At times where you find yourself at a juxtaposition of options, none of which lead to an outcome you seek pursuing, what do you do? In the days of old, crows’ cages and hangman’s gallows were erected at crossroads, to prevent the spirits of those who were condemned to those same roadside sideshows from following their executors home, and haunting the ever-loving shit out of them.
Is that the option? Hang out with the hollowed faces that once held bulging eyes and purple tongues, before the ravens hanging around looking for a quick peck at some newly abandoned bones-in-a-cage got bored from the incessant waiting, and decided to see _just_ how different the board of fare was on the other side of the crossroads?
Psychopomps, I think, are part of the human cultural identity because of these connundrums. You need to know who to follow home, when all the options look shitty, and, clearly, the afterlife beats what will leave you swinging – one way or another.
If all goes well in the next two weeks, I’ll graduate college, eleven and a half years after the computed trajectory of post-high school catapult dictates I should have landed. Part of me is proud, part of me loathes that I caved to play the game. Part of me wants to go on to greater things, and part of me feels like I don’t deserve the life I have, and that I should be languishing somewhere right now, for collusion, or terrorism, or whatever other excuse los federales can come up with to justify getting me off the street.
I worry a lot about the world my son has been born into.
A speaker at a presentation my wife recently went to opened with the concept that, once upon a time, the ideal was to leave a better world behind for future generations – since that idea was totally fucked, the goal should shift to leaving behind a better type of person for that world which has been so royally screwed.
Where, exactly, does personal choice kick in here? I once confronted closed fist and deadly anger with the bald truth that “I never asked to be born…” Will I face such an accusation someday? Worse, will I think it myself, that consigning my offspring to the world they will inherit is a crime worthy of such a pondering?
I wish real life came with a Konami code.