It is July in Texas. The environment is unfit for human life. I stand in my front yard as my two small children scamper barefoot around the driveway, which has been baking in this hellscape’s unrelenting sun for hours. Their soft feet dance amongst the heat shimmers.
Flies buzz all around. Vultures circle above us. Our smell excites them. Eons of evolution have informed the creatures that inhabit this land that the mere presence of our tender, exposed flesh in this place portends our inevitable deaths. They expect to feast on us. On me. On my children.
My wife rushes outside. She is upset. This is all she can be. Only wretchedness and anger, like this hard country’s twisted and spiny flora, can flourish here.
“What are you doing!?! It’s a hundred degrees! Their feet are gonna get burned!”
I tell her I know. This is the point of the exercise. For our children to associate this time of day and this time of year with pain. Blistering, inescapable pain. I do this so they never ask me to bring them out here again. Into this furnace. They do not understand the pain yet. They must.
My wife has lived here long enough. She knows the ends I pursue are justified, though she will not say it aloud. She instead objects to my means. She tells me they are wrong.
I ask her what she means by “wrong.” She is incredulous.
“What the fuck are you talking about!?!”
She has been touched by the heat. It has made her agitated. Confused.
I clarify. I ask her if it is morality she speaks of.
“Dude, are you drunk?”
I tell her God is not here.
“WHAT!”
She hurries to our children. Puts her arms around them. Protects them. She is a good mother, but she does not see that I am protecting them as well.
I clarify again. I explain that if what she means to say is that my methods are morally objectionable she needn’t worry, because God does not watch this place. He does not look upon us here and thus he cannot judge what we do here.
My wife is afraid now. Outwardly, it would appear, of me. But it is of the truth I speak that she is really afraid.
She nervously tells me the Bible says God is everywhere.
I tell her to close her eyes.
“I want to take the kids inside. Now.”
I repeat myself, but she will not close her eyes. Just the same, I say. I tell her that I know she can feel what I feel. The heat, evaporating our souls out through our pores. The sun, cooking us until our skin bubbles with tumors.
God has left this place, I say. He cannot bear to look upon what he has created.
She is a Christian but she knows I am right. God does not reside where our family does. Here in the Texas Hill Country. She cries softly.
"You are drunk."
She has found my thermos of margaritas. I tell her not to let it obscure the truth I've spoken.
The children cry now too. Their feet hurt. They ask to go inside. We do. We turn on Bluey. We are happy in there. In there we will remain. Until November.
It is July in Texas.
🎯 Ceasefires and negotiations are a way of telling Russia you are weak. Dictators act only from strength and assume others do the same. If you wanted them to stop and were strong enough to stop them, you would. If you don't, it's a green light.
@davojones22 @charlie_wally@maddenifico So your idea of what these people are like is purely based on what you’ve been told to believe and not any personal experience whatsoever. sheep behavior
There are some moments when you just bury your hands in your head muttering “What a knob” under your breath.
Zack’s back to talk ‘transgender mice’. There’s dumb, then there’s Wun Dum Fuc.
🎥 TikTok - @zak.kimball