Because, yeah, maybe it is time…

Warning y’all, this might be one of those long and winding posts, we’ll see…

Some of y’all might have noted, I have a bar code tattooed on my arm. To answer the obvious question, I ring up as Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, hardback edition. And sure, I’m not the only person, especially of the cyborg lovin’ variety, that has a bar code tattoo. However, like anything and everything else I’ve had permanently put on or in my body- I thought long and hard about it before doing so.

And yep, sure enough my barcode has earned me some strife. Jewish family? Less than thrilled with me getting a number tattooed on my arm- for obvious reasons. My profession? Let me tell ya, the “jokes” run rampant and usually are not funny. I figured this would be the case prior to getting it. But I got it anyway.

Why? Well, because deep down in the black pit of my little twisted mercenary soul, I am a grim fuck. No two ways about that. I may have a sense of humor and all, but yeah, at heart, a cynical, sarcastic curmudgeon, at least a great deal of the time. With a general dislike of people a whole lot of the time. Not to say there aren’t some damn cool people out there (waves to the cool people), but yeah. And, well, there is that thing I keep mentioning all the time that a lot of people don’t like to look at and think about…that whole “We are all commodities” thing…

Yeah, that. I believe that. I’ve always believed that. We produce, reproduce, live, earn, consume, buy, spend, work, get sick, get healthy, live, die…and someone else out there profits from any and all of those things. To someone, somewhere, out there, we are all products. With numbers. And rank about that high on a level of import to them. Life is an industry, and we are all cogs and gears and products and consumers in it. Faceless, nameless things which keep the machine rolling and producing more human products, which will continue to grease, feed, and maintain the machine and keep the wheels of the industry known as life functioning. In fact, when it all comes down to it, when it is all said and done, we, as individuals, probably don’t even rate a full barcode- more like a single line with a single number, amid hundreds of thousands, millions, billions, of other lines and numbers. Most of us live, die, love, struggle, fight, fail, succeed, and continue on, until our warranty is up. Then we die, and for the most part, even amid our own families and friends, we are all but forgotten in a generation or three. We are discarded products, no longer useful commodities, relegated to nothingness on the waste side and not even the machine will remember our names, even if they are etched on tombstones.

Oh, put away the fucking razor. It’s not depressing, it’s just life…as I see it anyway. Hence, the tattoo. I’m no one extraordinary, hell, most of us aren’t. We all have our gifts and talents, weaknesses and flaws, and you don’t have to be extraordinary to make a difference, to help or hurt, to achieve and enjoy, to make someone smile, or think, or cry, or see. We can all do that, and it need not require being extraordinary. In fact, often, it more requires being human, and recognizing the numbers standing right next to you.

However, there are people who do defy my rather grim theory, people who become legends, even in the business of life. Famous and infamous, loved and hated, feared and respected: Elvis, Gandhi, Shakespeare, Hitler, Julius Caesar, Jesus, Mohammed- the Prophet and Ali-, Cleopatra, Stalin, Marx, Malcolm X, Marilyn Monroe & Mozart…exceptions to the rule, some of many. There are reasons people dream of fame and fortune, money and power, political prestige or world-stage position. Some seek it, some are thrust into it, some are driven to it, and some don’t even get it while they are alive.

But they are the exceptions. The rest of us? The majority of us? Lines and numbers that keep the machine rolling, commodities that make someone else money, each and every one of us a product that also consumes…

No matter what you do for a living, and no matter what you use to make that living, and no matter what other people think of what you do to make that living. We buy and sell, are bought and sold, and in a hundred years, very few people will know or care about any of it.

Very few of us will ever stop the machine long enough to be noticed in a legendary way, to make, just for a moment, the wheels stop turning. No, that power rests with very, very few. Most of us are just not that extraordinary. And that’s okay.

But some people are. Some people, you see glimpses and hear a thunder when they speak that would surely, if given a chance, wake up some of the old gods. I even think we all have brief, scant seconds of that kind of wonderful. We all have a time or two when we are more than a number, or at least show the potential to be. Sometimes there is a dull burn in someone that speaks of the possibility of a true inferno, or something electric that speaks to a lightning bolt that could possibly short out the most powerful of machines. You know, that strange sense of something that says to you, “this person could actually change the world, or at least make it take notice for longer than 15 minutes”…

But being that type of person is never easy. It’s always far more safe and simple to be a commodity, a line, and a number. Sure, you can rant and you can rage, you can even send out sparks and jolts. You can shake circles and safe spaces, you can challenge and defy…you can judge and scream, you can beg, steal or borrow, you can yell and cry and put anything and everything you have into selling yourself as the ultimate product…

…but that shit don’t wake the gods, nor stop the machine. It takes not much caring about the machine at all, and a whole lot more caring about the numbers both next to you and a million lines away. Doing that, well, it takes a bit more. A little something that, alas, most of us do not possess. No matter how much we might wish we did.

Me? I have a barcode tattoo. I’m a commercialized, stylized commodity who will never blow a major gasket in the machine. But damn if I can’t see some sparks and thunder sometimes. Often, actually, and imagine seeing people standing there with a damn big wrench…not to fix anything, but rather to pitch it on it, fuck with the gears, and be something other than a line and a number.

Someone extraordinary. Something rare indeed. Something more than a commodity and product.

Someone spectacular.

And even as grim as I can be, with my smirk and barcode, it makes me smile…and wish them the best when it comes to challenging the machine and waking up the gods. Where ever, whenever, and however they can. Because the world could use a little thunder and fire.