Mickey Mouse Band-Aids

It’s so hard to watch someone you love cry.

It doesn’t matter that it’s not your fault. It doesn’t matter that there’s nothing you could have done.

They’re in pain, and you feel it.

That’s what it is to be close to someone.

When you’re that close, their feelings invade your own. Their pain is your agony.

And there’s nothing you can do.

Sometimes you cry with them.

Sometimes you try to make them feel better by making terrible jokes.

And all the time you feel like there’s something more you should be doing. Something you could say. Something you could fix.

I wish it could be the way it is when you’re little.

You fall down. You cry.

Then Mommy ‘kisses it better’ and everything is fine.

Everything was so much simpler then.

Now everything is harder.

Magic kisses lose their power.

Even Mickey Mouse band-aids can’t cheer you up.

If only they could.

I would buy a dozen boxes and slap them on every one I know who’s hurting. They could forget their pain, so absorbed it the brights colors and the smiling mouse-

If only things were that simple.

All I can do is listen.

Because all the Mickey Mouse band-aids in the world can’t fix a hurting heart.

Immortality

“Would you like to live forever?”

What a question.

The answer would seem obvious to some. In vain, people have searched for immortality. They have striven to obtain this untouchable treasure.

Who, with the water of the Fountain of Youth running through their fingers, would hesitate to wet their tongue with it?

Would you like to live forever?

“No.”

Shocking, is it not?

“But…. Why not?”

“If I live only for my time… Well, my time is between life and death. If I don’t die, I’ll know I somehow strayed from that life. I’ll know I’m not on the same path I started. Because that path leads to death someday.”

“What’s wrong with taking a new path?”

“It wouldn’t be mine. From the moment I decide to live forever, I would be leaving this life. How is that any better than death?”

“Why can’t you just continue on you path until your get to death and then….”

“And then what? Knock him down? I don’t think you can do that.”

“Why not?”

“Once you get close enough to touch death, I don’t think you can escape.”

“What if you asked?”

“People ask all the time. Have you ever stood by a death bed and heard the doomed man mutter ‘Please. Don’t take me yet. Please let me live.’ Yet how often does Death head these cries?”

“So you plan to willingly and knowingly let that moment come to you? You’ll simply resign yourself to this fate, and meet it without resistance?”

“It’s all a part of life. It wouldn’t be life if it didn’t end in death. It would just be existence.”

Furry Little Distraction

I would like to say something deep and profound.

Something that would make you see the world differently and transform the way you live.

But I can’t.

All I can think about is the mouse in the ceiling.

He’s a very bold mouse. He makes as much noise as he pleases, scratching about and scuttling around.

He’s ripping at the insulation now I think.

He’s driving me to distraction.

I can’t possibly concentrate for more than a few seconds before…

He’s gone quiet. I wonder….

There he is again.

Silence Mr. Mouse! Can’t you see I’ve business to attend to?

I don’t suppose mice care a bit about business.

Mice are all very well when animated with big eyes or in books- even when I see them in real life, I have nothing much against them.

They’re rather cute, actually. With there black eyes and soft ears and general furriness.

But they have little consideration for people like me in moments like this.

I do believe he is intent on making sure I get nothing done.

I don’t understand how the princesses get the mice to actually HELP them-

Perhaps if I sang to him he would listen….

The Tell-Tale Handwriting

My clipboard is absently decorated with an assortment of scribbled doodles in pen.

It is the clipboard I use for writing.

The scribbled doodles are a result of the many times an elusive idea in my mind refuses to come out.

When I have nothing to put on paper, I draw on my clipboard.

This is not exactly a good thing, as I can’t remember if the clipboard actually belongs to me.

But lately both paper and clipboard have remained untouched.

I’m afraid of them.

They sit there, imposingly empty, daring my to try and give them something worth while.

But every time I begin, the very sight of my own handwriting seems to be mocking me. It reminds me of all the things that handwriting has said in the past. All the false starts and failures. The empty words and cringe-worthy dialogue.

The people and stories I’ve abandoned.

How could this time be any different?

That handwriting has become a mark of my own incapability.

That tell-tale handwriting.

My solution is simple.

I must not betray who I am to my own subconscious. Or rather, I must not betray who I have been.

I mustn’t let every word I write ask why I even try.

I must escape this past.

This handwriting that says everything in only a word.

So, I have resorted to typing, at least until this phase passes.

I will write in untraceable words, bound by no chains of the past.

I will write as if I am like the rest of them. As if they will accept me. Me and my words.

As if the things that I need to say are things that someone needs to hear.

And maybe they are.