We sit at separate tables. It is a humid day but I am at an outside cafe where I read my paper and drink my coffee , and he does also. We never speak directly or make eye contact but I am close enough to hear him without intending to eavesdrop. His name is Noah.

A big boned man dressed in red, white, and blue comes walking past on the sidewalk. He carries signs and buttons and plops them down by the cafe. “LET AMERICA PREVAIL”, he says, “A war is on the rise and we need men, or boys we can make men out of, to come join in the fight. FOR FREEDOM! FOR JUSTICE! FOR PEACE!”

Noah is unfortunate enough to be at the table next to the man. He chuckles at the statement and remarks, “For peace?”

“FOR PEACE!”

“After I shoot a man?”

The man continues to preach to the crowd that has formed and yells, “It is evil we are defeating! This is justice, people!”

“No, this is justifying killing,” he mumbles sarcastically while continuing to read the paper.

“We need to show our country’s strength!”

“Ah, weak, weak, weak.”

The man can’t ignore Noah any longer. He turns to him and says, “Well what do you propose we do? Shall we sit back as you seem to be doing? Those men out there are the ones working towards something. They are the ones progressing rather than sitting here and talking nonsense.”

“Sitting around and fighting are the two excuses for avoiding a problem and I, sir, can say I do neither. “Noah stands. “People of America, after my cup of coffee, I will be going home to rebuild the schools that are falling apart right here in our backyard that reeks of crime and lack of unity. Now won’t that be working towards peace rather that fighting for it?”

The crowd doesn’t react. Rather, they walk to the nearest drug store or beauty salon because they hear and don’t listen. The recruiter leaves. And so does Noah before I have a chance to speak to him. A week later, I am traveling overseas with a gun in my hand and twenty pounds of ammunition on my back.

————–

That whole week before I leave, I think of Noah. I think of him when my Dad pats me on the back and asks, “Excited, boy?” I think of him as I am on the boat floating in the Atlantic Ocean with drunken men around me yelling “FOR FREEDOM!” And I think of him while I am out on the lines for the first time. I watch as grenades blow up around me, and gun shots mute my thoughts, and little boys run across the grey strip of land forgetting everything their mothers have ever told them. They are yelling at me to shoot but my arm doesn’t have the strength to hold up the gun. The next thing I know, I am lying on the ground shouting God help me.

————–

I open my eyes to a sterile, white room with beds aligned all across the way. A nurse hovers over me and asks how I am. I’m not well enough to answer.

“I bet you’re wondering where you are,” she says, “You got shot out there. I heard you went down pretty quickly. However, it doesn’t look too bad. Just a bullet wound.” My eyes widen.

It was in the arm. According to my nurse, that’s nothing they can’t fix. In order to retain feeling though, I have to write letters everyday for an hour. Everyday, I pick up the paper and pen and write “Dear Noah,”

————–

Sometime later, the man in the bed next to me asks me what my name is.

“Conner Mathers. Yours?”

“Pat Halloway.”

“What happened to you?” I ask.

“I was helping you up when I got shot right in my leg.”

“You were helping me up?”

“Yeah, I watched it happen. I watched you just stand there and welcome that bullet.”

“I’m sorry; I just didn’t know how to react.”

“Oh you were holding yourself back. I saw it. And now, you are holding me back. I should be out there fighting.”

“Well not me. They asked the wrong guy. I can’t go out there. I’m too screwed up about morality. Something did hold me back the other day, and I can’t deny it.”

“So boy, what is your pride getting in the way of?”

“O fuck you. It has nothing to do with pride. This whole world is so obsessed with killing people, and yet there is still a part of me that thinks maybe peace is possible. But I don’t know how or if so, but I do know you cant fight for peace by fighting.”

“You can’t fight for peace lying cold in the grave either.”

————–

I’ve been sleeping in long spurts with the medicine they have been giving me. One night, I awake to find Pat looking up and alert.

“Can’t sleep?” I ask.

“Never can.”

“Oh.”

“So you’re afraid of war, huh?

“Not afraid, just against it.”

“Same thing,” he remarks, “What’s this peace you talk of?”

“I know it’s not realistic but I figure, I’d rather work towards some strange outlandish dream than live this hell. At least I’m making a conscious decision to fight for a goal where I’ll be able to sleep at night. That’s a start. Maybe peace will follow.”

“Oh leave it to humans to screw up something good. If we are given peace then we will just complain about how blue the sky is.”

“You know why you can’t sleep,” I ask frustrated, “because you are too afraid of dreaming.”

”You know why you can’t get a girl? Too full of bullshit.”

“How do you know I don’t have a girl?”

“Well do you?”

“No.”

————–

I think the medicine has been affecting my dreams also. The next night, I am sitting on an ottoman with Noah beside me while we eat toast.

“Noah!”

“I’m sorry. Do I know you?” he says, staring at me blankly.

“No I, uh, I was there at that cafe that day with the war recruiter. He was a big guy, kinda hairy.”

“Oh yes I remember. Sorry about the scene I made.”

“Don’t be. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Not even when I was carrying a machine gun toward enemy lines.”

“Ah, so you’ve been at war. How has that been?”

“I got wounded.”

“Bad?”

“Nah, I just couldn’t bring myself to shoot.”

“Because of me?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.”

“I’ve wanted to talk to you. There’s so much I want to ask,” I confess.

“Well I don’t know how well I’ll be able to answer. I’m just a thirty-two-year-old from Buffalo, New York. But nevertheless, I’m here. Ask away.”

“You talked of peace.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think its possible?”

“Possible, yes. Probable, no.”

“How?”

Noah put his newspaper down and looks at me. “You ask that as if there’s an answer.”

“Well, is there?”

“A long one.”

“I would hope so,” I reply.

He takes a breath. “An end to war is an obvious step but that’s the furthest thing from peace.” He takes another breath and then continues, “I see people killed everyday. I see words beat down truly happy people. Words that, honest or not, should never be spoken. You see, being honest is the same thing as being an asshole. It’s a crappy excuse that doesn’t justify a thing. The times I inflict sadness on another, I have to walk with that guilt the rest of the day.”

He continued, “To me, I’d rather be the victim than the culprit. It’s a much easier role in life. I’d rather be hurt that be hurting someone else. Unfortunately, not enough people feel that way. So I don’t know how that will change, and I refuse lose sleep over it. I would advise you not to either.”

“Sleeping is never a problem.”

“Then maybe I’ll be seeing you around.”

————–

For a few years after that, I fought everyday waiting for my return home. I wrote each night about my plans for America — my plans to speak and educate and rebuild and give back. I never thought that I would grow up to be a bitter man who let their values deteriorate and in turn, love the feeling of a cold gun in my hands but hey, it happened.

So do I still think peace is possible? Yes. But I sure as hell don’t care either way.

Her longing eyes fear blinking. They do not want to miss any action Dan makes. We all go about our lives around the two but my heart breaks watching the stagnant mess.

Dan drops her off first then drives me home tonight. We are both blunt people, and our conversation ensues. “Break up with her, confess your love, take her virginity – do something,” I say. He sits. We are like the bees, struggling to sting because we will die in self-defense.

We wake up. We consume mass amounts of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. The box sits next to us, waiting to be poured again. We watch “The Real World” and then change the channel out of embarrassment. We receive a call. The phone sits in our lap. Windows down, we drive to the store, buying ill-fitting dresses, sequined vests and short shorts. We go to the friend’s house whose parents are out of town, putting on lots of eyeliner and drinking lots of Captain Morgan. We stumble to the school dance, shimmying in front of teachers and dancing with younger boys. We leave early and walk to a bonfire, drinking, smoking and peeing behind the garage. We call ex-boyfriends and eat cookies when we get home.

Regular posts will start again after May 30th. In the meantime, here is my senior article for my school newspaper:

The question “What do you want to do with your life?” plagues me not because I do not possess an answer; rather, I do not have an answer that others understand.

How do I explain that I want to live a dumpster diving, train hopping, protein-deficient, thrift-store buying, nomadic existence? How can I avoid strange looks when I say possible careers include a bike messenger or crazier, someone who just wants to write?

I dream of the day when I can have tattoos, and my job will not require me to cover them up with a button down, collared shirt. I dream of the day where I can write and not have a second job just to get by. I dream of affording health care.

Looking toward the future, I want to live passionately and take my hobbies seriously. I want to attack everything as an art form, disregarding back ups. I want to remain idealistic even when I have to pay taxes.

So come time for college, I am about to test my ideologies and my idealistic nature, but I am scared that I will crumble when given the task of transforming theory into reality. At least I recognize this fear but head straight toward this prospective risk regardless.

I fear that as most grow up, the real world succeeds in making us realists. It is a silent epidemic. It does not destroy the environment or wipe out the masses but it allows a little bit of the unrealistic child in us to become forgotten.

Aaron Cometbus, an underground author, spends his life in poverty to pursue his craft, saying, “It’s too easy to just let yourself be defeated. To wallow in the comfort of suffering. To let your self-destructive tendencies become your whole life. To retreat and hide from the world you could have taken by storm. To keep the fruits of creativity to yourself and let them rot on the vine. It’s too easy to say you’re a loser and think there’s something noble about failure.”

As Cometbus suggests, most fail because it is too arduous a task to even try. Yet, present day society thrives on self-determination. Even though the capitalist system has flaws, as all do, its major strength is that capitalist theory is in accordance with the DIY ethos I like so much. Whatever you want to do, work hard and do it.

As a senior, I’m now reflecting on the past just as much as I’m romanticizing about the future. The last four years have been an incongruent mix of spending time enveloped in a fictional world and spending reality with my best friends, purposely not taking life seriously; a mix between reflecting on life and experiencing it; a mix between having so much to say and not verbally being able to express myself; a mix between fighting personal demons and refusing to apologize for who I am.

Using the newspaper as forum to express myself for two years, I still do not know how much of my writing is read and how much is looked over by the student body. Regrettably, I know that in past attempts to bring light on certain issues, I have preached when that really has not been my objective. Thus, I hope this piece does not hold the same tone. This senior article is merely my personal statement to look back on when a pile of rejection letters collect on my own desk, an inevitable fate for an inspiring writer.

My only advice is this: Live simply. Brush your teeth. Wander with a purpose.

The Teenage Head is young and hip and hot and decisive and hot and cool. They are anti-everything including themselves and if they played guitar at least one of the strings would be broken and the other five (or 11) would certainly be out of tune. The Teenage Head makes movies not films. The Teenage Head writes stories not literature. They are from the second city (which has actually been the third city, statistically, since 1991). They stay up much too late and wake up much too late and arrive much too late to classes with old old kids and old old teachers and old old books and old old ideas. The Teenage Head is young and hip and hot and cool and hot and anti this about literature almost as much as you are.

Check out the Teenage Head for a story of mine: Thank God

Also, if you have time, the short films are worth a look. I particularly like “The People in the Middle”.

I waste time being productive.

It is the cities and the mountains that I love. Either a concrete playground illuminating overpopulation or the natural areas so empty one cannot even escape themselves. However, I wake up every morning to see suburban bliss, the in-between that ignites in me no inspiration or muse. I find myself frequently visiting the city or running away in the summer to the mountains; however, in the times where I cannot escape suburbia, I seek solace in the land that literature creates. For, at my very core is my love for art.

In the last four years of my life, art was not only my retreat and my passion but also my education. In the hours of the night that were too late to even check the time, I found myself in a room filled with words. Meanwhile, I was also searching for new sentences to fall in love with. There was Bukowski and Brautigan taped to my walls. Books covered the shelves and the floor simultaneously. Articles filled binders. With every word, I had discovered something new. At the very best, I had not only learned but changed.

Although I spent nine years at a Catholic grade school, I never understood Catholiscm until reading C.S. Lewis. Even in the country’s current mess regarding immigration, it was Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath that shaped my stance on the issue. And for many years I succumbed to innate shyness but only after watching Cool Hand Luke did I really learn how to speak my mind. I confess that it is as though I need a fabricated world to help me understand and change reality.

While rummaging through an issue of Adbusters one day, I came upon a quote from Lee Henderson, in which he says, “Art is the only god you can prove exists”. Immediately, this quotation got written down and lingered in me for years since. He articulated the role that art plays for me. It is not for sheer entertainment but illumination. It is immortal. It gives me direction and meaning, a role similar to that of religion. Thus, when losing myself in a piece of music, I have found myself gaining a sense of existence.

If anything, I am a passionate person who does not wish to stop learning once the school bell rings. So give me trains, give me buses, give me a sidewalk, and I will wear out my Chuck Taylors until the rubber sole is all that is left. Give me words, give me passion, give me beauty, and I will ignite all that is inside of me. Give me life and I will try as hard as I can to live it.

age: 29

location: apartment

I completely depend on electricity, a digital screen and phone lines. My attempt to regress back into a natural habitat fails as I am surrounded by everything artificial and everything clean. I am neither. I can’t remember the last time I shaved, anywhere. I do not feel more primitive or more rooted into the animalistic self that a human truly is. I just feel like my belt will stay in its loop, and the buttons on my pants will not come undone. No one likes animals.

He makes a lot of noise, stomping and swearing, to solidify his anger. Emotion. Noise. Emotion. Noise. Not music, but a representation of words he cannot speak. His drink spills. He is unhappy. He gives up. Is it shameful that I only like him when he cries?