[COPY] The First Happy Man In America

The first happy man in America burned down his house and left the country with this warning, “Watch out for the motherfuckers, they’ll just keep you down.”

I’m not afraid of the light, he thought, but this goddamned darkness has to break sometime. He was a free man, a follower of Christ. He forsook all his possessions for peace of mind.

The flames brightened his face, reddening it, shaping it with shadows and flickering heat. Watch out for the motherfuckers, he repeated.

“I have seen the other side,” he cried. “It was beautiful and frightening, and ecstatic, and God is merciful. It is mankind that is cruel.”

The happy man had seen the other side and he was filled with joy for having seen it. Others thought him insane. They were right.

No one knows where he went after he burned his house down.