There ain’t no rest for the wicked. I’m not saying there’s no hope to get better, i’m saying right now I don’t intend to. So as my usual epiphanies go, this one is about 4 minutes old. So I found the sounding board in the guise of the keys, and typed my way down the rabbit hole. At the other end of a stern and unending gaze of a girl, i’ve never been. However the fleeting glance and side stare, that’s where I live. So my mistake in the past is that I stayed in vision too long. For some reason the ghostly image I knew I was envied the solid state I could never be. So we’re all agreed, the only mistake ever made was being around too long. So comes the time to discuss abandoning ship before I sink it again. Goddamned siren song really burns my ears, and has been the predator of a whole fleet of drunken nights. I once fancied myself a wolf, mistakenly presuming what lied inner under the moon could see the light of day. So that was seemingly years ago, and in the new day and age I still pine at the moon but for different reasons. She can still cause the pack to howl, but it’s not a hunt I join. Today i hunt for myself, solo survivor looking to get as far away as fast as is realistic. But none of that matters anymore, it’s merely lights flashing in ones eyes during an extended embrace. It’s nothing if not fleeting and intangible. So the goal now, I guess i’ve gotten off topic, the goal is to be who I am for better and especially for worse. There is no rest for the wicked, for evil and grace can coexist in the heart of man. I’ve never been perfect, and lord does she know that, but i’ve tried too hard to be pious. I just need to be human. I make mistakes, i ruin and I raise. I muse and mourn. It’s just two sides of a coin. I spent a long, long time praying it would come up heads. But now I just recognize the odds of the flip.
The first thing to go, before sanity, was my writing. What was once therapeutic became a chore, the grounding calming act being transformed into a molasses-slow progression toward yet another failure. I returned to it every once in a while, mostly at night in the full swing of my werewolf madness, but it was rarely for my own leisure. It was more often for the adoration or communication with others. I was wise to use my own heart as the encryption key- only those who understood me at the deepest level could really read what I was saying. Which bears the subject of how wholly unsellable my writings would be, unless I were to woo the greater part of humanity enough to buy my babbling about love and triumph and discovery. Of course once the writing was gone, so too was my mind. Thoughts started seeing their shelf life increase, and I can attest to just how much they didn’t care for that. My thoughts had gotten used to a life of travel, from birth to death they moved over page and fountain pen and keyboard. Complacency was not their color. So it turned out insanity is not all that different from reckless abandon- jumping off cliffs in my dreams for years had conditioned me for it. You see most of my life, my dreams are a place of safety and a place of heroics. I would often have the gumption to do in my dreams what I’d dare never do in real life, so i’d play the show, kiss the girl, fight for the cause, all of it. And that kind of recklessness rarely carried over into my own life until I put aside such encumbrances as pride and vanity and expectation. I lost my writing, so therefore I lost my mind. I lost my mind, I lost what weighed me down. Is this an attempt to ground myself once more? God I surely hope not. This is more a post card from a mindset one can’t get to by train. I’m out there, in the ether, embracing what I once scorned and gaining what I searched for in my dreams. And all it took was laying down the pen and opening a window.
A phrase caught my ear the other day. Someone said ‘Stillness is the Move’ and I was gone. I was lost in a world they mothered, yet could no comprehend.
And then Fiona chimed in, urging that ‘if there were a better way to go then it would find me’ and I was down the rabbit hole again. If you remember the Adventures of Alice, then you should also remember the rabbit hole was sometimes an inglorious and frightening place. But she makes it through, making friends and enemies along the way. So I too found myself raising hell and making concessions in the interest of self progression. In this land of course there is no progression. Both lyrical cues, the drinks to shrink my scope of vision down small enough to travel in Wonderland, are along the same vein- that i’m not going anywhere right now. So my mind decides to fancy that whim.
Originally there weren’t as many Lewis Carroll references but I have found that they suit my purpose as of now. The idea of a vindictive and commandeering Red Queen, the absurde and arbitrary advice I get from Tweedledee and Tweedledum. I guess Carroll was on to something with these characters who lived so far outside the realm of normal that they simply had to be allegories for the way we really are. Everyone knows a Mad Hatter or two, and some of the women i’ve met fancy themselves an Alice. In reality Wonderland is no place for a progressive mind, a person with drive and resolve should never decide to launch his day through the looking glass. But then there are those who have lost their agenda, who float and search for the better way. Or wait for it to come to them as they spin their wheels. It’s a strange feeling, having no direction. It’s like there’s something in your future looming over you, maybe it’s the events to come or the person you’ll be, but they’re sitting there waiting for you. And we are all playing the part of the Rabbit.
(train of thought warning!)
In glasses of water, some say the ripples can read us. See through our shells with the clarity of the crystal glass you hold. See the lines, see the waves, wonder what you’ll see in heaven. Will you make it that far? The answers are for the questions we all swallow down every day. I think we’ll be ok, one way or another. What else can I expect when heaven is predicted as easily as a glare off a dirty glass, or a bump on the table. A thud and then the everafter. I think that’s how most theologians would sum it up, if cursed with onomonopetia and a short breath. Thud, God. Thud comma God. The fall, then the rise. Equal yet opposite reactions to an action nobody can predict. And if God is up there, I wonder what he sees. I wonder if they have glasses of water in heaven. And what the ripples might say then.
So, my last post was hopeful. And this one too, you can be sure, is hopeful as well. It’s pretty weird, considering the day I had, that I can still have a positive outlook. I wonder if it’s truly hope, or maybe just ignorance finally tightening the blindfold over my eyes.
This morning, a mere 3 hours after my last post, my car died on me. This car has gotten me everywhere for the last five years, and for a car that is old enough to drive itself I have nothing but thanks. A 1992 Camry and it has seen me safe passage through many poorly planned nights. But it was on my way home, after an 8 1/2 hour shift. And it stalls about a half mile from home. So I freak out for a minute, then try and start it again and it starts. So I get it a bit closer to home and it stalls again. This time it wont start again so i had no choice but to push it into a parking spot and walk home. And so my priorities had shifted.
Life has a way of zooming in our focus when we would prefer to worry about what lies far ahead. Whereas I’d usually spend most of my time worrying about that ambiguous beast that is my future, I now have to worry about my now. How I’ll get to work the next day, how I’ll need to pay for repairs. And it’s not such a huge worry as money, I think I can figure that one out. I’ll make do. It’s the stress, and the change.
And as I spend my whole day worrying about that, angry that I’ve been awake for too long to have to suffer through this mess, I arrive to work tonight and hear that someone was underwater for too long in our pool today. And it didn’t get any better. And he never woke up. A little kid, not much older than any one of my nieces or nephews. And it kind of makes me realize that, no matter how crappy my day was, I still have everything I could ever dream of. I have friends, and family, and loved ones. And the more I get to see them the better my life is. And my heart went out to this lady, who woke up this morning a mom and is most assuredly crying herself to sleep tonight.
It’s why I guess i’m starting to realize that this reaction to my situation was, though also very human, very premature. Today wasn’t a bad day, today was the luckiest day of my life. And so tomorrow shall be as well.
So, in my life right now, everything is good. By which I mean, nothing is terrible. But whereas younger me might have fretted over the things that are bad, I’ve learned to weigh them both. In an homage that JB might get, I’ve learned one thing: “You take the good and you take the bad, you take them both.” (and there you have the Facts of Life…)
So I’m taking some solace in the fact that, as summer heats rise and hearts are soon to follow, I can for a small and fleeting moment sit here and have a moment where all is well. My family is safe, loved. My friends are all gainfully employed or exuberantly unemployed. I am, for the moment, content with my romantic position. I am, after all, only 22. There’s still time.
So I’ve been looking not up, or within, but ahead. I’ve been trying to get an idea of where I’ll be heading. While at the same time not planning it with any sort of rigidity. I’ve been made the fool of The Plan before, and it’s time I treat him with due respect. As a tool, and not an answer. A method, not a meaning. A Plan, not a prayer.
While treating The Plan as such a friend, I’ve started to in turn realize the true enemy I have in Memory. Some of the flashes I get from my own head are paralyzing, and when I query it for the happier ones I am often met with friction. It’s not a good enemy to make, I can assure you that. I guess in one way I’ve gained a sparring parter, a chance to flex some muscle and build a bit of a lesson-learned view of some of my more regrettable flashbacks. Some of them I know will never leave me, those moments and people that sneaked up and changed me as easily and swiftly as they walked out the door. Some of them I hope are gone forever. And it’s these good times i live, these happy days that I get to see my friends and revel in a good story, it’s these times that can be tainted by Memory. If only he would just learn, and listen, that THESE are the ones I want to keep on top of the queue.
And for these hours, I am met with solace and silence, for not even my own labored heartbreak could dare to interrupt the rain.
Truth is, i’m done pretending. I’m thinking truth is the new scene. Not that I’ve been much of a scenester in the past. Wardrobe would speak to that. I’ve always been mostly forgettable, apart from those who choose to remember. In the shadow of the inferno, we all learned a little bit more about ourselves. The loves we’re sure of and the ones we think we can finally just let go. And yeah, I get a little lonely in the middle of the night, but it’s human. Hrm. Okay, less obscurity. No more fact either mind you. Just words. It’s been a while since I just let myself bathe in the ether of English, be swept in the wake of wordplay in a manner unique and expected by now. On the night of a holiday that’s all culture and no cream, we had a time with salt and lime. And at the encouraging of a relative who went too crazy, a flame who many could say flickered to a fault, I indulged for a brief time. I did as the tomcat urged and matched equal parts work and play. But I did him one better: I stopped at a point. I knew when to call it quits, when there was Steve and when there was New York Steve. And I went home, letting once again these so called “conquests” fall to the hands of those i’m brothered with by nurture and not nature. I’m thinking it’s time for a new word though, conquests being a horrible phrase for it. We’ll call it opportunities. A word I can spell a small percentage of the time, and act upon even less. Opportunity could have been there, might not have been, but back to that truth pare. In the ending of pretending I can make peace with the fact that it isn’t who I am. I can wait, I can sit here and wait. It’s something i’m both good at and destined to do. For better and, in time proven true, for worse. I will not be forced into love by no hand, not my own or that of circumstance. So I sit with guitars and drums in my head, jazz the companion of the waves of inspiration, blues the consort of wicked urges. The blues is all I pray, the blues don’t bother me at all. But baby how blue can you get?
Life jades, zooms, crawls. Conflicting emotions are what makes me clueless. With set rules and definitions I can at least play the part i’m assigned. But the real trick, that real pop quiz, is what do I do when I get to choose the part? Which one do I choose, which path is the one I should take? It’s a little bit of a moot point, having passed one fork in the road so early on. I’m not saying it’s too late for me, but there’s definitely a slimmed catalog now. Do I live with the proletariat, becoming the chronicling bard that falls on deaf ears? If I choose this path, i’ll go back and forth between where I am now, Canterbury, and eternity. And that’s all i’ll have. Or I can choose a path with more adventure, with the knights noble. I could abandon the quaint life i’ve etched and move towards grander kingdoms, saying farewell to the farm that has bred me well. But for those knights, some nights get lonely. And I risk giving up more than I gain. Risk. I guess above jaded eyes, above 4am decisions and dry cleaning, there is risk. It’s what you have to weigh back and forth. You either take the shot and make the grade, or you brick it and collapse on the court. Where I am now, i’m fooling myself into believing it’s easier to just stay on the bench. But that’s not who I am, is it. I dream of greatness, live up to expectations and flourish in a few fields. I just lack that green aura, that willpowerful flash that blinds the eyes of the evil and proves that good hearts and strong minds can prevail, not just in 40-page, 6-panel universes but in the real world as well. Time to turn the page, is it not? Or would I rather just let the issues stack up and gather dust on a shelf.
I seem to have abandoned this refuge lately. This safe haven of thought, the port of call for my heart. And it isn’t because I don’t need it. Because I do. But i’ve got so many other things to deal with that i’ve placed it on the back burner, however erroneously misguided my priorities might prove to be. And they probably are, considering that when this is slow to update you can be sure it’s all piling up somewhere. I’m placing my own mental meanderings, my lucubrations about love on the back burner. And it’s killing me. It’s so hard to live in this world when you’re one of us. And if you know what I mean by “one of us” then you truly are part of the crowd. I have to pretend to celebrate these daily trivialities, take false pride in impressing a CEO that I had no intention to win over. I could care less about my hourly, or my gas mileage or new credit limit. But I have to care about these things, to reach what they call the end. To be stable enough to spend some hard earned time focusing on the real goal and gift, the bohemian ideals I hold dear finally finding time to be explored. So I paw through the overgrown orrery of obligations looking toward a horizon, praying for a lottery. All working towards some refuge where my time can be mine, where I can use this mind to unlock the secrets it and others hold.
Further convinced all i’ll ever need is a private island off Bora Bora, some music and a pen.
.Steve
So I finally feel like breaking the wall, and talking to you in a more readable sense. Since the poetic tic-tac-toe I’ve excelled at for years is simmering, it’s become a danger. It could boil over any moment. So we’ll sum it up in the layman terms. I don’t want to go, and I don’t want to stay. I want to love this place and defend it, but I also feel like getting out of here while there’s still time for me to be me. Or i’ll just forever be that kid I was back then. And, yeah, she and her and the other one have made this place so damned appealing. But like I said with my letter on the train, it’s not so bad that I can’t live without all of it.
I’m not ungrateful, for I’m stronger than a lot of people assume. And a lot of it comes from knowing you. You’re a rock wall I’ve been working on for years. An adequate analogy in both stability and difficulty. But now maybe it’s time to trust the anchor I’ve placed in the wall will hold. Time to free fall or swing back hard. And yeah I know this is probably another one of those life lessons and planned courses i’ll just ignore the minute I click post. But dammit if that still doesn’t make it worth saying. I wasn’t the one who was good at sticking to agendas.
