The Soap Is Out Of Reach

The soap is out of reach.  I cannot bathe.  Raw nerves hidden under the flesh of my right leg scream their stabbing fire up from the smallest toe to the base of my spine.  I want to rip these nerves from their roots, slash off the leg, or numb myself to the point where no internal or external pain can be felt, however that may be possible.  The cold porcelain of the bathtub chills my skin while compressing my hips into the shattered vertebrae through the weight of my body.  An over ambitious use of traction may have broken my back, but that is not where my mind is going.  Right now, I just want to be clean.     

Friends tell me I am too young to be broken.  I do not see it as a matter of age or time, but rather a fact of existence and experience.  Merely a few years ago I was able to run, bike, swim, play ultimate frisbee, and dream of a better tomorrow.  The future was before me in whatever form I wanted it to take.  I knew I could be anything I wanted.  Now I excruciatingly exist in a world not of my making.  The dreams of a future, without the sorrows of the present, still haunt somewhere behind the web of bodily and societal deceit.   This was not how the world, and my part in it, was supposed to be.  Yet, I recognize that this reality is what I confront.  I am sure there is a way to deal with these problems, but right now, I just want to be clean.

College was filled with hope for the future.  I became an adult in a time when the Cold War was over, Vietnam was a vacation spot not a War, Iraq was a country America had vanquished when I was in Junior High School, and the worst national dramas were dress stains and a failure of nationalized healthcare.  My country ignored the rants of Saudi, Japanese, and most American lunatics who attacked with weapons of mass destruction while espousing and implementing massacres of organized religion and distorted political theory.  Our face to the world was occupied by greed, the rising value of our technology stocks, and a belligerence to anything that did not contribute to our personal sense of financial security.  After all, we needed and deserved bigger salaries, bigger houses, bigger televisions, bigger cars, and bigger serving sizes.  Oh how we consume!  Did this get us to where we are today?  I would contemplate this question, but right now, I just want to be clean.

The Republican Revolution came to power while I was naive enough to think it a fluke.  These WASP white collared grey suits promised protection from corruption, a government for individual rights, and a big tent party to attract votes.  Yet, within a short time of achieving power their lies, character assassinations and empty slogans once again became the commodity of politics.  The Supreme Court decided an election so that No Child was left behind at the same time no child was allowed to advance.  Science was attacked by the religiously fervent, who drunk on their power cut government funding to social services in order to have the White House sponsor Faith Based Initiatives.  Eventually, an internationally organized Faith Based Initiative of global proportions brought two towering icons of American economic might tumbling down on Manhattan and the five sided symbol of U.S. military prowess to flames in Virginia.  A field in Pennsylvania became a demonstration of the sacrifice true heroes offer when faced with a moral choice.  Would I have made the same choice?  I would like to answer yes, but right now I just want to be clean.

Instead of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people we confront a regime that tells us how to live, think, marry, pray, vote, invest, educate our children and die.  From Congressional and Presidential action on Schiavo to bans on civil rights and cuts in social services, this government has invaded our lives as it espouses a diatribe of the values of the individual and an ownership society.  It sells itself to the highest bidding lobbyist of K Street and to a twenty-four hour media that thrives on conflict and the personal political views of corporate sponsors.  The revolution to remove the corrupt from power brought forth a Texas sized Hammer of greed, a thirst for glory without leadership sacrifice, and a war we cannot win.  Soon we will have a new justice to overturn our right to choose and all American’s rights to equality before the law.  Privacy and national pride are becoming notions of the past as we surrender our Constitutional rights to a vague Patriot Act and an Attorney General who dismisses the international law on torture as quant.   Can we clean this system?  I would like to think so, but right now, I just want to be clean.

When I was a child I was told that anything was possible.  I could be anything I wanted when I grew up.  I had dreams, like every other child, of being an astronaut, fireman and cowboy.  Then architecture came into my life, promising a personal path of creation, beauty, and civic development.  Alas, the War and Massacres in Bosnia haunted my days and terrified my nights.  Guilt about these atrocities in which I played no part drew me toward international relations with the hope that I could help save the world.  In my late teens I knew all of the answers and how to bring world peace.  I set myself on a path toward creating that utopian world.  I remember that naiveté fondly, but right now, I just want to be clean.

Through years of job insatisfaction at influential positions within the government, blink duration relationships to women who needed more maintenance than our under-funded inner-city schools, and a winnowing of our personal idealism through a constant barrage of cynicism in all media, the world has shown itself to be far less than we had hoped.  Our quarter life crisis have come and gone, and yet we are left with an existence void of meaning beyond the weekend trip to Wal-mart to bankrupt our local stores and communities while we increase our waistlines.  Can there be more beyond what we have seen so far?  A famous piece of ancient literature begins with the phrase “Empires wax and wane, coalesce and are strewn asunder.”  Has our Empire run its course?  Have we bankrupted our future by consuming more than we could afford in our present?  I would love to look into this, but right now, I just want to be clean.

One of my best friends, my brother, is serving in Iraq.  Other good friends have either gone, or returned from service there.  Many sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers will never return.  What of all the Iraqi’s who had nothing to do with Weapons of Mass Destruction or the contrived link to Al Queda, the innocent who are caught in this hell, what can become of them?  Our reasons for going to war proven false from early on we are told to stay the course, accept the losses, and hope for the best.  Can we tell the innocent Iraqi people the same thing?  Are they better off today than they were in the past?  They have their freedom from Saddam, but run the risk of being blown up on a street corner as they look for work.  I cannot measure the intrinsic value of these alternatives.  Will the Iraqi’s be as accepting as us Americans to their death tolls and insecurity?  I doubt it, but right now, I just want to be clean.

Trade deficits balloon on the same scale of the national debt.  Our debt and facadic personal prosperity is financed by other countries feeding on our greed.  We cannot secure this financial system from shock, yet we are watching this bubble grow to unsustainable proportions. 

The planet’s ozone layer disintegrates faster than the value of my dollar.  Some uberwealthy CEO’s steal from their employees to pad their short-term prison-sentenced estates.  Not all CEO’s commit these crimes, but those who have the right connections can escape with slaps on the wrist.  Will their campaign donations to our political parties secure freedom from prosecution or can justice be served?  I don’t know, but right now, I just want to be clean.

Where will my retirement money come from?  Social Security will not exist when I’m old enough to qualify for it.  My investments have been stagnant since the missing Crawford village idiot moved to Pennsylvania Avenue.  My company does not offer a pension, but at least I am lucky enough to have health insurance.  Can there be a future for me when my present is consumed by just paying for gas?  I want to think about that, but right now, I just want to be clean.

The soap is out of reach.  Originally warm, the water is beginning to chill my almost rigid body.  Aches of muscle overcompensating for disintegrating bone hinder my arm from stretching to the hot water faucet.  I attempt to envision a future that could be.  A hazy veil of pessimism and cynicism drapes over my eyes to obscure these possibilities just out of reach.  How can I break into that future?  I want to know, but right now, I just want to be clean.

As intractable as my personal obstacles appear, the hope remains that if I bend in just the proper way, can sustain just a little more pain, and reach beyond my comfort zone I can reach the soap.  I will grasp it with all my will.  If my will fails I may be lucky enough to find a partner to help me reach.  Brushing the soaps smooth texture on my soiled and pained body will sooth my ills.  My pain will continue to plaque me.  I do not know how I will get out of the tub.  Maybe my partner can help in that too.  Nor can I figure out how I will put my clothes on.  Who knows how to answer the imponderables of life?  At least, though, I could be clean.