The Illustrated Encyclopedia of an Imaginary Universe

Today I thought I was accidentally wearing a beret but I don’t even own a beret.

The light turned green and I drove on.

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People have an unnerving habit of wanting to stand directly behind me. Sometimes I wonder if I rotated in place, people would rotate in time, just to stay behind me.

Ruffling papers, breathing heavily, watching.

Something tells me it’s wrong to mix the audience with the captives, but they do it anyway. The barriers that used to divide the visitors from the caged have been removed in favor of psychological aversion and a genuine loathing for any existence other than our own. We seem to have become a closely knit family of solipsists.

Sometimes I’m filled with some sort of skulking anger and omnidirectional derisionfor everyone around me. Other times, I feel an unabashed and unconditional love for everyone. This grevious indecision leads me to the conclusion that I am no better than my peers, which is not that terrible of a thing. But the ensuing confusion lends itself to the conception of misconceptions and the breeding of extreme emotions. Either anger or love, rarely apathy. This isn’t anything of which to be proud nor is it something about which one may like to boast. It is a simple truth.

Perhaps it’s something like the mixed emotions a parent might feel over a malformed newborn. The selfish hope of ‘ten fingers and ten toes’ blown away with a doctor’s somewhat sorrowful news that the infant has webbed fingers and toes. How does one cope? You wanted a little boy to play catch but your dreams have been dashed because your newborn son’s legs are shriveled and useless. He’ll forever be bound to a wheelchair.

But that’s unforgivably ridiculous; an absurd comparison. How can I possibly know the ruinous disappointment? I’ve had my dreams shattered before but I seriously doubt my tiny hopes and charming daydreams could amount to the weighty wall of hate that mgiht casually build itself in concentric circles around the hardening heart of one who’s life has been forever altered for the worse by a retarded child, or one that died far too young. Of the latter, I’m familiar, but that’s not this.

For the moment, anyway.

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It’s the day before April Fool’s but I don’t really feel foolish. I’m actually going to break with tradition with my yearly pranks and obscure tomfoolery. I just don’t have the inspiration or motivation to conceive and then execute some ridiculously complex scheme just for laughs. Somehow, and I’m not sure how, I’ve made some secret internal conclusion that I was going to April Fool’s Day and instead focus on Easter. I haven’t bothered myself about Easter in nearly four years. As a happily practicing non-Christian, I’ve slowly lost interest in Easter, particularly as a religious holiday. But, like almost all other holidays, I do have a certain curiosity and, in some cases, rabid interest in the non-denominational consumerism surrounding it.

The core religious significance has, for the most part, been entirely replaced by completely unrelated quasi-historical mythology which, in and of itself, doesn’t have much at all to do with the original story. Rabbits with eggs? Fat guys with presents? What the fuck?

So this weekend, I’m going to dig into a white chocolate bunny, strategically hide plastic eggs filled with random tiny candies, eat Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs (my favorite!), and perhaps even boil and dye some eggs. Maybe I’ll even remember some of the vaguely disconcerting stories about some radical Essene Rabbi who, would he have known what was going to happen, would’ve told everyone that this isn’t that, either.

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Received an e-mail at work from a woman named Melissa who wrote to say that everyone refuses to open any e-mails she sends.