* my wallet
* my work badge
* my religion
* my virginity
* the political radicalism of my youth
* my ambitious career dreams
* the lives of my loved ones
* the belief that i could do anything
* the belief that the world is slowly, steadily moving towards progress
* that there are rocks, things that will not move, to hold onto
I once had a teacher who said that human beings were onions--you could pull layer after layer off the persona, until you eventually reached a hollow core. This terrified me. I am sure this is a common enough experience for a first or second year college student, so common that it is probably recognized as a banal cliche by those more worldly than me. I did not admit my terror at the time. Now, I wonder, though, if he had terror too, and was not ready to admit it yet. I remember that he pronounced this bombshell with a great smile on his face, as though he were the one who had come up with the metaphor. Like some sort of community college Camus: "I know you've endured a barely literate education under the Bush regime, but it's time to wake up to the fact that life is without inherent meaning and so are you...now get over it!" I know that we did not get over it. You can ignore it--and most of us did--but you cannot get over it.
On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love brought back to me:
A pocket for my money.
A card for my labor.
A cross for my sins.
A stain for my filth.
A molotov cocktail in a starbucks window.
A nostalgia mixtape,
And an old photo album.
A self-help book,
And a shiny new candidate...
And then we got to work:
