O O Ø O O O O
Bang
Sharing some less than pleasant experiences, as a metaphor.
You know that feeling you get when you crack you head hard? Not just bumping it and exclaiming “D’oh!” like Homer Simpson, but seriously smashing it on something you didn’t expect to be there, like the trunk lid or the cupboard door.
First there’s the stars. They’re not actually star-shaped, but bright bursts of light that slam into your field of vision from the sides. They don’t have any particular colour, but if you had to pick one, you’d say they were red. Red because that’s what comes to mind as the blood drains from your extremities, leaving your fingers and toes tingly and numb. All sensation becomes rooted at the point of impact, which pulses with the aftershock. You can taste bile at the back of your throat, and you begin to salivate reflexively. The old, reptilian part of your brain hisses furiously, causing you to lash out at whatever’s at hand, either physically or verbally. You slam the door, yell at whoever is nearby, or smash something. Any damn thing, as long as it’s close at hand.
The Unforgiven
This is the time when self-censorship is impossible, regardless of the collateral damage: Fuck! Goddamnsonofabitch! You aren’t concerned about civility, or manners, you’re only concerned with your righteous, near-biblical anger. This is Clint Eastwood style, Unforgiven anger: “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.”
But that’s just the immediate onslaught of the symptoms. The second wave brings on the vertigo and the nausea. You find yourself forced down to your knees. You have to place a steadying hand on the ground. The red doesn’t clear from your vision, but your eyes begin to well up, rendering you effectively blind. You wince, trying to seal them against the continued onslaught of dizziness. Dropping to a marginally safer semi-prone position you put the hand that isn’t attached, claw-like, to your face, gingerly on the spot, knowing what you’ll find. Blood, yes, and a few broken hairs, but no pain from the brief contact. Whatever senses there once were at the site of the now expanding contusion, have been blasted numb by the impact.
From the epicentre, however, is an expanding ring of fire that grows to encompass the circumference of your head. From the spheres of your eyes—and you can now distinctly discern that they are spheres—around your temples, to the swelling pressure against the back of your skull, the pain shines like a supernova, in plain sight where all can see. It radiates, but doesn’t kill you. Instead, your genes mutate as they must when exposed to such near-lethal levels, and you begin to collect your senses and rise out of the conflagration, like the Swamp Thing, or more appropriately, David Banner: the Incredible Hulk. See what you have wrought?
You’ll Live
Now, with the evidence of the destruction on your fingers, you can clear your watery eyes to survey the damage. You’re going to live, albeit not without some immediate pain. You can sense the extent of the corollary waste: that which was broken in rage, those who were offended by proximity, your dignity.
For the fortunately mature, you could perhaps shrug it off and start to laugh at yourself, if only the agony were to subside. Otherwise the continued anger, and its bitter nephews, resentment and hate, can begin to fester in that open wound where personal responsibility and civility have no jurisdiction. This is where you play the fault game, taking up a round of pin-the-blame on the asshole who may have contributed in whatever small way to your broken, prostrated state.
You know that feeling, when you hit your head?
Yes, you known that one?
Every time Jean Chrétien opens his Goddamn cakehole.
That’s all. Thanks.
Evan Spence
Tuesday, October 15,
2002
PD DLXIX