Shutting Out The World

Shutting Out The World

By Joel Elveson

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In the dark of the blackness that is night sits a man at a desk with moisture in his eyes as he stares blankly but longingly into the archives of his mind. There is music he knows so well accompanying him on his journey to way back along his way back home. Those were the sounds of his younger years. With a tap of his finger, he is launched to wherever he knows not where.

Daybreak introduces a new day. Now to find a new way to be amongst the living while avoiding the world. The internet is and is not his great escape. Wherever he goes the world is with him as it rests in a pouch attached to his belt on his right side hip. He is no longer in touch or desirous of a hand to hold or lips to kiss. The world is not a friend but he knows he is in this world with others knowing he exists as well. His heart is connected to his mind. They work in unison to keep him going.

You can close the shutters of your life if you so choose. Close the windows tightly. Draw the blinds down low. With every breath, you breathe in this world you indoctrinate yourself to place you want no part of but nevertheless, it is unavoidable. A ring from a phone, an unexpected knock on the door all further serve to remind you yet again that you exist as life exists. Accept the unacceptable truth of who you really are inside of what you pretend to be.

The hurt, the hate, the successes once enjoyed, the failures that really were not are all being tied up in a neatly stacked bundle to be displayed in a curio cabinet perched in a place of prominence. In the attempted absentia of all things living in cohesion cannot be covertly covered up. And the light sneaks its peeks into the forefront preparing perhaps for the numbing of the rejections or objections that festered for so long now. Try as you may the world cannot be shuttered nor shut out even as you shutter yourself in.

Sometimes everything is wrong

Now it’s time to sing along

When your day is night alone (hold on)

(Hold on) if you feel like letting go (hold on)

If you think you’ve had too much

Of this life

Well, hang on

–Everybody Hurts-R.E.M

Seasons spent sighing away until the tears rolled in and onto an already beaded beard. A heart so broken from living a life of loneliness. A closeness that rode away in a silver car packed to the brim shredding the formerly felt feeling of family. What that must have done to you. My friend, I know yes I know how it feels. While the aching back was already starting to break from the agony of anticipating agitation that woman sat before you covered with leeches hurled her hate attack right at you. Needless to say, the target was hit. Once a man who did deals they said could not get done is now less than a skeleton of his former self. The pride of his power to produce plunged into an ocean of obscurity.

Although you were defeated by despair now it is time to hunker down to fight your life. One day it may all come running back to you with a renewed feeling of rejuvenation. Back up your vacated throne you never thought you would ever sit on again is exactly where you may be. Remphasizing your unrelenting rules of my way or no way can conceivably become reattached to you. Go for it! Strategically recreate Strategic Staffing Group. It was not Jenny, Jackqueline, Ray, Robert, Arie or Jack whose shoulders carried the team. It was YOU!

Yours was the only personal phone that was allowed the ring to resonate throughout the office. It was ONLY YOU who was allowed to slam and stomp as you damn well pleased. What you said you wanted, what you said you needed, whom you said you needed was gleefully given to you. Your answers to the questions were the only ones that mattered. Almost on hands and knees and faces filled with fear, they would beg you to stay.

Brian tried to knock you down to his shoe size but he could not dislodge you. That was YOUR turf! That was YOUR world! Only a select few could play in your playground. This is the past you now choose to pretend never happened. Bang the door behind you minus all you once were which is now hidden in the packages you schlepped (the Yiddish word meaning carried) home on the subway. You may schlep along but you are not a schlepper.

You can shut people out or let them tune into you so they are part of your life and not an intrusion into it. The earth continues to spin on its axis. So you too are spinning around desperately trying to encircle yourself to a place of solitude. Go ahead run away from yourself or run to yourself. Choose your direction or it will be chosen for without your prior knowledge or consent. Choose not to live life in seclusion while you still have a life to give.

So often we choose to crawl when we can run. We choose to be blind when we can see. Our lives are not our own until we take possession of it. On the road, with, what we call life it is all there before your eyes. Put down the shield take down the shutters open your heart. No longer can you illuminate the illusion that you are all you have or want. A click on a mouse or push of a button will not mute the sound of waves beating against the inside your mind struggling to get out struggling to live and be free.

Just because you play a game of let’s pretend there is no world other than acquired nothingness it does mean all the singers and players will fall silent. The moon will still glow in the nighttime as it hovers over the majestic waters that flow from mighty rivers. Dolphins leap into the air with glee in celebration of life. Birds still fly free laying down their nest wherever they may be. The dust that is twisting in the winds turns and flips over and yet over again before tumbling gracefully on the ground chokes you up with words you yearn to speak but will not hear.

We all have a voice or a vision of what it is we are even if it is not what we want to be. Take hold of a hand and let it take you to its leader. Accept a kiss on the check from ruby red lips. Your circle is no longer unbroken. The chick that just cracked the eggshell that had it trapped inside is now free. It wants the world while the world awaits its arrival. So too does the world wait for you to re-emerge whereupon you will feel the power of the wind as the rays of the sun is soaked into your moisture-starved wrinkled skin. Grab a handful of life and this time don’t let go. There will be plenty of time for you to slumber underground but that time is not now. You can’t shut out the world as it will never let you rest until it finds you.

Thank you to all who read or will read this piece. There are two people who never cease to amaze me or douse me with their humanity. It is with this in mind I owe a deep debt of gratitude to both Larry Tyler and Bharat Mathur whose friendship can never be put into words but mean so much to me. THANK YOU LARRY AND BHARAT! Not a day goes by that you fail to impart you unfailing wisdom to me. The miles that separate each from the other will always lead us to be together in one space.

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