The Blunt Edges of Being

THOMAS JEFFERSON: I woke up maladjusted to the world today. Suddenly, now, I don’t fit in. Can’t make it like the rest of them do. I’m here willfully on the outside of everything, drooling towards Saturday’s bliss-point crave, not a place for me in the whole sun-smeared world.

EUGENE V. DEBS: You? You’re just confusing your “writerly sensibilities” with the endless conjunctive clauses, dangling modifiers, and comma splices of your circumstances. Come on now. It’s time to reboot that subjunctive moodiness and shape things back to shipped instead of shopped.

THOMAS JEFFERSON: I’m not suited for the frenzied pluck of the world around me. I’m ill with resistance. I’m ornery with fashion’s mold. Plus, I’m in the mood for fighting — for or against, really.

EUGENE V. DEBS: Be a stereotype. Classify yourself and become a number alone. A zero or a one going through the router of your most uncommon thoughts. Go ahead. It’ll all be okay.

THOMAS JEFFERSON: My name’s written in the sky with chemtrails. You’ve got to live in the outer limits of things to be awarded this grace, this freer way of gazing.

EUGENE V. DEBS: No. Just contrails. Nothing more. Your name’s just a nine-digit farce, a generic statistic, a slogan on a cerulean business card in a bucket of other blue-toned business cards. We are micromanaged…