"Breakdown"

(1)

United States of Hysteria

They wanted me to be one of the Pastel People.  One of the Pretty People.  One of the Hair Salon People.  One of the Cupcake People.  They did not want my fire-brick reds & angry blacks, my sea-deep greens & sky-shorn blues.  They wanted me soft & easy & pleasing to the touch.  They wanted me to play it safe.  They wanted me to follow the program.  They wanted me to color inside the lines.

They told me:  It has to be either this way or that.  Either this way, or that.  There's only one game; it's the only game in town.

And the hell of it is, they were right.  It is.

I didn't know then that it was possible to live a life within the system that was also courageous & adventuresome, & that you could use that life to fight against the system.  So I chose this way, not that.  That way meant college.  That way meant that after college you got a job & bought a car.  That way meant that you bought the car so you could get to the job that you had to take so you could pay for the car.  That way meant that you bought a house so you had someplace to live while you went to the job that you had to take to pay for the house & the car.  And so on, & so on, until at last you got to the draggle-end of it all – a few brief years of retired bliss.  I didn't want that way.  So I chose this.  I chose rebellion against, not rebellion for.  And now I'm trapped.  I'm part of the system, but I no longer have the ability to choose work that is courageous & adventuresome.  Instead I must be one of the grunts who mans a cash register or a keyboard or a gas pump or a factory machine.  I'm the system's slave.

They still want me to be one of the Pretty People.  One of the Pastel People.  One of the Hair Salon People.  One of the Cupcake People.  But I'll keep my fire-brick reds & angry blacks anyway, thanks all the same.  It may not be much, but it's all I've got.  Will it be enough to see me through?  I don't know.  The only thing I know is, it's all I've got left.

the misbegotten