Turtle Power

   We have new products at my workplace named after teenage mutant ninja turtles. I was a huge fan as a kid, so I get a kick out of calling pizzas "Donatello" and "Raphael." I think they probably appeal more to people my age than kids today because those recipes have a number of toppings, and children generally like only cheese or maybe one topping. The Michelangelo pizza includes pineapple and jalapeño. I would totally eat that. But not when I was eight. Customers can also choose "katana cut" which is only 4 slices instead of 8, hey, faster and less work for me so that's cool. It would be more fun if we actually used swords though. My inner child is happy. My weekend was more entertaining than usual.
     I saw a coyote out on delivery. We've been warned there are quite a few in our densely human populated suburbs here, as in keep your pets inside or they could be eaten. This is the first time I've seen one though, so I thought it was cool.  It surprises me because this is Tampa Bay, Florida, near the gulf beaches. Seagulls and palm trees look normal here. I always thought of coyotes as a southwestern American thing.  We have more large birds of prey, squirrels, bunnies, wildlife in general than when I was younger. This is also good, I think, but I'm glad my cat is indoors, safe from the coyotes.
    I had to avoid hitting a turtle crossing the road.  I wanted to stop and help him out, but hot pizzas in the truck must reach their destination as quickly as possible.  I'm sure he was fine, he was gone when I came back. Those guys are tough. They have ninja skills. Radical, dude.

To Be Silent

    I'm no one to advise anyone or to be advised. Speech is rarely necessary, most often an attempted antidote to the awkwardness. I speak to put them at ease, to escape my label, to escape myself and the true essence of I and all of us. Because we're all the same, so why would talking to others be more rational than talking to myself? Which, of course, I do, and which, of course, writing is. Writing is talking to oneself, but with the added illusion of talking to the entire world, potentially. Who knows who might find their way to these words? I've read many a word that never knew I would be its audience. So what's the point? I'm told I should write a book. And then I'm told again, by another. But I always inwardly have the same rejecting thought - what could be the point? Not only do I have nothing new to say, but I doubt anyone else does either. Fiction is the richest medium for revealing insightful truths, so I could see the potential there more easily. I do recognize the perpetual sensation that we've peaked, intellectually, technologically.  Many have thought this for centuries, it's been documented. We believe every idea has already been had, there could be no possible new invention, but we go on creating more and more exponentially. So I get that, but still I feel the pointlessness of it. We already know we're supposed to just stop it. Stop thinking, reaching, striving, breaking, hurting, taking. Just stop it.
    We're just filling up the emptiness with denser emptiness. There's no sense in order. I would put my words in poems, put my poems in songs, for ambiguity does words their highest honor, but even the words detract from the purity of the music, as the music does to the silence, and ultimately the most we can do is the least we can do: to be silent.