Chris Spangenberg
“Man,
when you lose your laugh you lose your footing...”
-Ken
Kesey, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
It
was on days like these that I forget how to laugh. An average day, when the
concrete sets in the same pattern as it did yesterday, and in front stretches
an endless gag routine that I've seen before, all three-hundred and sixty-four
minutes. I can't help myself. The monotony eats all the apples of my eye,
treads on plexi-glass eggshells with no small juggernaut jag. Saws off the
table edges, makes child-proof a peeping booth, and pillows my fall out of bed.
I know the motions of course. The perpendicular pendulum upturn of the lips, a
slight gust of air, a snort perhaps; some hissing? Who knows? But this serial
solidarity, a United Snakes prospect, does not discount total freedom. Only the
taxable parts of it, and that was saying enough. Or at the very least, I take
leave of staccato sincerity; like a repeated joke, told until its meaning died
in the sentenced syntax. A joke, which was a funny thing all things considered.
A
joke is only funny the last time it's told. To me, at least. There is something
about its due date, its mass expiry that persists through all penance. The
instant one has to explain the joke, it might as well not have been told at
all. And that is worse than not having spoken, and resting your case in sullen
silence. Still, the senseless repetition, the spread
the joy mentality that
accompanies the farce scares me into inaction. Much like a contagion, spreading
the good word of St. Elsewhere. Wish you were here wishfulness. But happiness
is a selfish drug, not to be taken lightly in autobiographical aptitude, or
amputated motif. Much more so than say, tea-leaves or opium drips. For we are
natural slaves to the awareness of bliss; our pursuit of it is but a constant
and callous calling-card. I know others like us don't care to share the sunshine
that comes between them and their rose-tinted shades. But hey, whatever makes
you happy. I could care. But I care less.
The
joke was funny the first time round; a politically incorrect notion of some
enforced stereotype, a black market trade of guffaws and glee. To this day, I
cannot remember how it went again. But it was funny. That much I held in store
of recollection. Rather than not, it was the fading humour that caught me
unaware. I didn't laugh when I heard it. I laughed a good hour after. I laughed.
And
it was a hollow, spineless laugh; all dentures and no difference, no care in
the world. The tunnel could light itself, halfway through, and I would still be
laughing till kingdom come. It was the sort of laugh that laughed for itself, a
self-aware spasm that comes cheap but paid heavily, on the lungs and limbs.
They get caught up as well, trussed up and tangled in the indignation, swatting
the air like newspapers and flies in a linear line.
It
wasn't borne of desperation. Desperate laughs are short and braying, like sheep
who know that the grass is fading under their hooves, but still feed on the
green cause it's the last thing they know. The only people to hear such true
laughs are 1-800 SUICIDE operators and debt collectors. Desperate, like having
the rug pulled under you; and you're on the long way down the stairs.
It
was a cannibal laugh that fed on itself to sustain its nature; unholy gusts of
air that sucked all the joy out of me, left me dead in the water. I laughed
until there was no more laughter to laugh. I laughed until there was no air to
breathe. I laughed until the penny dropped, and my sides split for a dime's
worth. The laughter ended half a minute after it started.
Looking
back now, on nihilism; I can speak for myself no longer. You could hold a
candle to my reasoning behind, but you wouldn't see the fire until the silent
alarm screeched bloody murder. In all trueness though, I laughed for America. I
laughed for cancer patients. I laughed for all the missing children. I laughed
for global warming. I laughed for the starving in Africa. I laughed for Soylent
green. I laughed for asbestos in the walls. I laughed for a happy ending. I
laughed at nothing at all.
