Dark Matters

My world, and welcome to it.
The Roger Williams song went, “Welcome to my world,” while Jamnes Thurber declared “my world, and welcome to it.” One is a sentiment, the second is more of a challenge: see just what you make of me, when I look around and tell you what I see.
There are times when I feel sentimental like Williams, others when I feel satirical, like Thurber. Still other times I feel totally blunt and honest and revealing, for better or worse, and today is one of those times, so bear with.
I’m angry. There is much anger in me, and it comes out at odd times, when I am alone in the house and the garbage can liner doesn’t come out easily or the computer jumps from the page I am working on back to the default web page without my asking it to. I explode, scream, pound the floor with my fist when no one can hear or see me. I always have done that – scream in silence. But why now? Why so much anger right this minute, when my life seems to have picked itself up off the floor and started me on a really good, positive path?
I rage against the machine. Sometimes it’s the political machine, sometimes the economic one. Pick a machine and watch me rage. I am a self-appointed rage, who sees how others are treated and listens to their hearts, and takes it inside myself until I explode. It has been my way. But the anger is within me, and it has its own roots.
I am not excited about getting old. I hate the inevitability. And Death may be a distant friend, but She’s not welcome here,
There. I’ve said it. I’m scared of Her.
I’ve always thought that there was something wrong with me for being such a coward. They say, cheerfully, a coward dies a thousand deaths but a hero dies just once. It’s crap. We all die once. I suspect more of us think about it more of the time than anyone will admit, at least until they get older, like me.
I don’t quite know why my thoughts have grown so dark. There is new life going on all round me, oblivious to my moods. My grandson treats me as if I were as capable as his father at keeping up, and I do pretty well. Tonight out in our yard a beautiful doe lumbered across, her brand new fawn working hard to keep up. But the truth is that I am 62 years old and some mornings my body really lets me know it. Death is coming for me someday. I am in no hurry, and I have sent no invites to Her, obviously. She may be kind and gentle, or matter of fact and unmovable. It doesn’t matter.
I think that’s what angers me most: it doesn’t matter.