You There: A Plea In A Dark Time

Our job is to understand and to care, and most of us have failed miserably.

The everything we cannot understand we are asked to accept, and at this, also, we have failed miserably.

Most of us, though, have gotten pretty good at going on, and for this most modest of achievements we are rewarded with what?

Laughter, I suppose. A sensitivity that can sometimes almost convince us we are human and have souls worth saving. The occasional flight outside of ourselves that allows us a glimpse --however brief-- of exactly where we are and what we have been given, which is the one thing we can ever truly call our own: our lives in this world, exactly as the world is, which is too often heartbreaking and fragile but which can nonetheless also be incomprehensibly fascinating and beautiful.

So, You there: Big Thing. Great Eraser. Compulsive builder and eccentric architect. Demolition expert. Thresher. Conjurer. Custodian of bursting and broken hearts and Choreographer of confrontations with mirrors and painful truths. Master of disappearance and deterioration. You with your largess with lilacs and your wondrous palette of greens. Lord of the turtles and obsessive molder of birds and beetles. Dog maestro. Prodigal prototype. Soul pincher. Star sower. Shatterer. Lamp lighter. Candle Snuffer. Trickster. Slumberer. Sourpuss. Soft-hearted old fool. Mutterer. Madman. Misery maker. Historian of Mystery. Erratic Umpire. Virtuoso of oblivion and obliteration. Terrifying Immensity. Merciful One.

You, who so often in your boredom or wrath seem to study your majestic creation like an indifferent chess move: I'm crying uncle, right here and right now. Come on, Alleged Something, show a little tenderness. Go easy on us. If you have some perhaps understandable grudge, let it go and give us one more shot to make things right.

Forgive us all the great and usual sins. We can be beautiful, but so can we be stunned and stupefied into unaccountable and unpardonable ugliness. We know this. We know that some of us are fools, and dangerous, but there are many who try very hard to combat such destructive assholes. Please don't make it any harder than it already is. Please don't be a vengeful dick.

We know that we are bumbling failures, too often cold hearted, but we also know that we can still be miraculous and compassionate, and the best of us are out there proving that every minute of every day. So, come on, forgive us. Most of us want desperately to be here.

We understand your takeaway prerogative and, frankly, we've seen enough of it lately. You've shown that you can crush us, that we can be crushed, that we can crush each other (and do), but I'm asking you to please raise up off us and let us try once more to prove ourselves worthy of the grace and the magic we've been given, and the redemption we've supposedly been promised.

And if you must turn away, if you've truly had enough, then turn, and let us live. We can take care of each other, and should. And will.