Hobbit Homes. “Reality”
The inner city birthed me
The local pusher nursed me
Cousins make it in the street
They marry every trick they meet
A dime, a dollar they're all the same
When a man comes in to bust your game
The turn key comes, his face a grin
Locks the cell I'm in again
I’m driving through inner Suburbia. The part that borders the city center. Not so close as to be a Central Park brownstone but close enough. In a 15 minute walk you can get to a gas station and deli.
The houses are surprisingly unique and spacious. Much open grass! Strong trees full of wisdom and shade! Brick homes standing out more proudly, confidently than their siding-only neighbors. Don’t get me started on Wood. The pinnacle of all home materials.
I pull into one of the driveways and honk. Twice, two quick jabs to the wheel.
This is the best way to assert yourself and mark your territory in a parked automobile. While moving you can swerve and mark territory by bringing everyone unlucky enough to be caught near you a sense of fear and close to death. Of which after they’ll breathe and thank God they’re alive. Or they’ll get pissed off and throw the finger. The response doesn’t matter. You made them feel something. Honestly if you wanted to terrorize people go into a crowded parking lot and rhythmically honk ever couple of minutes. Make jingles. Do it when people are close by. Don’t stop for 48 hrs. The police may hassle you about disturbing the peace. Whatever they say is a lie riddled out to control you. Don’t give them too much power.
The daydream of domestic disruption evaporates from my thoughts.
I honk again, double tapping, as if paying homage to my daydream. Acting out and executing.
My friend strolls out after minutes of idle. The confident posture of someone with self belief. Chin held high in pride but only a few centimeters shy of compensating a dark hidden insecurity he must hide within. He’s self aware enough to not let these feelings of inadequacy drag down his conscious being and attitude. Maybe at night, when left alone to spirited screams of personal judgement will he get haunted by these nocturnal beliefs of i’m-not-good-enough. This is something prayer defends you from.
I tell him the last part after he gets in.
The least I can do in the case he’s going through any torment I can’t feel is offer him the power of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior who alone can save you. I believe this. This is honest word to friend.
He laughs it off as nothing special. Simply a wild thought of mine driven by excitement for the next couple hours. We’re going to my land to chop down trees. We used to smoke joints when having downtime, now we chop trees. The wood isn’t needed now that winter is over. So after axing down 3 or 4 we cut them into foot long segments and begin to build.
The first ‘building’ was a failure. Lack of foundation and no pieces long enough to cover the top. Rookie mistakes.
Since then we’ve become quite gifted in building these wooden structures, remarkably easy to mistake as cabins for hobbits. This is not coincidence.
Nobody should be in these woods. They’re my woods. On loan to my family from God. Any stranger in them should not be calm or relaxed. They should feel the eyes of 15 masked men on them from the branches above. A sighting impossible as our coverings match that of the leaves and skyline. An obscure pale blue and minted green camo that’s only usable in tree top hunting grounds such as ours. (We got custom made mass order from Kruschiki.)
We don’t believe in death upon first sight. We would never kill or seriously maim without first communicating to the trespasser. I say communicating because the pathetic excuse of expression that we call Language has been replaced by controlled eye contact, flares of the nostrils, twist in the mouth. We are seen, viewed, not heard.
Our gnome homes. Tiny detailed infrastructure much like a chateau to the height-challenged offer a fierce warning to strangers. The passerby, lost on land they don’t own, cross paths with microscopic mansions.
Villages of them.
We have built a couple but one 35x50sq foot area is home to The 1. The 1 was our first mass creation. Nothing there is taller than my chest. The steeple of the church, which is the highest point of The 1 reaches to just below my Heart. This is on purpose. Grand design has secret meaning. God showed us this. There’s the church, village taverns (3 building of which to congregate think of coffee shops but 16th century European forest style) one-family homes (9 of them, to date) and a tiny creek that runs through the heart of The One. Beside the creek is 5 feet of land, untouched, left open as space to lounge and lay back. The Gnones beach. The pigmies central park. The hobbits play spot.
Sometimes, if we’ve been gone an unusually long period of time. (Storm created swells of the East coast force us to abandon building for days in the Ocean) When we come back we’ll see signs…
Strange signs of disturbance…
No uneasy feeling follows this. We aren’t met with unearthed feeling of past doom, or terror on the horizon.
But we’ll explore the village we’ve made and find foot prints. No longer than a mens size 4 but much wider in width. Nearly twice as wide. My size 12s don’t reach the sidelines of their indentions.
The furthest reaches of the interior homes have mud on the floor. Yards length back from the door and inaccessible by all of our 6’+ bodies. We can see these mud stained foot marks through windows we’ve build but to properly examine we’d have to take the roof off. We elect against this. We’re not here to understand. We’re not here to see these things. If the otherworld wants to show it’s face we’ll be less than reluctant to have the blind fold ripped from our eyes. Until then we create terrain for experience. If they aren’t watching us, monitoring us, then hopefully our buildings instill the same sense of wonder in them that they create in us.
Today we’re going back, maybe we see signs, maybe not. It’s always a gamble!
We work on it 3/4 days a week and a good mood is always attached. God must have felt the same sense of joy in creation when designing each of us. But this is why my friend brushes off my statement about Prayer, he knows that on building days I get lost in the breeze and let my mouth release untamed thoughts. He’s used to this, can easily discern what’s real and what’s a side effect of environmental sensitivity.
Moments of silence follow. Not the least bit awkward. Having to fill every second with conversation is the real awkward action.
“I don’t think you’re playing the game smart enough” he breaks our silence.
The sentence makes me feel the presence of The World. Reality, as a feeling, an experience. Reality as failures of today live. This shit is like poison and conversations of this nature, if not discussing how to abandon that same dreaded reality, are loud. They echo back and forth in my daydreams. Rationality scratching at felt desire, purpose. Questions about reality and your true day to day experience, as trapped in their confines, leans back in laughter.
“What do you do for work?” is a question that has the same feeling attached to it. For me, atleast. As for work, I Live, I Do. Isn’t language the experiencers burden? You must bridge into my definitions quickly. Were Merriam and Webster even real?
“In what way?” I ask
“Well you have a good skill set. And those talents are obscure but unique and you have them. On top of that you have a degree from a good school. If I was you I’d play to the government more. I’d play their game. The only way to eventually win or be free is to be legitimate, atleast for a little. I think you going corporate and getting ~$500,000 for 5 years work would set you up nicely. It could make ‘legal’ some of your underground money.”
My suspicions were right. A crushing blow to the chin by Reality’s minions.
How to explain each move on that chessboard feels like daggers to my organs? How to explain the suffocation of something I’ve yet to find words for - Soul, Spirit ? - How do I say that every time I try this I begin to look in the mirror and see a shell of who I used to see. Aging like shitty wine. This, a product of lying inwardly to myself saying yes! this path is better! I have money now! Security! Each week spent on that heavy traveled path chipped something away inside of me that took months to rebuild, nurture back to Health.
The damage is done slowly and silently. The intense weight of concentration that goes into Clock looking alone is dangerous. 2 hours before a shift you’re watching the clock. On the clock you’re watching the clock. In humans best World, the Clock doesn’t exist. The moments of freedom you do have, right after pocketing some money, is typically held on to with death grip. You don’t want precious minutes of not working to be wasted. But exhaustion sets in, the feeling of $’s moving the needle numbs your ambitions.
The world tricks me at times. I think I need this to get that. A fly car? Need good legal credit to get. A new home is the same.
I think I need to play the game better. Then God whispers. He tells me these are fruitless, distractions of a neurotic society.
What more should you want than a few beautiful women, kids, a home and ‘farm’ outside-the-bounds-of-modern-lifes-grids.
“I hear you, really. But right now I’m fulfilled. I hope we see footprints today.”
__ _ _ ________
HOT! DAMN! You feel this?
God speed friend! If I interpret correctly you stayed strong and didn’t get vaccine? I admire you. This action makes me PROUD. The sun is shining as of now!
“How many souls do you touch a day?”
