The only thing that is true in life is death. What a crock of shit.

That may be true for the rest of you. It isn’t true for me. From the Byzantine Empire to the very last second it has been me and the rest of you fuckers. Day after day waiting for a day that has yet to come. Can you imagine the things that I have seen? Like a slow trickling saline bag of useless information. How much do you think has really changed in that amount of time? A whole lot less than what you are imagining inside your head that is for sure. For a while there it was a whole lot of nothing. Waiting for the people you know to die. Can you imagine the amount of death I have had to endure? The amount of people I have had to watch just drift off into nothing. Lucky bastards. What I would give… My whole existence… Imagine that.

I’m not some kind of Zombie or God. And that’s all the time I’m going to waste on that, and believe me I could waste a lifetime explaining how I am neither of those things. Take my word when I say I have spent lifetimes proving that I am neither a zombie or related to God in any fashion. I bleed, I get sick, I hurt, I heal, and I’m still here. Something lost and mixed up in the code. Something is broken in my DNA code because I don’t age either. Forever 21 isn’t just a dying quick fashion outlet. Try that on for size. For you modern horror lovers and tweens out there I’m not a vampire either. Vampires don’t exist, get over it. Nope, I’m just one unlucky son of a bitch. We had different words back then of course. Less vile, but humanity evolves and gets lost in the translation. Twenty-seven different evolutions, that is if I was to die and be reborn, but as you can imagine I have a hard time passing for sixty-three. So, it is more like eighty-one different lifetimes I have had to endure, but who’s counting at this point? What is a day that doesn’t end? Tomorrow.   

1622 years, 3 months, and 19 days… or 592, 532 days… let that sink in…

I was born on Easter Sunday if you can believe it, of all days. No, I’m not Jesus and as I said, not related to God in any way that I have found. Maybe in their image. No, I’m not anything. I just am at this point. How’s that for an answer? It sucks. To be this god damn old, and not look a day over thirty-five. It sounds awesome, I can hear it in your head, and it isn’t all bad, but having to start over again and again. New places, new people, new identities, new processes of thought, and a never ending new. It is exhausting beyond the point of caring. Some people can’t even be bothered to change their underwear let alone give up on everything they possibly once knew. Did you know that the Earth was once the center of the universe? We believed that with all of our hearts. That’s a generalization though. Most of us could give a shit if we were the center of anything or not because we were hungry. People are still hungry by the way, but at least they know that the sun is the center of the universe. I’m sure it brings them comfort. I know it would have to all of us back then. The ones that could read that is. I didn’t learn to read until I was well into my second hundred years on what was not to be the center of the universe. What was the point? Imagine that.

Should I waste our time going over everything that it is that I have seen or had to relearn? Go over the greatest hits or are you good? Personally, I’m good, but I would like to at least stay topical. Lately the news cycle of modern man, that’s what I call you losers, is fixated on abortion and how precious life really is once again. Let me tell you it is pretty damn precious. About as precious as your rights to pursue happiness or walk down the street and not be harassed for existing. Do you know what we used to do to deformed babies? Where I was from at least, and you can extrapolate for the rest of the world because I’m sure we were not unique in any way. We’d throw those freaks of nature right over the cliffs south of my village and then kill the mother. We’d make her watch as we chucked her child into the rocks below and then to prove our point we’d slit her throat right then and there. Why didn’t we just throw her over the cliffs with the child? I’ll never know. Didn’t think to ask. That is just how it was. Best guess is that it didn’t seem humane.  Do you have any idea how dull blades made of iron can become overtime? Slitting throats by the way isn’t like the movies, quick and easy, it takes effort. One time in France I watched someone get guillotined over and over from a dull blade and poor equipment maintenance. That unlucky bastard was screaming, “I can’t feel my legs. I can’t feel my legs.” Over and over again like anyone gave a shit. Want to know what his crime was? Hang on to your panties… He had the balls to say the King was full of shit and enough people happened to be standing around. The river of blood that would flow down every street in America today. Paraphrasing of course, I’m sure though it was the way he said it. Because life is precious so long as it fits in with the times. At least he got to die.

Maybe I too could die by conventional means? I do bleed after all. But what if I don’t? The scars of past attempts have been enough to know that by some miracle I always pull through. Watching and waiting. That’s about all you can do with time. Replaying memories of time gone by. Even that has become boring and redundant with enough time. I thought by now I’d be on some distant planet we found and eating exotic fruits we’d never heard of. Instead, I’m sucking on dragon fruit and observing yet another debate on abortion as if we discard one. There aren’t another three to four babies screaming their way into this life. Ballpark that’s close to 10, 687 new and future assholes to take your jobs and tell you how you’ve been doing it wrong this whole time. Believe me when I say they will be very vocal about how wrong you have been this whole time as though they were born with the knowledge and not adapting to our mistakes and discoveries. It is off putting to say the least, but you’ll get over it in time or die. Unless you are me. Then getting over it and waiting is the only option. 10,687… That number to me is insane and I’ve watched it get to this point. For context, since we all love facts now, I was born one of possibly 190 million people back in 400 A.D. ish. There are 7.8 billion people now… Either get busy getting us the fuck out of here or quit getting busy…

I say “ish,” because of course we weren’t so obsessed with time like we are now. There was no, “It’s my birthday week, bitches,” type of celebration going on back in my day. Okay, boomer. Which is ass backwards if you ask me. Speaking of boomers. What a bunch of pussies. There someone had to say it. So, you had to be raised by a bunch of people who lived through the “great” depression and World War 2. “They were hard on me.” Frowning face. We conquered lands on fucking on foot like it was nobodies business. Walked uphill six miles through snow? We marched across Asia in scandals not because they were in style, but because that was the best form of foot wear we had if we had them. Only to drag your bitching and moaning asses to this point in history. Try that on for size. Think you’re so goddamn special for the things you had to endure? Well, you’re not. We all play our part in getting us here and life has been pretty soft for awhile now. There might still be plenty of real men and women walking around on this planet like we did so long ago, but I haven’t bothered to step foot anywhere they are from in centuries and neither have you. Things get gradually better, deal with it. Progress already. Where are my rockets and space travel or flying cars or any of the other bull shit ideas we’ve been kicking around?

Had I had any idea we’d still be debating abortion rights this late in the game I’d have developed the shit myself by now. That’s what faith in humanity is worth. Disappointment. Twenty-seven lifetimes and we’re debating which is more humane. To silently destroy a fetus or wait until they have thoughts, feelings, dreams, goals, a purpose, and send them off to war to kill others with the same afflictions. Only for them to come back equally as unwanted as before the day they were born. How highly evolved we have become over time. Highly evolved. That’s what they say we are now. Might as well be living in mud huts in the middle of the jungle and shitting into holes for how sophisticated we really are. How much we really care about our fellow man. Every life is so precious. Sixteen centuries later I’m here to tell you… It really isn’t.

Maybe there could have been, but that time has come and gone. Past all of us bye and we didn’t even get to say goodbye. Who knows how much more of this I am going to have to endure for no reason at all. “How much more death and destruction am I going to have to sit through,” I shout onto the sky, the dirt, to the world with no reply. How much more until the rest of you figure out what I already know? What we have always known since the beginning of time. Life and everything in it isn’t that fucking special. How we feel isn’t how it really is. How it is, is never how we really feel. The days of fucking to recreate have long since passed. We fuck for fun because we are bored. You want more of us walking, talking, and farting around? Then give us a purpose beyond standing around. If only there was a way to bring any sort of purpose to any of this. If only life mattered a little more than it did before. Purpose is the end of progression. Once you know that there is no purpose to any of anything the progression loses its worth.

In 400 A.D… ish, we thought that we were all that there ever was. We conquered lands in fear of what could be. Strangers in a strange land with even stranger ways. A misguided purpose that progressed us along. A misguided that still perpetuates simple minded people forward to this day. I’d hardly call that progression, but I guess we just have to take what we can get. Simple minded is here to stay. Incestuously we fear and we will always fear what we don’t know. Sixteen hundred years later we don’t know much more than anything. We haven’t learned to guide our misguided efforts elsewhere. Towards the stars, towards anywhere that doesn’t put any of this into the ground. The new thing is that everyone wants to be so woke about race, sexuality, gender, and who we are individually… But we have barely been born in the eyes of existence. With enough lifetimes under our belts, you’d think we’d all see that, but every lifetime is so single minded.

We are designed to only care about ourselves. I’ll admit I’m no better. All this time walking around and do you want to know what I have done to make it better?… Nothing. All this time walking amongst each of you and all those that came before you, and all I mastered was staying out of the way. My gift to a world that I haven’t cared anymore about than on my first day here. 1600 years and counting of not giving a shit. I may not be related to God, but I have to say I kind of get it. I get why she, him, they, or it hasn’t bothered to come down here and direct a day of traffic personally. How many floods before you throw your hands up and move on? I mean they killed my son and rewrote the damn book I gave them I don’t even know how many times. It is beyond frustrating to believe for even a second that they don’t care about anything more than themselves every single day. They think they’re all getting up here to live their best lives. Hedging their bets on a bunch of lies. And I’ve got some news for them. If I wanted them to wipe their asses on my couch, I’d have invited them a long time ago.

Yet, there are still some of you waiting for an invitation. A little secret between me and you. Birth was the invitation and a whole hell of a lot of you have been dragging your asses across my couch for a while now. This land was your land until you shit on it from sea to shining sea. I mean in the name of the son and the holy spirit you are running out of places to bury your shit. Some of you are living on top of mountains of your own shit right now. Mountains and mountains of trash, bodies, and chances to make a change. Y’all want to move in but I already gave you the keys. Let that sink in. Let that take a hold. Kill each other or don’t kill each other. You’re going to do it either way so what difference should it matter to me? Advance to the point that none of it matters. Highly evolve yourselves beyond the stars. Poison it all back to the start. Concern yourselves with pronouns and the beginning of life and keep shitting on all that I have given you. Keep up the great work. I’d tell you it was almost worth it but I don’t even remember how all this began anymore. Fuck it I give up. This is me now. God’s already walked out the door a long ass time ago.

It took several lifetimes to realize I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. It took even more lifetimes to understand that none of this was going to figure itself out. Three lifetimes ago I decided to make the best of whatever this might be. I’m running out of lifetimes in me and I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. I started this wanting sympathy, but now, once again, I don’t know what I want out of any of this. A good reason to die? A life worth living? An existence that meant anything? It isn’t there, but I keep looking. I keep the flame of humanity alive in myself. I’m as selfish as a god and as awful as the devil. I am more human than any human that has come before or since. Maybe accepting humanity for what it is and not what it could be was the path we have all been walking without knowing. Maybe highly evolved was no way to ever be. After 1600 years there really isn’t anything left to say that hasn’t been ignored already.

There is this though. Whether it means anything to anyone, to the lord, or to whatever this is supposed to be. There is this one last thing. Life may not be precious, but every day is. Every day is a moment to enjoy. A moment to reflect. A moment to make a change and a choice. Everyday given is one less taken away. Take that for what it is worth to you. Take that to some higher place. Take that for granted. Take it for what it is. Just don’t let it go to waste, fall apart, and disappear.  God’s said a lot of things, made a lot of rules, made a lot of mistakes through the ages too, but their message has always been very clear.

“Humanity is only a reflection of myself and what I have to give and I have given you everything.” 1600 years of walking, talking, and farting around I may have missed out on death, but I learned plenty along the way. So, stop wiping your ass on their fucking couch and clean up after yourselves for a change. If you want to bring a life into this world, give it purpose. Simple as that. Otherwise let it go. Pretty simple too. None of us are perfect and that is by design. For better or worse. We do the best with what we got and we’ve been given plenty. Plenty more than we’ve ever really needed. Give up on the fear of the unknown and embrace the love of knowing you are not alone. Trust me watching everyone you love and everything you know die isn’t easy, it doesn’t feel good, and it’s still going to happen. The only thing that hurts more is watching all that effort and sacrifice disappear for fear of what could be next. Change is good and in enough time you’ll see that existence didn’t put us here for any real purpose, frowny face, but here we are… so highly evolved and ready to move on. 

Hopefully this story hit all the right nerves… I’m sure it will have stung a few that I wasn’t trying to hit… That’s the nature of violence… the nature of opinion…  it doesn’t always go where you intended… Not perfect by design…

For instance… I never intended to involve God in any form… other than that the character was not related or of holy decent… still isn’t… and yet by the end… God was all I could seem to think of to explain the absence of death in the character’s existence… For the record… me using “God” doesn’t imply any singular god or religious being… confusing I know with the quote at the end… But as I believe in none of them… “Humanity is only a reflection of myself and what I have to give and I have given you everything.”… is what I have gleaned from what I know about all of them… all religions are not the same… all beliefs are not the same… but I think we can all agree that at their core this is what they are getting at… opinion… you are more than welcome to disagree… but what are you fighting?…

This question gets extrapolated to everything we have ever fought for… this idea of wrong and right is endless… based in fear… dripping with unknown… we spend too much time fighting something we don’t have the answers too… fighting for something that isn’t up to us beyond the unknown while limiting what we do know… abortion… nasty topic I know… we’ve boiled it down to two very distinct sides… drawn a deep line in the sands of time… neither side is wrong by the way… pick a side I could careless… either side is about making a choice… the choice… no matter the consequences though should be yours to choose… the conflict comes when we choose to decide for others… and that is not okay… it is not fair… in a free society… we should be free to make our own choices… for better or worse… for our reasons and no one else’s… I understand I am digging up some bones literally for some of you… and for that I apologize… I’m not trying to stir up the echoes of anyone’s past…

It is a nasty subject… one that doesn’t involve me or you… unless it is me and you that this is happening too… restricting rights isn’t going to change that conversation… it isn’t going to move the needle of our evolution… that conversations is going to happen whether we have access or not… just like it is wasting our time trying to decide if anyone should have access to such rights… because they should… like it or not… they should still have the right to choose… as you do now… as we always have… in a free society… restricting people to a safe means of fulfilling their choice is inhumane… more so than taking a life that hasn’t a clue any of this exists…

Because if we are being the most honest with ourselves… there are plenty of people that are suffering here and now that we could give a fuck about… plenty of people walking… talking… and farting around… that could use your love more than you’d ever know… if you really love humanity as much as you claim… those sad souls could really use your misguided efforts to save a child that is yet to know pain… to know suffering… to understand what it means to never be loved… because they do… again opinion and choice… abortion is what it is… agree or disagree… but it is not the worst of what we do to ourselves by any means… nasty subject… and I’ve said all that was best left unsaid about this today…

On a more positive note… I really wanted to play around with the idea of someone who has been around for too many lifetimes… and not a single thing be remotely special about them… mentally the image was very tangible as too how miserable of an experience that would be… could you imagine?… I’m sure after the realization settled in… a few lifetimes… there would be a few really good lifetimes that were the most enjoyable… before settling back into this idea that life is just life… a novel concept based on our own singular lifetimes… childhood is miserable upon reflection… not quite sure what the hell is going on… then we get the hang of it… kind of… adolescence… of course we don’t really know at the time that this will be the best it ever was… but upon reflection… we know… then like a disease age sets in even further… life doesn’t become good or bad… it just is… middle age… and that is where I am… so that is where the character has to be… a snapshot of what is… not a stretch of the imagination by any means… but still one that seemed interesting to explore…

That lasted a good solid ten minutes before I took a look around and drove the car towards the nearest edge that was bothering me on the day… and here we are… more highly evolved and ready to move on… 

Hope All Is Well…

Highly Acclaimed… Some People Have Enjoyed It…

A Lie

Where did this all begin? The hurt… the pain… the confusion… the lies…

“Everything is fine. Everything is how it is supposed to be. Lie to yourself long enough and everything will be fine. Right?” A lie is the story of where all this began. For one of us at least. Struggling through life during a time when nothing feels certain. Our hopeless character figures out what it means to survive when everything is taken away… Walks away… Goes away… How it feels or how it is? Trying to regain a sense of reality won’t be easy as everything comes closing in. As the depression comes settling in and the desperation grows.

Layne Ambrose holds nothing back as he explores themes of self-discovery and isolation in a day-to-day struggle with a town and life on the brink of collapse. Desperation can and does come from anywhere. Finding solace at the bottom of a bottle… and any substance to escape these new found feelings. A lie can only be stretched so far before the truth is exposed. What is real and what isn’t? When everything feels like a lie inside your head?

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