4th of July...

Hard to describe. I am in an armpit. Unshorn. Flea-bitten. Me--and the
armpit. Maybe I am the flea. There is a swollen lymph-node and it
radiates pain all the way from the heel--the scarred,veiny, calloused scabrous
heel. Always sweating--radiating lead... Metallic discomfort up and
down the right side of the body, it would appear. The body favors this
uncomfortable side by lying on the other, stretching its elbow up and
over its head and back and around and under the two soaked pillows.
That is when I can breathe. Then it brings its arm back down, clutching
tightly at its chest, as if in an effort to protect the painful,
swollen node from the invisible crawling stingers that first afflicted
the heel some hours ago, passing poison up the right side of the body,
terminating in the armpit where I reside, terrified and clutching more
tightly than ever. I am. I am terrified and grasping at the porous,
metal-soaked walls. The chlorinated roots of the scraggly hair all
around me leaves a pungent chalk in my nostrils and around my eyes and
on my grasping limbs. I am hot and cold too often at odd intervals to
know whether I am hot or cold, living or just breathing at odd
intervals, responding to conditions or to the condition of the body I
am struggling to inhabit. How the hell did I get here? How will
I get out? What then?

Hi, I'm Mike Miller. On this, the fourth day of July in the year 2008, my thoughts drift in the direction of escape. Escape from debt. Escape from worry. From social responsibility and anxiety. From empathy. From pain and expectation. Escape from custom. Escape from systems of all kinds. Escape from economics. Escape from routine. Escape from uncertainty. Escape from poverty. Escape from entitlement. Escape from guilt and the fear of failure. Or the fear of success. Or the expectation of success. Or the expectation of entitlement. Or the social responsibility of expectation. Of empathy. Or the routine of anxiety. The economics of anxiety. The uncertainty of debt. The industry of debt. The guilty customs of expecation and pain. The poverty of entitlement...
My heart flutters at this notion of escape from time-to-time. When I am feeling sick and stuck, or sweaty and forlorn. Twisted up with abstract guilt. Pressured and ignored all at once--I'm sure you feel it too, from time-to-time. The kind of feeling makes you want to blow something up or knock something down or throw something up or out or away... Makes you imagine fire and tremors and ripping and caving walls and twisted debris. Kind of feeling makes you imagine drawing lines in or stomping emphatically on dirt. To create an impact or just to feel the impact of creation on yourself. To feel you and gravity and time and debris convolute and constitute and consecrate and reconcentrate... Well, that or it just makes you want to escape. My heart flutters at these notions from time-to-time.
What are we celebrating today?
What are we celebrating that we do not desecrate in every dimension of our feedback-distorted, irradiated proxy-lives?

WhoaA there!