A Declaration of Independence

[Arete of the Gathering Flowers]

I promised a sample of my writing in my last blog post and so here's a short story for y'all to chew on, I put it here as a blog because I don't know where else I would put it.

A Declaration of Independence

Reality bites. Some mornings you wake up and you just don’t want to be yourself anymore. Some mornings you can’t. Mornings like that the window in my room tempts me a little, tells me to sneak out a while; climb down the tree and go. I hit the street and hesitate for a bit, nostalgia perhaps or some hollow promise that I’m going to come back. I run, run as fast as my legs can take me and as far as I can to get out of my life for a few dawning minutes as the darkness cowers before the firefly asses of streetlamps, before the sun comes up and brings me through the junkie’s alleys and past the lawns of crotchety morning adults who forget that some people have to live sometimes; but under my tentative assessment that they themselves don’t.

Some mornings, life creaks at every narrow sightline, at every narrow rite of passage you struggle through, frustrated all the while that you didn’t quite make it into the big leagues of the better man’s life. Some mornings you’re inclined to your own judgments and the thoughts, that somehow being wiser means you can’t console yourself against your envies, seems a little like compensation for the failure to become. People more confident, people more inherently likeable and people who just seem to have a knack for being slightly more popular… well in essence people who aren’t (I hope) you and people who aren’t (although I hope) me.

It was three forty-eight when I stole the car from my parent’s driveway; it was easy, the keys hang on the kitchen wall expectantly like shelved chocolate bunnies in Easter. Even more, it feels right, stealing; dangerous like living has to be, really living. Reality bites and I realize that it’s just like running, the pent up frustration pumping through your veins like a drug. It’s all your heart and soul and mind, your body feels each passing second hit you like flies and none of it matters. I know I’m running again but the wheel fits right in my hand and I take off, shifting gears, shifting memories around as the dashboard hums nostalgic music from some tree house chopped down, some friends who’ve moved away and already gotten on with their lives. I think that maybe I’d head to New England where the crux of our liberties manifested, where the cracked bell of liberty still rings some heavy toll in our hearts but the word is that freedom’s out west these days.

I see a stop sign that I miss and pass right on through, I forget the rules they taught us, and that makes me at once insanely proud and terrified at my own potential within this monster. The headlights blare some hyperactive score of photons, scattered on the tinted dark of the street and I think that only a neophyte can fully realize the intrinsic beauty of the wheel and embrace it with all its exciting danger.

I pass the firefly streetlamps, the lawns of crotchety adults, the basketball courts, the tennis courts, the elementary, the junior high, the high school, but most importantly, I pass the memories. I pass my life and get a little farther, I pass through and out of my life for good. I stop a moment at the cross because the red light seems to watch me, passing judgment on my actions, but light, of all things, understands the need of dawning new beginnings; and after a while it flares its approving grin, I smile back. I press down on the accelerator and feel the manic horse power of the car start up along with an increasing confidence in the power of man to make decisions; going forth, free at last, the master of my fate and the captain of my soul.