Your car will fail you. Advertisements will fail you. Your collection of shoe trees will fail you. Your jacket, the cool one with the really interesting buttons, will fail you. That restaurant you like to go to for lunch on Wednesday with your friend from work will fail you. Your teeth will fail you. Your pets will fail you. That brown spot on the kitchen sink that you aren’t sure where it came from will fail you. The set of TV trays you got for a wedding present will fail you. The next interesting thing that I tell you will fail you will fail you. The Cleveland Browns will fail you. Bridges and tunnels will fail you. The movies will fail you. Tobacco spit will fail you. Your parents will fail you. The Hubble telescope will fail you. The songs of birds in the morning will fail you. Your hobbies will fail you. Mount Everest will fail you. The way your loved one plays with your hair will fail you. Your aches and pains will fail you. The day after Thanksgiving will fail you. References to British television will fail you. Price tags will fail you. Swans will fail you. The cottage on the lake where you lost your virginity will fail you. Time will fail you. God will fail you. Science will fail you. Gravity will fail you.
There you’ll be, floating up into the vastness of space, helpless to hold the world close to you. And you’ll be thinking, “Oh, this is just great. The Browns have lost again.”
When you feel it like a smear of hot elephant shit on your forehead. When the shadow of the ground below you wipes away the light of the moon. When tomorrow wraps around behind you and gives you the mother of all wedgies. When salads turn into used car salesmen. When the dark is a vast bowl of toads and fear is a bottle of garden rakes.
I’m pretty sure I’m losing focus here. So the message, in its baldest, nakedest form, is this: Don’t be afraid.
Ethan Abides 