Outside of a bar, under the dead hum of a drippy air conditioner, I have found a truth. It is a quiet truth. Still, it is louder than a roaring lie.
Said truth brutes at a picnic table next to birthday balloons left over from the night prior. The balloons are shriveled and sad, drifting this way and that, but they refuse to touch the ground. Despite the party being over, they maintain their tragic resistance against gravity.
The bar’s back patio is the closest I get to a porch around here. The things I miss most about home are the porches. There are porches in other places, of course, but porches in the South are vital. They provide stage and audience for songs sung by humble gods and drunk devils. The songs go like this: say, man, just stick around a little while longer; the sun is but hours away, and tomorrow is a new day.
Life has been such lately that words have been few and far between, let alone truths. I fear I have pigeon-holed myself into speaking clever truths, truths that may not even be true, truths that could never be sung on a porch. I don’t always have something cute to say. Sometimes, I feel plain ol’ mean. Sometimes, I feel like punching someone just for kicks. Sometimes, I feel like lighting something on fire just to watch angry sparks dance in the sky.
See, under the dead hum of this air conditioner, there’s a never-ending line of ants marching towards a puddle of condensation pooling under my Miller Highlife. I’ve been squishing the ants one after another for the better part of an hour. The mean truth of it is, I haven’t given up squishing, they haven’t given up marching, and we’re all here at this damn picnic table, pretending like we aren’t dying.
Hello, world.
damn that last paragraph hits hard