so full of love right now... no I am not on any drugs, other than a bunchy of pop tarts and wine.
just spent the evening hanging out with an old high-school flame (a decade ago... I know) and her friends at a house party and "pop tart tasting." no fucking joke.
and it just felt good. it felt so good to be around that energy... a bunch of people feeling good about their lives (seemingly), having fun, getting together for no good reason, looking good... being young and awesome.
hell yeah. i want more of that. and to see the ex-flame... not that we ever dated or anything like that. but she had become what i always thought she would - it was like a validation of my initial, confused high school feelings - to look at her and be like, "i knew you were going to be awesome."
can you tell i still like her? but the bigger picture - because it's got to bigger than a girl - is just the beauty of that hopeful world. ( at some level, i felt like maybe she doesn't even like me. maybe she doesn't even find me physically attractive - just not her type, you know. but just seeing that a person and groups of friends and events like that exist, that just felt right.) right now in southern california, there's a missing girl: chelsea king. (and sadly, i just found out they probably found her body...)
but the point is this: the posters of her is just the picture of awesome youth: straight A student, helping others, young, ambitious, positive, etc. and i think that's what i love... just mix that with a little realism and there you have it. for some reason i associate it with banana republic. but whatever. and all the grown-ups find it so sad that she was taken away... because it's that energy and positivity and dreams of the youth that drive us, chasing the dragon in ourselves and others.
so that was my night. a night of happiness, of inspiration. and i tried to channel the bon vivant. for some reason, that word has stuck with me. perhaps everything sounds cooler in french. but what a wonderful goal... so no matter what happens, to be a bon vivant...
you talk about hate... but probably the thing about self-hate that is the worst is it taints all the time without it. like asking yourself why you've been carrying around this load, and how far you could go without it... then before you know, back it is.
but asking myself the question, what would the bon vivant do? has helped. the bon vivant does care much for the past. he doesn't care much for putting rules on happiness... he tries to find it where he can.
but through it all, and the excitement for the trip, i'm scared. not about dying in africa, but about returning emptyhanded from the trip... that would be the true disappointment. not sure how to fix it.
thoughts my friend?
-29...
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brother, we were both of us the pictures of awesome youth in high school. no one knows what path she would have taken. maybe we saved some hypothetical kids from a terrible mother. maybe we deprived the world of a concert pianist and an incredible mother. I like that, the paths so many that the branches become a fog. like the human brain. so many possibilities for the traveling bioelectric current. anyway, the trip:
ReplyDeletesaving you from your trip expectations should really be my area of expertise, but understanding the Buddha and teaching the Buddha are 2 different things. (by the way, I'm not going all Mormon door to door on you, I'm just saying 'Buddha' to be cool. but it is what I studied and he does come into play here.) my advice is to die a little death before you go. play the trip through in your mind, and have it be the worst trip ever, with no enlightenment to be found. die a thousand little deaths, until your brain is just tired of being nervous about it all. live every scenario that you don't want to happen. every time the nervous pressure on yourself pops up, kill yourself with the tiny little deaths that have your nightmares about the trip become reality. before you know it you'll just be on a trip, not thinking at all. every time it creeps up, experience your own death, in this case a failed trip. every single time the nervousness creeps, kill yourself in your own mind. this is my advice.
There was this true story about this guy in WWII. He was thought to be crazy by the rest of his platoon, because he showed no signs of repulse at the horrors around him. finally one of the guys asked him how he could be so calm, and he told him,'Don't you get it? We're all already dead. Once you know that it's pretty easy to get on with the business at hand.' He was one of the only ones to survive the war from that platoon. kill yourself in your own mind. maybe you'll live, maybe you wont. but you'll be at peace with the whole thing no matter what occurs.
the feeling of love continues today... and is seriously just pointing to all women in santa barbara. hilarious. i still feel the butterflies from last night... my lord highschool emotions are strong. my god.
ReplyDeleteyeah, awesome youth. that's something about the people i was hanging out with sf, mostly from college: everyone just had this belief that they were so fucking special. i constantly thought to myself, "who the fuck are you?", and gravitated towards those that didn't harbot quite those beliefs...
but the fact is i LIKE that belief. it's a bitch to protect, cultivate, or god-forbid regain. because it such a relexive attitude - it's that diamond in the rough aladdin thing. that's what all those disney movies are about? about keeping that sense that you belong to a different group of people.
because, weirdly it feels like an anti-social feeling - i'm so special! but what's it's really about is imagining yourself in a community that is better than your current one. in the extreme, it's sad: like the middle-aged woman who believes she belongs among the aristocrats or something - sort of tennessee williams tragedy or something. (was his given name REALLY tennessee? awesome. meet my future daughter, California.)
but maybe that's just sad because it's based on something external - rather than just a standard of everyday behavior, influencing whatever the fuck it influences.
i think that has to be one of the craziest parts of having a child - that they just start becoming someone and having visions about themselves that you are like WHERE THE FUCK DID THAT COME FROM. sometimes it's towards being a mtv pain in the ass; other times it's towards being the next fucking richard rorty. but in any case, it probably feels deeply out of control for parents.
and in some ways, we are the parents of ourself. the child is the father of the man? something like that.
back to the point. a god-damn diamond in the rough vision. don't lose that, honor students everywhere.
nice
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