I’ll miss your sorry faces, ball-scratching and snoring.
I’ll miss your stupid jokes, your piss-bottle rooms and audible farting.
I’ll miss the fact that you give me shit,

You make me laugh,
You gross me out.

The situation’s heavy and conversation’s light,
I’ll miss cramped rooms, hard beds, outhouses, hot noons and frozen nights,
the funky smell of body odor.

See you state-side,
I’m heading out.

Farewell, fine friends,
we’ve done too much together.

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

- Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Photo by Daryn Foss

I have always loved the people who suffered from complete immoderation; the ones who were insatiable for all of life’s experiences, shamelessly and hungrily looking for the great sensations that makes a life worth living. I had forgotten how hungry I was for their company, and how empty  I had been with people who told me to ‘calm down’.

Settle down, calm down… you’ll outgrow it.

They’ve told me that for years but I have not outgrown it. In fact, I feel it more than ever. I feel it like the heat of the sun, the cold of the night, the touch of a hand. I feel it like actual hunger.

I am so tired of people who do not feel, who cannot see themselves. Self-righteous pricks who think that what is good for them is good for all.

I am sick of pretenders who tell me that they understand and feel the same things that I feel, only to later admit that what they truly want in life is the same thing everyone else wants – a white picket fence, barbeques, and a nine-to-five, typical existence. Men, women, friends and lovers all come to admit that what you hate is just something that’s in their nature.

I pretended to be that too. I pretended that I wanted to be normal because I was ashamed. I wanted to be liked and loved, and was told that it was how I would get it. How ridiculous that notion was. Gag me with a wooden spoon, already! I was so sad behind my smile that I forgot how to drink without falling into loathing.

Oh, you can’t help that. We‘re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.

- Lewis Carroll

I love the ones that scream “Carpe Diem!”

They tap their toes and cock their heads to one side and say “Vitement! Allons-y!” Quickly! Let’s go!

They look at me and ask “What is it that you truly want? What are you waiting for?”

And when I come with the very human response of “What if…” they snap their fingers and say “no excuses!”

I grow weary of curmudgeons. I am weary of mediocrity. I am weary of ordinary. I am tired of pretending that I am not mad; tired of acting as though I do not want to go to excess on everything… I jump too soon, I go too far, I dare too much. Oh, and I am quite mad!

I want too much to be satisfied. I love too soon to be tame. I laugh too loud to be proper.

I have many fatal flaws and do not apologize for them anymore. I see them in the mirror and smile. I am what I am and it is all I will ever be. I am more honest now than when I tried to fit the mold a year ago; when I felt shame for all of my failings. I have regrets, I’ve made mistakes and feel some guilt, but at the end of the day, the ones I wronged were wrong themselves.

Great people – people I admire and, a year ago, could only hope to read about in books – seem to like me for these supposed “failings”. Who I am and what I am was not some cosmic mistake. There are others out there like me, and they are great! I enjoy them more than those societal pricks that snidely judge what they do not understand. How could they ever understand such depths of feelings when they’re so busy hiding their insecurities like it was an obscene body part?

I’ll keep the good, I’ll shed the bad and I make no apologies for being happy. I am happier now than a year ago. I am more myself and I like myself more. I like the people around me. That, in itself, is sucking the marrow out of life et c‘est tout bon pour moi.

Where are you, you free souls and firefly chasers? Where are the adults who still climb trees and climb the mountains? Where are the people who lie on the rooftop and stare up at the stars? Where are you, you wanderers with your packs and your torn up boots? Where are the mad ones who steal the light of any room? Where are you, darlings, that were lectured by the prim, properly ordinary people who wagged their fingers and told you to calm down, settle down, and be reasonable?

We mad ones are the world’s greatest dreamers. The others are a bore.

I need volunteer beta readers to give a critical eye, with the aim of improving grammar, spelling, characterization, and general style of a story prior to its release to the general public. You’ll get emailed bits and pieces, chapter by chapter. So, depending on when you get back to me, you might get a different version than the person I emailed it to last week, and so on an so forth. It’s an evolving work.

In return for your participation:

You will get acknowledged in the book itself and link-love!
You’ll get a free copy of the book when it comes out, and
If you are a fellow writer, I’ll return the favor.

Is there something else I could do to entice your help? Please just let me know.

Interested in being a Beta Reader? Please email me Kathleen(dot)E(dot)Argonza(at)gmail.com or Tweet @KEArgonza.

I love it.

It is a testament to man’s ability to persevere and hope in the face of complete disaster. Foolhardy, and maybe mule-headed, this country simply refuses to be reduced into the rock that is underfoot.

I remember a scene from a Lion in Winter, where Prince Geoffrey and Prince Richard are facing their death, Prince Richard claims that the enemy will gain no satisfaction from him, and they will not see him beg. Geoffrey calls him a chivalric fool, “as if the way one fell down mattered.”

Prince Richard then states “When the fall is all there is, it matters.”

It feels as though this place is braced to fall.

The Coalition Forces have been a load bearing pillar, keeping this house erect. When it is removed, when it is too expensive to maintain, the house may crumble and collapse. All those inside are collectively holding their breath, unable to save it, unable to leave, powerless against the events that they cannot control. Powerless against the decisions made high above their heads.

So what if the house falls?

Well, the Afghans will do what the Afghans have always done, generation after generation. They will rebuild.

Nothing will ever destroy the spirit of the Afghan people. Look at the land that they live on! Anyone who can carve a living out of these mountains cannot be defeated. These are a people who can grow wheat (or poppy) from a stone. These are a people who can survive the conquering of the world’s greatest armies. This is the graveyard of empires and it’s people are like the water from the snowmelt eroding the rocks that wish to stand in it’s path.

I hope to return here one day as a beatnik hippie, with a leather pack on my shoulder as I go waltzing Matilda through the continent as I make a personal pilgrimage from the Philippines, the land of my birth, to Vevey, Switzerland, the land of my youth. I hope to embrace old friends, and see this place greatly changed; paved roads, fertile lands and a sense of governance and rule of law.

When I return as a solo rambler, I hope that I can walk the roads without being wary of disturbed earth, wires cropping from the sides of the road, or having to search into the culverts for that bulk of home made explosives designed to destroy an entire up-armored military vehicle.

I do think that this place will be purged in fire when all external forces stop putting out the small fires that lick at the heals of this country. I think that it will be consumed. But in that wreckage,from the sad and weary gray ash will come the most magnificent phoenix, it’s beak pointed to the high moon, its wings of victorious flame; not defeated, not destroyed but ever enduring.

My time here comes to an end and one should always end everything with hope.

Even at the bottom of Pandora’s box, with all the evils of the world, there was always hope.

Fare thee well, Afghanistan.

Join me there, beneath the briar,
where we can make these flowers grow.
As we make Death into a liar,
Fore’er, in flower’s petals show.

Rest with me, beneath the briar,
where we will look up to the sun,
Ash and ash, fire of desire,
At least, at last! The two are one.