting until we thought we were safe to make its move. We were never built to handle the onslaught of daylight.

                Fuck your logic. Fuck your reassurance. I'm no stranger to grief. I know nothing is forever. But this is not something to work through. It’s not something you smooth over with a few words of wisdom on Facebook. This is a sunrise I never want to see again, harsh light casting shadows on everything I once thought was true. This is being chained to a wall, a crow coming back to peck out my eyes over and over and over again.

                It’s been six weeks since I killed my best friend. I’d like to see you work through that, you judgmental son of a bitch.

---

I may post chapter one later on today. Not sure if I'm ready yet.

Sacrifice

I just realized I'd never posted this publicly. Then someone asked me to tell them a story; for some reason this popped into my head but I had no way to link it to them.

Dystopian near-future science fiction short story I wrote a while back. This literally popped into my head almost fully formed and I just ran with it. One of the easiest stories I've ever written. I need to edit this and clean it up for publication one of these days.

***

Sacrifice

By Ben Bjostad

Copyright 2012 by Ben Bjostad. All rights reserved. Reprint this without permission and an army of ninja penguins will descend upon you and slay you like the plagiarist you are.

I won't take long to burn. Seconds, maybe a minute, and I will cease to exist but for the electronic records that litter the world, the empty words of my journals and soc-net postings, the belongings scattered through my shared apartment on the fringe of downtown, and the memories of those who once knew me.

I've written my letters, said my goodbyes, composed one final song, and loaded it all in my offline queue to dump into the net when it is time. We spend most of our last hours making love, Cassandra and I clutching each other in the bed that takes up most of our small room, littered with posters and electronics, implements of pain and implements of pleasure, books and videos and games. We'll leave it all, for our roommates to divide amongst themselves when they find us gone, for not even they know of our plans. This is tradition.

We spend most of our last hours making love, clutching and grabbing and clawing, pulling hair, reminding ourselves of the pain that is our shared language, our common fluency, our clarity. Glistening in sweat and blood, where her fingernails have raked my back and my grip has broken her skin, we hold each other, my fingers caressing her face that has captivated me for so many months since we met, drug-fueled and dancing in an abandoned warehouse on the east side, escaping this world that we share a disconnection from, only connecting to each other.

I hold her face in my hands, and we whisper our love and immortality, our shared universe that excludes this reality we are lost in. We share dreams of being born in a different age, a warmer age, in a year so much less cold where we are so connected and so alone.

She is so beautiful to me, and I hate this world that brings us to this place, where there is no escape, no way out. Wars across the globe, a government we can't believe in; I wonder if the world was ever the way they teach us it was in state-mandated history and patriotism classes. I wonder if anyone ever believed in the empty words carved in stone monuments and the front of government towers, if we were ever anything but numbers in a vast machine.

Eventually we rise, Cassandra and I, and dress slowly for the last time, my eyes drinking in the last sight of her in her pure state, no barriers between us. Our bags are packed and by the door, and I pull on my shirt, fasten my leather gauntlet to my right forearm. My computer fastens to my left arm, connection port clicking into place with the receptor implanted on my wrist, and as I clip my glasses into my temple-port, icons come up to indicate net connection. My aural implants beep softly to indicate readiness and I feed a playlist to them, feeding them to Cassandra's computer as she plugs it into place. We stand there, in front of the cracked mirror that fills one wall of our small room, in this three-bedroom flat we share with five friends in the student lofts of northside Atlanta, dressed in denim and leather, black alternating with a riot of color, her multicolored dreadlocks cascading down to frame the upper portion of her body.

We should have had a lifetime together. Maybe someday we will.

I want to smash everything down. I want to start a revolution. I want to destroy it all, the glass and steel tubes of the gleaming office towers downtown where the conformists go to slave in front of terminal screens, the holoboards that constantly remind us to be vigilant for terrorist activity, the teachers and classrooms that remind us of our duties to this fallen republic, the empty places between all of our souls. I want to set all these children free, that grow up thinking everything is so wonderful, only to wake up when they reach adulthood and realize how empty everything is. I want clarity.

I want a world where connection isn't a sin, where we can live as one.

My eyes twitch as I flash through soc-net sites, dumping messages and songs to my friends, letters to my family, who will never understand. Icons come up and disappear in my vision as my fingers flash across virtual keyboards, menus come up and disappear with blinding speed as I manipulate my presence on the Net and leave status messages on my site. This is goodbye, and I know that messages and calls will begin to stream in as our tribes recognize our intention, but no one will try to stop us except maybe our families, and they can't stop anything now. Our friends will understand.

This is tradition.

With the twitch of a finger, I set my communications to dump straight to my inbox. I don't want any calls, any interruptions. I dump a last set of messages into the Net, to the news organizations, both the official ones that will ignore our actions and the unofficial ones that will trumpet us as heroes. They are equally welcome to my martyrdom; I am not doing this for them.

Cassie hands me a pill and a bottle of water; I swallow it and pass the bottle to her; she does the same with her own pill. It won't kick in for thirty minutes or so, which is why we take it now; I want to feel this final walk before we reach our destination.

We sling backpacks onto our backs and clasp hands as we walk through the door; no one else is home. I turn out the light and we walk down the flights of stairs and onto the streets; we do not have far to go.

Wisps of cloud pass through the gleaming towers that stab into the sky, hundreds of stories tall; three blocks away from our converted warehouse, another tower grows slowly, support beams forming and autocranes crawling across finished levels, placing glass panels and chrome over the bare flexfuller. Helicopters circle overhead, and a billboard reminds us to report suspicious behavior to Public Defense immediately. On the wall of a department store across the street, a bright digital display shows one of the news channels, offering another optimistic progress report on the capture of a terrorist cell somewhere in Africa, American troops escorting haggard natives into a firebase for questioning. No one ever questions why the world hates us; America, China, India, Eurocon. My fingers twitch again to show historical photos of the destruction of Boston, the crater left by the nuke smuggled in and detonated. It is the first thing I remember as a child.

I erase the pictures from my glasses and close the visual port; my fingers feel the pressure of Cassandra's hand on mine. To the cameras that dot each block, to the orbiting airships and satellites that scour the streets for activity, we're just another pair of disaffected Crazers walking the streets of downtown Atlanta, separate from this world that surrounds us.

I think about my parents; they did the best they could, and I suddenly picture my mother reading the message I sent to her inbox, and struggling to understand. This is not an impulsive act. For a week, we've been planning, preparing, enjoying, blowing through the meager savings we have, eating sushi and drinking good wine and cheap whiskey. Cassie and I haven't left each other in six days now; we haven't been able to stop touching each other.

I wish I could believe in an afterlife, somewhere we could be together forever. Maybe there is one. I don't know. I don't know if I can believe in anything anymore, except for her.

I feel the street through my boots, feel Cassie's soul through her hand, feel the life of this city through the air; I've never felt so alive, so pure. I feel what it must have been like when the world was less empty. I feel connected. Cassie looks at me and smiles. Her eyes show me a promise of love everlasting, unquestioning; she can't live in this world without me any more than I can without her. This world is empty without her. She gives me meaning and context; the years before her feel like empty shells. She never doubted that she would take this journey without me, even when I begged her to stay behind; I almost snuck out in the dark of night to take this walk alone, but we had sworn an oath to each other; we would take this walk together.

This, too, is tradition.

We walk through the gates of the park; children are playing, parents watching idly, some of them with the distant gaze of those surfing the rivers of data through their net glasses, lost in simulation world or completing work. In the center of the park, a monument rises; Atlanta's memory of Boston, and the World Trade Centre; Yankee Stadium and a dozen subway trains and airliners, victims of terrorism, casualties of a shadow war.

Casualties like Cassandra.

Casualties like myself.

I toss my draft notice onto the stone step before the monument and unsling my backpack. I open visual port and send out a last torrent of messages. We have no time now.

I can already hear the sirens in the distance as police and Public Defense react to the messages I've sent. The drugs have kicked in and I feel like I'm floating above my body. Cassie douses me with kerosene and I do the same to her; bystanders stare on in horror, some grabbing children, some backing away, a middle-aged man walking toward us, now running, now stopping as he realizes it's too late to stop us. As we pour liquid over each other, helicopters circle overhead. The man pleads with us to stop, but this is the moment of truth.

The drugs have fully involved my bloodstream now, and I touch fingers with Cassandra again, calling out my love for her. I can see in her eyes that she feels the drugs too, that will keep us from dying in agony. We toss the cans of kerosene aside and pick up torches; my fingers flick the lighter, igniting them, and I hold my torch high, in defiance of this empty society, this hollow world.

I don't know if it's true that your life flashes before you as you die, but we had time, and mine did. I remembered meeting Cassie; the first time we made love, the first time I hurt her, her agony and her ecstacy. I remembered running across soccer fields, remembered the last time I saw my father, my mother, my sister. I remembered the good moments of this world, and remembered the day last week when my draft notice came in the mail, that it was my duty to fight terrorism, that I would leave my world, my friends, Cassie, behind.

I remember the emptiness.

I clasp Cassie, holding her tight, our torches held high, burning our defiance to this empty world that will not care when we are gone. We're just cogs in the machine. Our eyes meet, and everything we've ever felt together passes between us as we savor one last moment.

Our clothes catch fire first, then our skin, but the drugs do their job and I feel no pain. My whole world is Cassandra. My whole world is love.

We begin to burn, and as Cassandra and I embrace, my eyes meet those of a young girl, maybe seven years old; her mother clutches her tightly and tries to shield her eyes, but the little girl stares at us, and her eyes are full of questions, questions as to what could lead us to this moment, questions I have no answers to, questions no one can ever answer, and no one ever will.

Could I Have Saved Your Life?

I don’t understand what happened. I’ll never understand what happened. I’m not sure I ever want to understand why you chose to leave this world behind, no matter how much I need to understand; it hurts to think about, but the penance of the living is of no consequence to the angels of the shadows.

I don’t want to know, but I need to know. I still blame myself to a degree. I always will. I cannot lay this burden down; I can learn from it, let it inspire me not to fail my friends and family again, but I can never leave it behind. I can never outrun memory and recrimination. I can never completely forgive myself. I know that if you were truly at that point of no return, there is probably nothing I could have said or done that could have made a difference, but I’ll never know for sure.

It is that shadow of a sliver of a chance that maybe I would have had the right words, the right actions, that maybe just knowing I was here for you would have stopped you from pulling the trigger; it is that shadow of a sliver of a chance that makes the memory and the grief such a killing thing.

Two weeks before you died, you called me and told me we needed to talk. You told me you were in legal trouble and needed my advice. We agreed to go out for beer and talk about things. Then stuff came up and I pushed it off until the next weekend. My life was so busy with summer classes, a relationship that was disintegrating, social obligations and work; I didn’t know it was so serious.

You shot yourself before I ever got the chance to go get a beer with you.

When I needed you, you were there. When I was going through my divorce, when I was going through crazy shit with Meghan, when I was doing too many drugs and getting caught up in the mess that was the Acworth house, you were there. When I needed help moving, when I needed help with Evolution, you were there. You dropped everything when I needed you.

When you needed me, I was too busy. When you needed me most, I wasn’t there.

Intellectually, I know that once someone reaches that point, you can’t talk them out of it. The part of me that is governed with logic knows I’m not to blame. My heart can never be so sure, my soul can never grant myself absolution.

I picture you in the driver’s seat of your Jeep, looking at the .45, flipping the safety off. Your two most prized possessions. I try to imagine what was going through your mind at that moment. Did you forget how many people loved you? Did you feel alone? What made you pull the trigger?

We survived everything together. We lived through the drug years, the rave years. What made you end it? How could you make that choice, and leave your friends behind to deal with the wreckage of your passing? You were there for Brett’s funeral. You sat next to me at Phile’s funeral. Did you not think you would be mourned?

I want to call you a coward. I want to tell you what I think of your decision. I can’t. You failed me. You failed the tribe. We made it through the fire and the light. We survived. We’ve been through hell together and you bailed on us.

We failed you. I failed you. You were at your lowest point and I was not there. I can’t take that back. I can’t fix it. I want to fix it, but I can’t. Some things can’t be fixed. Some mistakes can’t be erased.

I’ll never know if I could have fixed it. I never got the chance to try. I never got the chance to save your life. You saved mine. When I was drowning, you pulled me out of the water. I never even saw you sink below the waves.

Should I have? Did I miss a signal? Were you reaching out to me, drowning in the ocean, calling for a liferaft? That last time I spoke to you, when you wanted to get together and talk, did I miss something in your voice? Did I miss some inflection, some tone, some word choice that should have made me sit up and realize something was seriously fucked up?

You were my brother in all but blood. You were the best man in my wedding, and I would have been the best man at yours. I should have seen it. Should have recognized it. Maybe you would have done it anyway. You probably would have done it anyway.

I can never, ever know whether you would have done it anyway. I never made the effort. I can’t even say I had a chance to stop it, because I don’t know if I could have. All I do know is that I never made that chance. I never had a chance to save Brett’s life. I never had a chance to save Phile. I might have had a chance to save yours.

It is the missed chance that still keeps me up at night sometimes. It’s been a year. The grief passes; even wounds of the soul eventually heal. It’s that shadow of a sliver of a chance that I can’t get over. If I’d taken the shot and missed, it might be different, but the clock ran out before I got a chance to. I can’t forgive myself for that. You called me. You needed me. I put it off. Two weeks later, you were dead.

It is those two weeks that will haunt me for the rest of my life. It is those two weeks in which I might have had a chance to save you. It is those two weeks that I’ll never get back.

I know I’m not responsible. I know it’s not my fault. I’ll never know if maybe I could have saved your life.

Not Waving But Drowning

Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he's dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

MLK-I have a Dream speech translated into LOLcat

My friend Stacy posted today that she wanted someone to translate Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream speech into LOLcat.

So I did.

:D

Note: Martin Luther King is one of my heroes. This is meant for humor and as a homage to one of the greatest men of the twentieth century. Thank you for making my country a better place, Reverend King.

Meow Luther Kitty- I haz dream

I iz happeh to cuddlz u todeh in waz gun be da bestest day for cheezburgrs in the histeree of ar littrbx.

Vry lng ago, a grt persun who lvd cuddlz and gvng kitteh treats rote a papr. Ths big papr set the slaves fre so they cud give kittehs mor lovins. Now they cud run thru the medows and ctch all the mices.

But now theyz still can’t chz all the mices. They haz to chz only mices in der own islandz of mices. They no haz all da chzburgrs. We cuddlz here today to claw wht peoplz legz so dey letz us chz mices wherevrz.

We comz to the capetlz to make them clnz ar littrbxs. Da first peoplz promizd al kittehs they wud haz cln litterbxs. Al kittehs, tabeez and caluhcoez and evn siemeze kittehz iz garunteedz to haz cln literbxs.

Why sum kittehs no haz cln litterbxs? We clawz ur legz til you givez us cln litterbxs for all kittehs and letz us all ply and cuddl and chz mices together. We haz no time to wate. Now iz time to let all kittehs be equel and stuffz.

You no ovrlk our clwng of ur legz. We no stop until we getz frdm. We wntz our litterbxs opn to all kittehz. We clawz you in sleep untilz all us kittehs are equel citishuns. We meow so we can haz justush.

But iz sumthng I must tellz my kittehs dat lie on warm windoesil ledng to scrtchng pst of justush. We haz to stl uz the littrbxs not go pee on peoplz beds. We mushent scrtch all furnushur to shrdz.

We haz be good kittehs. We haz give lovens and cuddlz to allz our peoplz. They r ourz peoplz and kittehs and peoplz haz cuddlz and stuffz wif ech othrz.

We iz no happeh so long az tabeez and caluhcoez and evn siemeze kittehs haz difrnt littrbxs an no can chz mices together. We iz no happeh if we can no slp on all the furnishure togethrz. We iz no happeh if we no drnk frum watr bowlz or haz chzburgerz. No, we iz no happeh until justush is servd and we all haz chzburger.

I knowz you come here thru lotz bad thingz. Sum cme frum animel sheltuhs. Some escapz from bad dogz dat chz us dwn streetz. Haz faith u wil getz chzbrgrs.

Go back to Misesipi, Aluhbamuh, Souf Caruhlinuh, Jorjuh, Louesheyana, ur brnz and ur sheltehs, noweng dat sumhow the situashun will be betteh.

I purr 2 u todeh, my kittehs, I haz dream. I haz dream dat iz Amerakin dream.

I haz dream dat sumtyme our nashun getz up, strtchez, and livz tru meaning of itz cred: “We haz truthz dat we know gud: dat all peoplz and kittehz iz med equel.

I haz dream dat wun day on red carputz of Jorjuh teh kittehs uf peoplz and tabbehz and caluhcoez will cuddlz az wun.

I haz dream dat my littr uf kittehz wil livz in nashun wher they iz no judgd bye colur of der fur but by how gud they givz lovenz.

I haz dream todeh.

I haz dream that even in Alahbamuh tabbehz and caluhcoez and siameze kittehs can haz chzburgrz together.

I haz dream todeh.

I haz dream that al littrbxs wil be cln, all dogz wil be fenshed and leshud, and we will all haz fishez an chzburgrz.

Dis iz ar hope. Dis iz fayf dat I go back to da souf withz. With fayf we can scrtch da couchz of dispare a scrtchng post uf hope. With fayf we can cuddlz az wun, meow az wun, cuz we be free wun day.

If we can haz gud nashun dis must cm tru. Let fredum ring frum teh kitteh sheltehz. Let fredum ring frum the sunnee spotz by the windoez. Let fredum ring frum the scrtchng postz.

Wen dis happnz, wen fredum ringz frum al da kittehs, we can haz al ceiling kat’s kittehs, tabbehz and caluhcoez and siameze kittehs, haz chzburgrz togethuh and meow in the wurds of teh ol tabbeh spirishul, “yay celing cat, we iz fre at last!”

Reign of Ashes

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Reign of Ashes

by Ben Bjostad on Saturday, November 13, 2010 at 3:19pm

Rage washes over me, bloodstream hardening,

skin aflame; I want to kill something beautiful.

I want to destroy all that was once beloved.

Rage, control slipping away, until all I can imagine

is your face, bloody, your teeth, loosened,

your pride and beauty stripped away,

until your ugliness is left bare for all the world to see.

Fuck you, who I once loved, fuck your words

and empty gestures, your disguises that fool the world

to see a pretty little girl. Rage consumes me;

I burn underneath its alabaster wings, the flame

begins to consume my veneer of civility,

and reveal the underlying truth.

It's been so long since I've felt this rage,

the mind can mellow, but flesh never forgets

shuddering, shaking, trying to keep control.

I want to hurt something beautiful today.

I want to kill the pain and slack the rage,

destroy it all, let naught but ashes reign.

Benedict Arnold

In the end, it always comes down to treason,

A scarlet letter,a saboteur within the walls.

Turn your back and walk away, leave the wreckage

in your wake, leave it all behind and seek your light.

Make the choice that’s right for you, even if it’s not.

Destroy the walls, blow the bridge, steal away,

run to safety in the dark of night.

Run from the pain and break the faith.

Break the bonds that held you safe here in my arms.

Shatter all we built, the love placed stone by stone,

and walk away from the rubble that remains.

Your bedsheet treason can be forgiven,

your change in latitude can never be.

Find yourself in a war-torn wasteland,

leave me behind to heal my wounds;

run to daylight, run far away

give up the chance for absolution.

Turn your back on what remains,

spit on my anguished forgiveness,

hang your head in deceitful shame.

Leave the guilt. Leave the wounds.

Leave behind the scattered memories.

Sell your soul for a break to freedom,

leave consequences in your wake.

Speak the words and leave them hanging,

toss my replies into the wind.

Make your case and do not listen

to my rebuttals in the night.

Do what you must, do what you will;

you care too much, but you do not care at all.

Kidney-Stone-O-Rama!

I actually wrote this about three years ago on my MySpace blog, and it's still the funniest thing I've ever written. Someone I know has a kidney stone problem she found out about today, which prompted me to move this over here since a: I haven't posted for a long time and b: It's funny enough to repost. I had much more fun writing this than the actual experience was.

Kidney-Stone-O-Rama!

So yesterday I apparently got a kidney stone.

I'm OK, but it was a frightening day. At least now I know nothing is really wrong with me.

Here is the account of my crazy medical crisis day.

Part I: In which the unquenchable fires of justice threaten valuable real estate.

Trust me on this: The last thing you ever want to feel when you wake up is burning in your urethra.

Let's face it. I'm a 28 year old guy. The center of my entire universe is my penis. It's the original multitool. This is very valuable body real estate, and it's just not supposed to burn. So when I wake up at 645am to feel the unquenchable fires of justice building inside me, my first thoughts on reaching full consciousness involve syphilgonorrcancerherpesitis, or a really angry sperm with a switchblade.

Once I actually wake up, I realize the switchblade option is slightly unrealistic, but I can be excused for failing to think or react rationally when there is burning in my penis.

I stumble to the restroom, there to look dumbly down at Hercules, but there's any number of reasons this can be happening. So I attempt to pee.

Still waiting….

Still waiting….

Shifting bladder muscles to overdrive and grunting…

OK. One drop. This is not good.

I'm still rationalizing to myself. Maybe I don't need to go, despite all evidence to the contrary. I dress myself, gather my books and computer for my eight am government class and drive to campus. This has got to be just my body protesting against waking up at 645am. Everything's fine.

Really, it's fine.

Oh God, here comes the burn again.

Part II: In which the hero of the story attempts self-diagnosis of his bladder in a crowded classroom.

I love campus-wide Wi-Fi.

I take a seat near the back of the lecture hall and fire up my laptop. Being an eight-am freshman required course, half the class has laptops out. Supposedly, we're all taking notes on the lecture. In reality, everyone is on myspace, facebook and various instant messengers complaining to everyone else in the world who got stuck with an 8am class.

I, on the other hand, am frantically googling 'burning penis' and other classics of search engine lore, trying to find out why my lower torso feels like it's been bitten by one of those spider-crab parasite things from Cloverfield.

It only gets worse as the professor starts lecturing. Pretty soon, my bladder starts throbbing like a Scotsman is using it for a bagpipe and I've got pain on my right lower torso that's making me wonder if one can actually amputate a torso.

According to the internet, this isn't possible, exept for some old japanese manga I found of chicks with metal torsos. There really is a fetish for everything in Japan.

WebMd says my symptoms could indicate appendicitis. I have no great love for my appendix, but this would just not be a good time for it to explode. Exploding body parts are not a fun thing to happen. I think I feel a freak out coming on.

I want to try to make it through the class. I really don't want to be that guy who walks out from the back of the classroom mid-lecture while everyone stares at him and mutters 'let the shunning begin'. This runs contrary to the primary law I adhere to in life: Don't Be That Guy. I would have to walk down the steps to the front of the room and cross in front of the professor to escape the lecture hall. I will be shunned.

I'm going to have to Be That Guy.

I quietly pack up everything and slip my jacket on, and as quietly as I can make my way down the steps. Unfortunately, when you've got an overstuffed gigantic backpack, you feel like an angry troll is hammering your bladder and you're wearing big ass-kicking Goth boots, it's hard to be quiet and unnoticeable. The professor never breaks stride in his lecture, but I feel a hundred sets of eyes burning into my back.

They don't burn as badly as my loins do, though, so I make my intrepid course forward to the door and try not to run as I sight the men's restroom in the distance.

Nope, Hercules still isn't working. I have a vision of my body slowly being poisoned by whatever's left of everything I've drank in the last week. Given the amount of beer I consumed on my birthday a few days ago, this can't be good.

It takes me ten minutes to gather the will to leave the bathroom and walk back to my car, put my ginormous (this week's sign of the apocalypse: This has actually been added to the dictionary) backpack in the back seat, light a cigarette, and curse everything below and slightly above my belt.

Part III: In which the hero has to describe the burn to his hot Korean doctor.

Nothing in my twenty-eight years of life prepared me for a conversation with my mother that begins with the sentence "Mom, my urethra is burning."

Still, given her past as a dialysis technician, I figure if anyone knows what I should do, it's her.

I describe my symptoms to her and she tells me if I can't get an appointment with my doctor soon, I need to go to the Emergency room. Easy for her to say. She has military medical coverage. My work medical plan, however, is provided by Billy Bob's Used Furniture and Medical Equipment of Tulsa, Oklahoma, or some equally fly-by-night operation. Thanks, HR department.

I call my dad; he says pretty much the same thing. Apparently I've got a family history of kidney stones from both parents I didn't know about.

I drive to the University clinic; they don't open until nine. Then I call my doctor. They can get me in at 1145. So much for my 1100 and 1230 classes.

I go home and try the restroom once more. This time, we have success. Not much success, but it is amazing how satisfying it is to be able to take a leak when you have previously been unable to. I now konw what it's like to be eighty. I also know why my grandfather was so pissed off the last decade of his life. It wasn't that his grandson was an utter failure at life and unworthy to be his namesake; it was merely an inability to use his dick.

I've never understood why I have to be weighed, temperature taken, blood pressure and pulse taken, every time I go to the doctor. Even when I went to get my referral to a psychologist for ADHD treatment, I go through the drill. All I want is for someone to make my penis stop burning.

Wow, that's a sentence I never thought I'd write. But wait, here comes the awkward part.

My doctor is about my age (late twenties). She just joined this practice a year ago, to replace my former doctor, who retired. She's fresh out of medical school. She's Korean, and we all know my thing for oriental chicks.Especially intelligent ones, and she IS a doctor.

I now get to describe to super-hot lady doctor my symptoms.

I relate the story to her awkwardly, trying to find every euphemism I can think of to describe my nether regions, and she reacts to it professionally, of course, but that doesn't make it any less awkward. She tells me it's probably kidney stones, and I have to get a urinalysis.

Fucking stupendous.

There's nothing in the bathroom that tells me what I should do with my plastic cup full of urine, so I walk into the hall holding a plastic cup full of yellow liquid. Good times. My doctor is looking at a chart at a workstation in the hall, several other attractive nurses are also doing various medical stuff, and I'm standing there looking like a guy whose crotch has betrayed him, carrying a cup of my urine.

"Oh, no, you're supposed to leave it on top of the toilet," the doctor says, and I can feel my face turning twelve different shades of crimson.

"There's no sign," I said. "I'm sorry,"

"I should have told you," she said. I placed the cup in the bathroom and returned to the exam room to study statistics and wait for the doctor to return.

She comes in a few minutes later. "There's blood in your urine," she announces. This is not something you ever want to hear from your super-hot lady doctor.

"It's something with your urinary tract. Probably a kidney stone since you said your family has a history of them. I'm sending you over to Kennestone Hospital for a CAT scan."

"OK..." i respond. Having never gotten a CAT scan, I'm picturing torrents of weird radiation and machines that look like torture devices from Star Wars.

"I'll give you a call as soon as we get the results back from Kennestone." she says.

"OK," I respond. I slink out of the doctor's office, convinced every single woman in the place has seen my bloody urine and heard about my plight. God, I hate life.

Part IV: In which the hero of the story makes his parents wish they had used a condom.

Even in pain, I can't let an opportunity to screw with my parent's heads pass me by. So I dial my mom's number, knowing she's worried sick about me.

"Ben? You OK?" She asks. I put on the most worried voice I can muster.

"Mom...how soon can you be in Atlanta?"

"Three hours, why?" she asks. Her voice pitches up and, being the youngest son, still 'the baby' in her eyes, I know she's freaking.

"Um, it's bad. Real bad." I respond.

"What's wrong?"

"They're going to have to do surgery today. It's really bad."

"I'll be on my way in a few minutes..." She's interrupted by hysterical laughter. I just couldn't hold it in any longer."

"Benjamin Boisseau Bjostad!" she yells at the top of her lungs.

"I couldn't resist, mom. They think it's a kidney stone. No big deal. At least I know what's wrong."

"You've got to stop doing this before I run out of anything but gray hair."

"I win," I reply. I then call my Dad and repeat the whole process.

If any of you, my readers, ever have kids, hope and pray they're not like me. This is the best I've gotten them since the April Fools Day I called them both to tell them my college girlfriend was pregnant.

Part V: In which the hero finds out he will most likely survive.

So I got the CAT scan (which wasn't nearly as scary as I thought, although the machine is intimidating; it looks like the thing that Arnold Schwarznegger used in Total Recall), and the call from my doctor. I've got a very small kidney stone that will pass on its own. It still hurts, but it's much more bearable now that I know why it does; when I have unexplained pain in that region, it qualifies as a bad thing. But I'm OK.

Things Ive learned this week:

*Kidney stones hurt

*CAT scans aren't scary

*My medical coverage sucks.

*Cloverfield is the greatest movie ever.

Now I'm off to work. Which is the mental equivalent of a kidney stone. Yay.

***

update: Almost three years later, I still occasionally get them. And they still suck.