I am in the Twilight of My Youth

Thank God! The sun is setting on the tumult of thirty years of awkward strife! Amen and amen again I say to its passing--farewell to the demons of insecurity. The cracked mask of youth falls away as the sure face of manhood emerges. The weight of those thirty years knocking about in the darkness of confusion, the hurricane swirl of emotion sometimes almost paralyzing in its force. And goodbye to those years of constant struggle against my physical enemy: cerebral palsy. You were an adversary whom had much to teach me, and while you will still lurk in my muscles and sinews until my dying day, we know that I have won, that I have banished you to the no-man's land of defeat. But I feel still that you are an old friend, that I was formed as a result of our unending war. The scars I wear from our battle I wear with pride. They are more precious than any medals handed out by any army or government, they are not pinned to a uniform, but are forever seared into my flesh--they are the man that I am, a document of every foot advanced on the battlefield that is life. Thank God the battle continues!

I walk about the street and in the store windows I see the magazines that hold up the slaves of youth as mortal gods. Their Eden is illusion; the god they worship is a lie. The ones that wear the perpetual plastic smile of youth, the never fading smile, the doll house smile that sparkles in the incandescent light of a nuclear blast. I walk down the street and see their inhuman gladness unhindered by the journey of the soul. Ten thousand years in the grave and their smiles will still be shimmering up to the heavens while the corpse beneath rots away. Even today while I see them in their ghostly gracefulness wisp down the street, beneath the myriad smiles I smell the stench of rot. It invigorates me, sustains me, jolts me from sleep and reminds me that I am still living. It is a pungent flower, to be sure, and its beauty is that of the undying flower bred in factories--but we live in the assembly line age. Soon we will join with the undying flowers and taste the stale breath of eternity--never dying, never living, with our perfectly painted smiles uniformly stitched upon the face. The wonders of the future almost in reach!