Sunday, September 17, 2006
Leadership
It's late. Maybe 11:30. I don't know. Nowadays I turn the clock away before I lay down.
It makes me anxious to look at the time.
This is not my bed. It's a top bunk. There are four mattresses in the room. I have a pair of ear plugs on the side of my bed because the guy below me snores like a snowblower.
Across the street in the pub they're booming out redemption songs. It's karaoke night and most of them have gone over there for a drink. In the hall there's the rest of them sitting around on low backed chairs, I could hear them before I put my plugs in, talking about righteousness and corruption and leadership. There must be 30 of us in all. I'm the only one holed up in his room.
I like it that way.
The world is full of extroverts. They grow like Epsilons. Or is that just because they are the only one's out? Don't matter. We're led by the Gamma's and that's what matters. Like it or not. The rest of us just have to scrounge the floor for table scraps.
Righteousness, corruption and leadership. Blah, blah, blah.
I feel alone when I make even a mention of truth and beauty.
I was the one born in the wrong time.
I don't really give a fuck about leading and pioneering and making the world a better place. The world is going to be what it is. Maybe it will be a little hotter in a while. A little poorer. A little less light. Or maybe it won't. I don't know, and I'd hate to take the lead only to find out it's in the wrong way.
What I do give a fuck about is truth. And beauty. And yeah, they aren't tangible. And no, you can't rally and picket for them in front of city hall. But they matter to me and that counts for everything.
The thing is, I don't know if you could even find either of them in the real world. The real world is just a bunch of compromise and half lies and two sided faces. Truth and beauty are religated for the netherworld of my head. They turn themselves up in a verse or a sentence or a few strokes of color. That's them. I don't think I've found them once in small talk. I don't know. Maybe I just don't hang out with the right people.
Maybe, but I could waste a lot of time finding out that I do, and that they just aren't there. So I'll sit here in my bed and write myself to sleep and hope that I get a touch of them before dawn.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
