Olde Fart

excerpt

Long thought to be kings without castles, bubble boys by all accounts were castles without community, fear that fell short of empathy, and eggs without shells. To tab generational wealth as a rill that trickled rather than a pond stagnant with scum and the croaking of frogs was to insure the bubble that boys drew themselves to, that none would pop, a few could roll, but most lathered their thoughts and prayers on a oily scuz of admonition that then aged into scum. Allowance of light and air being one option to allure the bubble boys of their fixations of ham hands and white knuckles, most but not all, denied such resources that plumbed unhealthy delusions from their thoughts. Gaps widen, and those on one side believe they can fly across, they cannot, believe they climb down, most fall. If they survive the trickle down, then they must navigate the bottom of such expanse. They must dodge the falling debris of those coming and going, and they must scramble like wet rats up the other side only to find a gated community that promoted the use of rat poison embedded in words like freedom and liberty to control appetites of any so lucky and liable to find their dream blistering into some fuzzy horizon. Few if any make it here. Some do, but the gap widens. Those on one side seclude themselves as if besieged from their ideas of the other side. Fascination being a passage from empathy to fear, they drew further from the gap and built what amounted to labyrinths in their wake. Mazes patrolled by that beast of gentry…mobility. And for the few that tip toed the corner and cracks, that used underground trails to bypass invisible and impenetrable fences and men, that kept strides too short for some and strides too long for others depending upon their ambition and whether that odyssey was blown off course by the design of winds that shrug shoulders. Not to digress on the struggles of go-getters and gardeners, but bubble boys to explain the gist, take up a lot of clean air, water, and food. Maintenance of obsessions keeps one isolated and insulated, wired and walled with the materials of freedom and liberty-that being wealth, prosperity, and objectivity, such work grows weary for the known universe. Yes, expansion is a given, and to that, resources must be shared and spread, but bonds between the hermit and the crab, the bubble and the boy, resists all such nonsense that feels like the thinning of soul and broth.