Bob of Suburbia

I've been thinking about mythology, heroic journeys, and noble causes. Often there are great warriors and great battles, but perhaps these are just metaphors for more mundane activities.

I am Bob of Suburbia, and I made it to the grocery store despite seemingly insurmountable odds. Traffic lights were stacked against me, but I persevered and eventually arrived at my destination.

Still, there was the matter of parking. I and other potential shoppers, each of whom needed to buy more supplies to feed their families, circled around the lot in search of a place to moor our SUVs. Mine was running low on fuel, and I would need to find a gas station as well, but not until my own provisions had been procured.

At last I found a spot near the store. The driver of a smaller car saw it at the same time, but after a brief staredown I beat her to it. She raised her middle finger at me and swore oaths as she passed. Perhaps another day she would prevail, but not today.

Once inside the supermarket I grabbed a basket from among the few remaining and barreled my way down various aisles, with little regard for whatever or whoever might cross my path. I have children at home in desperate need of frozen pizza and ice cream sandwiches. To stand in my way is to keep them from getting what they require.

I am the provider for my family, a responsibility I do not take lightly. If ramming my cart into your cart helps me reach my worthy goal, so be it. Your cart will be rammed, your needs be damned. We can step outside and fight to the death for honor and a carton of eggs.

So it has been, and so it evermore shall be.

How Well We Make the Journey

You could be on the edge of greatness and not even know it. Choices to make. Which way will you go? Forward, backward, off to the side somewhere? A detour of sorts? Those are often the most interesting trips we take. Unintended destinations full of surprise and delight.

Years later we may look back with fondness, remembering the happy accident that led us there. It could be a person, place, or thing. Maybe the detour isn't some physical road not traveled but actually turns out to be your life partner.

Seriously, it happens.

Such moments get folded into our saga, become part of our lore. The telling changes over time, as events recede into the past and lose clarity. They move from the realms of memory into imagination, and the same story is never told twice.

It all takes on a grandeur that perhaps is unearned. That is one way of looking at it. The sense that we are just individuals on a large planet, each indistinguishable from the next. Grains of sand on the beach, water in a swift moving river, stories of a world.

Another way is that the uniqueness is what defines us, not only as individuals but also as a species, as inhabitants of a lonely rock in the middle of space headed toward ultimate destruction. Yes, we are very small alone and together, but it's a miracle that we even exist.

There are days when this line of reasoning makes sense. Other times we merely feel fragile, vulnerable, irrelevant in every possible way. But like the grains of sand, the water, and the stories, these feelings also pass.

Everyone ends up in the same place eventually. Some take longer than others. Maybe greatness isn't in reaching the destination but in how well we make the journey.

She Wept, Then Slept

She woke up dreaming of a lake. Someone was screaming for ice cream and wanted to bake a cake. She didn't know what to make of it all and went back to sleep.

Later that morning she woke again and walked to the park on a lark. It was no longer dark, so she left her mark on the grass and hauled ass out of there.

Just before noon she bought a spittoon that had once belonged to a saloon owner. She made note of the shop and promised herself she'd return here soon, then walked back outside and marveled that the moon was still visible this late.

She had soup for lunch but felt something crunch, which didn't seem right. In the end it was nothing, but very few words rhyme with “lunch,” which also doesn't seem right.

On the bright side, there was still a bright side. It was like that old album Pink Floyd never recorded, Bright Side of the Moon. It was less dark than the one they ended up making.

In truth, she found the entire affair rather silly, though she couldn't say why. One doesn't simply stroll through life thinking of such arcane matters.

But there's no accounting for taste, and she still wanted ice cream or maybe a dip in a cool stream, or a trip to the moon for some cheese if you please. It was early afternoon by now and how she longed to be anywhere but there, where she wouldn't care if people decided to stare at her bare shoulders or the tear in her jeans that she hadn't noticed.

She kept walking while some were talking and others squawking as the ferries were docking and one guy was clocking another, knocking him to the ground.

She wept, then slept.

Just in Time for Death or Love

“Why is it,” asked Thompson, “that we never appreciate our greatest strengths?”

Logan wrinkled his brow in thought. “I suppose it's because they become so much a part of us that we can't imagine life without them.”

They were on their way up, from the 17th to the 63rd floor of an 80-floor building. Thompson gazed ahead at the unmoving, metallic doors that held them safely inside the elevator car. It felt secure, like a place where he belonged. It felt like home, but then, his grandfather had been an elevator operator back in the day. Not that he remembered his grandfather well—not that one, anyway.

His other grandfather, on his mother's side, had been a shoe salesman. But somehow Thompson never felt as comfortable in his shoes as he did in an elevator. It was one of life's great mysteries to him, a puzzle he would likely not solve before death, which he was sure wouldn't come in an elevator—although wouldn't that be ironic?

He smiled at the thought. It didn't go unnoticed by Logan, who raised the brow that had previously been wrinkled.

“Do you have something to say?” asked Logan.

“Ever listen to Aerosmith much?”

“Can't say as I have, why?”

“No reason. I was trying to remember some lyrics to one of their songs.”

“Which song? Maybe I know it.”

“I think it's called 'Death in an Elevator' or something like that.”

Logan stared at Thompson and took a quick glance around their shared metallic box. It felt smaller than it had when they first entered.

“You mean 'Love in an Elevator'?” said Logan.

“Yeah, that's the one.”

Ding! The doors opened. They had arrived at the 63rd floor, just in time for death or love.

You Might Have Gotten Paid

Phones on bones fall mainly on the stones, or maybe on a strip of sidewalk that isn't being used for anything better. Who can say what logic may have influenced the decision. It probably cost someone a fair chunk of money. Then again, if someone paid, someone else was paid.

Checks and balances. Credits and debits. Everything evens out in the end, they say, and though that may not always be true on an individual level, the universe knows. It holds true. Conservation of mass and energy, or some such.

That's one way to look at Chicago. It's a limiting worldview, to be sure. Very reductionist, a thing that suggests no other possibilities. The best way to think about it is that the sidewalk had potential to be the base of something else. Still does, really.

What might that something else be? This is where imagination comes in handy. If we knew a clever person or three, we could get a few informed opinions on the matter. Serendipitously, we might find such people walking on the very sidewalk we are trying to improve. Walking, talking problem solvers.

Actually, that's not a bad description of humans. Alternatively, you could call them walking, talking problem makers. We make problems, we solve them. Credits and debits, right to the end.

The thing about art is that it forces us to think. Often those thoughts are along the lines of, “I could have done that” or “I can't believe someone got paid to make that.”

Sure, but it's like how the sidewalk has potential until someone does something with it. Of course you could have done that, but you didn't, and that's the difference. Maybe you had a crazy idea in your head. If you'd acted on it, you might have gotten paid.

There Was No Escape

“There are worse things than this,” said Tyler, ever the optimist, even as they found themselves in what might well have been the one situation where that statement didn't hold true.

“Like what?” shot Sheila, intent on calling him out, holding him accountable for the words coming out of his mouth. He'd been getting away with his melodramatic nonsense for too long, it was time for that to stop.

“I can't think of anything off the top of my head,” he replied, more concerned with the situation at hand—which was quite bad, indeed—than with finding examples that would satisfy her curious fixation on evidence to support every assertion, regardless of any mitigating circumstances, such as being stuck in a position that may not have been the worst imaginable technically speaking but was still neither the time nor place for debate of this nature.

“Of course you can't, because you're full of shit.” She delighted in the error of his ways, of his words, of everything about him, even as her being right meant that there were not, in fact, worse things than this and they were therefore, to put it crudely but accurately, screwed in a big way.

“If we're going to be literal,” he said, “I'm not full of shit. I took care of business a while ago. So while the situation may be dire, at least I don't have to use the facilities. Not that there are any here anyway.”

They both seemed surprised at the scatological direction their conversation had turned. Perhaps in times of extreme stress one's thoughts naturally turn to bodily functions. Still, this was bad. Even she had to concede this might be the worst thing, which would negate her objection to his original assertion.

There was no escape.

A Consistent Perspective

You were swimming in soup, more like drowning really. Grasping for an edge to cling to, gasping for air to breathe, hoping for a better outcome. In a word, you were desperate.

Too many thoughts. It's a small head, how can there be so many thoughts whipping around in there? It's bigger on the inside, like a TARDIS.

Come to think of it, you could use a doctor. Life spinning out of control through the universe, again like a TARDIS.

Work on the metaphors, kid. Your words are pretty, but you can't compare everything to one thing.

Well, yeah, that's a weakness. A known bug, as they say in the software business. A fix is in the works, but first we have to isolate the problem. What is the issue's scope? What triggers it? Diagnosis is harder than it looks.

So anyway, you had a soup metaphor. Then there was the TARDIS. And now software. Why not just pick one of those and stick with it?

Sure, that would be the logical solution, but life isn't so simple. It's more like—

No, you don't get to do that anymore. Metaphor abuse is a crime.

Is it, though? Is it really?

It ought to be.

Possibly, but we're talking about what is, not what ought to be.

Semantics.

Not really. If it's not actually a crime, there can be no punishment.

Like that novel by the Russian guy.

Nice metaphor, jackass.

Thanks, I learn from the best.

That smacks of insincerity, but what can you do?

I'll tell you what you can do, kid. Try again tomorrow and don't suck. And if you do suck, don't pull me into the interior monolog of what might be the worst dreck you've ever written.

No promises. Soup would be good. And a consistent perspective.