Coincidence and doll parts on Twining Flats Rd.

This life is crazy: full of beauty and wonder, but with a dark and dirty underside. The enaction of Project 2025 has us sliding down a hill as steep as any slope on Aspen Mountain, right towards fascism. Before the Heritage Foundation took hold of our government by the short hairs, the old rats-in-a-cage analogy could explain many of our major crises. (Speaking of rats, did you know there are more humans than rats on the planet today? Yep, due to a lack of pirates, I suppose, and lack of access to birth control, we outnumber the little guys by about a billion. Gross, I know.)

I honestly don’t know if there’s a grand plan for resolution to all the obstacles we face, or if life is just random violence and procreation by mammals floating around in space. And I know I don’t want to know how far and wide the sexual predator quagmire goes… Some of us plucked all the eyelashes out of our dolls in the bathtub, and some of them fucked children. Whether or not Trump is a pedophile is moot at this point. He was aware of what was happening at Epstein’s parties, and he did nothing to stop it.

The Republican party has, in a rather short time, jumped off the cliff of moral high ground, sliding fast and furious into a deep crevice of child abuse. They are now the party prosecuting children in court without legal representation, and starving children to death in Gaza. Obviously, their top donors comprise Epstein’s list of clients, otherwise they would release the files. When Congress went on vacation early to avoid the whole fiasco, I also toyed with the idea of taking a month off. I could’ve just re-released my own Epstein file from eight years ago.

In 2017 I wrote a column about Epstein’s parties, where underage girls and boys were brought in as entertainment, alongside top-notch drugs and top-shelf liquors. Trump’s association with Epstein was in the news even back then, as was Leslie Wexner’s and a whole bunch of other old men trying to fuck themselves young again. Is it the innocence of youth they are chasing, or the act of taking another being’s innocence away that excites them? Sick puppies, either way, and a fair chance that Jeffrey Epstein was abused as a child.

My own childhood was a little more Little House on the Prairie. There was a Jill Epstein who lived on Twining Flats Road, the same road where I lived during my doll-torture phase. She was arrested and hung herself with an extension cord in Pitkin County Jail. The same year Epstein ‘hung himself’ in jail in New York, but I think her death actually was a suicide. Even though they were both from New York, Chat gpt says: no relation. Just a coincidence? Yes, that’s what it’s called.

However, the world (especially the Roaring Fork valley?) seems to be full of them. Big and small, dark and light: coincidence plays a part in all our connections. Just like the flip of a coin: fate, luck, or a headhunter in the afterlife determines where we’re born, our access to life’s necessities and privileges, and ultimately, whether or not we feel worthy of all the love.

I recently attended the celebration of life for a fellow native of the Roaring Fork valley who led a life of prosperity and joy. This was the first time I read The Optimist Creed, and this! is the world I want for all of us:

Promise Yourself… To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.

To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet.

To make all your friends feel that there is something in them.

To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.

To think only of the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best.

To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.

To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.

To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile.

To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others.

To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud words, but in great deeds.

To live in the faith that the whole world is on your side, so long as you are true to the best that is in you.” ― Christian D. Larson