Somewhere in the Future with Bob Dylan

In the future somewhere, there is a funeral parlor with a closed casket and Bod Dylan's voice creaking over what will likely be an inferior speaker for such an event, while a professional man with a white carnation on his lapel checks his watch to see how much time until he has to start ferrying people out so they can prepare for the next service.
It's all very depressing this death anticipation that tends to grab me from time to time, and it's not in the sense that I was in the hospital for a four day jag, listening to the man in the next room, who only seemed to wake up in the middle of the night to cry out "help" in a dry voice and wondering if all the monitors I was hooked up to would suddenly scramble into some kind of electronic, bleeping anarchy just as the lights fade and all the sounds get warped and whatever happens after that happens. Whether that's an angry, vengeful God waiting there with numchuks to beat me into oblivion for being a skeptic, or some kind of eternal reward, or maybe even the worst: inky, black nothingness, I don't know, and to be quite honest I don't really want to think about that right now.
And I don't really want to think about any of it, but I once again find myself over tired and my "shuffle song" playlist seems to be leaning towards the morbid.
I thought I was over this whole thing, but then "In My Life" kicks on.
Supposedly they played that at Cobain's service, so of course I've insisted in some shoddily written, non-leagally binding will I scribbled down that probably won't be found until 4 years after I'm dead, that it be played at mine.
Anyway, I'm sick of waiting around with nervous energy wondering which internal organ will start spouting blood, or where the tumor is going to pop up, or if my heart is going to slow down or just explode this time. Or you know the insane fear that somehow I'm going to be crushed or trapped, or murdered, or the immediacy of a car accident that leave the steering wheel crushed in your chest. I can hear how that sounds, just the crunch of the metal and plastic bending. It sounds fake, but the next thing you realize once you get your wits is that it actually did happen.
Yeah all that.
All that is never too far from getting prime time slots in the frontal lobe.
Brutal miserable thoughts. The kind of thing miserable teenagers who can't get dates should be thinking about before they go to college and realize they're really good at science.
Well I'm not good at science, so maybe that's why I never shed some of this teen angst bullshit.
Of course, it comes and goes. Other times I don't really give a fuck. Whatever will be will be.
The story gets ugly on all sides. I'm afraid of the future which is stupid because I don't even know if I'm going to be in it.
I'm afraid of living on an overheated rock with the oceans in my living room while President Palin is on television letting me know that she's going to lob some cruise missles all over the globe because being America means doing whatever the fuck you want and never having to say sorry, while dozens of people you see at the super market pump their fists and chant USA, USA. But of course she does it in a cute, folksy way.
It'll be serious times in the future.
They'll be no music, or expression, or fun.
That's what the future looks like to me some days.
That's what it looked like to me today.
I guess there's always tomorrow.

everything quiet on the long trail outside

at 9:30 he decided to stop. he couldn't remember the last time he put this amount of effort into a singular project without blaring distractions about other things pecking away at him. Some jazz quietly waffled across the breeze running through the house. His hands were stained with marker streaks, a bi-product of the drawings he unleashed on the poster boards in front of him. He wasn't an artist, never had any real propensity to draw, or create, but he found the package of poster boards, someone must have left them in the house, and he had the magic markers, and he couldn't think of a whole lot else to do with his time.

The girl would have been proud of him but she was gone now and probably not coming back. Something felt funny about having her around constantly so he started an argument. At first she thought he was kidding when he complained that she must have eaten all the Kosher Dill pickles he enjoyed on his sandwiches. He griped about this for several minutes before he began violently pulling items from the refrigerator and throwing them to the floor in between shouts of calling her "selfish" and a "liar". It didn't take long for the girl to leave, promising to return when he wanted to "call to say he was sorry". As of now he hadn't called and had no intention of doing so. He liked the girl but it seemed like he got more done without her there.

Now that the squeaks of the markers had ceased the silence in the house was in stereo. He peered his eyes back and forth as if to make sure he had been alone the whole time. He looked down at his new works spread out across floor amidst full ashtrays, plates of dried up food and dirty laundry. He was working with three colors, green, black and red. When he'd first started making these lines across the white paper he wasn't sure what he was trying to get, and now that he was done, now that he realized he put such effort, such focus, into it he felt that there must be something to it. He studied the wild lines, the shapes, the circles, the boxes he filled in with vicious streaks. He even looked at the quiet spots on the paper, where nothing was filled in. Maybe all this summed him up in some surreal, abstract way, maybe he was just a bundle of noise trapped inside a box, shooting around trying to get into the quiet. Of course it was equally just as possible that he just needed to get outside for a little while.

and finally the truth

"So you just came back to me because you realized there was nothing better out there?" she asked.
"Actually no, I realized there is a lot better out there than you but I just can't get any of it."