So where does that leave us? The entirety of human expression amounts to a feeble shriek, a derelict distress call doomed to echo in dutiful repetition.

That’s just my suspicion, anyway.

We imbue our lives with so much significance and insist on the eminence of such things as God, love, society, and principle. I don’t claim to understand any of these things. I am no scientist, and I am no philosopher with a viewpoint worth a damn. All I know how to do is to deconstruct without remembering how the pieces fit back together when I’m done. At times lately, the mysteries of life seem to do nothing more than exhaust me. It’s a tiring game, pretending that life still enchants you.

As far as my imagination will allow me to comprehend, it occurs to me that life, the universe, and existence can all be summed up into a simple phrase: crude physicality. Humanity defines its salvation on the belief that we transcend beyond mere flesh, that we are so much more than just a collection of cells and chaotic particles: molecules, atoms, strings, and quarks, all stirring about in the cosmic stew. But what does it mean to be saved when you reduce the most precious things in our universe to crude physicality?

Everything within the realm of human understanding is rooted in something physical. Thoughts and emotions are a mix of chemicals and electrical charges running through our bodies. Words and songs and poems and laws and inspired revelations are mere conceits of the mind, all rooted in physical stimuli darting about our brains. The most beautiful sounds ever heard, the most profound revelations ever conceived, and the deepest sensations of passion ever endured can all be reduced to mundane explanations of biology and body chemistry. We exist as complex formations of mass perceiving existence through waves of vibrations in matter both within and without us. We exist on a plane of particles and space, actions and reactions, friction and collision. The human body is merely a vessel, crudely calibrated to experience existence on a physical plane.

The mysteries of life and existence seem less distant and a little less significant as you approach the realization that nothing we can define is truly intangible. What romance is there left to find when you reduce everything to a heap of stimuli and oscillating atoms? What is romance at all? What is life?

The best among us might persist in the face of so much pessimism and sing a hopeful song about the beauty of life; but what is song? The most beautiful sounds a human can create begin as electrical impulses in the brain, which travel organic conduits to inform the lungs and the tongue and the diaphragm to inflate and sing. Gentle sounds pass through vibrating bags of flesh up a tube and through the lips, and the sounds stir surrounding air molecules and send waves of vibrating measures traveling to every living thing with an eardrum within range. These sounds penetrate chambers of ears and stimulate tiny eardrums, which dutifully report the sensations to their own corresponding brains. And that’s how song can travel from one mind to another. Song is the perception of creation, one mind almost literally touching another through a vibration of particles in a delicate dance of reciprocity. Song is such a marvelous thing, yet what is song if nothing more than a complex vibration of particles in the air? Song is merely sound, matter set into motion by breathing bags of liquid, flesh, and gas. Life is a mere gathering of mass haplessly prodded into untidy motion. Salvation can seem like less of a sure thing in the course of so much crude physicality.

I suppose this litany reveals me as something of a cynic, though I’ve always thought myself as more of a grudging optimist. In the midst of all this nihilism and detachment, I’ve sought out refuge in even the most unlikely corners. Of all of the strange places to look for reassurance, my journey has led me to a fundamental law of physics: The Law of Conservation of Matter. According to the matter conservation law, while matter is constantly changing its form, it is neither destroyed nor created. In a closed system, while the same sample of water might transform freely between drops of liquid, chunks of ice, or wisps of vapor, the number of atoms within the system would always remain the same. There is no destruction or creation. Matter is merely rearranged.

The physicality of existence is not something that we should necessarily despair. Even without the mysticism of the sacred intangible, there is beauty yet to find. All that has ever existed, and all that has yet to exist, are one and the same. The same substances that make up our bodies, the same particles that we live to breathe, the same molecules that we consume and digest, the same chemicals that swell deep emotions inside our chests — it’s all the same stuff that once composed the dinosaurs, the same particles that those ancient beasts breathed, the same atoms and molecules that once composed ancient civilizations, the same complex amalgamation of chemicals and mass that once inspired our ancestors in distant times to write poetry, to fall in love, to celebrate and commune, to go to war and to make peace. The stuff of life and existence is constantly in a state of reformation and revision.

There is so much triviality that serves to divide us, yet so much uniformity of substance and form that reminds us that we are all but individual specimens of a vast, astonishing whole. In life, though we might act with a fair degree of independence, we all walk fundamentally in step, coasting the interminable waves of mass in unified momentum. Life is a dance of sensations, a barrage of vibrating stimuli, motions of matter that affect us in ways that are significantly the same. There’s a curious kind of harmony underlying our chaotic state. In death, I don’t claim to understand the intricacies of the everlasting soul, but I do know that the compounds of molecules within our bodies never cease to be. In death, there is no destruction, but deconstruction. We are merely rearranged. Perhaps when I die, the nutrients from my body will form into a tree which consumes carbon dioxide expelled from living lungs, and which exhales oxygen into the atmosphere for living lungs to breathe.

Everything that was and is to be exists in a state of infinite possibility. What is life? What is existence? The truths to those mysteries are far more exciting than they might at first seem.

KEVIN: Of course.

GOD: Just a moment ago, you told me that God should let His children live their own lives.

KEVIN: In an ideal universe, even the most aloof and irresponsible deity would take at least some measures to stop his children from hating and killing each other.

GOD: The funny thing about ideals is that they can differ so greatly depending on the dreamer. Sometimes, not even the dreamer himself can agree with his own ideals.

KEVIN: I see where this is going. You think I’m asking for too much. I shouldn’t gripe about the apathy of God if I truly valued humanity’s free will. You breathed life into our frail little bodies, gave us minds of our own, built us a playground, and then set us free. Well you know what? With all due respect, I’m not impressed. I just don’t understand the point of all of this.

Life on earth, you know? I mean, what the hell?

If what they say is true, then there’s a Heaven somewhere. It’s a place where you supposedly feel no pain. Death is nothing to fear in Heaven because you’ve already suffered enough and died for the final time. But what’s the point of pain, and what’s the point of death if we’re all truly destined for eternal bliss? People like to justify our mortality by claiming that God wants to teach us lessons that we’d never learn without first experiencing pain. Others try to convince you that God expects us to prove our worth before we can claim our right to stop the suffering. Still others conjecture that the physical and metaphysical universe is fragmented, and living a perfectly virtuous life will reconnect you to the greater whole. And the theories continue. To tell you the truth, I’ve never heard an explanation that satisfied me.

The more I think about suffering, the more I wonder why I can’t let go of that vision of the ideal universe in which God is both unconditionally loving, and unconditionally just. Why do we accept these assertions without questioning them? What proof do we really have of God’s infallibility? How in the hell are we supposed to be sure that God is more than just a sadist in the sky? The simple truth is we suffer by design. I wish I could understand the wisdom in this kind of creation.

GOD: I have faith that one day you will.

KEVIN: When do you suppose that will be? And since when did you conduct your affairs on the insistence of faith?

GOD: Oh, kid, you really do have a lot more to learn about me, don’t you?

KEVIN: I guess it was too much to expect a straightforward answer. I should have learned by now to just stop asking.

GOD: But where’s the fun in that?

The majority of our days are spent working someplace where we’d rather not be. For the rest of the time — our free time — we wile away the hours at home fighting boredom with all forms of distractions created by others to entertain us: television, books, blogs, music, video games. For most people, it’s enough simply to be entertained. Yet for some of us, prolonged exposure to any form of entertainment breeds restlessness, regret over lost time, and a nagging desire to create instead of consume. I know this feeling all too well.

As a writer, I should take the time to appreciate the creative efforts of others, if only to avoid becoming that lout at the party who interrupts everybody without waiting his turn to speak, and without listening to what everybody else has to say. Yet every time I sit down to read or to enjoy somebody else’s creative efforts, I inevitably think to myself: “You could be creating something worth remembering, too, if you would only stop wasting your time.” Boredom has a funny way of swirling the mind with its pesky contradictions and its appeals to one’s vanity. I’m just one of those people who was never smart enough to figure out that free time is a commodity that was meant to be wasted.

With the imminent fear of death and starvation held steadily at bay, it’s amazing to think of all the trivial things that the mind can allow itself to view as urgent. The war for survival has devolved from what was once a fearsome, roaring beast, into a passive aggressive, elderly old aunt who guilts you into giving her rides to the airport every day. In my little sanitized corner of the globe, modern life affords me the peace of mind to live a soft, comfortable life punctuated by modest intervals of free time. Yet during those free hours, I sweat over silly things like whether I have it in me to write that novel I’ve been working on for eight years, or whether I’m even capable of writing another blog entry worth reading. With so many people in the world with real problems, it occurs to me that the only reason that I care about such frivolous concerns is because they happen to be my own.

Boredom is the best and the worst gift my free time has ever given to me. It compels me to action through unease and anxiety, yet it also sours my creative spirit with crushing cynicism. Sometimes I wonder whether boredom is just another weapon that the war for survival uses to wield against us. There’s an odd sort of romance to that kind of thought.

Behind my apartment building, just beyond the narrow parking lot, stands a modest wall bearing graffiti that is both hilarious and tragic all in a single viewing. My girlfriend and I affectionately refer to this as the “VNG, Fack You, Thug Life” wall.

There’s a lot more going on here than you may realize at first glance. If you look closely enough at this wall, the graffiti reveals a story, told chronologically from left to right. I’ll break it down into seven simple steps.

(1) Somebody comes across an untagged wall and decides to claim this shitty, narrow parking lot behind a row of aging apartment buildings as gang territory. “VNG XIV”, he writes in red. Naturally, the entire neighborhood is impressed. All the ladies want to suck this guy’s cock.

(2) Later, a second tagger comes along and scribbles out the first tagger’s gang markings. Because this individual uses black paint, he will be referred to as the “Black Paint Tagger”.

(3) The Black Paint Tagger scrawls “Fack You” on the wall.

(4) The Black Paint Tagger decides that his pronoun usage is too ambiguous, and thus attempts to clarify his statement by drawing an arrow that points toward the scribbled out gang markings. “I’m not saying ‘fack you’ to the neighborhood as a whole,” the Black Paint Tagger seems to be saying. “My statement is directed only at the person who tagged on this wall before I did.” Communication is key.

(5) The Black Paint Tagger, feeling that “<== Fack You" isn't enough to fully convey his message, steps slightly to the right and jots down the phrase, "THUG LIFE". Notably, deceased rapper Tupac Shakur had "Thug Life" tattooed on his stomach, and he just barely pulled this off because he was one of the greatest rappers of all time. The Black Paint Tagger, on the other hand, somehow transcends the cringe-worthy lameness of this hackneyed phrase and lades it with brilliant rhetorical landmines that explode in a tangled cacophony of life-altering mindgasms.

(6) The Black Paint Tagger garnishes his creation with with some odd looking hieroglyphics, which he ultimately deems unreadable before he scribbles over them. Through this process, he has, unavoidably, partially dissed himself.

(7) A friend of the Black Paint Tagger approaches from behind and aptly points out that the F-word has been misspelled. Dismissively, the Black Paint Tagger makes a halfhearted effort to convert the “a” in “Fack” into a “u”.

And thus was born the “VNG, Fack You, Thug Life” wall. The world has never been the same since. Frankly, I don’t want to live in a world where this wall doesn’t exist.

After somebody has asked you how you are doing, most social contexts demand that, in the name of common courtesy, you keep your replies bright and pleasant. “I’m doing well, thank you. How are you this glorious day?” And the circle of disingenuous empathy fulfills itself and winds around for another spin.

“Oh, I’m doing great, actually. My wife and I just got back from the park.” At this point in the conversation, you begin thinking to yourself: Dear God, I didn’t actually mean it when I showed an interest in your day. “The park is beautiful this time of year, believe it or not. It’s a little cold, but the kids loved it. So did the dog.” Fuck your dog.

And that’s the unfortunate truth. The vast majority of us couldn’t be arsed about each others’ day. To be sure, there’s still room in our calloused, preoccupied hearts for human empathy, but we reserve that valuable human capital for important things like mass shootouts, natural disasters, and global famine.

So go ahead. I dare you to ask me how I’m doing today. I’ll probably reply with something polite and chipper, but I’ll secretly be memorizing your facial features for the flammable effigy I’m making of you back at home. That’s how I roll.

While common wisdom would suggest that the best way to deliver a toast is to speak extemporaneously and directly from the heart, I took the exact opposite approach and drafted a script that I intended to memorize and deliver. I was so honored that Josh had entrusted me to say something meaningful and to help set the right tone for the night. I prepared as much as I could in order to reciprocate that honor to Josh.

Being one of the Best Men at Josh’s wedding was an experience that I will always remember with great fondness. I’m so glad I was a Best Man at least once in my life, but once is frankly enough. I was a nervous wreck two weeks prior to the wedding reception. I’m a writer, not a an orator.

Special props go out to the other Best Man, Carlos Oliveira, for his support and encouragement while I was on the brink of hyperventilation during the minutes leading up to my speech. I’d also like to mention Conrado Oliveira, who started clapping and chanting “KZ” to help me through that awkward pause when I forgot my next line. This act came from a place of love, and I won’t soon forget it. Special thanks go out to Tommy for heckling me from the guest tables as I was setting up one of my jokes. It’s all love, Tommy, I know. Wiseguy. Finally, thank you to my wonderful girlfriend, Diana, whom I love deeply, and whose loving support gave me the courage to believe that I could do the speech my way, and succeed in doing so.

If you’ll please forgive me this indulgence, I have posted below the original script of my Best Man’s speech.

The Other Best Man – by KZ

Believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, I am the other Best Man. We’re kind of doing the People Magazine thing where they name the sexiest man alive every year, but oddly enough, every year it’s always a different dude. It kind of cheapens the honor, don’t you think? Well, whatever, there’s two best men now, and one indecisive groom. The way Josh explained it to us, he couldn’t decide between me or Carlos, so he decided to honor us both as his Best Men. That’s a cute explanation, but if you really want to know the truth, I just think Josh has problems with commitment.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re sitting there in your chair, folding your arms and thinking to yourself, “Oi! How can you say such a terrible thing at the bloke’s wedding reception?” First of all, please drop the terrible cockney English accent because it is not working for you. But secondly, relax. I emailed this very speech to Josh this afternoon at 2 PM. I assume since he never got back to me with a reply or a complaint, that everything I’m doing up here is fully sanctioned by Josh.

Having said that, I would like to read a poem I wrote specifically for this occasion. I wasn’t sure whether I should read this poem tonight. I’ll try to keep it short, but it’s about seven…seven…seventeen pages long. But again, Josh gave me his “silent OK”, so anything goes. Four letter words and all. And…it’s in my other tux. Thank you very much Diana for reminding me on the way out of the house today. Let’s give her a round of applause, ladies and gentlemen. She has ruined my entire speech.

At this point, Josh probably hates me, and he’s regretting that he ever asked me to come up here and say something nice about him.

Truth be told, Josh and I have known each other for twenty years now, and we have never been able to get rid of each other. We met at the age of seven at Five Wounds Elementary School. Then we went on to Bellarmine College Prep for high school. Then finally, for undergrad, we both ended up going to Santa Clara University. We’ve remained friends long after graduation. For twenty years, I’ve had the privilege of calling Josh my friend. And for the past four years, I’ve had the delight of getting to know Sarah, and I now consider her one of my closest friends. It makes my heart sing to know that these two have found so much happiness together. After twenty years of friendship, I am proud to witness these moments, the time in my good friend’s life when he starts a new life with his wonderful bride. Josh has gotten married before I have, by the way, and my girlfriend Diana won’t let me hear the end of it. “Oi! Josh and Sarah did it. When are you and me getting married?” Diana’s English accent is terrible. Why does she talk to me like that? She’s not even British.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about love, and what I can say about it without sounding redundant. What can you really say about love that hasn’t been said literally thousands of times before? What more can I say when so many inspired philosophers, authors, poets, and playwrights have already weighed in on the subject with far more eloquence than I’m capable of? Just as humankind has always done for centuries, we are born, we grow, we learn, and we fade away. But in between, there are some beautiful moments where, with a little luck, we find love, we get married, and we celebrate with grand parties just like this one. It’s happened billions of times before throughout the ages, and I should think that it will happen billions of times more in the future. When you begin thinking of anything on that grand a scale, you begin to wonder, “So what?” Love? It’s all been done before, so what’s all the fuss about? What a tidy little rut we find ourselves in.

But love is no rut, not in any form. Love is the grand experiment of life that constantly surprises us by joy, one generation after the next, and always with the same old bag of tricks. The human dance wouldn’t be the same without love to guide us with all of its familiar refrains. Robert Frost once said, “Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” That innate desire lives inside all of us, and it begs us to dream, challenges us to grow, and dares us to care about someone other than ourselves. Love is that immutable constant of the human spirit that invariably keeps us all human. Love is our guarantee that the human spirit, for all of its frailties, will always have something worth celebrating. Tonight, my human spirit soars with gratitude and joy because two people whom I love very much have dedicated their lives to loving each other. I can think of no better reason to celebrate.

Tonight, my friends, let’s all raise our glasses in celebration to Josh and Sarah.

Casey: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/2008_greek_riots.html
Kevin: damn, that’s nuts
Kevin: compelling pictures
Casey: too bad they didn’t put the phone number for hot protester chick in #7
Kevin: lol dude i was thinking the same thing. is that wrong?
Casey: never
Kevin: she’s fighting for social justice and government reform and shit
Kevin: and we’re just thinking about banging her
Casey: bow chicka bow wow

Among this bounty of undervalued books, I found and purchased an old, worn copy of Garfield Takes Up Space.

Just recently, I finally got around to reading the book. I love Garfield, and so of course I enjoyed the book from cover to cover. When I reached the last page, though, I came across something that made me pause. On the upper left corner of the inside cover was a handwritten message: “Sassy was there & here!” The ampersand was modified to look like a heart with hooks and bubbles hovering above and below it.

As I’ve mentioned before, I find something fascinating about graffiti in public places. Just as equally, I get this visceral kick from discovering handwritten notes in previously handled books. There’s an entire world out there of subtext, secret monologues, raw opinions, frantic notes, and words literally written between the lines. What a wonderful thing it is to open a book and to immediately understand how the words within affected the reader who came before you. It’s like you’re taking a glimpse into someone else’s subconscious mind, and your shared experience with this stranger suddenly becomes all the more meaningful.

As I stared down at Sassy’s note to the world, I realized how sad it was that the potency of her message had to die so that I could purchase this discounted Garfield book. How many others would have seen Sassy’s note had I decided not to throw this tattered old book into my paper bag?

So today of all days, before the close of the year, I’m getting the word out. Sassy was there & here!