OVERRIDE

September 11th. Impending war in Syria. Suicide Prevention Week. It's only Tuesday. I have to teach sixth graders tomorrow for what will be my third interview. All of my dreams at the moment are mere intellectual properties. To quote Big Gay Al, "The whole world's gone to hell but how are you?".

Seriously, how are you doing? How are you coping? Let me tell you about my "crazy button". I will instantly admit it will probably prove to be quite an inappropriate name for my coping mechanism but then again I could have referred to it as what you may know as Fukitol, which I believe comes in pill form, liquid or Flinstones chewables. I just know that Im looking to my crazy button because my last stand of defense, humor, is clearly running out as evidenced by these two paragraphs.

When I was in high school, I used to run cross country and track. I was pretty good at it. My mile time was 4:52. For three seasons, I was varsity, including the last one when I had torn the IT band, a ligament on the side of my knee. I was 5'10, 128 pounds and 5% body fat. The ligament tore because there was no fat to cushion it. A sports doctor said the only reason I hadn't had an injury sooner was because I had the perfect gait when I ran. Martial arts training, which I had started at age 10, included lessons on running properly. I know this because I was already teaching it at this time. All of this had absolutely nothing to do with my success as a runner. I was not an athlete. This whole operation was ran from my skull. I discovered that if my body had nothing left, I could just flip this crazy button like a nitro switch. By the time I was 17, I was hospitalized after having a mental breakdown.

Now I am approaching 35 and hovering around 220 pounds. I don't run. I don't practice martial arts. In fact, I don't move very much at all. The crazy button is still there though. Where does it come from? What role does it serve in my life now? For one, I no longer need to press it. I just know it is there. When you have an arc reactor for a brain, let's just say that I know more than I will ever understand or be able to express because my thoughts have travelled to the ends of the Earth. My day only begins when and if I get all that under some semblance of control.

I believe that button is really more of a landmark. I have always said I can sense the very beginning of this mad dash. Since the big bang of my consciousness, it was like opening new tab after new tab on the highest speed internet way before there was such a thing. There was no way I would ever be prepared to be told there was just this crazy shit you all call the 'real' world'.  I took one look somewhere back there and wasn't impressed. Maybe I just planted a beacon so that I could always return to my earliest mind when things really didn't have to make sense. You do know that when a baby arrives, it just came from The Big Answer. Maybe by preserving this one trick, I gave myself a fighting chance against what was to come.

So why am I telling you about this crazy button? This beacon. I believe if you are spiritual or were to consult someone gifted in that arena, this would all make a hell of a lot more sense, for one thing. Our motivations is the same though. If we find truth, we are obligated to share because it belongs to us all. In this culture I live in, the America I believe in, we are watching the ship of conventionality go down. Most are still on board and fighting over the captain. It is my belief that the silver lining is that more and more people may begin considering alternatives to conventional thought. I know that my crazy button has gotten me out of a lot of jams. As eccentric as this blog entry may seem, I am merely trying to share with you a coping mechanism. And while I know that there is a seemingly inexhaustible list of these offered by conventional thought, I thought that maybe you might be interested in mine.

So does this mean I want you to find your crazy button? First, I certainly don't want you to call it that because I never liked the name I gave it but really I have bigger problems than thinking of a better name for it. I did like referring to it as a beacon though. Call it what you will but let me leave you with this. You all come from a point of origin that was fabulously free of conventionality and gloriously ignorant of the real world. You were a child. You may not have as strong a link to it. There may be no beacon or button that can take you back to a state where the fact that the world makes no sense and is scary as fuck. But it is still in you. Please seek it out. Find your crazy button so that you can stand up to this crazy life.