Losing Our Balance

Excerpted fiction - copyright 2011

It’s been said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  By that definition, we’re all a little bit crazy, aren’t we?  I mean, let’s talk about dieting.  Or dating.  Or credit cards.  Credit cards are crazy, aren’t they?  But, okay, that definition might be true to a point, but don’t you have to take into consideration what we’re doing over and over again or even why we have to keep doing it?  Edison did not create a light bulb the first time he threw a bunch of wires together, but that doesn’t mean he was insane.  It means he was patient.  It means some things take repetition.  And then, let’s face it; sometimes the most insane part is thinking it up in the first place, doing it the first time.   Like, loving the wrong person.  Loving too much.  Or loving at all.  Loving.  Yeah, love can definitely make you crazy.

By the world’s standards, Jesus was insane, you know.  He said he would raise the dead.

I think insanity is when you want something that isn’t real so badly it becomes real, at least to you.  And then you live in that reality.

Oh no.  That’s faith.  I always get those two confused.

You’ll have to cut me some slack.  Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember that people out here don’t talk about that kind of stuff.  They talk about the weather and movies and news and coffee—what’s the deal with coffee, anyway?  All I see is gourmet coffee—everywhere I go, gourmet coffee.  Whatever happened to plain old Joe?  I mean, coffee is coffee, right?  There’s a Starbucks in my bank for heaven’s sake.  Can you believe that?  It’s crazy.

There I go again.

I’m not supposed to use that word.

Native Americans, I learned, do not have a word for insanity. They call it being imbalanced.  I like that.  It feels right.  You know how you can be walking along and you trip and lose your balance and you do the arm-cartwheel-dance trying to get back to normal, trying not to fall, but you fall anyway?   That’s what crazy feels like.

It feels like falling.  Falling and falling and you can see where you were, and where you don’t want to be, but nothing you do changes anything.  No matter how hard you dance or how fast you spin your arms, you fall anyway.

I build walls.

I used to be an artist, but I’m not anymore because when you’re an artist you see things differently from other people and that is almost as dangerous as loving.  So, I build walls now.  And I like them.  They hold everything inside them.  Especially what I’m hiding.

Hey, that would be good to put in the wall...