Broken Glass

I just got a message in a bottle.

A la Sting and the Police, Pirates of the Caribbean, and probably that movie Castaway (I'm probably the last human on earth to not be initiated I know), my friend resorted to the most chancey of communicative means. Maybe not so threatened, I found in my mailbox a cardboard tube, in which lay an old beer bottle wrapped in newspaper. Sealed with a cap of wax the label instructed in an off-tilt scrawl, " BREAK FOR WEAK VOMIT" with a crude sharpie box urging an appropriate smash zone.

Just where does one go to break a bottle?

The first place I thought of was the backyard where I sit now. The yard is practically a trash heap already, strewn with rotten camping chairs, bits of soggy cardboard, some odd tvs and computer monitors, an imploding shed, and some intrepid daisies in the corner, while malfunctioning power extensions snake through the muddy pit of a "lawn." But with my heady, bare-foot-loving roommates tromping about it seemed too likely that some wayward shard would cause bloody tracks across the murky kitchen floor. The street out front was also nixed. Though there was plenty of hopeful concrete awaiting, no one wants to be the house that puts glass in puppies paws. So I wandered down the street, with the hopes of finding a way to extract my mail.

I turned the corner and walked straight into a cop. 'Looking for parties,' I thought as I tried to absorb the bottle's silhouette into my jacket. No need to try to explain why I'm marching with such determination on a Saturday night, beer bottle gripped in hand. Around the next, I found more hopeful instruments. The pile of woody debris proved too 'thuddish,' and the cigarette post seemed fragile. Turning into a parking lot I decided to let my inhibition go as I hurled the bottle across the night sky. A resounding clunk and clatter as the post skittered along the pavement was the reply to my low toss. I chased down the still-trapped note and hurried away from apartment windows.

The next lot proved successful as I swung down on a curb, retrieved my well-earned letter and returned home.

The question in my mind as I walked was, where do we go to destroy, to make a mess? No one wants broken bottle in their home or community. No one wants to live in dangerous filth. So we deposit our trash in the proper box, put it on the curb on the appointed day and wait for it to disappear. To some other indian's home, where we don't have to see his tears. I went to a company's property to do my damage, because it seemed less real than the neighborhood of homes and children. I pushed it on an unknowable figure, a group of many without perceivable faces. It was just enough levels of abstraction, as it likely won't affect anyone I know or meet.

It seems an apt analogy to the patterns of humanity in my sleepy mind. We project our pain and filth onto distant others so we can enjoy the immediate gains. I got my letter, I got the visceral pleasure of making a mess, and I don't have to deal with the aftermath. What could be better?

~SSW