Home,.....home where I wanted to go

Writing this blog is like therapy for me. I have all of these thoughts on life, indirect questions, rants, and memories that it's good for me to write them down somewhere. I used to keep a journal on and off from about the age of fourteen. There are a lot of funny, strange, painful, and even sad memories in those pages. It's funny whenever I get the urge to read through one I usually can only read like two entries before I just kind of zone out and playback in my mind what those days were like and what I was feeling at that time. One thing that I've noticed about myself is that no matter how great I would be feeling one day the next day or two I'd be writing about how much life sucks and vice versa. My life has changed so much yet so little in the past seven or eight years. They say hindsight is 20/20. It's hard to see yourself in the big picture of life and the story of the world when your living in that moment, but take a step back and look at what has been. There were crazy times I came so close to crashing and burning and then there were weeks that I'd spend staring at the ceiling reading latin prayers. I'd write about pretty much anything and everything. It's kind of ironic how years make the moment clear in our minds. An edited entry from August 16th 2002 about a girlfriend I had: "Oh my God, this hurts like hell. I had that dream again where you were lost for good in space. A waking nightmare that is only worse when I am sleeping. Your just someone I used to know now. I never told you that it's not so easy, caving in. Your eyelashes falling and wishes washed away. Bottle up the rain my dear and keep the color in your hair. And get to church cause you're a good girl. It's not so cold out here in the fall only in my dream. Go to sleep now and forget about her man. This only makes it worse. Listen to those hazy eyes." It's crazy I can still remember that day. This girl that I had been dating told me that God told her that we had to breakup because we had made out a few times. I think it was her parents though now that I think about it. Looking at the big picture in hindsight I always seem to get where I'm going.

Teenage angst has paid off well.

I have those days when I just hate my mediocre life. I'm sure most of you have felt this at one time or another. For me it's that I see other people doing so well and talking about all the good times that quite simply I'm envious. I'm tired of always being so close yet not close enough. I know the last page so well. I just can’t see the first. So I just don’t start. People say that I have no life, because I'd rather stay home and drink than hang out with perfectly fine people(girls). I'm becoming a cynical bastard. I'm rude, even a bit of an asshole, to those girls that are attracted to me. Why? It's a valid question. I really don't have an answer. My friends, family, even complete strangers think that I'm just going through the "drinking anti-social" stage. You know? But I'm not going "through" a stage. I'm stuck right in the middle of one and I can't see a way out. It's an endless cycle. I just say "Come on out. We’ll both get right off of our heads and float up off the chair. We’ll go on vacation tonight under a sun of neon light. I almost love this town when i’m by your side so I’m putting this night down to bed. 'cause I was sitting at the bar hoping I was dead. You'd walk in the door and there'll be no more waiting no more. You melt all the ice in my head. You woke me from a long sleep and i’m almost back closer than ever to finding those secrets. If I told you the truth you wouldn’t like what i said. I get secrets at night but they don’t stay. I get secrets at night but then they go away. They'll fall off my lips into yours. I'll find them locked. Locked not like all those open doors. Forgive yourself in the morning when the day can see. But I need no forgiveness when my bed is empty."

You're all by yourself but you're not alone.

Sometimes I feel as if I'm being watched when I know that no one is there. Or I see something out of the corner of my eye but when I turn to look nothing's there. I know that's crazy. Right? I've been told that it's probably just bad pizza or an overactive mind, but still it feels so real at the time. I do believe in supernatural beings and the spirit world, though I tend not to take it to the extent that people from my childhood did. "People are afraid of what they don't understand" is the cliche, but the truth to that is evident in observed behavior.

That being said here is what happened to me the other night believe it or not. I was driving home from school a little after 2:30 am on wednesday morning last week. I'd turned off the radio because of my dislike for commercials and popular music at that moment. I had my window cracked and the morning air was brisk with clouds shrouding the moon in a dull glow. There were no other cars on I-80 except for me and no street light to speak of. My mind was wandering after a long 16 hour day and the road noise lulled me into its droning symphony. After a indeterminable amount of time I was vaguely aware of a hissing sound from the direction of the back seat. The sound grew progressively stronger in volume so I twisted my head and body around to see what it could be. Swerving with the movement of my body to look in the back, but I didn't see anything that could or would make that sound. Puzzled I looked into my rear view mirror and I swear to God to what I saw there. I saw a shadow that could have been a face, but what struck me were two piercing blue eyes looking back at me. Using a four letter word I swerved again ,this time almost getting the car sideways, and slammed on the brakes. I jumped out of the car in the middle of the freeway almost afraid to look in the back, but when I eventually did there was nothing there. After a few moments which felt to me to be centuries a truck passed by honking his horn at me the obstacle in the middle of the road. I reluctantly got back in and continued home. The rest of the trip I kept looking back and in my mirrors to see if I'd see it again, but nothing else happened that night.

Hallucination of a tired mind? maybe. A demon or an angel? Maybe. I can't explain what I saw, but every now and then I feel like someone is watching.

The killer in me is the killer in you.

Have you ever wondered what it is exactly that makes you acceptable to society? Is it your good manners, your regard for life and justice or is it just the fact that you don't "rock the boat", "make waves" in our little pond of society? I have often wondered how for instance that classes came to be in society. In medieval times there were those men that were of "noble" blood and those of "common" lineage. How is it exactly that noblemen became so "noble" and common men became so "common?" I've been watching Borat clips on YouTube and the one thing that i've observed overall is that Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) see's the absurdity of our cultures. He says and does all the "wrong" things in the feign of ignorance. Peoples reaction most of the time is stunned silence or they talk to Borat as they would a child. Why do we delude ourselves that somehow not talking about or acknowledging a subject makes it disappear? Why do we train ourselves and our offspring to sweep "unpleasant" subjects under the rug and pretend that everything and everyone is fine? I'm just as guilty as the next guy in trying to be acceptable to society, but why is it this way? Why are we not straight forward and honest with ourselves and each other? Are we so ashamed of how far we have fallen?

At the bottom of everything...

Today I woke from a dreamless sleep and felt days of summer in air. Summer my favorite time of year. It's the end of things like school and rainy days. The sky so blue it's hard to remember the gray. Sunday afternoons on the beach with the girl you love and parties in the backyard with all your friends. Going to drag races with my dad and my brother and drinking ice tea. My memories of summer are mostly happy days riding my skateboard around downtown. My mom would drop me off at the skatepark downtown and I'd just ride for hours. There were days though of sneaking in the backdoor of the theater and watching like three movies in a row. At night we'd go down to the cemetery sit on somebodies tombstone and tell ghost stories. Other nights we'd get our guitars and drums together and jam all the songs we knew. As you got older you'd make love with your girl on the living room floor. And spend those days just staring at those floating mountains of white talking about your big plans. At the bottom of everything we were happy. It was before we found this liquid cure for all the bumps in the road. I think this summer will bring all those feelings back again. There's just something in the air.

The limits

There is something so very profound in pushing the limits of what we know can be done. Man since his conception has challenged what he knows to be true. "Why?" The citizens of drowsy, lethargic society ask. Why not just accept what is known to be true? Because it is simply that we are what we know. We mortals appearing but for a moment on the battlefield of the immortal titans of good and evil look at ourselves and ask "why?". Our questions are answered in the limits of what we know with the paradox of another question "how?".

In my own life I have found many questions of "how?" and "why?" but the one that is the most real to me the most tangible is "how fast can I go?" From a child my father took me to automobile races of all kinds. At these I witnessed man and machine moving arcoss space and time at speeds that just a few short years ago would have been considered unable to be. There is a change in being at tremendous speed. Time seems to slow and thoughts and reasoning seem to come to you faster than you can comprehend exactly what you're mind is processing. The human struggle to propel ourselves across distance in shorter times is so gritty so real to me. A boy that I had been aquainted with at school lost his life this past week in an automobile accident. The instructors told us that he had been going in excess 250 mph when he lost control of his vehicle. I wonder what he must have felt? The adrenaline pumping through his veins. The sound in his ears the deafening roar of this earth, this time. Most will scoff at his boy wasting his life for this thrill, but what is life without thrill? Without knowing? Is it meaningless? This question of "how fast can I go?" is it any different than the other questions? Any less significant? The limits are there, but are we willing to push?