The last few weeks have been filled with navel gazing solipsism, so excuse my tone if it seems too pedantically morose. My trip to Kona became my great idea became my nightmare and is becoming some other phantasmagoria of doubt and possibility. WTF. I have known for some time that I have lost sight of the person I was and now it seems really likely that I don't have a frigging clue where to look for what I was. I guess this could be a good thing: redesigning an obsolete prototype that barely ever took flight might be a good thing. So I'll speak in parables and hope that it helps me to figure out what to do next 'cause if I don't figure something out soon my world very likely will just rearrange itself and my perspective. At the point of a shotgun.
If you have a dream and your partner doesn't share in it, what do you do about that? Since most of my dreams either involve felonies or explosives, I can't blame anyone for not wanting to go down that path with me. But one thing that can be said for me, I've been consistent. Oh, maybe the only thing that I have been consistent with is inconsistency, but let's not split hairs. I have always wanted, I think I remember this, that I wanted not to want what everyone else wanted. I wanted to try to be part of the solution and not simply be a tool for the occupation. We are living in a very fucked up world and as I remember from my high school days, "to be considered normal in an insane world makes you insane." Behaviour-wise I seem normal. I don't feel dirty. But there have been some negative reports filtering in. The corporation is having some issues with my "unusual management style." Honesty and directness are fine, as long as you don't have a brain in your head. My bad.
So as I enter the end of the reproductive gulag, and the offspring make their choices as to what kind of prison they are tending toward choosing, I get to ask the question: what the fuck is next? My job is boring and banal, even thought its unique and low stress. I cannot fathom doing it for another day let alone another 10 years, but that would be the smart thing to do. I really wonder if I will live that long if I continue to punch this desultory clock. If it wasn't for my second job, which does allow me to display my actual personality and provides me with a fair amount of strokes, I would go freaking nuts. More freaking nuts.
As there is only one person who reads this blog, I apologize for this long-winded drama show of woe is me. Its actually kinda funny. I am reminded of a comment my one reader made: the answer to the question of whether the glass is half full or half empty is that its half full of urine. Something like that. I had another friend bitch me out because I wasn't being positive enough. But he just had babies and doesn't have a clue what he is in for. He will have long forgotten me by the time his divorce papers become final. Either that, or he will teach kids how to dream in black and white. (Hey, maybe not, maybe he'll just keep going to Mexico to remember how to dream, I haven't been in a while, that might be an easy fix . . .)
Maybe the whole problem boils down to me almost always having to initiate in the bedroom, but that would be a problem that I am supposed to weather with a stiff-upper lip, amongst other things. I love my wife, I love my kids, I kinda like my house (and often hate it) I like at least some of my friends, and I am not completely broke. Life is good, no? No? What I want is for someone to share my dreams with, and someone who wants what I want. I am completely insane for saying this here but she didn't pick up the phone.
Somewhere I lost the ability to say what I really want to people. I got the weird look from too many strangers and "good friends," got told not to be too negative, got asked why I wasn't negative enough about what I was supposed to be negative about, got told to count my blessings when I really wanted to burn them. My mom, god rest her soul, when I got like this used to tell me to "count my blessings" and I actually would. Through gritted teeth and a rage that still haunts me, I would try to enumerate all the "good luck" I had. Have. Had. Fuck if I know anymore. Isn't that a pretty sunset? Took the picture myself!
1 comment:
The best thing about art is that you’re producing for such a narrow set. No matter how urbane or simple or classless or free people may think they are, they’re all the same; same handful of emotions, same grid of desires, same fears, same longings. The trick to both life and art seems to be to make the familiar SEEM new. With that said I find myself at the same point in life as you but looking in a different direction. I’m constantly wrestling with the sixteen year old me for control of my life and lately I’m winning by default (the teenage me that made all the decisions I’m having to live with is just plain bored and no longer talking to me).
See if this sounds familiar; I’m about to graduate from Tulane (history); buying a house (close tomorrow); will be married in the year and by next spring will be teaching high school in the New Orleans Recovery School District (read; moving target) while trying to have a baby.
How did I get here? I spent my life not taking life seriously (just personally) and wound up in a position where no one took ME seriously. Cynicism became too easy, thus boring so I’m trying a new track and find myself really in over my head. By joining the fray that surrounds me I seem to have given up all that defined me (or at least made my fun) and now I’ve become invisible and am finding it very hard to strike a balance between enjoyable and useful (“If I lose my devils, my angels may leave too. And if they do, they’re so hard to find”).
I could go on with my long winded whine but it just reminds me that I’m not doing what I started out to do (there’s that teenage me again) or the desires the adult me have given so much lip service to. I’m beginning to believe that the dead are the only one’s who truly know what they want to do with there lives and I’m just not that committed to the truth.
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