Angels In The ISI

Inspiration comes from many forms and sources. There's positive ones, like simple joy: maybe things are going well, you feel refreshed and energetic. You're at your best, most productive, and whatever line you're in, your work is not a chore because you're bringing a positive energy to what you do. The less you feel like you're actually laboring, the easier it is to labor. In some ways, it seems a little unfair, because you're not really conscious of how effective you're being. That's why it's better to just let it happen, look back later, and who knows, you might end up surprising yourself with what you've done.

Or, and some would argue this is the more likely scenario, you're in a negative place and your labor is your escape. Now, I'm not just talking about art; many will assume this falls into the whole "true art comes from pain" bulls--- that leads to pseudo-intellectual self-aggrandizing critical ramblings and rationals to engage in over-indulgence. But how often do you also hear about people throwing themselves into their jobs because their personal lives are in shambles? In some respects, artistic creativity and corporate business diligence are not all that different. People from all walks of life need a distraction, whether it's a work or at home.

This begs the question, why does everyone need to be distracted? If a human's natural state is the very thing they need to escape from, what does that say about the purpose of human existence? If someone is having a good life, we often say they're "living the dream." And there's the problem. Maybe happiness shouldn't be the dream, maybe it should be the standard.

The issue there is, without a goal, with nothing to strive for, humans are never truly happy. I've talked about this before, it's aiding in the journey towards joy and self-fulfillment that drives the angels' existence. So are we actually positive or negative? We're like emotional medication, but, are we the curing indication found within or unfortunate side-effects listed on the label?

Either way, doing it makes me happy, god knows my job on Earth didn't make me feel this way, or anything for that matter. I was going to ask Marley what she thought, but pontificating on a drug metaphor is probably not what you want to ask of a former heroin addict. I asked Lira, and she said, "Do you honestly believe if there was a concrete answer, I would tell you?"

"No, you'd tell me to figure it out for myself or I'd never learn anything."

"Good boy. Keep it going, I have faith that your IQ will hit the century mark someday."

I coughed a sarcastic laugh, "Thanks for believing in me."

"No problem. Take eternity if you have to. And you probably will."

You've got to love her.

That's Not Quite How Michael Kay Would Phrase It

"Burnett's a question mark," said Sashial. "He's a fucking mental case. The Yankees need him to live up to his talent, he's never gonna do that if he doesn't learn to grow the fuck up and stop being a emotional little bitch."

I said, "That's funny, I heard one of the sportswriters from the New York Times say the same thing on ESPN." She laughed. "Get the fuck out of here, you wiseass!"

"You know, you're sounding more human every day."

She didn't seem to like that. "What the fuck are you talking about? I'm a fucking archangel."

"Yes, but when I met you, you seemed pretty down on the whole human race."

"Bullshit," she answered, "I always had love for you, you know that."

"Oh, nobody knows that better than me," I said, "but you still had a sincere contempt for what we did, it was like you were trying to rescue us from ourselves. I couldn't tell if we did a single thing you found worthy of your attention other than reveal our shortcomings. Look at you now. You love baseball. I know it started because you love heckling from the stands, but you're even talking statistics now, in your own way of course. You've taken enough interest in a human recreational activity to absorb a level of expertise. You would have never done that a year or two ago."

"How the fuck do you know that? Remember, Lira and I were in your head, not the other way around. You've gotten to know us really well over the past couple years, but there's a complexity to us you still couldn't imagine."

"So I'm wrong?" I asked.

She exhaled and tilted her head. "Not exactly. We were created for a specific purpose like the archangels, but we were also fitted to be adaptable. We can develop feelings and interests. Humans are constantly adapting too, I'm sure you know that. Their interests come and go with the generations, much shorter even. These things you think of as fads, we're not immune to them. We've seen so many things come and go, you saw dozens in your lifetime, imagine how many we've seen? It's a constant reminder that the human lifespan is so fleeting, these things define your era. To me, it's like they're gone in a heartbeat. Kind of like humans."

"What does it matter?" I asked. "When their life ends, they end up here."

"Oh FUCK, sometimes I really think you'll never fucking get it. Our goal is to enhance the living existence, to aid the challenge of that, and it goes by so quickly that if you blink and miss it, someone has a miserable life. Overcoming sorrow and desperation in your lifetime is the true reward, not playing video games and eating peanut fucking butter and chocolate cookies for eternity."

"Don't be hattin' on my Tagalongs," I said. "And I do get it. Well, I'm getting it."

She smiled. "I know you are, sweetie. Remember, angels go on for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. You've only been one for a few years. You've got plenty of time to learn."

"You're right. So, you think the Red Sox are really the favorites to win the division?"

She chortled and shook her head. "Fuck them."

How Does He Know? Is He Dead? If He Was, He Wouldn't Be Here

This Glen Beck guy kind of makes me glad I'm dead. I listen to him and think that I wouldn't want to live in a world with that guy, much less one that's raised him to the level of celebrity. I also think that people take him seriously and realize how many people need to be saved.

Then again, it's not my job to save them from what isn't my idea of sensible ideology. Angels are not politicians, personal philosophy is something you have to figure out on your own. Intervening via divine intervention is actually against what we stand for, just like what Michael said to us in angel training class when he was talking about the "events" of the Bible.

But when a guy like that points to a horribly tragic natural disaster and says it may be a message from God, that's just wrong. First of all, he's never met God. Second of all, I have. He's a creator, he doesn't like to intervene, and when he does, he doesn't do it like that.

My own theory is that Glen Beck's entire existence is a message from Satan. He's saying "I exist. How else could you explain this crying buffoon?"

That Hole In The Wall Could Have Been Your Face

It's hard sometimes. You know, when I first became an angel, I think I considered the campaign against sorrow to be my mission. Anyone whose heard what I've been saying for a while knows that I've discovered anger to be an equally prevalent force in the destruction of man's complacency. I think when I died I didn't realize how much a rival to sorrow anger was in the basics of the angel's job because I never realized how angry I was, I only knew I was sad. I don't think my anger prevented me from working my sorrow out, but there was something more subconscious about it that just ate away at me without me knowing it. I think I was just in denial. When you consider yourself sad, you feel more like a victim than if you're angry, something about the visceral force of anger that makes you feel more like an aggressor. You feel less worthy of receiving help, and if you feel that way, chances are you won't get it.

A recent subject, Hershel, recently got into a confrontation with someone he knows, someone he didn't know very long but got along quite well with and considered a friend. "I just keep picturing him in my face, ranting and raving like some kind of fucking insane lunatic. Only he's not insane, he was just hurtful. Fucking ruined Christmas time for me. Every time I picture it I just want to break something, punch a wall, I don't know, shoot a pillow like De Niro did in that movie. And you know what sucks? You know why I hardly spoke back? Because I didn't want to cause a fucking scene."

And there you go again with the rewards of virtue. The high road is lined with the bodies of the malcontents, people who proved they were better and got paid in abuse in return for their honor. What the fuck is wrong with this planet that people do this to each other?

At first, this is why I didn't think I could be an angel, and later, why I knew I had to be. If I'm not around to feed my subject the basic, "Imagine how petty, tiny and insecure that person must be to treat other people like that, how sad their life must be," stock line, then who else will show the kind hearted yet angry, that they're lamb and not the lion? Or that the pathetic belligerent one is not the one who stews in rage but the one who releases it towards the unfair target because they're too pathetic and ugly to know what's right and what's wrong?

Well, Herschel seemed to feel better. God knows I do.

Never Give Up, Never Surrender!

Lira said something to me the other day that really made me think. "How can you stand it?"

"What?" I asked.

"These people and their problems," she said. "So many people never get any better. Even if you help them through a crisis, there might be another one coming soon. Did you ever think that you're doing this all for nothing?"

"Do you?"

"Hey, pay attention, we're not talking about me. I'm asking you a question, I'll put it in writing if it'll help you figure out what your own thoughts mean."

"OK, OK, ease up," I said. "Well, this one guy, he's got a bit of a confidence problem, it makes it hard for him to act. Just about every few weeks he's moaning over something he didn't do, a chance he may have missed."

Lira sneered. "Life's full of regrets."

"Yeah, but it's easier to regret something you did than something you didn't do. He feels like he can't change his life until he changes who he is. Change like that doesn't come easy. You can't just flip a switch and suddenly have the confidence to act, talk to a stranger, take a chance with something, especially when there's no guarantee the outcome will be any different."

"So again, why do it?"

"Because if he abandons hope, I have to have hope for him. Even if he gives up. If I never give up, he'll still have a chance to find happiness, no matter how much he believes it won't happen."

Lira smiled. "That's a good answer. You know, if I'd asked you that a year ago, you probably wouldn't have known. You were more about saving people from the hurt you felt when you were alive. Now you're starting to develop the wisdom of how divine intervention works."

I wasn't leaving that alone. "I'm sorry, did you just say I had wisdom?"

"Don't let it get to your head, you idiot. You can answer one question out of fifty and you still fail the test miserably."

"Glad to see you're not going soft on me," I said. "Now tell me this. How do you deal with people who won't get better?"

"I'm not human."

"Neither am I."

"Yes, but you were, dunce" she said. "I never was, I don't have to deal with issues like that. I am as I am."

True. She's not human. Sometimes I forget that.

Sorrow Vs Anger, Rounds Seven Through Twelve

Now take what happened to Tom a few weeks later. He's divorced for quite some time, but he married young and never really got the hang of meeting people and dating. "I saw this girl on the subway, right? She's cute, I even took a seat across from her just to get a good look. And during the ride, I notice a bunch of times that she's looking at me. At one point, I even looked up and down a bunch of times in a row and she was looking at me every time. And I did nothing. I'm not a forward guy, I'm not Mr Pickup Artist, hookin' up with girls on the subway. But dude, she was fuckin' checkin' me out! It wouldn't have taken much to just give myself a chance. Just say 'Hi.' Hell, just wave! Hell, just fucking smile! Fuckin' do something! Maybe you won't fucking die alone, 'cause if I keep doing nothing, that's what it feels like is going to happen."

Now, I'd originally thought that this is where sorrow trumps anger, because this is what Tom has to live with. It's not a burst of emotion, he's walking around with the knowledge that he failed to act and it may have cost him something. Whether it really did or not is not really the issue. That's the point; he doesn't know what trying to connect with this girl would have led to, and he never will. Better to try and be rejected than always wonder how your life might have turned out if only you'd captured the moment.

This kind of sorrow eats away at you. Anger's got nothing on that. But then I thought about Tom's tone when he told the story. He was indignant, almost spitting the worlds out. At who? At the girl? No, of course not, she didn't do anything wrong. Tom's anger is directed towards himself. That's not the revelation, that much is pretty obvious. But how is sorrow defined? If you think in terms of Tom, sorrow is really an inverted form of anger. If someone stole something precious from you, you'd resent them for it. Tom resents himself, and people who do generally have two reactions: acting out or acting in. Instead of taking things out on those around him, he turns it inward and responds by not allowing himself to be happy, sinking his emotional state to a low ebb that seems hard to escape.

So that's sorrow, and that's anger. So what the hell was up with that guy in the supermarket? Maybe in that case I'm mistaking anger for rage. Fuck, negative emotions are definitely not concrete. You didn't think being an angel was easy, did you? Well, maybe for Marley it is, but for reformed misanthropes like myself, there is a bit of labor involved.

Sorrow Vs Anger, Rounds One Through Six

God, it's been crazy lately. Approaching our "on" season. It always gets busier in winter, you know, seasonal affective disorder and all. And now baseball season is over, and as you can imagine, Sashial and I were pretty unhappy about what happened to the Yankees. Lira's response was pretty much in character. "Maybe you two will actually stop worrying about a bunch of euphoric millionaires and get back to actually helping people who need it."

"At least I'm fucking passionate about something," said Sashial.

I chimed in with, "And you know I've been working my ass off, once the weather broke the depression was overwhelming."

Lira smiled, "Baby, it's been well over a year now, the fact that you still can't tell when I'm not serious is so sweet in its imbecility."

"Oh I know when you're kidding," I said, "and I'd laugh it off but I know sharing belligerence is what you live for."

Sashial grabbed my neck and shook me. "I fucking love this guy."

Speaking of belligerence, this kind of leads to a question I've been wondering lately: which is worse, living with anger or sorrow? My first thought was sorrow because that's been my experience, but when I thought deeper I wasn't so sure. Then I tried to think of what was typical. One recent job I had was this guy who was seething with rage, all because some douchebag in the supermarket cut in front of him when they opened up a new lane and then claimed he was letting him go first and got all self-righteous about it, starting in with, "Oh, Jeeeeesus, I mean GOD!"

"Real fucking condescending crybaby shit," my subject told me. We'll call him Tom. "Yeah, he was letting me in, that's why he ran in front of me and got to the line first, that fucking liar, god, when I think about it I just want to find the guy and punch his fucking face in." And Tom's not a violent guy, the guy's attitude just really got under his skin. This kind of crap is pretty easy, you just give them a stock line about how sad the other guy's life must be to pull stupid crap like that, they calm down and by the next they've practically forgotten all about it.

That's the thing about most forms of anger, it's usually an emotional reflex, a short term visceral reaction that's often bigger in your head than it is in real life. The sudden onslaught is like an emotional assault you perpetrate on yourself, that's why the way you see it can be skewed. Especially in this case, because who knows if that guy in the supermarket's intent was malicious or not? It could just be Tom's perception. Why is that? I later had another run in with Tom that shed some light on things. Or so I thought, 'cause it also made me think my theories were a little off. But more on that tomorrow (hopefully).