Perfectly Natural

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. Everyone in Minneapolis saw it on April 21, 2016. It would only rain purple for him on the day he died. Somehow every time someone hears 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' you know the words. It's six minutes long, has no discernable melody, no chorus, and yet I don't know a single person who doesn't like it. You go certain places and say, "You remind me of the babe," loud enough and people break into a full song and dance. Why Graceland & Neverland bring people to tears, for bad or good reasons, they have them, and those reasons are strong. We are not sure who the flash mob movement benefited, but it was a well-documented spike for someone or some thing. When some of the big ones teamed up with words, camera, voice, and charisma, you the collective effort, you think is just for money, but it's for something greater. But then again, you only think of one name when you hear, "There's no crying in baseball." The woman older than sliced bread who died three weeks before her one-hundredth birthday and we still wanted more of, that golden, first lady of television. Those were the big ones; the ones anyone could recognize, practically gods in their own rights. Those who would play to thousands at a time, entertain and endure for years, even though most of them were dead.

Then there were those who didn't know they had it. They were harder to see at first. You would chalk it up to them being good students, hard workers, or smart business people. It took them years or decades to get there to get there, but they got there. Sometimes 'luck' isn't luck. Minds that were so keen to become billionaires, while totally natural, weren't human.

You grow up thinking that fairy tales are metaphors for not talking to strangers. That there are some lesser beings out there that leech off greater ones; some are fine with it, some aren't, some are completely unaware. That the top 40 radio station isn't the equivalent of hymns. Commercials aren't for products trying to get you to keep some supreme being alive. It all seemed so commercial and capitalistic for so long, so normal, so human. Life shouldn't be this complicated! Except straight athletics, those people are totally human. They work hard, if they work hard for something or someone else, that's their own prerogative.

There were always whispers, legends, stories; from all over the world, they all had different names. They all had different levels of phenomena attached to them. Some attributed their talent or skills, some didn't. For simplicity's sake, for now, let's call it "the gift." The gift, also known as the touched, the talented, blessed, and far more than you could imagine could be listed, so we'll stick with gift. The gift is too abundant and too wide spread for it to not have one source only. The general consensus is that everyone is born with the gift and it's either nurtured or smothered out completely, like a spark.

What feeds or destroys the gift? Environment? Family? Education? Friendships? Hardships? Does the gift come from the Gods? Sourced from the earth? Do we feed off of it from one another? Are we ourselves Gods in development? Or are we Gods as we are? Who do the Gods pray to? Can millions of Gods all be wrong?

...

They all seemed like simple questions then. It was so long ago now. I was so young then. I look back on myself then and think if I could take it all back, would I? I laugh to myself and think, "No fucking way."

...

For all things Tinka Boudit