And so we all acted like it was normal to just kind of have this asshole in our lives.
It’s true. He was just there and we kept him around.
That’s why I wrote it. That’s why I said the things I did. For the first time. For the only time.
Not because I was petty or vindictive or obsessed. Not because I wanted to hurt anyone or anything.
I mean, the funny thing was that I hadn’t even really thought about it in ages. It.In the flow of the people, place, things that had elicited my ire and inspired my revulsion, excited my senses, and in short, inspired my pen in as long as I could remember, he was kinda out there, he had faded into the ether, hardly at center, never the focus. I know he’d never believe that. That’s just fine with me.
But it was still a matter of fact that he was a presence. He was there out in the periphery, affecting our views.
And then, accidentally, in someone’s scrap book, there in focus, center stage, primary view.

Why do we do this? Why do we just keep that ugly and useless billboard there, amidst the trees and grass, blighting the landscape against the distant sea? Why do we allow it to exist, that thorn, that sore, that sty on an otherwise beautiful face.
Maybe it’s like scarring: a roadmap of where we’ve been and how much we’ve learned. Nostalgic memories of when saccharine didn’t cause cancer and it was the new miracle and medical marvel and so we stare at that homage to TAB and muse on our innocence and think “right, no,never again. Look where our haste got us. Look where our laziness can bring us again.”

Or maybe it’s a certain reluctance to admit defeat. Curiosity to the utility of these failed objects. Maybe even a suspect hope that this useless article of unsightly frustration will make good on it’s existence in our lives. After all, these found medical use for Olestra right? And some of our most expensive and disturbing military research created the most common breast cancer screening and treatment measures.

Or maybe it’s just an accident. An unfortunate lapse in attention, an apathy, even a certain level of defeat.
Sometimes we get so used to the ugliness we keep it there because we forget we can remove it. We build a blind spot or incorporate it into our routine or depend on this aesthetic slap on the face long after it’s utility: in contrast, in context, in symbolism has become obsolete.

And what if the blind spot grows. What if it’s one billboard, and two, and then a great big statue and constructed confabulations of false idolatry. What do we do when we begin to avoid these articles as inevitable, indeed, as part of nature themselves.
No.
Better to nip it in the bud.

You know when it’s time to tear the fucker down. To build a bonfire and destroy it’s scraps. To make a chant to the heavens that we don’t need such frustrating and ugly articles in our lives to appreciate the sacred and the beautiful. That’s when we remind ourselves that we are better than this and that it’s worth the effort to keep our landscapes pristine.