Standing Out

Standing Out ©

By

Michael Casey

I was checking my reader figures this morning as I do every day, and I noticed a comment, which can also be spam advertising, from South America perhaps. So they liked a post, a sample in Spanish. I checked out their name and email, and it was fake. However the name used referred to tattoos and Ra tattoos at that, I even learnt the Spanish for tattoo. The name associated referred to a Mafia family turned Peacemakers. So who says I need any imagination if I get comments like this. It’s probably all fake, not unless in some Jail in some country they have stumbled over my writing.

But if you are really bad boys reading my stuff you could try reading all 1,280,000 Words of mine on a Kindle. It’s as if I am Joan Wilder in Romancing the Stone and the local gangster loves my stories. Well thank you all whoever you are, in jail or in a palace or whatever. And if you want to spend some of your billions before ICE or whoever catches up with you why not donate 30million GDP to Birmingham University so they can start that Pain Relief Centre. I’m all for turning swords into ploughshares. Maybe its the Jesuit in me, or I’ve read too much Don Camillo.

This is all the Prologue, a line of white stories to sniff as you have your coffee and buns, far healthier than any other substances we see in films. So why do we all want to stand out?To look hard, or to look soft, or just to be naked if you are a nudist. I suppose its because we want to have a family, we can chose our friends but not our family. But we can chose a family of friends, a gang or cohort if you know a posh word. So do we chose friends or do they chose us.

I suppose a writer if I’m being really stuck up my own, you can insert the word of your choice, a writer observes more and joins in less. But your life can make you an observer, you are the lookout, or the ICE surveillance guy. Or the priest at the church door counting the sinners in. But we all need love, sex and love are different, once your hormones quieten down you will discover this. We find love by romance, by joining a choir, or a football team, or the army or a street gang. Love in the broadest sense of the word, not sex, love, the kind where you’d die for buddy in the army, or in the street gang, or even for the other members in your Punk Rock band.

We all want to stand out, just a little bit, so we are not just grains of sand on a beach, all so the same. We want to be different, we want to stand out. We have to wear school uniforms, or I’m at college uniforms, ripped jeans and a top with a large coat stolen from granddad. We want to be different from our day to day existence, to show we have personality especially if we have none. So be being in a band, musical or not, so by making noise together, we find ourself a home where we want to be, because our real home may be a prison.

Then if you are a naughty boy your home in the gang can lead to prison, a real prison where you spend your time getting inked up, and all because you wanted to stand out from the boring crowd in your village. Life is not fair is it? I have my own tattoo as big as a A3 piece of paper, it’s a brown birthmark on my shoulder, all overgrown in hair now. Maybe that’s why my bothers and sisters used to say I was born under a cow, because of my cowpat birthmark on my shoulder, which makes me stand out.

Now as today is Holy Saturday 31stMarch 2018 I though I’d finish by saying this, just in case you really are those Egyptian Eye tattooed people from South America, thank you for today’s spark which led to this piece. Remember Easter is all about Peace and rebirth, so try not to kill anybody anymore. And yes do donate money to Pain Relief Centres anywhere in the world. Because in the end ICE or rather the cold of death comes to everybody.

How do you want to be remembered? With fear in the eyes of those who see you or with love? Jesus had his own gang, his own posse, today Holy Saturday Jesus is dead, but tomorrow and every day he is alive with Love for all of us. Even me, even you. All tattoos will be washed away and naked we’ll all be judged, Heaven would be so much more fun with YOU, yes YOU inside teaching the angels dance moves. And if you are very very lucky you’ve never get to meet me, ever, and how great would that be?