Pain and Opportunity

Part of my trouble in life is that I am very empathetic.  I don't think successful people are.  Depends on your definition of success, of course, but I am not talking about the NPR definition.  I am talking about the aggressive capitalistic kind of success.  Even in art.  There is a ruthlessness about success that doesn't let you sit and weep over the misfortunes of others.  You might express it, capitalize upon it, but you don't spend time feeling their pain.  Not Picasso.  Not Warhol.  Not even Bobby Dylan.  That is what I think.

I, on the other hand, tend to feel other people's pain accutely.  Both the fortunate and unfortunate alike.  I have felt terrible for the wealthiest people I have known, have felt their struggles and their losses and made those (not their successes) my own.  And losers?  Forget about it.  I am all about losers.  Every fucking character flaw I can make my own.  Success, I am realizing, has been anathema to me.

I must stop looking at stories and videos from Japan.  Officials lie.  Who doesn't believe that?  The food, the water, the air are becoming radioactive.  Scientist will wait a few years before they begin to tell us what happens to all the radioactive elements that are blown and washed to sea.  Right now it isn't as important.  We are now willing to accept larger levels of radioactive material in our food and water and air than we were before.  What else can we do?  Science changes.  Those previous levels--those were just overcautious.  We've accepted all the deaths that burning fossil fuels cause as "natural."  Radioactive deformities, sicknesses, and deaths will become naturalized, too.  The news will be delivered in calmer tones without shame or outrage.  It will be a matter of fact.

I am burning with radioactivity.  I am sick with it.  I am full of blisters and boils and degenerating organs.  How can you not be?  Who allowed this?  Would you have?  If so, I suggest, you are capable of success.

I have violently conflated two things, I know.  Illogically.  But this is a blog, not an academic press.  It is an ego, an id, a blasphemy, an underbelly of a dream.

Sick all weekend, through, St. Patrick's Day and its celebrations and festivities, through the brilliant weekend of jazz and parties and art festivals, through the enormous full moon and the coming of spring.  I felt lousy.  I slept.  Alone.

Now with the sun, I will return to the factory, to Maggie's Farm, to toil and labor away what I try to call my life.  I have been without celebration, without festival, fair, or jamboree.  I will wonder if people are going to bars and cafes and amusement parks in Japan.  I will wonder if anyone dares to laugh.  I'll wonder if someone whispers a joke.

Somewhere, though, someone will be thinking, seeing advantages, changing definitions, making new standards, inventing new games.  Certainly they will see pain, for there lies opportunity.  

The birds have died in Japan.  I read that.  A cardinal lights upon a post outside my window as I write.  We look at one another for a moment.  Then he is gone.