false security

When I was 30 I felt this fear steal over me. It had always been there, just gnawing away in my guts...tossing and turning at just the right moments. It was a fear that drove all my decisions in life as an adult. As a kid, it was quieter. I had hope. I believed the universe HAD to give you exactly what you imagined if you believed it hard enough. I had always envisioned what my life would be like at thirty. Married, kids....perfecting the established formula....succeeding where my parents and the families of most people I know had failed.
   I looked around at thirty and saw my friends married, having babies...I thought....wait, that was supposed to be a part of my plan....i must have failed in some way....


   I thought about buying a house, settling down roots and living like an adult. I started paying rent on a 750/month two bedroom with a pool, and workshops and gas fireplace and washer and dryer. I had central heat and air that worked right for the first time in years. I was trying to get my credit straight to purchase it. I was on my way to the American dream.


   I remember being out in the cold, after dark, right before Christmas trying to finish a carpentry job. Miserable. 4 degrees outside. I had a girl waiting on me at home that I was head over heels for. I would come home and make dinner while she studied and we would drink wine and make love in front of the gas fireplace. Yep, all that lame shit.
   But the stress of worrying about bills pushed me down like a boot on my chest. Things began to break and wear out on the house and my time, energy and money to fix them could not keep up with how fast they broke. 
My truck broke down, my cat died and I began to notice my girlfriends's insanity. I resented my job and my own insanity began to obscure my vision. I was enveloped in a dark cloud of doubt, stress and worry. The serpent of anxiety sat coiled on my sternum and feasted in my chest.


I had to do something before I lost my mind. I bailed on the house and moved back in to the tiny back house I had lived in years ago. I had to downsize all my possessions to do this. I took only what could fit in a small bedroom, kitchen and bathroom.
Soon after, the woman proved herself to be absolutely insane. the most poisonous person I had ever met in my life.


It didn't take long for all the foundation of security I had been trying to build around myself to crumble. I decided to relish in it. I got hungry again. All I had to count on was all the dreams I had when I was a kid before the fear set in. I plunged myself into self improvement. I finished a script I'd been working on for damn near 10 years. I started working out more, My lovers became hope and accomplishment. Acting out of desire instead of fear, I began to build myself up again.


I realized that no hoops we jump through can protect us from the inevitable. We are all going to be alone and sick and die at some point. No amount of comfort, tangible or intangible can cushion us from our impending loss. and we all go out the same way, empty handed and alone. 
The only thing i feel i will be able to take with me is that sense of accomplishment. That i didn't waste my time pinching pennies, that I let it all ride for something ultimate.


   I'm not saying that the fear never comes around. How will I make rent tomorrow? How will I take care of my parents when I'm older, and will I always be alone?
But I'm chasing a fulfillment that I think cannot be taken away. My soul knows which way to go and rebels at every wrong turn. I would love to know there's a guiding force whispering to it, directing me to a greater purpose....but I can't count on it. I've never heard your God in the ceiling and have stopped listening. There's a different feeling in my chest. It's more of a pull now than a push.My religious friends will tell me that it is god guiding me, but I've learned to not have faith. Just hope for the best and expect the worst. But understand your purpose. The thing that you were made for. For me, it's the things that make the doubts and fear go away. I wish I believed there was something to catch us when we make a leap of faith....some kind of wind to throw caution to.....but like that song says..."if I die tryin now, I wont die wonderin how life would've turned out".

It doesn't scare me to believe in nothing. Everything in life there is to have faith in has failed me at this point....Family, nation, religion, relationships....I find a comfort in the instability of it all. the only thing you can count on is that you can't count on any of it. It is fluid and you have to be fluid with it. 


Security is an illusion. Definitely in this life....so why not the idea of security in the afterlife as well? All the fairy tales were lies....but that's a good thing. If we throw them all out then we wont have this thing we're trying to live up to and failing.

Well, enough drunken 4am writing. good night.

Regaytionships

To preface, let me just say that yes, i know in the title I cleverly placed the word gay within the word relationships. Yes, I did use the word gay in a somewhat negative context. Let me just say that I fully support homosexuals and treat them equally as I would any other human. I fully support the idea that same sex couples should have every right as any other. In fact, I think gays should get tax breaks. Yep, you get rewarded for not increasing your carbon footprint and increasing the worlds population. Gays have more money to spend anyways since they don't have to spend it on children, we could stabilize the economy like this! and help the planet! I've never understood why people are against gay marriage because marriage is gay anyways.
  I'll go one further and say that I wish that 95% of the other men on this earth were gay. Then I would have less competition for women and there'd still be some dudes around for the grenades, the sea turtles and the land beasts. 


   But please, I'm asking all my gay friends, just let me have that word. I like calling stuff gay. It's not like I use it in the MOST negative connotation. It's not like I say "Hitler was totally gay". But look, until recently in the 20th century the word meant something totally different and we gladly gave the word over to you. If someone asks me how I'm doing today I can't say "I'm feeling really gay today, Steve!" because that translates into "I want a throbbing cock in or near me"! Lots of words have different meanings, so if I could please go on using it that would be great. thanks.


   Onward to my topic. It seems that most of the problems in the lives of people I know stem from relationships. Problems with, the lack of, one that they can't seem to end, somebody's cheating, not enough sex, fighting etc, etc, etc. I must say that I have found a great peace in my life and I'd like to share with you how.
  
 For a while now I have made the joke "I don't care anymore like Phil Collins". A reference to his the first track from 1982's "Hello I Must Be Going" album. I said "I don't care anymore" so many times in jest, that one day it just burned itself on my heart. When I hear about relationship problems that people are going through, I can usually relate because my relationship career ran the gamut from beautiful to ugly, meaningful to stupid. I've been through long term, short term, shallow, friends with benefits, cheaters, liars, fighting and boring, but now I have this disconnect...it all seems so foolish to me.
   The only thing you can count on in this world is that you can't count on anyone. People are fickle. They change. They get bored. They get tempted. and all that's OK. We're all fallible and there's a beauty in that. Why do people set themselves up for failure by saying "I'm gonna want this person all up in my face forever and ever amen"? I've always said "Never say never or forever". The worst part about marriages failing is that people had to make a spectacle out of it. If you feel so perfectly aligned with someone that in your heart you feel like you'd die for them and never leave them why not do that shit quietly, then if you change and fail it's not so bad. It's like all those people who have straight edge tattoos. Straight edge for life? yeah right.
   I think as a culture the need for marriage is phasing out. People have options nowadays. you can survive as a single parent. So why go through all that hullabaloo? Just live together til it aint cool anymore, then you don't have to fuck with the law, you don't have to give anyone money and you don't feel like a failure.


"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."- Albert Einstein


   I tried and failed so many times I think it would be insane to try anymore. I had some amazing times with some great people. I learned volumes about myself through my relationships and especially through my breakups...maybe more through the breakups. I was always so afraid to let go. Fear was the greatest motivator. I didn't understand that you don't have to possess someone to appreciate them. People are like sunsets, all the more beautiful if you just bask in them while they're here and not lament when they're gone. There'll be another one tomorrow.


In fact I think the stupidest I've ever acted in my life was over relationships ending. Fucking crying an shit? Acting like it was the end of the world, feeling like I wanted to die. I look back now and can't believe I acted like that or felt that way. Time gave me perspective and now I couldn't see things any other way.


   "But Christian", you may be saying, "This girl is special. Her vagina is made of hope and wishes. It has different rooms. It's another portal to Narnia. Elves and unicorns live in it. The elves bake warm cookies and your dick squishes into warm, chocolaty cookie goodness". How much is your fear based on sex? Haven't you learned yet that sex is easy? That anyone can get it at anytime? That often times it's not worth the fear of disease or the drama that goes with it or the fact that you have to hang out with them afterwards? I challenge you, guys and girls. next time you're on your way to hang out with someone of the opposite sex, pull over to the side of the road and rub one out. Just masturbate on the side of the road. I assure you when you're done you'll be thinking. "wait...I have all this stuff I need to do". But, if you still want to hang out with them, you may have something special there. I can't stress enough, once you realize that sex is easy then it won't be your motivating factor anymore. I've proven to the world that I can get laid...now what? How about making something of yourself?


   After the last relationship I had I was bummed for a year. A fucking year! But you know what I did? I made movies, wrote songs, went to the gym and did a host of other things I wanted to do. I worked on myself mentally, physically and spiritually until I found that peace, that completeness. It's like my friend's song says: "watch what I can do today. I'll climb a mountain, forge a river, cross the steam. I'll show 'em all today". Now I think about how much time I would've wasted watching movies, making dinners and eating ice cream. I don't have time for all that shit. I'm not looking to waste time. I've got a world to conquer. I don't get to wake up and do exactly what I want to everyday and I need to relentlessly try to remedy that. Last year I acted in 9 film projects, directed one, played a load of shows, wrote music, gained 20 lbs at the gym and did a shitload of other selfish shit. Not one time did I have to entertain someone, make someone feel special, hang out with someone's family, listen to someone's problems, deal with someone else's drama, tell someone where I as going or have someone all up in my face an shit.


  And how much of your fear is based on pride? You want to break up with someone and do and everything is fine until they fuck someone else or you even think about them fucking someone else. Then you try real hard to get them back. You can't possess people. And why would you want to? They all have expiration dates.


Everywhere I look I see people settling for less. I see people struggling to hold on to something that's not working. I see people unhappy. I see people jumping from one relationship immediately to another. Why is everyone so scared? I used to get lonely, but now I have no time. Worlds don't get conquered by people snuggling up to their special boo and eating pie.


And all the people that accuse me of being feelingsy? Generally they're all involved in regaytionships. The proof is in the pudding, and I'll have myself another bowl of I-can-do-whatever-the-fuck-I-want-pudding while you eat your same-motherfucker-up-in-my-face day-in-and-day-out-hold-hands-and-watch-tv pudding.

The greenline, hippies and the rule of 5%

Woke up with that old melancholy feeling. I guess it beats waking up totally depressed, or hating my life in the morning because I have to go do work that I hate. Mornings before work are always hard. I'm always thinking about what I could be creating that day instead of grinding one more day off my life.
   But I love working for myself. I booked a job for monday and left the house with my dog to go get coffee. I hadn't been drinking it these last few weeks. Trying to detox a little bit. But last night was a late night and goddamnit i needed it. The day is beautiful. It feels like spring. I decided, fuck responsibilities. I'm taking my dog to the woods.
   My whole life I've always been attracted to the in between places. Woods, ditches, empty lots...anywhere that 95% of people wont go because they don't want to get their shoes dirty. I guess I've always been troubled by people. For years my favorite spot to go to was the railroad tracks on what is now called the Greenline. Now, I'm not complaining. Memphis needed something like this. I'm actually surprised they did it. Memphis usually only supports things that are dumb and safe and only suitable for the great unwashed. The greenline is free and you have to go through the woods for a bout a mile. People might get hurt out there and not be within 20 seconds of a walgreens. I figured the Memphis Greenline would have vats of Ranch dressing for us to drink every quarter mile. In a way, they took a sacred spot from me, but I'll gladly give it up if it means people getting outside and off their fat asses.
   The bridge over the wolf river was a meditative spot for me. I spent many hours sitting on that bridge, smoking cigarettes and looking at the stars. It was a perfect crossroads. You could go east, you could go west, you could plunge into the woods or you could jump off and die. Just like life, except sometimes in life your choices just aren't that clear.
Me and Brian Moore used to swim in the pond that the greenline crosses. We'd actually wait for a train to come and when it got real close to us we'd jump off the tracks into the water. If you swam down to the bottom it was cold and if you plunged your feet in to the muddy bottom it would release a sulphuric smell. It's funny the dangers that we look past as children, just to experience life. There were snakes there. The water was probably polluted. We could've gotten hit by one of those trains.
   As I write this the memories that I made there come flooding back. One of the first times I went down there was with Grant Fey, who just offed himself a few weeks ago. It took us forever to build up the courage to jump off the tracks into the lake, and I was the first one to go.There used to be a train door that floated on the lake like a raft and we would push it around with long sticks, sometimes with 5 kids on it.. One time me and Jason and Chris Forte bought a watermelon at Easy Way and went down there with a .32 and blew holes in it, imagining it to be a girl that one of us was dating. There was the time that about ten of us trudged through the swampy woods at 4am with one flashlight looking for an alleged pot plant. Or when a still mulleted Joey and I hung out down there even though we were arch enemies at the time and someone pushed me in the lake.
   One of my all time favorites was when Jason ran away from home in the 8th grade. We had not been friends very long. He couldn't stay at my house so we decided he was going to live in those woods, and still go to school. We camped out that night in the cold, ate chunky beef stew out of cans by the fire, smoked poison ivy and walked to school in the morning. During first period, the cops showed up and took him away.


It sucks what we have to settle for as nature here in memphis. A paved track with thirty feet of trees on either side of it, strewn with garbage. The river it crosses is really a channel cut by the Army Corps of Engineers. That's why it's big and muddy and straight. If you want to see what the river is supposed to look like drive out past Rossville. It meanders through woods and under fallen trees and you can see to the bottom. Once a crew of us drove out that far and thought we could canoe back to Memphis. We were on that river for 9 hours with our homemade oars getting eaten by mosquitoes and scratched up by fallen trees. when we finally gave up and got a ride back to our car by some Deliverance rednecks it took ten minutes by road to travel what took 9 hours by river.
   Since the water now gets rushed through Memphis  and no longer floods the woods are slowly being choked out by privet and scrub brush. When an old tree falls a new on can not take it's place because the brush deprives it of sunlight and nutrients. One day it will be a forest of privet, which is itself a non native species. The lake will be taken over by the invasive chinese carp, that eat every other species out of the lake until it is deprived of diversity.

   On this day presently, I didn't go down there. It's not one of those in between places anymore. It's a major thoroughfare, and sometimes I just need to not see another soul for a moment. To not hear another voice. I was trying to explain to someone tonight about how I hate people, but I was trying to not sound like an asshole. Maybe I am. But I understand that evil does not exist in nature, only in man. Animals are never sociopaths. Honestly, if I could blink a billion people out of existence I would. For the greater good. 
   People I know joke about me being a hippy because I have respect for nature. I resent that. maybe hippy meant something different at one time, but to me hippy means slacker. It means lazy. Stoned. Apathetic. Non violent out of sheer laziness. I don't believe in non violence anymore. I think we should have public beheadings. BP execs, wartime presidents...off with their heads. Most of the people that call me hippy don't give a shit about anything. 


   I spent that day at Shelby Forest  and left the trail, just plunging headlong into the woods. I could hear nothing. No planes, no birds...nothing. I found a rusting car in the middle of the woods and wondered how it got there. After walking several hours I found that place in myself...that clarity of mind that I can only find when I get away from people. I thought about how I used to have memories and get these "pangs". It was a longing for time I had left behind. I would physically feel a pain shoot through me when I thought of a time I had loved. I don't get those anymore. Sure, I long for the presence of some of the people I love, but I never long to be in the past anymore. I've never felt more content or clear of my purpose and who I am than right now in my life. I have no confusion as to who I am or where I am going. I have no void to fill with a relationship. This may pass, but it's a great feeling, a great place to be at. To love who you are and what you do and feel totally sure that you are on the right path. But I think I earned this place.


   I was explaining to someone tonight about the rule of 5%. The rule of 5% is a Nation of Islam teaching, and although I think most all religions are hogwash, I really like this little teaching. Basically  85% of the world's people of all races and faiths are the deaf, dumb and blind masses of the people who are easily led in the wrong direction. These 85% of the masses have neither knowledge or wisdom and are manipulated by 10% of the people who have knowledge but use it for their own personal gain. Those 10% are said to manipulate the 85% masses of the people through ignorance, the skillful use of religious doctrine, and the mass media.

The third group referred to as the 5%, possess both knowledge and wisdom, the righteous teachers and are at constant struggle and war with 10% to reach and free the minds of the masses of the people.

This person asked me if I felt like I had wisdom. I said at the time that it would be unwise to go around making claims like that about myself. But I have lived, and I have an understanding. I see a greater picture and am aware when I'm being manipulated. Things that hold importance for most people hold little for me. I see a lot as foolish, as petty, as a waste. At the same time I have a sense of peace, but it is peace through experience. I feel like I see something that 95% of people don't see. I'm not going to name it. I'll let the feeling speak for itself. It's 1:30 in the morning and I'm rambling. none of this means shit.