A Day in the Life of Chaos

I have a scar on my right cheek, or is it my left?  I have to think about it for awhile before I remember.  I have had it since I was a little boy and when I look in a mirror it is invisible to me.  Others may see it but when something exists with you, like the color of your skin, in time you no longer see it.  I used to ask my mother if it was as small as a GI Joe scar yet?  "Close," she would tell me, "close."  When others would look at me the scar is what they would see first.  They would want to ask me the cause yet they would refrain, thinking it was an invasion of my privacy.  Eventually after a long time the topic would come up and they would sheepishly ask.  I would of course tell them that it was caused by some fantastical circumstance like a violent girlfriend, a shark or the slash of a sword.  In truth, I stumbled over some rocks when I was running and a particularly sharp one cut my face. In life everyone carries wounds with them.  They etch our emo

I saw a crazy man this morning. I've actually seen him before but this morning he stood out like never before.  I was riding my Vespa to work feeling quite stylish and quite Italian.  I wore my jacket with the British flag on the back and dark goggles.   While feeling quite chic in my mind I was hoping with all hope I would not be side swiped by a red neck in an F150 or hit on the head with a beer bottle.  I suppose my black visored helmet had that later covered but the former would have been disastrous.  I was motoring through West Columbia, an area that was once a suburb of Columbia and now is seemingly forgotten.  It is run down, dotted by apartments and small houses that should be condemned.  If that wasn't enough, the area is punctuated by a chicken plant that dispenses an odor strong enough to wrinkle the nose.  There is usually a parade of interesting people out on the street but today one particular man stood out.  He was probably in his 60's, of course the appar

Narrator : Winnie the Pooh crawled out of the gorse bush, brushed the prickles from his nose and began to think again. Winnie the Pooh : Think, think, think. Narrator : And the first person he thought of was... Winnie the Pooh : Winnie the Pooh? Narrator : No. Christopher Robin. Winnie the Pooh : Oh.  The world would be a better place if we all took time to think.  It is hard to think, it takes work.  Thinking gnaws at the brain and it can be quite disquieting because often there is no simple answer.  It is so much easier to be told what to think.  History is filled with tragic examples of those that declined to use their mental faculties and the ultimate consequences.  In truth, surrendering your mind is akin to surrendering your soul. In the case of some historical monsters like Hitler or Stalin declining to think was literally selling your soul to the Devil.  Our minds govern all that we are.  They regulate our desire, emotion, feeling, love and hate.  The American N

A few weeks back I wrote an essay on things that go yelp in the night.  It was a recounting of a terrible sound that nearly froze my blood in the darkness of the night.  Coyotes were on the loose.  Nature was at my back door.  I live in a town with a buffer of woods edging the back of my property.  It is an area where deer roam and coyotes stalk the night.  Snakes hide under rocks by a stream and turtles move from sun spot to sun spot.  Hawks circle over head and occasionally a lake heron will fly buy surveying the gold fish and koi in my ornamental pond. While frightening and savage there is something peaceful about knowing I coexist with the natural world so close to my door. Just beyond the flickering light of the Animal Channel on my 56 inch LCD tv is a primeval world of hunters and the hunted. The people that populate my job are a curious mix of educated northerners transplanted here by some cosmic design and red neck Task Force officers.  A Task Force officer is simply a pol

Last Monday a woman in my office wasn't at her desk when I arrived in the morning.  The day progressed and periodically I checked for her, yet was never able to find her.  Finally I asked a secretary if she knew if Beth would be in at all.  I was told she was out because on Sunday, Beth lost her house.  Over the weekend a bad storm had passed through the area and along with creating a tornado, knocked down some trees.  Especially hard hit was Lake Murray, an area near Columbia where Beth had a summer vacation home.  When I heard the news and verified that Beth and family were okay my mind immediately clicked.  It was as if some kind of primal fight or flight instinct kicked in and I opined, "I wonder if the storm was made worse by the lake?" At first the seemingly innocuous nature of the question didn't bother me until I sat down and thought about it with more contemplation and depth.   What I had done was a process that the vast majority of us are guilty of on a