I’d Rather Live Todays of Futures Past Than Tomorrows of Past Todays

I have this melancholy wave that comes over me when I stop doing stuff and acting busy, but there’s really no good reason for it. I have a lot of concerns and fears that I’m having to run through. I really couldn’t explain it to you if you didn’t know me.

I’ve learned so many lessons over the years. I learned a lot in 1989. I learned again in 2003. My first lesson was really in 1977, though. I’ve never stopped learning since then.

We’re all on the same Wheel, but each of us has our own Wheel, too. Sometimes they converge for a long stretch; sometimes they don’t. A lot of unexpected people jumped back onto my wheel this year, along with some people that always return eventually. Change is in the air again. Intuition really isn’t a big factor this time.

All the people that ever run through your life are part of your continuity. You can’t escape mine, just like I can’t escape yours. The worst thing we can ever do is to ignore each other. Indifference is much worse than hate, but I’m not a person that can ever feel indifferent.

The philosophy of temporary love is my coping mechanism. I’d rather have a season than a reason. I’d rather be a reason than be part of a season that’s forgotten about later. My memory is stellar by comparison to many, but memories are null and void in the here and now.

If you knew me 20 years ago, I’m almost unrecognizable to the immaterial eye. 10 years ago, it was rebuilding and looking bright. 5 years ago, it was the valley to the peak, but none of my valleys ever fall below the one’s before. The people that I knew 5 years ago have already drifted towards the ocean. You can’t step into the same river twice; you can’t step into the same time period twice. You can’t be the same person twice.

We are (mostly) all of us on a series of parallel journeys. Do parallel lines meet up again? On the horizon they do.

I’m on that journey, too. I think all things happen for the best; I’m never mad at the Universe for the life that I’m responsible for. I have to face all of my fears in the near future, and in the beginning and end, I am still the only constant factor in my life.

You are etched on the palms of my hands and the essence of my heart. My journeys are because of your strength that you have lent me. I only pray that you have taken as much from me.

 

 

Excerpts: Reposted from MySpace, just minutes prior

My Naked Face

There are people who live in my city who I grew up with or knew in my hometown, somewhere else in California, somwhere a lot smaller and tight knit. Somewhere that you couldn’t help running into people that you knew. Almost all of those people today, I only see them in avatars.

I had a random online encounter with an old friend who has a lot in common with me as far as ideology and the like. I was doing my monthly drive-by of my Facebook account (one of the places where the real me resides online), when I caught off guard by the instant messaging, like I always am.

We chatted a bit about what we were up to and where we were living. I don’t expect people to have a good memory anymore; I am a bit of an anomoly for my demographic. She asked me if I was still writing songs, and I said no, I was just playing. I didn’t have a reason to write new material; I have enough that I’m happy with for having no audience. What I was really saying is I didn’t have anything to say through that vehicle anymore. My voice is heard in different places through different means today, but I didn’t get to say that. What I did say was that it must have been part of the vow.

She responded with the statement that it gets hard to be creative when you have to deal with life. That’s not an excuse, I said. Not for me.

It must have been clear to her on some unconscious level that were talking about two different things now, because she had to go. I sent her a link to a metaphysical blog that I thought she might enjoy, at least, the person I used to know would have. I hummed the lyrics to one of my songs in my head:

The night it lasts forever

You’ll never see the dawn

The world in which we live in’s

The pain, the soul, the song…

Continental Drift

There are so many things that I want to write about, but organizing them into a string of cohesive thoughts is difficult sometimes. There are so many things that I am multitasking on currently. I feel like Gandalf in the 3rd (?) LOR movie where he laments being allive for so long, and now he has no time. There is definitely a big push to catch up years that I spent living and learning about life, instead of learning and not living. Sometimes I feel like I should be a counselor, mentor, or some sort of advice giver. There are areas that I do know about.

I am jam packed in my electives with three courses on psychology and the one on philosophy that I’m currently in. These are the type of things I excell in, even though they have nothing to do with my concentration. I would have took asthetics (history of art) too, but I didn’t have a pre-req needed for that, so maybe some point in the future.

That’s not why I called you here though. This week I was on vacation, and it turned out to be ZERO percent of what I thought it would be when I originally set this date for time off. Halloween weekend I think I decided that I really need to make some breakthroughs concerning the walls I have erected over time for self-protection. This concerns the area of the heart. I have also been thinking hard about what my true essence(s) is/ are.

Change is brought about by decision, and action. Deciding you are going to do something, and actually taking steps to achieve this goal are equally important. For soem people, coming to grips with one is easy, but the other is the major hurdle. Change is constant and unavoidable. As temporal beings, we cannot stay stagnant or unfluctuating.

The inner person is an uncharted lake, full of riptides and undertows. There are shallow tidepools and vast underground tunnels that lead out into the monolithic ocean. No one can know you except yourself, but even this is a distorted view, tinted by your own experiences. People have different perceptions of you, but very few get to see all of the sides, or even most of them.

I am at a crossroads every day. My conscious choices lead me on paths that have reprecussions in the future. Heaven and Earth help me.

Advice to my Younger Self

I’ve often thought recently about what would have happened if my current self had been able to travel back in time twenty years and have an encounter with my 18 year old self. Would I even recognize me in the future? What would my first impression have been of how I turned out? Would my initial reaction be that I had stayed true to everything that I had said that I would *never* change in 1988 and still turned out bitchin’?

What would my current self have thought of the distorted reflection of my former incarnation? Memories are a subjective experience, and all experiences are subjective impressions of internal and external sensory input. Would I, for the first time being able to confront who I was, look at myself in the past as a sorry wreck or just a confused young man? Would I have said, “Man, I was beyond unhealthy back then.” Well, it’s kind of hard to avoid when you’re ingesting every drug you can get your hands on, and as a matter of pride, you’re trying to be the best at that too; banging different girls just for a place to stay and something to eat.

Although I know that Jackhammer 1988 would have ben in no condition to listen to Frisky Boy 2009 and take his advice as something he could apply practically, I would still have something to say. I would have definitely said, break it off with that girl you’re seeing right now, there’s too much drama involved. I also would have questioned, why did you ditch school already? You really have a gift that most people don’t have, why piss it away? I’m sure at this point, younger me would think I turned out to be a rather square cat, who foolishly stopped smoking weed and just didn’t understand what it was to be in love.

In a way, diverting my younger self from this path of temporary self-destruction would have affected a lot of other positive paths that came a few years later, only because I hit pretty close to rock bottom and had to make some serious changes. A lot of learning experiences would not have been fully internalized (I’m a stubborn one), but who knows what people I would have never even come close to meeting had I gone the productive route right away?

I don’t live with regret anymore, not even for a minute. The journey is the grand adventure, not just reaching the goal.

I’m sure in many ways, younger me would still look up to current me and wonder how he could get there quicker. Both of us still have no desire to live completely inside the rules of society. We both cannot conform to the homogenous way of thinking, and we both look like the rebellious type. Part of younger me lives on, he is just wiser and more acclamated to the ins and outs of the real worlds. In the end, I would want to mentor young me, and teach him all that he would listen to; and younger me could remind me of how much has always been there from the start, integrated into the very  essence of my being.

Time for expansion: A new page

It was becoming obvious that I needed a real blog page in which to house some additional content. I’m happy with most of my literary posts that are currently on the MySpace page, but some of the other content is rather limited. I’d like to share some more candid thoughts here, as well as repost some of my favorite previous content. There will be a mix of each, but I’d like to use this page as a place for the diehards. Perhaps you will get a clearer view of the real person behind the looking glass. In any case, I’d like to thank you for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.