Saturday, September 30, 2006

A(cceptance).

There is a way to move. There is a way to move with a sense similar to oil of vitriol, burning the way through lesser substances, finding a path by making a path. There is a way to move through life whilst living it, surging forward with an intensity that easily lends itself to an all-too-simplistic Freudian reference that is far more entertaining to brazenly laugh at instead of sheepishly standing aside, digging ugly patterns in the dirt with the sole of a shoe. There is a way to move with eyes that manage to see as much as they can, not nearly everything, no; but as much as is needed, as much as could ever really be known. There is a way to move with songs of blood vessels overtaking the sounds of silence, forcing you to concentrate on the road ahead, lest you take a wrong turn and end up right back where you started, sitting on your ass in the middle of Goat-Fuck Nowhere.

I never knew how to move on.

It was a problem. It still is.
A problem because the world gives no allowances for those who wish that things could be a different way than they are, even when they should be. Not knowing who or what you are, not understanding where you belong or where you think you should belong. The world is a place of motion, spinning on its crooked axis along its elliptical orbit, expecting you to take things in stride or to simply be left behind.

I tend to dwell. I build things up before they begin, thinking my way into an impossible arena full of expectations, that can end with nothing but disappointment. Leaving me sitting there, staring at the lines on my hands, wondering where it was that I had brought myself to at that very moment. And more importantly: Wondering how. Sitting in a space that didn’t exist. Staring at blood that had never been, trying to relive mistakes that probably hadn’t even taken place. Thinking too much.

And there have been different things, so many things…so many touches that try to point in one direction, or another, or the other, or upways and downways, longways and…other places. Possibly in Denmark. I wouldn’t know, I’m not a masterful wizard of topography. Nor am I merely passable in the subject of mappings and movings, knowing for goings. Not knowing where to go.

And as always, not knowing how to begin.
This is the way it goes. With beginnings intended to be something that can be understood, something planned, something that can be looked upon with little/no imperfections of apprehension building up in the corner of smooth and milky eyes. Intended for greatness, purely by design. And just as surely, intended never to be. This here, this very bit of personal immunization via text…it began as something else. Something It was something intended to be metaphorical and vivid, conjuring nascent images from the depths of Emerson’s Oversoul, something that we all would know, all would understand, even if we never quite knew why. It was supposed to take that which was true and that which was merely fabrication, placing one atop the other with clear boundaries that would still manage to let them seep into one another, granting understanding and meaning through the action of thoughtful mingling. Fiction layered atop fact. False and true. It was supposed to come from something that I wasn’t really a part of -- but still, something that I had seen -- something that mattered, if only in its own way. It was also supposed to talk about Godzilla.

It was intended to be special.
What it was, was morose and pretentious.

It didn’t belong. Not here, there, or anywhere. Not because the idea was entirely poor, not because the situation was one that couldn’t be properly be elaborated upon, and most certainly not because I didn’t bother to care. It belonged in the world. It just didn’t belong with me.

Because I wasn’t a part of the beginning.
It wasn’t mine. I couldn’t step into that moment. Couldn’t bear to swoop in like the grandest of fools, imposing my hijacks upon what I thought would once again be a true duprass. It was too new, too real, too meaningful in the skin of those to which it truly belonged. It was still theirs. Because I hadn’t taken the time to let it become my own. I hadn’t allowed it to cure, growing more and more of my own insights (and possible misunderstandings) like a fragrant rind, only ready for consumption after countless seasons had run their course. I couldn’t truly begin, because I didn’t give it time to move. With me.

There is a way to move, to get you where you need to go. But you never know the way.

Never. Never know how to push, only pulling, even when the sign is right there, a beacon of common sense telling you what must be done. But you never know that way. Never can read, never can see. Never know how to move.
Until the move has already begun.

All of a sudden eyes are cast downward, and the wheels of the grand ol’ wagon-train have already began a turnin’, drifting down a hill that nobody knew was there. And it is with that slightest inkling of an idea, that we are finally able to begin.

This is not intended to be a place of sadness. It wasn’t started with that in mind, and it’s rare that I sit down to make one of these bloody things happen with anything but interest (and the occasional blind panic as a result of self-imposed deadlines) on my mind.

But even with that being so, I’ve often been told that this makes people sad.
I’ve often been told that this place makes me seem sad.
From those who know me well, as well as those who honestly don’t know me at all.
This bothered me.

I wondered why. And in was in that moment, that instant of wondering, that I finally found a way to move. A way to move on.

There were people there. There are many arguments to be had about the state of a lonely society, and many arguments to be made for the affect of solitude upon thinking and moving and being. There are ways to be lonely that lead to ideas, and there are quiet mornings when nothing is better than waking up alone. Waking up and breathing in the air turned sweet by the cold, and suddenly feeling content with that space. That life.

But it isn’t always so. Because when life is lived with expectation inflated by imagination, all of those brisk mornings suddenly have a chance to take a turn towards the frigid. And within that space, it becomes hard to move on.

Unless there are those around who care to notice. Just enough, so that when they look and ask if you’re okay…that their simple action can make all the difference. Stop becomes Go. It isn’t the be all/end all. It isn’t a grand plan towards enlightenment, and it isn’t a call to lose your hope in a sea of solemn indifference. But with that said…it can be nice, sometimes. Living by the kindness of strangers, under the steady gaze of friends. Seeing the life that is already exists, looking at what it is instead of constantly dwelling upon what it could have been.

Seeing things there that matter.
I found myself driving on a quiet night. It was on the Universal Backlot, the general activities of the place greatly silenced by the hour, but still being more active than a common street at 3 AM. A place a business, where I was doing business. But as I was slowly proceeding through the labyrinth of stages and busses left silent for the night, I saw something that I hadn’t been expecting, and certainly hadn’t been hoping for. Deer.

Four of them. Calmly walking across the industrial pathways of that place of business, not caring about where they were or who might see them roam. Their unhurried gait made visible by the colors of the harsh orange lights, and the pale, pale glow of the moon. They paid me no mind, and we both went our separate ways. And even so, despite there being no true meaning in such a thing, as is often the case with the world around us -- their presence did something.

Even as the world is moving along, it will still take the time to move you.

I still don’t know where I’m going. I’m still going to sit still and stare outward, and still make things grander then they could ever have a hope of being. I don’t always take the time to consider ideas written by Camus, and pondered over by people who are far wiser than I will ever care about being.

But I’m where I am.
There is no sadness here.

Not today.

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Monday, September 11, 2006

A time for the tired to seek what they must. Or something.

I don’t know about you.

Right now, out there, you could be anyone at all. You could be someone who’s looking at this over the bridge of an upturned nose, passing it off as nothing more than the rambling…rambles of a fellow with far too much time shoved into his sweaty palms. You could be a young child of a Hungarian diplomat, who somehow stumbled across this page through a series of circumstances involving someone who currently resides in San Francisco. You could be my one fan, actual and whole. You could be tall, short, oblong, delicate, stupid, delectable, wonderful. You could be a real prick. You could be my best damn friend in the world.

It doesn’t matter, not really. Not right in the here, right in the now. Because I’m in that spot again, that space, where all I can see is this light that’s probably shining too brightly for my baby browns to handle. I can’t see anything else. All I have, right now, is the gentle clicking sounds of my fingers, which I’m trying to keep moving, moving, fast enough so that I don’t have time to stop and think. So that I can keep ahead of myself, losing myself here to ensure that I don’t go and get myself lost. Lost, good and proper.

I’m trying my best. I’m trying as hard as I can, because out there, in that space that I can’t see, past the walls and the wind and the bridges burning in a blaze of triumphant smugness, for someone, somewhere; something is happening. Things are happening. Again and again, as they are always going to do, whether you want them to or not. It’s happening. Again.

“I don’t know about you.”

Yet I only wish that I could know more. About the ones worth knowing, the ones who I already am lucky enough to know. About the friends who right now, are strewn about the world. I wish I could know. And for whatever reason, I wish that I could Help!

I need somebody. Not just anybody.
(See, I made a pop-culture reference. Isn’t this fun?)
It’s all I can think about. More than the sound of the helicopter that’s droning out the sounds I spoke of earlier, of my clickety-clacking and stomach churning. It’s got a light out, searching for something, for someone. Just another search. Just another concept stuck in my head, possibly because of the mini-marathon of House and Veronica Mars I’ve held for myself. I’m just searching, wishing, thinking on. Over and over it, just wanting to help. Way of the world.

Right?

I wish I could help the friend who’s tired of where he finds himself, stuck in a path towards a life that he doesn’t want, with people that he doesn’t exactly care for; but the rut is all that he knows, and for the life of him, he’s not sure how he can manage to dig himself out of it.
I wish I could help the friend who’s tired of having more actual talent then the people who have more poisonous social moxie, who then manage to move above when he finds himself unwillingly staying below.
I wish I could help the friend who’s tired of being lost, who only wants to be found. By One. Specific. Person. Because it’s always hard, finding that one who manages to make your skin tingle in all the ways that make sense, and still find the time to like you right back.

I wish there was something to do, to help these fine people kick off their gargantuan metaphorical clogs and rest their weary feet. If you, out there, if you knew them…you might wish the same. They’re good people, fair and decent. But you don’t know. And I?
And I wish I could help me.
Because I’m tired of feeling useless.


But bollocks to that. This isn’t about me. This is in regards to knowing, on the issue of helping. Trying to figure out what’s right, from whatever options are presented, and a few more that happened to be absent. That one right thing, that is indeed out there, somewhere.

I just wonder. I make connections, I get information from late night conversations, and then just pick up on things that I naturally pick up, unless they happen to be staring me right in the face, always leaving me wondering about how many have passed me by. And yes, I tend to be useless, and repetitive, and a host of other things that I could dwell on if I were as whiny as I was as a young(er) boy.

Yet we’re past that. We’ve moved on, the images of collective misfortune freezing and moving by, just another in that endless series of memorable snapshots, pushing the others aside, managing to bundle themselves up until they’ve made a day. Collected remembrance, still looked upon. But done. It’s done. It’s been done. Which brings to the new time, the new place, that new moment of stasis where the flash has flashed and that snapshot is ready to document the day. In that instant of blindness, we have a chance to see what’s around us. The options, the opportunities. The things that are around, that have been making us oh, so, tired. And somewhere out there, there’s something that we can do.

There always is. Just a little off to the side, sitting there waiting to be noticed. An opportunity for advancement, in whatever endeavor is attempted, a right moment amidst all of the wrong ones.

There always is.
A choice that offers a chance, one that serves as a christening, smashing itself into a sepulchre of jagged edges, giving itself up so that you can do what needs to be done. It hurts, sometimes. It’s difficult, sometimes. It’s violent, sometimes. It’s glorious, sometimes.

I don’t know about you.

But I’ve known enough to know that you, whoever you are, whatever you’re tired of, whatever you may be doing, whatever it is that you hope you might be doing…I know that down the road, down the time, something will happen to you. Something important. You’ll have a chance either to do something, or to not do something. Either/Or.

Just like my friends, the ones whom I love so much. Just like their opportunities, just like their decisions, just like their discomforts. They’ve been tired, and they’ve tried to do what they need to do. Standing there, eyes closed, face forward, whistling against the wail of the wind.

There’s nothing to be done. Not anymore. It’s already happening, even if I don’t quite know what those happenings happen to be. The happenings happen, as they are always designed to happen, even when the design isn’t designated; thinking too clearly to be clear at all, wishing too hard to ever be felt, moving with uncertainty through certain convictions, and easily, clearly, certainly getting lost along the way. Is how it is, and perhaps, just as it should be.

___ of the _____. Right?


Events beginning to unfold, choices already being made. Mileage ticking up, plane tickets being bought, contracts being signed. People making their days.

I don’t know about you; but I’m hoping for the best.
Because if there’s nothing to be done, that’s the only thing to do.