T-Shirt Ninja, and Other Non-Threats

I'm guilty, I'll admit. I realized this morning, or possibly last night, while washing my face, that I, despite my years of training in you-should-know-betterology, have indulged in one of the greatest sins of all mass media consumptiondom. Yes, it's true, I've been thinking in goodguy/badguy terms. Now, I know, I am painfully aware, that there aren't really good authoritarian dictatorships and bad authoritarian dictatorships, there are no good and bad rebel insurgents, but some part of me still struggles to dichotomize international and global conflict into manifestations of the forces of good and evil.

Perhaps this urge stems from the black and white dichotomies of my religious upbringing. Or maybe I'm just an optimistic little idealist? I feel the need to box up warfare and pull it apart because, apparently, in my merry little world if I can definitely pick a goodguy and a badguy, then I don't have to accept that world peace isn't just impossible, it's improbable. If I can find a goodguy, the world will have its hero.

Never one to hang on to irrational ideas for *ahem* much longer than I know they're irrational, I've revised my thinking on goodguys vs. badguys. Turns out, the goodguys and the badguys are really all just guys. Guys with guns. And if you're looking for someone to stick up for, or whose side you can take with a conscience free and clear, it's the ones without the guns you want.

If I Got Up and Left

During my absence, the urge to abandon my life has been growing inside me, somewhere along the back of my skull. Note: yes, it really was more neglect than absence. The mass of the bug grows, like black velvet sludge, atop my brain, pushing against the walls of my skull, while it's tail slithers and snakes through my body. It creeps down my throat, entwined in my vocal cords, and wends its way around my lungs and liver. My intestines and uterus are hidden in the coils of this sly black adder. And it splits, ever so gracefully, to pull at the muscles of my thighs. The tails of this, this snake, this thing, this urge, are tied taut at my ankles, so thick that my knees cannot be kept still more than twenty minutes. It pulses, rolling its sinews inside me, urging me to go.