You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Fight Club.
It’s a novel and screenplay written by Charles Michael Palahniuk.
“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”
Brilliant!
It’s one of the classic movies of all time. Brad Pitt and Edward Norton play two roles of the same battling alter ego.
Pitt is unconscious action in the pursuit of end results without pause or concern for consequences.
Norton is a curator of reason. He’s a tortured soul, battling with imagery of right versus wrong in a burrito laced with psychosis.
Both characters are at odds in this barbaric strip mall of human interaction.
On the surface the characters are disgruntled men, bare fisted miscreants, fighting in parking lots and in the basement of ratty bars.
They are looking for something in a well of emptiness.
They find it in the electrified brawls in the subterranean skuz holes of life.
Bam. Pow. A bloody jack to the jaw!
It’s a movie. The pain is cinematic. The stars fall down. They gather themselves, inhale breath and say “Damn I’m alive.”
“I don’t want to die without any scars.”
The 1st rule of fight club – You don’t talk about Fight Club.
God I love that.
It means nothing and at the same time, it means everything.
It’s a secret club of humans lost in the void, all searching for the light to reignite their inner furnace.
These fight club anarchists ache for something more than being a mouse pushing stale cheese in a maze.
They turn the fat of indolence into nitro glycerin to topple the credit card company’s that assign a number to our lives.
The premise is surreal, the execution pure Hollywood.
But somewhere in this 2 hour mess, the dark message of the film is delivered.
I watched Fight Club again this weekend. It makes me remember to stop and inhale life.
In Fight Club; it all starts with a jack to the jaw, a knee to the ribs, a kick to the skull.
Blood is the lubricant that greases the central theme.
The 1st rule of Fight Club? Don’t talk about fight club.
Though I don’t know what this means, I know what this feels like.
I remember standing outside a bar in South Central L.A. and watching two random dudes throw down in the parking lot.
It’s 1985 and I’m barely old enough to drink.
The smaller of the two men is getting pummeled.
I watch as he is tackled, body slammed to the street, his head smashed into the pavement.
It’s entertaining, barbaric, ferocious.
He is yelping in pain as a crowd gathers.
Everyone stops. Nobody engages.
Life is a spectator sport. 2 men enter, one man leaves.
I look at the faces in the gathering circle. There are white guys and black guys and sorority girls drunk on fruity drinks.
The circle throbs around the combatants like a jelly fish undulating in a choppy sea.
Is the circle going to envelope the men fighting? Is it going to absorb their angst and engage? Or is the circle going to remain a ring of isolation on the outside looking in, not caring about the human souls bleeding on the ground.
Just then the big guy smashes the little guy’s head on the ground.
It sounds like a cantalope falling from a truck on hard concrete.
Nothing good usually comes from such a sound.
The fire alarm inside me sounds. The firefighters asleep in my psyche slide down the pole, get on the rig and ride red lights and sirens out of my station
BAM.
I’M JACK’S MOMENT OF PAIN AND SUFFERING.
Maybe it was the booze, maybe it was just the simmering crazy that always seems to percolate not far from the surface.
I jump in.
I don’t dip my toe into the pool to test the water, I dive in head 1st with my clothes on.
Suddenly I am on top of the big guy.
He is surprised and releases his grip on the smaller guy’s head.
There is pain and punches and scraped elbows. We are an amoeba of jerking body parts and clenched fists.
I hear grunts and sense confusion. I am quickly winded. I feel pain and my arm being torqued in the pile.
Snot is blowing and there’s a yelp from someone below.
Suddenly it’s over.
We are surrounded by security officers pulling us by our collars out of this mixing bowl of confusion.
As I stand, winded, gathering myself, I see the faces of the men I was scuffling with.
“Which buddy’s yours?” the security guy asks me, trying to sort out this imbroglio.
I look at my shirt. It’s torn. There is a smattering of blood on the sleeve from where my elbow was dragged along the sidewalk.
I pick up my arm and stare at the blood. The street light is a pale yellow and the blood looks green and thick like rotting beef stew. The skin shredded on the street, like guacamole peeled back in an asphalt cheese grater.
It’s ugly, but as far as flesh wound go, not too bad.
“Whose your buddy?”
The words are a crossword puzzle to my focusing senses.
“Neither,” I reply wiping my sweaty locks away from my eyes.
He looks at me strangely.
“You don’t know these guys?” he says not believing me. “You are in a fight with 2 guys you don’t know.”
I look at the men in the scuffle.
“Nope.”
The little guy has a black eye and a cut to his head. As I gaze at his wounds I wonder what if. What if I hadn’t jumped in this dog pile and changed the outcome of his ass whoopin.
“Why would you fight a bunch of guys you don’t know?” he questions, probing the veracity of my response.
And that’s when I realize, sometimes you have to get jacked in the jaw to feel life.
“I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.”
I ponder the question.
Dozens of others walked by the scrum. Many more stopped to watch.
But like a coffee pot loaded with rich grounds and water, I was ready to brew. I just needed someone to push start and let the rich aroma of involvement draw me in.
Why did I jump in? Why do we do anything?
Some people linger on the sideline. Others walk the walk.
The faces of the bloody faced combatants are as foreign to me as currency in the People’s Republic of China. I don’t know them and they don’t know me. I really don’t care about either of them except the see saw of life, at that moment, seemed out of balance to me.
The officers talking to the original combatants are getting the real story.
Perhaps they have a good explanation for bloody wrestling in the street on a perfectly good Saturday night.
I don’t have that answer.
“So you don’t either one of those guys?” the officer asks again.
“Yeah, those are my friends right over there,” I say pointing to my group that has stopped to watch.
They are smiling. Perhaps because they knew I would have to jump in and help the under dog getting his ass kicked. I think they are mostly smiling because they are over there in the section of crowd not talking to police.
Why did I get into the fray?
I was bored, I was appalled that nobody was helping the smaller guy getting his ass kicked.
I have a quick fuse that often leads me into rash decision-making with little to no preconceived thought.
I remember staring at the fighters secretly wondering what it would be like if he just jacked me in the jaw.
Would it hurt? Would it wake me up and remind me that life is more than this maze of mindless zombies in forgettable parking lots bleeding and stinking and dripping with sweat.
“I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise. I am Jack’s Broken Heart.”
I don’t want to fight this guy. But then again, I have an itch. I kind of wonder what would it be like if he just tagged me in the nose.
POW
See stars. Shake my head. Feel the snot loosen in my skull.
I like the stench of life. I like the sweat that drips in your eyes when life makes you toil under pressure.
Sometimes to feel you have to engage the beast, invite the action, go for the gusto.
Sometimes you just wave a red cape at the bull and let it charge you and hope you don’t get the horns.
If you survive you have a story to tell.
Even if you get gored, there’s something powerful to take away from that experience
As they say, it’s better to live and love than to have never loved at all.
That’s Jack’s unbridled rationalizing explaining insanity.
It pushes me close to the stain so I can sample it, report on it, tell those on the periphery watching what it was like.
I’m Jack’s testy regurgitation offering the crowd a chance to exorcise boredom.
“I don’t know any of these guys,” I retort. “I just didn’t like the little guy getting his ass kicked all by himself.”
The security officer stares at me. I sense him reaching for his handcuffs, but he stops.
“Get the hell out of here,” he says walking away from me.
I smile as I walk back to my friends.
They are highly entertained.
“Did you have fun?” they mock.
I ruminate for a moment watching the crowd disperse.
Did I have fun?
I have a radicalized sense of fulfillment. I have a bloody sense of accomplishment.
While others watched from the sidelines I engaged life. I am bleeding, I am feeling, I am inhaling the confusion that is this moment.
“Everyone has an invisible gun to their head.” I think.
The 1st Rule of Fight Club? You don’t talk about fight Club.
The 2nd Rule of Fight Club? You don’t talk about Fight Club.
I understand what this means. A jack to the jaw. A moment of realization that you are alive, that everything can boil down to one insane second of adrenaline, fused with pain, mixed with realization that maybe there is something more than a cheeseless treadmill.
“So what do you want to do now?” one of my friends asks.
I don’t care what the answer is.
I feel the pulse of Fight Club.
It’s a good pulse.
I’m happy.
They still need to charge their batteries on this night.
I am satisfied knowing that life jacked me in the jaw and I jacked it back.
I am Jack’s perverse sense of existence.
Life’s Crazy™