The tale of Mr. Mediocrity

Let me introduce you to a man, I guess we'll loosely call him that.

Mr. Mediocrity-his name. Known Allergies? Growth, and facts.

Let's try some positive philosophy, for example; gaining advice to help make wise decisions?

You mean back when peers leaned on parents for wisdom?

Bad example-his were in prison.

For the past decade, a man pretending to be Mitchell Keys had been forcibly switched onto autopilot. He was an android, highbrow all but shackled and chained to trauma. That accident left behind a man, inside of a body, who spent all of his time a casualty to himself. He was a medium to mediocrity, lacking any type of positive philosophy that would urge him to get up and go.

He was walking through the world in a body that carried a software version no longer fit to function. If Mitchell was anything, he was in fact an operating system in need of a major software update. His brain—a neural network long passed needing a simple reboot to fix the malfunction. He was in need of an algorithm beyond code. Needing to realize the truth—that he was stronger than his Misery—like it was the final piece of firmware needed to reinstall his life.

And that's how Mr. Mediocrity got his name, adopted from ‘Average Joe.’

Sometimes I think about all that I've been through and cry because nobody knows…

Nobody knows all the trouble I've seen...

Nobody saw all these wounds that I've cleaned…

Nobody else felt the pain I was dealt with…

Nobody else cried when I tripped up and fell!

There was no hand! There was no help!

lost my balance thus starting my descent back to hell…

Mitchell looked at this city every day he has been able to open his eyes. Her hardened concrete skin the only surface he has ever toed. He wore the Emerald Cities aroma like it was cologne. She had always been friendly, from a distance, but now he stood in front of a gypsy, wearing a myriad of street lights blinking from green to red, pulsating like veins running blood from a heart. Watching concrete arteries work their way downtown from his house is like watching blood flow to a heart. Looking at the streets and avenues turning into blocks banding together, made him want to be the substance squirming his way through them. The only thing he has to do is open the syringe that happens to be his front door.

“I have wasted five years!” he says astonished. “I won’t do this... Not today. I’m not staring out of this window today!“ Managing to find an exclamation point by the time he turned into the kitchen, slamming his mug on the table.

My demons didn't take long on their way to come to find me…

Skeletons from the closet came too, more prepared.

As they started to circle me, They looked so familiar,

Wait...you were all there…

Sternly surveying his bide—grabbing his journal along for the ride, throwing it right next to his vertical Moleskin bag. Content with the contents collected, Mitchell takes a look around, throwing the straps of his pack over his shoulders, fingers flipping pages leaving the room. The book's borders felt sturdy in his hands, though he was handling each page with care admiring the beauty of a tome that had not always been his.

It made me feel better to see all your faces,

But I thought it was weird to meet here in all of the places.

I suggest that next time, someone please, think this through!

They all shouted back, "We were following you!"

The daybook is black and beautiful. Wearing moleskin around her vertebrae, slithery weathered cover that still to this day gave off a distinguished polish. That journal may have worn a coat of lint more times than shine, it sat on his shelf until he knew it was time to add stories of his own. The book itself so simple, the stories inside so bold! Power in her pages just to tell the tales she told.

His father’s, and his grandfathers before him, wearing his Grandfathers charismatic form of cursive on the cover. Mitchell L. Keys, written in the most beautiful penmanship to ever grace the pages of a book. Right above that, precipitously printed with a slipshod pen stroke, paid without care for the cost of real estate his signature held, was his father's name. Mitchell L Keys Jr.

I miss feeling love...

I miss some of my friends...

I miss looking at you guys and not seeing demons

that I trace to a mirror that shows me the reasons.

The curves and craftsmanship in Seniors signature went weaving through the lined margins leaving letters to perfectly fall into place. People were not taught to write like that, not any longer. Practice making perfect, he could trace that signature a million times while he would never look as debutante as that.

This book once the best friend of a weeping man, while his heart was turning purple. During the waning months of the war, Mitchell’s grandfather was stationed in a small German town. His battalion marooned into the modest countryside, weathering the final stand from a defeated army carrying numbers on their side. On a final peace-giving mission his grandfather, with a small brigade of war-weary soldiers, found themselves bunkered down inside a small church, trapped without supplies for almost two weeks. They sought shelter amongst survivors in a city they came to liberate.

Mitchell Keys Sr. passed his time never knowing when the last breath from his lungs would be taken. Using the pages inside of his journal to scribble the first names of the wounded—so he could use them for later, and the last names of the dead—so he would never forget them.

He went on to learn enough about the first names to mildly muse about their lives amongst the pages. Only then did he gain enough insight about the last names to fill in details along with their pages too. Small poems, and short songs, decorating lives with a hymn. For thirteen days the courage inside of that man composed a symphony of literal survival, only to find its way inside of a backpack heading out the door. Almost like it belonged in his satchel.

He grew up hearing the stories of his grandfather's bravery, imagining his pop-pop frantically flowing with prose, as he nervously begged for a pardon from his perdition. It gives him the comfort he needed, but also an all too real recollection of where he has been.

Mr. Mediocrity, What have you done to me?!

This is where I branch the tree,

that sprouts new leaves producing seeds.

It ends with my grandfather, my dad, and then me.

That's Senior, Junior, and that makes me three.

Walking through his neighborhood made Mitchell feel like similar storms were being shaken from his shoulders like the ones they were forced to weather. The Queen Ann district was an artsy and upcoming choice of Seattle landscape. Buying a house seemed like a thing to do after inheriting all that money, and $20,000 still went a long way. That was years ago before the Amazonian rainforest had been planted. Meaning a callus creation of roots hadn’t yet overtaken everything affordable, sending the rodents searching for shelter elsewhere.

Queen Ann’s central location to the arteries of Seattle’s heart quickly polluted her blood veins. Street cracks literally littering the ground with syringes, and sad stories of semi-survival traced back to vagabonds sharing sleep along the sidewalks and withdrawals under overpasses. Two different worlds existing in conjunction, and ignorance, of the other. One side of the street faced the world with the sunshine in its eyes, blind to the suffering on the other side of the street slumped in the shadows.

Now, do you see why I'm branching new leaves?

And growing new seeds that can produce new trees?

A brand new tree

with brand new leaves,

an unlimited potential that grew from contaminated seeds.

Truth be told, Mitchell’s much more content left amongst the malcontent, floundering with the other castoffs around the cities underbelly. Instead of coffee cups and cappuccinos, these back streets were filled with people getting high while being low. The only refuge provided to their lives usually came from the dumpsters they hid behind. Mitchell watched as a single sidewalk was all that separated serendipity, from savages. One side celebrated the chance at a new day, while the other tried to take something away to place color in their reality. Wanting to live inside something as beautiful as a daydream, even if just for a few hours. Any mask that fits, Mitchell thinks walking down the street, consuming it all.

He puts a cross in his feet, while he crosses the streets, dancing from curb-to-curb. Happy to be alive, jumping from sunlit corners, taking in as much of the shine as he can handle. Once he’s had his fill, he saunters back to the other side, heading down dark alleyways where his shadow could comfortably follow.

Now when you judge me by my family history,

Ultimately you'll agree there grows a brand new family tree.

budding with new seasons leaves, that only regrowth brings

Is my new Positive Philosophy in a key that I could sing.

As much as he wanted to stay out in the sun, he wasn’t ashamed of the man he’d become, blending better with the other side. Anyone looking from the shadows was already high as a kite, flying above their existence. The others were only interested in finding kite strings of their own, paying Mitchell no mind except to ask for the occasional cigarette.

The dichotomy of the streets, beautiful as it was, still sang depressing hooks. One corner sat satisfied, brimming with pride on the sunny side, another day to play away. On the other side— just suicide—survival, misery, and the wish to just die, watching the story of another, one after another, diving into dumpsters for lunch.

Worlds existing ten feet from the other—could be sister and brother—an addict who recovered—the sun more oblivious to the shades pain, then the shade aware of the pleasure gained from the rays. Suffering in the open, all of the world can see. Nobody ever looking because nobody wants to be the hand that actually helps.

That street corner defined the mistakes of the many who inhabited it. The definition of his life would be a success story, not a novella of nuance. Affirmation confirmed crossing the street, waltzing back into the sun.

I broke that branch.

I killed that tree.

Not Senior.

Not Junior.

but me, number three.

I watch new leaves grow,

and I'm so proud I got to be.

the man you probably know as Mr. Mediocrity-Mitchell Keys.