Sitting in a field after work. Listening to the sound of nature. This is how you have fun. I’ve been singing to myself for three hours. I will keep singing until my voice gets tired. My voice sounds like a natural wonder. I am ready to go across the world and travel to all clubs and cantinas and sing like a young, mystic Bill Joel. I want to go everywhere. I want to build a tree fort for the entire world to climb into and then the entire world can all be in a tree fort together. We will all get along because we will all be part of the same giant club. It will be perfect. I will trap all the bad and boring people in the tree fort. The tree fort won’t have internet so a lot of people won’t know what to do with their time and thoughts. And then all the bad and boring people will turn into normal people again when they wake up and start speaking and smiling and going outside again.
I soar out of the field. I find the center of America without any help from mapquest. I am the American Mystic Man and I have mystic powers. Mystic navigation is one of them. I have read books about aliens and strange happenings in abandon houses. I feel sorry for the people who need watch “Signs” or read these books to feel like there is something ‘unknown’ left to believe in. I am Two Tears Boye. I am the Thoreau of Americana. I am afraid watching the land be destroyed with no one standing in the way to try and stop it. I want to fight progress with my hands and my tears and the tears of all of you that I will collect in a giant bucket and dump over this country like a tsunami of release. But I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want anyone to hurt. I want the tears to wash over us and over you and over them and rub our sharp points away and we will rise a new nation, smooth around our edges like the glass trapped underneath the sea. Eventually all of us won’t have to feel so lonely. Eventually we will all share the same tears. After eating a salad with all of my sisters and brothers I will listen to the sounds of America going to sleep and I will kiss you all goodnight on your foreheads. After eating a salad I will cry two tears from the stars. ‘Two Tears.’ Two tears are complex. Why would you cry only two tears? A neighborhood is passing by on the right. Sometimes I shoot TVs with a gun for fun. I laugh when I do this. At night sometimes I create lightning so people turn off the computer because they are afraid of the bolts coming through their keyboard. I am worse than a Trojan Horse. I know why I exist.
It’s depressing that people are different. Everyone should be one person, who should then give themselves a hug and cry if they need to. I want to create a mountain range between everyone single person in the entire world and then all of us would all really be alone. Surrounded by nature and nothing else. ‘Profound?’ No. Mystic. I should joint the Peace Corps. No. That’s a dumb idea. I should be better than the Peace Corps and start my own Corps: The Mystic Corps. I climb a tree. Everyone runs away from me and I am left alone crying. Two tears? Yes. Someone comes back and holds out their hand. I reach for it. But then when I go to touch their hand I realize it is a hologram and my hand goes right through theirs and I fall back to the ground. Everyone is inside on computers. There is no one around to plant corn for the coming season. There is no one around to help the Mystic Man to his feet.
A Golden Bear comes out from the woods.
The Golden Bear stares at me.
I put my hand out.
“Hey, can you help me?” I say.
“Shuure,” The Golden Bear says.
“Thanks.”
“I am The Golden Bear (…the golden bear) I am the Captain of Candor. I stand up for the honest and the true and the kind.” The Golden Bear points to his heart and smiles a goofy smile.
“I am Two Tears Boye. The American Mystic Man and I feel lonely. I have been going around my country and my people have forgotten about one another. They have forgotten that we are all in this together. That we are all defenders of this land.”
“Do you want to change that?” The Golden Bear says.
“Yes.” I say. We walk and reach a cliff.
Below the cliff is a city of people and dead professional wrestlers. Sometimes there is a very tall statue of the current president of the United States but is has graffiti all over it. I recognize the president’s face. I am ashamed. The Golden Bear stands next to me. “Brrrrrrrrr man. It’s fweezing,” The Golden Bear says.
“Tell me about it,” I say. “Come here.” The Golden Bear steps towards the trees behind me. The Bear has a golden tie tied around his forehead and a blue party hat on his head. He looks like he means business. I like it when I know other people mean business.
The Golden Bear takes my hand softly and kindly and helps me to my feet. We take a few steps. We stop. The Golden Bear kneels, opens a secret passageway in his chest, and points to his heart. “Do it,” The Golden Bear says.
“Do what?” I ask. “Why?”
“Climb inside my golden heart. Do it,” The Golden Bear says. The Golden Bear takes my American Flag and throws it inside his heart. ““Oh.” I say. “Good thinking. Now I am going to have to go get the American Flag or else I’ll appear ‘unpatriotic,’ or something, an irresponsible mystic being littering in the wilds of North America. I’m going.”
I climb inside The Golden Bears heart. The Golden Bear climbs inside his own heart.We climb together.We are climbing. The Golden Bear makes sure I am doing ok. “Are you ok?”“Yes.”
We climb.“Why are you golden, Golden Bear?”
“Not all bears are the same bear,” The Golden Bear says. “I am the Golden Bear. The Sultan of Sincerity. The General of Genuineness.”
I pick up my American flag. We keep walking. There is a nook. Chris Benoit is lying in a nook. He curled up in a ball. “Why is Chris Benoit inside your heart?” I ask. “Keep walking,” The Golden Bear says. “It’s tuurning into a cold and lonewy worwod,” The Golden Bear says. “I know,” I say. “What happened to all the kindness? The honesty?” The Golden bears. “I don’t know. What happened to all wonder?” I say. I sit. A person comes over from the corridor. I stand. The person has a computer attached to their face. I look at the computer; the person doesn’t do anything. More people arise from the corridor. More people come and then they all fall down and go, “ZZZZZ ZZZ ZZZZ!” They are sleeping. I cry a little. Two more people fall asleep. The person with the computer attached to their face in front of me says, “Watch this.” I watch. He just falls asleep. “Life is stupid when people are so bored they sleep all the time. Where is all the kindness? The love?” The Golden Bear says.
“Life is stupid when people are so bored they don’t cry anymore. At anything.” I say.
“Yeah. Not even the movie ‘Stepmom’ starring Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep,” The Golden Bear says.
“Yeah.” I say. I felt like standing there and telling The Golden Bear all about my mystic self. All about my feelings for the girl I have had my eye on from the clouds for many moons now. I thought about telling him that my mother cried watching “Stepmom.” I thought about telling The Golden Bear about my family and how my mother and father used to love one another, and then hate one another and then love one another again. But then I stopped. I stopped thinking at all. I stopped feeling at all. Even inside The Golden Bear, the most adorable wrestler of all time, the entire world has forgotten how to share these simple moments from our pasts that make us who we are. All we do is sleep. In a world full of so much natural beauty we don’t see any of it. We don’t share anything. We hide. We don’t fight. We display on a screen and sometimes we blink. And I cry two tears because everyone else has forgotten how too. I want to change the future. I don’t want it to feel like the now.