It's a trap
The thrilling beat of your heart as your pulse races to the slowing of the bright red roller coaster. Exhilarating wonder excites your imagination as you start to see the wild hair and expressions of excitement as people unstrap out of their seats. Your perfectly chosen squad of roller coaster slaying amusement park gangsters grasping the gate, at attention, ready! You take the lead leaping over the double-seated cart with your squad’s gear in hand to stash across the way. As you are making your way back your entire universe turns for the worst. With the biggest, “WTF” expression you look at your now split squad as they shrug it off.
Slowly and miserably you sit down into your coaster seat, for where your friend is supposed to be, now sits a stranger. Dressed oddly in a ragged running shirt, short shorts, and topped off with a straw fedora looking blankly at the ceiling above, he chuckles to himself. Already pissed, you try to calm yourself to endure this seat taking idiotic, but you can’t. As you pull down the safety bar on the coaster you realize he is obnoxiously staring at you. As you angrily turn to meet his obnoxious gaze he begins to speak, “How do you think we got from drink coasters to roller coasters?”, I ask you with the most sincere of expression.
My dear friends, I am simply here to offer you insightful perspectives along with the eternal play of life. I’ll be shifting your canvas as you paint; one picture from many perspectives. Maybe stirring a desire to re-explore past work with new eyes, but not to give the entire show away to you. Then again, maybe a small peek behind the curtain. We like it right in the middle; the sweet spot, but not too sweet. We take a certain serious attitude to get this just right don’t we? Family, entertainment, love, health, money, all of it, but just the right balance. We aspire to maintain a perspective that justifies the person we have been up until now, while all along seeking out a little more to have a one-up on the universe.
To get ahead!
Ahead of when?
Ahead of where?
Ahead of whom?
Where are you now?
“What game am I playing?”, you ask
“As many as I can”, I respond
Do not hold your breath in fear that you may not get another; it will kill you. In the same breath, do not feel guilt and shame for being taken in by the games of life. I myself have suffered from extreme anxiety based on a God complex of wanting to be an observer in life, but not be taken in by the show. To separate observation from feeling. The downside is, in order to do this, I must maintain emotional distancing from the people and events in which I want to observe. Holding my umbrella, standing in a pool of pride refusing to play the game, while looking down on those fools dancing in the rain.
Life drags me down,I resist the urge to fall and stand tall
Life lets up,I lean back excitingly reeling in a new perspective
Life dangles in front of me smirking, as I take in my reward
Life chuckles and says, “Uh huh, caught in another game aren't you?”
Do you remember the last time something or even better, someone took you in? When they pulled you so deep into the show that silly that time dissolved into nothingness. Your worries and concerns about future events fading into the alluring dark spiral in her eyes. It was a falling preceded by a happening; you, the being happening to be there for the fall. In the same token, I ask that you lean in a little bit. Throw those hips into it. Shake those stale visions of your current reality loose. Sway with me and let the currents of thought move us here and there. Your serious focus is wasted scheming how you'll steal the show. Is it the anticipation of the coaster dropping down the hill that scares you? The fear that in that brief moment you are going to lose yourself to the thrill of plunging into deep thought, questioning who you are in these moments as your beliefs are challenged, and revealing your true self to me? Maybe? One step further. Is it that in revealing yourself you also have to admit that you have not been a genuine person?
A fake.
That was my fear. To be known as a fake person, for no one can trust the person that hides behind a mask;as they say. So I ask you, justified masked crusader, who is the person wearing the mask? Our word person, stemming from the Latin word; persona, an actor's mask in a play. I endeavor to play the roles of multiple personas from the stage of life as I sit in the director's chair, behind the red curtain, with the rest of the audience; being lost in awe of the directing of my own playing. Screaming, "Encore!" as the fat lady sings.
Wild Card
The Fool
The Joker
