He would spend most nights taking Polaroids of his erect penis. From every conceivable angle, in every available light source and with any inventive background, he would snap photo after photo until the floor of his small apartment was carpeted with tiny, white-bordered squares, many still in the process of giving their images life. He would then work until the wee hours of the morning sorting, arranging and categorizing them according to quality, clarity and aesthetic feel. After morning toast and coffee, carefully compiling the best of the photographs, he would don his coat and muffler, and proceed to the public library only blocks from his apartment. He would slip the photos, randomly, into books in the children's section, all the while trying to hide, not just his giggles, but the growing bundle in his trousers.
I would meet with him on Tuesday afternoons, in the park near that very library. We would sit on the bench and he would tell me things about the people that went by. This woman has had sex with over four hundred men, he would say. This man eats because he want to die, he would say. This woman... he paused. I had never heard him pause before. I looked to see his face in awe, his eyes becoming milky and moist. She has never known true pain, he said. He turned his stricken face to mine, And she has never know true love, he said.
She carried herself like an aged thing, but had the hands of a much younger woman. She strode purposefully through the park, almost awkwardly at times. In passing, in seemed as if she was deliberately avoiding the sunshine; the very treat that brought so many to the park that day. As I watched her, I realized she was the first one I had ever really seen. The others I had only given passing glances, but gazing upon her I knew she was the first I had ever truly noticed.
He truly believed that when it rained while the sun was shining, it meant the Devil the devil was beating his wife and these were her tears. He also believed that the world was a tree and that God was a squirrel, hoarding nuts for the inevitable emptiness of winter. He believed that he had a machine inside of him, but could not determine its purpose.

We're all smart, right? I don't mean the swish-wristed, intelligence relativist,"No one is smarter than anyone else," "I'm OK, you're OK" -mentality bullshit, but we all posess a modicum of intelligence, right?

A grand fear of mine as a younger lad, was that as I grew older, I would come to reliaze that my notch on the door frame of brain-power would be far lower than I had imagined. The relativity of it all placed my fears somewhere between "College Drop-Out"" and "Guy That Puts Bologna in the VCR." It seemed to me that all I had was my blisteringly razor-sharp intellect. Sure, I had very supportive parents that still tell ne how impressed they were with my retention of "Black Beauty" (which I read in fourth grade), but what if they're just slightly stupider than me?

I would apologize to my folks for heaping my insecurities on them, and insulting them to boot, but no one reads this silly Blog, so why bother.

This frightening scenario has been playing on my mind of late. The questions abound: What if I'm not that smart? What if the kernel of intelligence I do claim, is just a charade, doomed to shatter the moment I first conceive to insert deli meat into a major household appliance? It all get significantly worse when I consider the possibility that truly intelligent people don't question their intelligence. Does the very act of pondering the truth of my self-conceived acumen make the contention true?

I praise Jeebus that there aren't enough hand-wringing weenies like me to make a singinficant market target. If we did, I'd would be one of the suckers dialing the number on my screen for the latest and greatest in brain-enhancing pills, creams, salves, juices, eye-drops, hats and support-cups.

This whole self-absorbed worry session is obviously steeped in my personal insecurities, but hell... what isn't? I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night wondering what the hell I'm doing with my life?

Scratch that.

What the hell will I have accomplished when my life is over? It's the inevitable conclusion of truly embracing secular aethism; it's empowering, liberating, self-actualizing and incredibly scary. You realize, after it's all said and done, that you alone are responsible for the content of your life's accomplishments, and that you don't have the cushy convenience of a second chance.

Ironically, the concept of intelligence is so subjective, that I should be able to think myself into near cultish delight about the squishy gray blob between my ears. Unfortunately, a side-effect of the self-empowering, "I am my own God" business is that if, in this equation God is you, one must deal with the fact that God is not just imperfect, He's so fucking incompetent that he can't remember to put the cap back on the toothpaste.