No Links

Today, no links. I've re-written this three times and I think that's enough.

Just thoughts, in a random pouring. At night, from my second floor, listening to Brian Eno's "Another Green World." The window is cracked open slightly, so I can hear the trains as they attempt to ascend the Number Two track over the original Transcontinental line. It's 27-degrees outside but still I feel warm.

This past week a fellow officer died. In a one-in-a-million happenstance. A 16-year-old snap-fired and killed this deputy with a one-in-a-million shot. He is dead but I live on.

I spent four years working our jail system, 7 years in Patrol. 7 years in Detectives. I worked Theft, Child Abuse, Warrants, Robbery, Homicide. I worked for the FBI. For the US Marshal. I've been in literally hundreds and hundreds of life-threatening situations. Effected hundreds of arrests. Written warrants. Brought suspects back on extradition from other states. Been in three shooting situations, one which resulted in the death of a suspect. And yet I'm still here. Writing this tonight. Knocking down a St. Pauli Girl. With a liver the size of Kansas and a congested heart to match. Yet I still walk upright.

What is that, literally, all about? Why is that deputy at 37 gone, and I'm still ambling about? What's the plan? And why can't I see it? And why make that deputy's wife ask the same damned question?

Why wasn't it me on any number of prior occasions? What makes me any "better" than that deputy? Because, certainly, I am not. I am, admittedly, much less.

I don't have kids; I'm too selfish for that. Altruism stayed two states away from me my entire life. I'm about as sociable as Carcharodon carcharias. Every manner of whatever meagre "success" I've achieved in my so-called "career" was acquired by careful study, replication, concentration. I was not by nature either smart, clever or "people-wise." I was and am generally immature and masked. Entering law enforcement was, on one hand, the smartest thing I ever did in terms of life skills. The absolute smartest thing I've done in my life is to marry my second wife.

Even to this point there are days I feel I'm masquerading as a real, caring human being. Sometimes I feel nothing more than a child all masked-up in adult clothing. I am frequently thankful that normal humans are generally so incredibly dense as to not see me for what I truly am. It frequently amazes me that the bulk of humans encountering me, being that ignorant, can conduct any semblance of lives themselves. I have evidently, then, done some kind of excellent job of mimicking real human behavior.

And yet, despite that, years of conducting myself in such a falseness, the truly great continue to fall and I continue to live. To put it in the colloquial: "What's up with that?"

This isn't a plea for sympathy; this is me being, for once, honest.

The Good get taken daily, hourly, by the second. It's not just a cliche. Because here I continue to sit.

If that isn't horrific irony, I don't know what is.

BZ