I wish I had a laptop. Then I could write more. I'd sit at the coffee shop like those other assholes. I have so many options of other things to do at my house. I have a to do list 8 miles wide. Albums to record, songs to write, 4 or 5 unfinished movie scripts on my desktop, clean, work out....
I swear I'll never have enough lifetimes to do it all.
but i guess that's not fully honest. I don't write this as much anymore because something has significantly changed in me. In the past year I turned a huge corner in my mind and when i look back I can no longer see the person i once was. Age was never anything but a number to me before, but turning 35 has really clocked me like a lowhanging branch. I've always been introspective, but i used to be able to find some source of strength within, some thread of optimism. The subject of my writings has usually reverted back to the spiritual. My conflict between what I was taught all my life and what I was feeling. Although I always claimed to not have faith, I realized that I did the whole time. I was in total denial. I was a kid who secretly believed in Santa Claus.
You see, I always thought about things with a mystical slant. I had this belief, because I felt different than other people that I WAS different, special in fact. I believed in the fairy tale, that if you wanted something bad enough you could will it to be so. I believed in destiny. I've had a series of inexplicable events in my life. Prophetic dreams, near death escapes and unimaginable coincidences that made me believe that there was something else going on here, that my friends and I somehow knew something that most people didn't know, that we were being edged down a path that had meaning.
I don't believe that anymore. I realized that I might push my whole life and fail. Well, I guess that depends on your view of success or failure, but if I die poor, alone and mad, I will personally consider it a failure.
It's a Hollywood idea that through perseverance and pluck everyone wins in the end, makes enough money, gets the girl and everyone high fives.
Do I still have hope? Yes. I realize that anything can happen. I might inherit a sandwich empire from a long lost relative and live in a mansion made of sanwiches, boobs and hundred dollar bills.
Then again i might get some sort of cancer at any minute and have to have someone wipe my ass for me while i waste away in agony. The chances of the latter happening are far greater. Please be prepared to bring me my pistol.
Yes, I'm cynical, but it doesn't make it less true, does it?
I guess things seem meaningless to me now, and It seems that we're all mad.
I don't believe in inherent goodness anymore, just inherent randomness.
A bloom of opportunity springs up in your path and you ride it and flourish until a random wave of events throws you aside and smashes you with an impersonal violence.
Yet we attach meaning to life's rewards and pitfalls, still clinging to the ideas of benevolent or vengeful gods.
I never took certain falls in life as personal. Like death for instance. I've understood for a while that death, while sad is inevitable as sunsets and there's no sense in letting it destroy you. A god that took death away would also take meaning away.
But cruelty, well that's a chosen evil. And humans are cruel creatures.
And mad. It seems everyone I know has varying degrees of madness. Some greater than others. Some thing they cannot see. I know I have my own, and I've been trying to dig for it and pull it out by it's root for all my life.
I know pathological liars. I know people that every day is the worst day of their lives. I know people who constantly sabotage their own success. I know people afraid of nature. I know people that are emotional adolescents and will be for their entire lives. I know people that cling to unhealthy relationships out of a desperate fear of being alone. I know the paranoid. I know addicts.
and on some level and at some point I am one or all of these things.
And I love people that are these things.
But who on earth can we look up to anymore? Who can be a spiritual authority? If you say Jesus, I'll slap you. I mean here and now and incontrovertible.
We're all broken. We always have been. My friends and I used to be like a shattered windshield You ever try to kick a shattered windshield out? It's hard as fuck. We were broken but we held together. Now we're all just broken bits of glass scattered about.
The past, the things I attached meaning to 20 or 10 years ago suddenly don't mean shit anymore. Now is all that matters, and now I don't have any of the things I thought I'd have. Now I have what I call "Value Time weeks". 20 bucks for groceries the whole week. Value Time bologna on Value Time wheat bread, no condiments. Value Time coffee, black. Ramen Noodles cooked in the microwave with a scoop of Peanut Butter (crunchy of course. and NOT value time. What, am I a heathen? but try it, it's delicious). I look around and realize I don't own shit. That everything I have was given or handed down. Computer, TV couch, bed, record player, lamps, furniture. I have no attachments to these things. I am unfettered and poised like a drawn back arrow ready to let fly. At any moment I could fit the only physical things in this world I give a shit about, fit them in my truck and just go. And I would, but for money. I'm working towards it, but I can only save money at the speed of tectonic plates and the cash i need to set me free from this town might as well be a million dollars.
I don't have a spouse or children like most of my friends do. I don't own anything. I don't have any of the things that society deems as success. I've been in some movies, I've written and played on some songs. Gone on some tours. I've had "experiences". intangibles. Experiences don't keep you full, warm or sane.
But I've been rowing for shore my whole life. I don't just burn the candle at both ends, I put a blow torch to the whole thing at once. I work my full time job and then get home to my 24/ 7 job. I don't watch TV or go to bars all that much. I'm in the lab, trying to breathe life into this monster in my head. and I go through these cycles of furiously pushing and exhaustion. when can i coast? Just for a second?
And I know i couldn't possibly push any harder. This thing's going to have to meet me halfway or not at all. It's made me cynical. I don't want to get old. I don't want to get stuck.
And i look back and try to think about what I could have done differently. I've stayed true to who I am wired to be. I couldn't have done better in school, because I hated it with every fabric of my being. My mind, body and soul rebelled at every turn. I felt stifled, neutered. I thought by pursuing the things I was passionate about that I was fulfilling my destiny, that I was MADE to be the way that I am and that to do anything else would be an insult to GOD. If we KNOW ourselves then we will know what GOD wants us to do, and therefore we MUST succeed.
This fairy tale notion was the most naive thing I ever thought, and has gotten me in the most trouble.
Wow, this situation is so serendipitous that it must be DESTINY! I can't possibly fail because this is ordained by the creator and therefore TRUTH! Then when life pulls the rug out from under me, it's devastating. How could this go wrong? I've always done what I thought was right? Am I being punished?
I don't write as much as i used to because I don't want to create anything negative. Even these words I write now are not optimistic, they are not cheerful or inspiring. I just haven't wanted to add to the collective madness.
The other day I was walking my dog, going to the same place we walk 3 times a day. Up on the hill, in the tall grass I'm closer to the sky and up there I talk out loud. I ask for things. I carry on conversations with my enemies and friends. I guess the walking and talking is just working them out, but part of me imagines that up there, there is a better chance of them broadcasting to the ether, and that something will hear. On my walk the other day, some hobo had taken a shit right in my path, and wiped their ass with a sock. Just left it there for anyone to step in.
I don't want to be a hobo shitting in people's paths. I would have gone off the path so that no one would see or smell or step in my shit.
I try my hardest to never have to lie. I try to not ask people for things. I try not to waste anyone's time. I try not to say things I don't mean, to make promises I can't keep and to think through my options before I act.
But so many people aren't self aware. Are we supposed feel sorry for them because they are sick or hate them because they are assholes?
If any of us are unaccountable, all of us are unaccountable. We all have excuses. We've all been subject to cruelty.
And it's back to cruelty. How many don't know that they're hurting you or just don't give a fuck that they're hurting you.
Was that hobo out of his mind because of the cards life dealt him, or did he just not give a fuck if you stepped in his shit or not?
Was he the center of the universe in his own mind?
And I hear a lot of talk about forgiveness, but how do you forgive people that aren't sorry? That won't admit that they are wrong and will continue shitting on yours or anyone else s path?
And does it matter? There's no universal force balancing the books. Sometimes the shitters win. Sometimes, no matter how cool you try to be, people will try to get their dump on your Keds.
and I'm supposed to be thankful this season. Who do I thank? We're all in this together, shitting on and wiping each other's asses. There's no them versus us. I'm insane because we're all insane.
No one wins. We all just get by until we don't. What's there to say about that?
Is there a point? No. You can attach whatever meaning you want to an insignificant event. You can turn hobo shit in to a biblical omen in your mind. The truth is, we shit and we step in shit. We win and we lose. We become famous actors and we paint houses for a living. You'd think that this would be getting the big picture, but i will still worry, I will still stress, I will still strive. Because that's what I'm wired to do.
I will also not give up.
