Xenophobe

align="center">XENOPHOBE

align="center">By Fred Venturini

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I hate the park. style="mso-spacerun: yes">  This place is supposed
to be a natural sanctuary in the heart of a concrete-coated urban
wasteland, but its very existence in the face of such artificiality
makes itself seem artificial.  Or maybe its just the people that come to
this place, admiring the fountain that coughs up water as if vomiting,
rejecting its very purity, wrenching it high into the air, no doubt
praying to the Lord of stone that it doesn't come back down. style="mso-spacerun: yes">  But it always
does.  The
misery is as perpetual as that produced by love, and that's what the
people that visit here seem to bring. 

They love the
fountain.  They
see beauty. 
They hold hands and nuzzle necks and have their arms
around each other on the brown lattice benches. style="mso-spacerun: yes">  They have picnics
underneath the aged trees that if they had eyes, would be rolling them
as I do now. 
They play with their pets, poor beasts that have been
broken and bred, and they very grass they play on has been neutered
during grounds keeping, and each time the persistent grass tries to
rise up once more and claim the natural right to grow and prosper, it's
shorn once again by a man with earplugs and dark safety glasses, blind
and deaf to the destruction he administers each day he arrives.

class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in;
LINE-HEIGHT: 200%">I see and know these things because I work
here.  I see
the trees, grass, and beasts because I hate to see the people in
love.  I hate
this place, I hate my job, and I hate love.

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; LINE-HEIGHT:
200%">Falling in love is never done softly. style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Love subjects its
victim to a hard, fast plummet, bending the laws of gravity to double
its power and thusly intensify the plunge.  Love blurs reason, teases the senses,
cripples the intellect and will eventually destroy the heart in its
stark, merciless grasp. 

Any person unfortunate to
fall in love will know as much.  In fact, every person falls in love with
the exception of children who die young or people that are mentally
handicapped so greatly that the virus of love has nothing to cling to
and destroy. 
And as for those lucky enough to find happiness in the
face of such illness-such as young couples fascinated with the newness
of their collective disease or old couples that have endured hardship
and sifted only pleasant memories from their relationship-to them I say
wait.  Wait for
the metastasis of love to rock the young with jealousy, pain, hatred,
scorn, mistrust, and worst of all, regret until their minds
swirl.  The old
shall watch their life's mate leave them cruelly and unexpectedly, and
the desertion causes a lighting bolt of searing reality to shock their
bodies with fatal intensity.  It's no wonder that the old die soon after
their mate. 
Even in its purest form, love is still a venom, drank
deeply and eternally under the ruse of happiness and pleasure.

class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in;
LINE-HEIGHT: 200%">And there-a man has just moved closer to a woman
he just met. 
Just twenty minutes earlier, there was a nice "courtesy"
space between them, and he's just closed the gap because of one vibrant
conversation. 

Oh, how I wish that all the
people here were like the groundsman-blind and deaf. style="mso-spacerun: yes">  I love the joggers
with their ears constantly packed with headphones and their eyes locked
into tunnel vision. 
It's those souls that make working in the park
easier.

But these two . . . his newspaper has
largely gone unread, and now it sits forgotten where he once sat, and
the richness that reading it would've given him is lost. style="mso-spacerun: yes">  She is indeed
beautiful, but she came to the park solely to play with her dog by
herself?

Her need for companionship
should be apparent to even him, but he is the one that is truly
blind.  I can
see their relationship in it's entirely.  I can see that it will never work, that her
obsessiveness with men is what drives them to leave her despite her
beauty. 

class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in;
LINE-HEIGHT: 200%">And him?  He places great value on his
independence. 
And oh, how they smile.  How he brushes up against her and she knows
that it's intentional and welcomes it.  He won't try to hold her hand-not
yet.  The
poison is not yet in his system. 

And I have no
choice.  My
existence of misery continues.  They cannot see me reach back. style="mso-spacerun: yes">  They cannot see me
pull the drawstring of my bow.  Neither of them can dodge my arrow. style="mso-spacerun: yes">  No one can. style="mso-spacerun: yes">  And the world is all
the worse for it.