the typical american

12:30. by myself at the field kicking the ball. over by the school, i can hear the children playing their mundane games of tag and basketball without a second thought. they're laughing, jumping, smiling, cheering. i watch them. i'm not happy. you'd think i would be. i'm on break, what could be better than that? many things, really.

my head is feeling tight now. i can't think of any thing to write about. i'm struggling, thousands of thoughts rushing through my head a second. Spain, no, costa rica, maybe, england, maybe, america, maybe. i don't know, you just feel sick when you can't think of anything to write. you're thinking so hard, concentrating on that one thought, the subject of writing, that you lose all your energy. then i realize, just release. remember electric cool aid acid test? just release. let go, live in the NOW. it'll come if you relax. it happens to everyone, even to the best of writers. so of course it will happen to you. so, what do you do? just observe. look at the world around you.

but there's nothing interesting. here's where i am: the middle of a turf football field with a parking lot and a school on one side, and some one-story houses and the forest of the other side. i went into that forest once. it was depressing. there was lots of trash in white plastic bags, beer bottles, baby diapers and junk. how did this stuff get here? must be a big party scene. i'm walking through the thorns and plants and i come to a small stream. up stream, couple of guys are fishing in a small pool near the place where it runs out of the sewer drain. good luck catching anything. down stream, it goes past the historical society down under river road past all the abandoned car dealerships and the office parks and into the Passaic River. Yes sir, once the dirtiest river in all of the United States. probably still is. i've been in a couple of times, and i'm fine, so i don't know. you know, i've always wondered where the river goes. i always see it in motion, under the bridge, by the path, flowing, but where's it coming from? that's for God to know and you to find out.

so that's where i am. nothing special. there's only one other guy on the track anyway. before, there were a couple of maintainence guys kicking field goals. they were terrible, but it was alright. so, i take a look at this guy, and a hate him already. he probably works at one of those sickening office parks. you know the ones, with miles of concrete parking lots, post-modern 1980's architecture, security cameras all over the place. i always drive by these places and i ask myself, "who works here?" now i know. i'd never work at a place like that. i think any sensible person would know why.

just looking at him, i know every minute detail of his life. his new E-class BMW is still on lease, he bought it last year for 40,000 dollars at one of the three dealers in town. he's a local boy, yes sir he is. Summet high school, class of '62, by God. one of the best tailbacks in the state, star pitcher for the team. never won a championship, though. always seemed to come up short every time. sometimes drops in to see the old coach and talk about the program. "so, how's the team this year?" "oh, you know, same old, same old". he's the only one to show interest. "i can help if you want, still got the old arm going," he says, pretending to throw a baseball. "that's what we've got coaches for, fella." we don't want you here. comes down and watches every game, yes sir, ain't missed a game in almost ten years. always there, leaning against the chain-link fence in his tight fit Levi jeans and t-shirt tucked in. he always wears tennis shoes, just in case they might need him. but they never do. he chats with his old classmates at the game. Chuck Wilson, son of Don, the big real-estate magnet in town: "this kid isn't half as good as you. i remember you could throw a cool 90. you had a chance to make it big." he looks at the kid and nods his head. he knows he blew it, but he doesn't care. he's got a grand three story house, cost 2.1 million, two kids, both at Summet High, a beautiful wife, his highschool sweetheart, in fact, and three cars. he's living the life. he plays golf every sunday at Canue Brook, same tee-time, same old high school friends, same score, can't seem to get any lower. in the summer, he's at the country club every weekend, playing in some tournament. he never wins. but he smiles and wears expensive sunglasses nonetheless. only goes to church at Christmas and Easter, dresses up in his best, looking dapper, always drops a cool 20 in the offering, staring up at the deacon looking for a reaction. but she's featureless, and passes on. she doesn't care. she sees the same thirty of them every time and see hates their guts.

never reads, and if he does, only the Star Ledger or the Courier News, best goddam paper in the state of New Jersey, better than the other junk, the New York Times. always goes to the sports section first, looking at how Rutgers did in basketball or football or bowling. he'll read the results to his children and wife. they stare blankly at him, no one cares. he's a Giants and a Mets fan. hopes they'll do better every year, they never do. his wife's car's a Honda mini-van. every Thursday she takes Kevin with his spiked up hair and skinny features down to the Y to AAU basketball. he's a point guard. his dad'll stand on the sidelines in his business suit-he gets home at 4 every day- and shout encouragment to his son. he's the only dad to do this. after the game- the same advice every time- the same "good job, son," and then back home to watch the 30 minute DirectTV highlights of all the weekend football games, even though he's seen them twice already. he fancy's himself an analyst. when his wife calls him to dinner, he says, "one sec, kate, just let me see this play one more time." he checks and rechecks the ESPN.com football section nightly, looking for advice for his fantasy football team. the tips haven't helped him so far. he followed them all, and he's 6th in his league, losing to a 15-year-old punk who plays soccer and couldn't give a shit about football.

in two paragraphs, that's his life. he doesn't do anything interesting at work, just sits and surfs the Internet all day. in fact, no one's quite sure what he does. not even himself. his dad grew up in summit, lived the same life, died in summit, lived his WHOLE FUCKING LIFE in Summit. he's only been out of the country once, to the Atlantas beach resort in the Bahamas. he wants to go back and has been saving up for years. he thinks he knows Spanish and wants to go to Mexico some time. never wants to go to europe, only stupid French and Germans live there, and the British with their strange accents. yes sir, only place he ever goes on vacation is good old Florida, yep, Miami Beach, hulking high rises, thousands of people on the beach, water smelly from kids shitting in it, but he doesn't mind. he got a good cheap travel package from the Walter Long Travel Agency. he doesn't mind at all, even if he has to put their luggage tags on his pieces of black, shapless luggage.

he's the typical america. he's a mindless robot, a child. he holds no opinions of his own, others influence him. he thinks he once had dreams and ambition and aspirations, but he doesn't even know the definition of "aspiration". he thinks it's the best life he can have, wasting his body, his ONE life on this earth, rotting away in some coporate office park at the water cooler talking about the Monday Night Game, when he can be thinking, living, breathing. he could be writing, writing a novel, a poem, traveling, seeing the world, being free, but he's a slave of habit. he doesn't think at all. and when the slightest strange thought comes into his mind, or when someone asks him about religion or life as a whole, he nerviously laughs and switches the subject to the AL wild card race. yes sir, 290 million people live like this in America. this think about that, 290 MILLION dead, unthinking, uncaring, unbelieving minds. what a waste. what a terrible, terrible thing to waste. what'll happen when he's dead? only through the money and material possessions he owned will he be remembered. yes they may last 10 or even 20 years, but once everything's gone, it's gone and there's no way anyone could ever bring him back. yes, his name'll be on a gravestone in the corner of the graveyard by the railroad tracks, but weather and the passage of time will conquer all. his gravestone will become weathered and beaten until the name and the rock are one. then he will be truly forgotten for all of enternity. Eternity is a very, very long time. What will he have done on this earth? What will he have acheived? Nothing, absolutely nothing at all. He thought life was a joke, a video-game like the ones he used to play all the time. then, only when he's dying, slowly painfully, from Prostate cancer or some other stupid malady, will he realize his mistake. He'll gasp for live, struggle, he wants to live again, a second chance, but no, he's dead. you only get one chance here. best to make the most of it. try to acheive something, be a thinker, don't be afraid of the big issues, the frightening, cosmic issues, they will make you understand the significance of your one being. and then, finally then, will you go out, live an interesting life, and be truly happy.