The word anger doesn’t even begin to convey the feeling.
Outrage. The kind that knocks the words away from your mouth. The kind a howl captures, sometimes. Or the kind that sinks down so deep, you may as well have a piece of sharp steel stuck somewhere in your body in a spot from which removal would cause more harm than good – so live with it. When the fucking thing moves in your gut, feel it. Groan, if you must. Bite into something that won’t bite back. Wring a wet towel till it’s dry. Sleep. Accept the blessings from dreamland – and don’t let anyone ever tell you dreams aren’t worth the time you spend in them. Some of them can and do stave off insanity.
Then, get up again, and deal with the next piece of crap thrown in your direction. Or the unexpected gift from a kid who’ll never amount to anything. That’s what her teachers have told her since day one; whatever her parents think, I don’t know, except for the fact their overall expectations are at the grazing level.
When the light goes out of it, this is one shitty little town. Yes, some of us go on laughing and singing and writing as if our words made any kind of difference. But on some days, all you want to do is curse and shake your first at the nonexistent gods. “Show your divine faces and come down here! Come down here and slog it out like people do and must and go on doing!”
And so on. Until the outrage leaves you limp; or boils back down into anger; or simmers down to… something. Irony? Yes, let’s call it irony. Sometimes, you meet up with it at a stage beyond outrage. Not this morning.
Santa Fe. The eyes on the man standing there with all the others trying to peddle something or other to the tourists. The raw piece of cold steel in the gut feeling. God damn.
A writer's notebook 