By M.S. Garvey

(15, February, 2021)
FASCISM ACQUITTED.

Crime has never stopped paying. How naïve I have been all my life thinking that one day it would… not pay.

Dear Don,

This piece has become an inadvertent, accidental, perhaps unconsciously intentional personal letter to you. Which is fine, of course, especially if you print it. But, it is good because I have always liked best the medium of the personal letter when it comes to expressing one’s feelings and ideas.

It is a reaction/ revelation in response to your piece, Conspiracy Theorists Are Simply CosPlaying to Avoid Crushing Reality. I keep a pocket journal with me at all times for personal notes to myself, soft thoughts and big ideas. The piece that I offer here comes from that current journal and started as a personal note of something to consider. A few days later I read your piece. 

My heart is still sitting in the bottom of my stomach and I am questioning every motivation I have ever had and every choice I have ever made. I could have been one of those guys that stormed the capital. I am about to admit that I think I have been cosplaying my entire life. I fear that I may never have had a genuine moment of truth with myself, or love, or pure creativity.

My brain no longer feels like it is a weighty mass with potential for great things, but more akin to a hanging electric bug zapper on a hot and humid Texas August night. (...they could use some of that right now.)

A phrase won’t stop repeating in my head from one of those mob guys who stormed the capitol as he was walking out free as can be, “let’s go get a beer and come back!” he shouted. “Let’s go get a beer and come back!” All my life I have been avoiding “crushing reality.”

Are your ready for some football?!

(14, January, 2021)
(create your own tune,...and sing)
(with gusto)
“...you’ve got to be a football hero to get along with the beautiful girls!”

My father would sing that to me when I was kid wanting to be and trying to be...
A Football Hero. It’s what I wanted to be. 

The thing is. The question to answer is, I am, no, I mean, am I? Am I living for life? Or, am I living for affectation? In short; a fraud. Perhaps it should be approached the other way around—am I living for affectation? Or, am I living for life? Doesn’t that require more effort in this way? Ah, either way is the same way, no? I like, am I living for affectation or am I living for ‘life’? THAT is the question.

The question is no longer, “To be or not to be.” In this day, that is not enough. (...or, perhaps it is too much.) It is no longer relevant. Either way—too much is too little in some other way and somewhat likewise, too little is too much in another different kind of way.

What is “to be?” I know , I know, this is not the first time the question is asked but, I don’t think anybody out there truly knows. But, there seems to be a lot of bodys out there who truly think they truly know. Nobody knows. But, all of a sudden, in all of this not knowing I feel I have discovered what’s “not to be”—yes, that is affectation, isn’t it? “Not to be” is shorthand for, “not being yourself.” I, am I living for affectation? Or, am I living for life? I must answer this. We all must. For, I don’t think that I am alone in this. This? This what? ...this distinction? Distinction that feels like an affliction. 

This is worth examining for myself... and my country.

Am I living for life or am I living for affectation? I am pretty sure I share this psychotic distinction/disorder with others—the current past president perhaps or that drunk at the end of the street. A fraud. A fiction. An affectation, a façade. The more that I go there, I fear I feel that this is something that applies to my country; that has gripped my country like a, a, a, virus. 

Living for affectation or living for life has gripped the country like a virus.

When we say, in god we trust, do we really believe what we are saying? And God bless America... do we believe that that could be true?

Are we being “be” then, or are being “not be?” Are we sure that this god has trust in us? Where does this god be? And, we are really to believe “HE” looks like you and me? Now, that’s scary... and hard to believe. But this is basically policy. Let’s go get a beer and come back.

And why? Why would it be crazy if I worshiped the moon? Or the tree? Or the spruce grouse? the butterfly? or the bee? What about the loon?
But, football heroes?
Are you too being afraid “to be?” Or, is it just me?
So, are we going to “bee” or “not to bee”...?
I am for the bees.

Sincerely me, (I think)
M.S. Garvey

P.S. This piece is dedicated to the honey bee that came to visit me the other day and approached my face and somehow let it be known to me that she recognized me and remind me that they, the bees, chose me when I was eight years old in the woods outside of Portland Oregon one morning after breakfast in the summer of ‘73 when my cousin and I kicked that bee’s nest laying on the trail, to make sure that I spoke up for them when the day came that due to human stupidity we’d have to speak up for the bee to assure we don’t totally exterminate them and thereby annihilate ourselves... seems insane to think that it could actually be happening. Yet, it is happening and this is the point she was trying to get across to me when she kept approaching my face in an urgent scrutinizing manner. “Why would you let this happen?” she pleaded. And then she asked me to share this with others and have them ask others what they think of the bee. She told me to share it with ten people and tell them to do the same with ten of their people and in ten days tens of thousands of people would demand that we save the bees and thereby save you and me... yes, she did. She said this to me. Oh, you don’t believe she recognized me? Go ahead google it yourself—you’ll see.

M.S. Garvey would like you to visit
thegarveytrain.com and Trap Door Theatre.