Posts tagged life
Posts tagged life
Do you ever just have days where you don’t feel like wearing socks? And I don’t mean this with respect to temperature, either.
I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately so I’m assuming this is related to all of the completely wacked-out dreams I’ve been having. Last night I was leaving my house, or whatever passed for my house in dream-land-world-times, to get away from my mother so I could smoke a couple of cigarettes.
That part actually isn’t that crazy. But as I’m walking up this dirt path there was this person; you know that dude/chick/person-thing that’s in all of your dreams and always seems familiar but you could never place a face after you wake up even if it’s a particularly lucid dream.
And he/she was asking everyone that passed by… well, it was a weird dream thing. This person asked something that wasn’t necessarily intelligible and then people gave an answer.
The person who happened to be walking in front of me succinctly rattled off their life goals. The person coming in the opposite direction across from us did that half-stop-turn-around thing and kept bitching about their life situation as they passed.
And I noticed the pattern immediately. I couldn’t tell you exactly what question the person-thing-dream-dude-lady was asking but it was something akin to “what are you made of?”
You didn’t really have a choice of how you answered. It seemed reflexive, like it was coaxed out of the person to whom the question was posed. For the dudeski-lady-bro in front of me, the question of inner-substance was met with an expression of meaningful goals. For the guy across from us (I went to high school with him so I remember his gender unlike all of the ambiguous dream people), it meant bitching about how he couldn’t work at his dad’s hotel or some shit. Seriously he like, actually wanted to work at the front desk but was fucking around too much and so his dad was like “no son, you are fired, go live in Austin’s dream so he can talk about how 90’s your frosted Lance Bass hair is in a blog post the next day because tens of people will be interested in this.”
Then it was my turn. They just looked at me, didn’t even bother asking me whatever it was. Obviously I knew the routine (and obviously if they spoke gibberish to me this directly I’d call bull shit and wake up).
I said I wanted to be a professor and that I wanted to write comedy. I lit a cigarette and I was on my way. It was that simple.
Years ago I would have been the angsty cunt across the way, sans frosted hair. But see I don’t think that was the worst version of what’s possible (the frosted hair bit is pretty bad though). Because in the neighborhood of a year ago I would have had a really pretentious list instead of whining or instead of being so sure of what I wanted out of my life.
I would have gushed to personladydudebroguychick about how I wanted to change the world, how I wanted to live against the stream, how I wanted to road trip it all over the continent. I wouldn’t have shut up about mountains in Tibet and places in Japan and the streets of Prague or some shit.
There’s a lot of cool stuff out there. Beautiful, awe-inspiring, meaningful shit.
But you only get what you bring with you.
Ah, the proper year wrap-up. And the last post like this I’m ever going to make.
No, really.
Do you know what I am? I’m a fucking shape-shifter.
I swear it.
I could take you through the years. Originally, I planned on it. The first year I spent truly loving and truly losing. The first year I spent giving everything I had to another human being while at the same time pouring actual effort into my own life. The first year I spent coming completely unraveled.
And the time I spent finding out that I am so much more than anything I could even strive to be.
Ah, but the striving…
Find a way to get completely lost in another person.
Find a way to gain your bearings when that inevitably goes to shit.
Find a way to give something or someone all that you have.
And find a way to forgive yourself when you lose your way.
Whether it’s at their expense or your expense.
The morning will come. Or it won’t. You’re going to lose your way all the god damn time because every time you think you know where you’re going, you forget that you’re not the one in control. Not in the slightest. It’s all decided. It’s all put together already and unfolding. You’re in bloom. Petals becoming.
Be more. Please. Take yourself places you’ve never been, both within and without. Do stuff. Change the shape of your soul. It will happen one way or another. Don’t be so fucking boring.
Go buy some fucking CD’s. Build something. Fuck someone.
There’s urgency in that breath you’re taking right now.
Believe in that.
Don’t read this.
“I love this song.” She reached over and turned up the volume.
A lot of trees have fallen as a result of Sandy, that dirty, dirty bitch. Where I live the damage was really not anything of note. Only thing that happened on my street was a pin oak that half-fell on a power line. Only one of our neighbors lost power as a result, which seemed to amuse my dad.
Emotional BS to follow.
Do you ever stop and think that every day is the hardest day of your life?
Even if you spend the whole day watching the clouds pass, merely existing is something over and above not existing at all.
Every quantity is immeasurably greater than 0.
Every quality is infinitely greater than nothing at all.
The difference between your most difficult day and an apparently easy day, by comparison, is no difference at all.
I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.
I made a friend at work. It’s funny how as we get older a lot of situations stay the same as they were when we were 4 and 5. It was like the first day of school, sitting in the break room, and we just happened to recognize each other from orientation. Honestly, I still don’t know this dude’s name, but we sit with each other every day. It’s cute. (And I’m jealous of his hair)
He has a few visible tattoos, but the one that sticks out is her name on his neck in perfect script.
”Jocelyn”
Is it his mother’s name? I’ll go 50/50 on the odds that he’s that much of a mama’s boy. Maybe a daughter? Nah man, this dude is my age, if not like a year younger. At most, he’s, I don’t know, 3 years older. Not saying you can’t have kids that young or anything, but it just doesn’t seem like he’s a father.
It’s gotta be a girl. You know, the girl. He loves her. Or, at least, he loved her. There’s no mistake about that in the way he holds his head. There’s no flaws in curve of the “J” at the beginning of her name, or anything else for that matter. I can see it in his eyes. With every strike of the needle, with every drop of blood big or small that began to accumulate at the surface of his skin— through thousands upon thousands of sharp, ink-laden strikes, he loved her deeply; deeper than the needle could ever reach. And the ink is a little bolder for it.
Were they still together? Had he spoken to her recently? Was he unsure that he’d ever see her again? Was it his fault? Does he look in the mirror and know what he lost every day, just to keep his shoulders back and his head up so that he can see her name a little bit clearer, even if it’s backwards? Was she his first? Was he hers? Did he intend for her to be the last? Did she like the tattoo? Did she even know he had it?
I have one tattoo. It’s a lotus flower, and in the center is a blue flame holding an eighth note. I got it with my first girlfriend when I was in LA. I loved her very much. She didn’t get the same thing. Originally I was just tagging along, but then I decided to be spontaneous, and I had kind of always wanted a lotus flower.
She was getting an umbrella on her chest. Apparently, in Japanese culture, two people walking together under an umbrella symbolizes love. She planned to someday get the initials of whoever she was going to be with forever tattooed next to her own on opposite sides of the umbrella’s handle. Now, I don’t think she’s the forever type; but maybe that’s why this meant so much to her. Hope for something lasting and meaningful, right over her heart, to remind her what she really wanted in the end. Then again, maybe she’s just a whore with awful taste.
We joked with the people in LA who we had been staying with that we were going to get each other’s names tattooed. Even though the dinner atmosphere was really quite… jovial, I suppose, and everything was all smiles and laughter, the minute this was even jokingly suggested, everyone’s expression became immediately concerned and— I shit you not— everyone we were sitting with said some form of “oh God no” at the same time. It was a jinx. An awful idea. What if we weren’t together forever?
Of course we wouldn’t be together forever, is instead the sentiment I realized that they were expressing. And even though my tattoo is completely about what’s inside of me and nothing else, it’s not like I’m going to up and forget looking at her laying on the table across the room in agony while she got her sternum stabbed at high speed. It’s not like she was nothing to me, or that I somehow became me in a vacuum in spite of our relationship’s failings.
But still. There it was. Across the table as I ate the second half of my turkey sandwich.
”Jocelyn”
It’s been a week and a half and I still haven’t asked him who Jocelyn is. I don’t worry about it being too painful for him. I just know for a fact looking in his eyes and looking at the way her name rests on his neck that he could never do her justice by merely telling me who she is to him. He could never, ever really tell me the whole story. In fact, he really couldn’t describe it at all. He could say “girlfriend,” or “ex-girlfriend,” or whatever, but he’d be keeping so much inside that he could never get out. So much that only her name can say when spoken from his skin.
”Jocelyn”
I finish my sandwich and sit back to enjoy one of the two times during the day that I actually get to sit down. We’ve been talking about this and that, and then he tells me about how he was late today.
”Man, I didn’t know we had overtime today. I missed yesterday and then I used half a day today because I missed that first hour. How many of those emergency day things do we get?”
“We get three whole days.”
”Shit bro, I’m going to need those days.”
I start collecting my garbage into one unit so that I can throw it out easier when I have to fucking stand up again. I don’t think anything of him saying that he needs the days; I mean, technically, everyone needs the days. They’re emergency days. That shit is useful. But, you know, friendly banter.
“Why?”
”My girl is already dilated.”
His other two children were born prematurely too.
I’ve worked substantially on like a bajillion (approximately) posts today and scrapped all of them (approximately).
I was at a Bruce Springsteen concert last night, which is emotional overload on the level of religious experience. This is the case on its own, but particularly with where my life is at right now, as well as how Bruce kind of plays into the whole thing. And he does. Which is a post that I probably will make soon. It’s a cool story I thinks.
In other news, one of my posts just passed 3,500 notes (approximately) and I’ve nearly doubled in followers recently. So that’s fun times. Oh, and I got a free cheeseburger today.
I’ve got plans. I’m excited about things. It’s stupid how different things are. I’m sorry for how I got here but, there’s no looking back. I’m just missing one thing. Of course, it happens to be the most important to me but, one day at a time (approximately), I guess.
