HOME, HOME FOR THE STRANGE

That’s the way I feel about my little concrete hunk of the world at times. I’m not saying that they do it that way on purpose, just that it seems we have plenty of people who are less than what might be defined as normal.

I will admit that I’ve probably been over this territory before in some posting. But there are times when I just feel like some things are worth a second visit. In this situation the daily interaction with people on the fringe of sanity sort of inspires my thoughts.

I realize that there is no place on earth where insanity and dementia don’t have a foothold. Which in part fascinates me because of the countless efforts we make to try and be sure we make things look normal. And then we create governments and elect leaders somehow thinking they are going to be different than the rest of us. This is insanity naturally, but that is sort of consistent with everything else I suppose.

To me, part of being youthful is one’s dependence and faith in ideals. We are too inexperience to appreciate how perfect is generally a word that in no way applies to the things of man. Between our fantasies and naiveté we manage to contrive a reality that doesn’t exists.

Then we march out into the real world as an adult, with our head still in the clouds and clutching our diplomas from either high school or college totally ready to conquer the world. Well the one in our head at least.

Somewhere along the way we visit the real world. The one where things are broke and never will get fixed. A place where good doesn’t always win and bad sometimes does. Suddenly we discover we aren’t the center of the universe and then before long, we take that first escape with the help of some form and reality is our master.

It is called growing up. It might not always be a pleasant process, but it happens just the same. Along the way we discover that just like our fantasies, normal and sanity are variables rather than constants.

For me that crossroads of thought came some times after I became involved in local politics. My grandfather had been the political kingpin in our city for many years before I was an adult so I wasn’t totally ignorant of the way things worked. But I stupidly thought I could do it differently. Then I found out I couldn’t. I was just as greedy, corrupt and in need of all the good stuff as he was.

Plus I soon discovered the bland metropolis I lived in truly did thrive with nuts. Not special ones you understand, just total and completely dull minds who had no hope of ever rising above their lunacy.

Now days, I just expect stupid to be a worthy condition in our city. I haven’t gone so far as to want to celebrate it. I just stopped lying about it. That makes life a little fun when you know it is just a sick game where the winner is the one who can lie the best.