Everything New

The give and take of new clothes. The fresh lines of new pants, bending and twisting to mold to your body. The tautness of new socks, comfortably clinging to your ankle as they still retain their factory-woven tension. The crisp utility of new boxers, as if you are being draped over and not confined. The seduction of a hot shower and fresh soap from your favorite store. The unavoidable reminder that it is the simple things that make life shine in the routine moments. You come out of a long weekend where you haven't shaved, you barely moved from a computer screen (whether playing Warcraft, your new addiction, or writing 5,000 words in 60 hours), barely aware of the destruction in Java or the growing truth that the military you pay for with your taxes slaughtered Iraqi civilians in cold blood. There's little you can do these days, but the freshness of the new skin gives you some arousal, some strength to drag yourself out of your long weekend and figure out how you remain human. You wonder just what you can do, after five long years of jackals in suits coming on TV and lying to you about war and society and Jesus. All you know is that it's sunny today and you have new clothes that feel like a cooling breeze on your skin. You are in a holding pattern. You are reshuffling your deck. But at least you look sharp, and these new threads signal a potential in you, as if you are emerging into something else, something were you have a sense of control and destiny. You are desperate to shed your old ways. You have taken the long weekend to distract yourself, only to sneak up on the demons which cause you much suffering, a long razor moving slowly across your soul. You've grown tired of their antics and you know you must be making progress, changing the way you think, because it hurts so much inside. You feel a shift taking place, a war waging when you close your eyes, and the victory would mean a way to be happy and be more functional. Summer's here, and it's a time to shine, and maybe you need to take a cue from that.

Today's One Word: Justice

You can't admit that this is something fair going on when the powerful are evil and the opposition is nowhere to be found. You don't want to quote Yeats, about how the just lack the conviction to rise, but sometimes it's painfully right.