What I'm Looking For

I can’t help but feel that if I just ran the hell away from here, my life would be okay. If I buy a plane ticket tomorrow for Death Valley, and just walk, take nothing with me, just… go. I feel like my life’s been building up to this. I feel like somewhere behind this padlocked skull, there’s momentum building, there’s a coiled spring, waiting to launch me into another life, another reality, I can’t help but realize that it’s probably all a symptom, but at the same time…

What if I did?

Tomorrow. If I got off work tomorrow, bought a plane ticket, and mailed my phone and a letter of thanks and apology to the three people keeping me sane right now, if I disappeared like a puff of smoke into the wind, if I never came back…

I keep trying to work on these stories. They’re all half-finished, they all look bleaker and bleaker the harder I try to fix them. Nothing seems to fit, nothing seems to matter, I can’t think straight and my brain is twisted into knots, nothing fits or works or sounds right and just… I don’t know whether it’s me, or my environment, or just… I don’t know. I haven’t mailed my college application off yet. I don’t know why. I finished it a week ago.

I’m not stupid, or naïve, I like to think. I like to think I’ve washed all the romanticism out of my head with cynicism, and then replaced the cynicism with idealism, and then watered that down with reality and beautifully gray skies. The thing is, it’s a Romantic’s dream, running away. Buying a spontaneous plane ticket to Death Valley? That’s a castle in the air, man. But, oh, God, I want it.

I want to get the hell out of here, to pack my guitar and my laptop and a bunch of notebooks, and just go. And to wander, across deserts, and through old, deserted towns, and bustling cities, and grasslands, and fields, and forests, to just wander, to fast and meditate and find what I’m looking for, to hear more than the voices in my head, to meet people with odd and strange viewpoints, and learn from people who had no teachers, to sing in places where the sky touches the ground, to find the soft places between the worlds, to live.

And someday, I want to stumble back into town, and see my friends again, and share adventures, and hear all about how they took their potential and their grand dreams and spirits and souls and lives and did something amazing, about how they realized all of their dreams, and all of their potential, and how they changed the world, and how they’re big, real, more awesome than ever now, and how they fill the world around them. And I’ll tell them stories about how I saw the eagles freefalling with their talons locked, and I climbed down the Grand Canyon wall, and crossed whitewater rapids on foot, and where I finally met Coyote and here’s the scar I got from where he tricked me into picking up a hot coal, and what it looks like to see the sun set over the Edge of the Very World, and being in places where it rains all the time and where it never rains, and just, just and then… and then I can settle down, maybe, and things will be easier to understand, or maybe I’ll just turn back around and go out again, and and and I don’t even know.

Castles in the air. If you jump for them, you more often than not fall back to Earth and break your spine, but there’s always the off chance you’ll catch onto something on the way.

To A Friend,

I keep seeing your picture on Facebook, and it makes me think, and remember, and smile a little, but mostly just think. And miss you. We didn’t even really know each other all that well, we were from two separate years and mostly just had Band and insanity in common, and by insanity… well, you kind of outstrip me there, which is probably something you’d be proud of. Maybe. I don’t know. I just remember you telling me about your girlfriend of a very long time, and a bunch of stuff that I probably shouldn’t say here. I didn’t know what to say. It’s probably a good thing you never knew I had kind of a crush on you for a while, there. But then, I basically had a crush on every guy who stood out, for at least a week. I blame public schools for that. At least those stupid things went away.

But I still miss you. There was also the time we tried to break into the locked piano in the auditorium so you could satisfy the craving you had to play piano that day, and it was pitch black in there, so I held my cellphone like a light so you could try and pick the lock on the cover, but we never got anywhere. And when we came out of the auditorium, we were both laughing because we’d just realized how sketchy it looked that we were sneaking into a dark auditorium alone together during lunch, and because that was after (or before? it’s all pretty cloudy now) the whole stupid fucking hormone thing, it was pretty hilarious. There are not a lot of guys who I would enjoy trying to break into a piano with, probably because most guys wouldn’t try to break into a piano, at least not with the sole intention of playing it. Shock—horror.

The more I think about you, the more I miss you, and this is a really bad habit to get into, especially since it’s almost two in the morning and I have to work tomorrow. It’s been a really long time since we saw each other – more than two years, at a guess. Or at least more than one year. Anyway. I miss you. I hope your life is going really well, because as a person, and whether you believe this or not, you deserve it. Rock on, man.

What Power Struggle?

really though i never really had a reason to enter the fray, things just seemed to work this way, and i am just about as unchanging as Coyote hisdamnself. man, you might bring out the wild howling, or the manic laughter, or the omnivorous glutton, or the hunted predator, you might be able to twist the image a little, but it's still the same tufted tail, the same wild eyes, the same twisted soul. unlike Coyote, i could apologize, but i don't think i will. because i wasn't made to fit a bastion of order. man was not made for the Sabbath, but vice versa. (sentences like that are part of why i love my language so much. geez, only you, English. only you.) i am crazy because that's what i am. yes, i will try to handle it, i will try to keep things a little bit safe, and i will damn well apologize with every ounce of sincerity in my heart when the fucked-up parts of me go too far and i hurt someone, but... this is what it is, man. i am what i am.

Disclaimer:

Now, I may have a messiah complex as big as Bono's.

but.

But I believe, somewhere between skin and soul, I believe that I have a calling, that God put me here to do something. I believe that I am supposed to be out there helping fix this world. I believe that I can change the world.

Someday, slavery will be gone from every continent. Someday, no one will die of mosquito bites, of a disease we cured over a century ago. Someday, people will not starve in a world of plenty, someday children will not be murdered for the color of their skin, someday enough people will care, someday this kind of shit won't happen anymore.

I believe that I was given this life for a reason, and if I don't work on that I will have wasted this gift. I believe, somewhere inside of me, that I was given the dreams and visions that come to me for a reason, and that through Christ I can do all things, and also that it is distinctly possible that Coyote was sent to help me, or decided to help me, and I have faith that this is not blasphemy, that my ancestors believed it for a reason, and that there is behind me a Trickster who will lend me his strength if I ask him.

As I thought this on the way home, my mind immediately spiraled off into the mythic dimension, and before more than a few seconds had passed I had to shut off the train of thought concerning Coyote, because it would lead me to... well, vision over visibility. An illusion, a trick. But mark my words.

This will not stand. There is a day coming when this world will be at peace, when love will triumph hate and bitterness, when despair will be washed away. This world will change.

Whatever is not an expression of apathy, it's the eye of the storm.

To Whom It May Concern, and with all due respect,

My attitude is not defined by the speech-pattern of apathetic dismissal, "Whatever."

My attitude is defined by the final word with which I choose to leave your company, and most people's-- that is to say, "Peace." Which is, in case you didn't know, a shortened form of the full farewell, which is to say, "Peace be with you."

Peace be with you. Peace unto you, and your loved ones, and peace be unto this world, this torn and scarred world, this home of our fragile human race, which is within our power to make a heaven or a hell.

My attitude is in the songs I sing along roads and under echoing bridges and to the open night sky, songs like Sunday Bloody Sunday, songs that fan the flames of my soul, lyrics that grip my heart in a vise. My attitude is in the lines "Where you live should not decide / Whether you live or whether you die" because that is where my passion lies.

I say things like "Whatever," I shrug, I grin and laugh it off often, because my mind is occupied with stories, with dreams, with love and hope and fire and pain and longing, and whether it's the date or the initials that come first on an invoice doesn't even scratch the surface of any of those things. I won't say I couldn't care less, because on some level I do care-- I shrug it off because the mistake's been made, and file away the information for next time. Whether I remember it or not depends on other factors.

Someday, I won't have to walk into a store, pick up an object, and wonder if it was made by hired workers or forced slavery. Someday, enough people will care, enough people will care and think and speak and work, and slavery will be eradicated. Someday, children will stop dying from diseases cured centuries in the past, and people will care as much for the starving continents away as the starving in the slums of the next city over. Someday, this world will cease to be a hell for most of the people in it.

I repeat this to myself at least once a day. I have to. I force myself to believe it as I speak it, to see it in my mind, a world without a hell that could so easily be prevented, because if I start to believe that it won't happen, it hurts, so bad I want to cry.

When I put the earbuds back in my pocket, and I shake the snow or the dust or the rainwater off of my shoes and jacket and walk in, I shake off the passion and fury and sorrow that wars within me, because if I didn't have walls to put it up behind, it would consume me. I'd be impossible to put up with-- more than I already am, that is. But it doesn't go away. Know that. It doesn't go away ever, and I never stop caring, and I am never, ever apathetic. I'm just distant.

Peace, dude.

It's Devoid of Feel

"What do you see out your window today?"

Byron frowns pensively and twitches the curtain back. "There's a flock of birds," he said. "They're all huge, built like albatrosses, smoke-blue. Like a flock, they're squabbling over motes of light in the air around them."

Damien smiled. "Is that all?"

"No -- the sky is dusky red, like the end of a sunset, around them. They're flying all around, without stopping, like hummingbirds, because there's no ground to land on."

"How many are there, Byron?"

He shrugs, watching them. "I don't know -- hundreds, it looks like. I wonder where we are."

"Look down, then -- can you see the ground?"

"It looks like we're up too high for a ground or a horizon to be visible."

Then Byron closes the window curtain again, and sits back in his chair. He looks over at Damien, who lies on his back on the thick rug. If there'd been a fireplace at the front of the scene, rather than a blank stone wall, it would've looked cozy. He was youngish, unsure of his exact age, and had a shock of black hair, which he kept in a ponytail. Sometimes, Byron wondered if he'd ever been young like that. It didn't seem likely.

"Byron, I'm not hungry." Byron glances at him. "I really wish I was."

The older man snorts. "All the physical sensations in the world to choose from, and you wish for hunger?"

Breaking A Pattern

The other day I was looking back over this blog, and I realized that it is a very strange juxtaposition, between ramblings about friends, whining about life, and complete insanity. Or partial insanity, anyway. I have these moments – moments that last weeks – where I wonder if I’m really insane, if I’m just normal and milking the quirks, if that twitch in my neck is something I could control if I really wanted to (and I know I could, it’s just difficult and requires a lot of concentration), if I’m really insane or just a little weird. It’s not normal to have the sudden desire to leap into traffic, every time you walk down a busy street; it’s not normal to go wandering the streets at night, because you get restless; it’s not normal to think or act or speak the way I do. But I wonder, I wonder if I’m really insane or just a little odd. My friends… well, I don’t know.

I have to remind myself every so often that the hallucinations were there. I have to remind myself that there have been times when I’ve broken into a run on the street, unable to look back because there was Something there behind me. I have to remind myself that hearing cats behind me all the time when there are, in fact, no cats in the vicinity, is insane. I have to try and remember that it’s not just abnormal to always be warding off suspicions that your friends are spying on you, it’s paranoia. Insanity. I have paranoid schizophrenia, and I need to remember that just because I have good days, just because it’s a mild thing right now, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

The worst thing might actually be the periods of depression that come along. I have to remember that this is a symptom of the illness, and to fight it. Lying in bed without the motivation to get up is not just being lazy, it’s allowing myself to be that way. I have to fight to find the inspiration to write, and draw, and think, and not just lay about, which I’m afraid that I’ll do without the push, inner or outer. I still remember my mother holing up in her room for days, not eating or talking to any of us, just laying around praying and crying, and she had five kids and it didn’t matter because she couldn’t see past the haze. I have a life to live – I have a job, two jobs now if this works out, and stories to write, and school to go to, even if it is community. I can’t afford to let the haze of insanity hold me down here.

And, on that note, I’m off to my first day!