There are days when I feel like letting my job know that it’s time for me to go, because I can’t stand living above water anymore, that it’s killing me. I think about those whales in captivity with their fins all limp and that’s how I feel inside most days. I haven’t visited those dark places that scare me in so long, that I barely believe in their existence anymore, like monsters under your childhood bed that you’ve driven away with adult reason. But maybe they aren’t so much as dark, as they are a murky unknown. They serve a purpose, and if you’re brave enough to delve in, you get to walk a different path, embark on a different journey. I haven’t been able to look at life askew, and without it, it makes me feel like I can’t see things the way I used to, where there was a top side, and a deeper truthful underbelly. I think at some point you have to go to the edge and decide if you want to stay with your feet safely planted on the ground, or if you’re going to jump and trust that whatever rushes up to meet you, is what was meant to be. And maybe, despite all your doubts, you could fly after all. The dark side terrifies me. But I think I need it, because I don’t think this is the right path that I’m on.
No amount of money is going to make me feel safe. Responsibilities will always be there. My brother’s life will be his no matter if I’m there to catch his every fall, and I have to accept that. And I know full well I can’t deal with regret when it’s inevitable. So then, what’s holding me back?
Sometimes I think that people look towards other people to display that passion for something, that true belief in something that is beyond this world. I look at people who fervently create art, even fucked up, psychopathic terrible art, and I think, despite what I may think about it, despite all the people who laugh at it, that person has an indescribable drive that demands they create or else…Or else. And that’s something that I imagine to be akin to when our species first discovered fire…something that was so miraculous, so dangerous yet so beautiful, that you were just as terrified of it as you were terrified to be without it. What happened to all the underground bloggers? The ones that were tiny points of light on this darkened highway, bleeding out their truths? They’ve abandoned their faces, but they’re still out there. The poets, the bleeders, the optimists, the ones just tearing at their tired masks. I wonder if they’ve found anonymous venues when the intimidation of attention sent them looking for safer corners. Or if they refused to abandon ground, but found their voices stifled. What happened to all the bare naked truth that used to float around here? I hope you guys are still out there. We are all still very, very human, each and every one of us, and all delusions aside, we have no idea what the fuck is going on. And I think every person deep down craves that reassurance that it’s not just them, that it’s all of us.
I am a coward. If I weren’t, I would quit my job. If I weren’t, I wouldn’t be pushing other people to get their lives in order and I would get my own, or define the life I want regardless of external pressure. I would stop giving other people advice that I’m too scared to live by. I once drove all the way to Vegas, dropped $100 on a blackjack table in 5 minutes, then turned around and drove home, just because I was sad and didn’t know what else to do. And in hindsight, I don’t know why I did it, but at least I did it. That existence is so much better than one where you’re numb. I went a whole year without background music (I still have the same CD’s in my car changer from 2002), and it shocks me that I didn’t notice. How can you live without music to guide your subconscious spaces? I didn’t realize until Whit made a comment one day, that one of the things that helped our creativity when we lived together was that we always had music on, rather than the TV. And then I realized, wait, what happened to the music? Because the TV is ALWAYS on now. The internet is always there. And there’s always time to waste.
Fuck this over-domestication crap. If this world goes to shit, I’ll never survive in the wild. I propose a psychic revolution, a emergency alert for awareness. Look around at all the ways your life has numbed you, and decide what purpose does it serve–is it helping you or hurting you? Use your psychic antennaes, reach out to your world, your people, your life path. Get reconnected and start evaluating the why’s and the how come’s in your life. Because if you notice that things just haven’t been right lately, that there’s been this overwhelming feeling of dread that you can’t put your finger on…you have to ask yourself, is it out there? Or is it in here? Because I have a feeling that I’m not the only one that’s feeling like the world is off kilter but we’ve all been getting too sedated and numb to pay close attention.