Qualifying Clichés
"I wanted to walk through the empty streets and feel something constant under my feet, but all the news reports recommended that I stay indoors."
At this point, a deep, dark birthday post is usually called for. After all, this blog more or less shares its anniversaries with those of my birth, and it's about this time of year I start thinking about what I've done in the last twelve months and what I hope to do in the next.
But you know, things are a little different this time. I look back now and the only thing I can really be sure of is that I've accomplished things in the last year or so that most people never even get close to. Yeah, the motivation problems that have plagued my creativity since time immemorial are still around, but they don't worry me as much as they did. This period of my life has been more about prioritising than scrambling after the dreams that have dogged me since I was old enough to understand what it was I wanted to do with my life. In a sense, that burning ambition to say something and be heard was holding me back. In finally realising that and thinking about myself as somebody other than an emotional cripple and long suffering artist, I finally accomplished something that means more to me than anything I'll ever write.
I'll never be a spiritual person. My lack of belief in all things supernatural forever precludes that. I've always felt that the responsibility for failure, success, tragedy, and the ever elusive glory lies exclusively in the hearts and minds of people. As a culture, I believe we're in perhaps the most exhausting and difficult era in history. I wonder if evolution isn't somehow on hold, if we'll ever get over this tiresome and ridiculous phase of relying on fairytales, conspiracies, and obvious lies to somehow show us truth. I wonder and I doubt and sometimes I despair.
Still, I live for the times that exist despite my cynicism, and the last couple of years have held more than their share. Driving Interate 15 through the Mojave Desert twice and sensing on both occasions that destiny was riding shotgun, falling asleep in a Las Vegas hotel room feeling nothing but love for the girl beside me and satisfaction at the thing we'd done, stumbling and mumbling my way through customs at LAX on my way to meet the very same girl at what the end of a long, strange journey I couldn't even have guessed at back in the days when all I did was sit in my bedroom with cigarettes and alcohol, darkly plotting my own bleak future.
Make no mistake, friends, that's the handle. The ability to change the world doesn't lie in grand gestures and theories of bloody revolution. It's in the little things. For a while there, back when this journal was in its infancy, I wasn't sure where I was going. Since then, I guess I've realised that it isn't really the destination that's important. It's how you get there.
I'll always feel the same way about the world, I think. Neither of us is looking like changing any time soon. As for the little things, I've managed to overcome the bad ones while learning to appreciate the good ones. I've put enough distance between myself and my addictions that I can appreciate cigarettes and alcohol as occasional treats instead of needs, and when she smiles at me a certain way or we go walking just as night falls gently over Southern California, I can appreciate just how good life is without qualifying my clichés.
So maybe that quote sitting below the title isn't as accurate as I once thought. Maybe flying isn't so much about hurling yourself at the ground as it is those sublime moments when you forget the ground is there at all.
And maybe turning twenty-seven isn't so bad. I married the girl I love, moved to a place that already feels more like home than home ever did, and finally found a big enough stick to beat back my demons. I have a novel on the go and a head full of ideas. At this time in this place, I'm starting to feel as though I can do anything at all. I'm starting to feel as though even I wouldn't bet against me chasing down that last dream.
Would you?
At this point, a deep, dark birthday post is usually called for. After all, this blog more or less shares its anniversaries with those of my birth, and it's about this time of year I start thinking about what I've done in the last twelve months and what I hope to do in the next.
But you know, things are a little different this time. I look back now and the only thing I can really be sure of is that I've accomplished things in the last year or so that most people never even get close to. Yeah, the motivation problems that have plagued my creativity since time immemorial are still around, but they don't worry me as much as they did. This period of my life has been more about prioritising than scrambling after the dreams that have dogged me since I was old enough to understand what it was I wanted to do with my life. In a sense, that burning ambition to say something and be heard was holding me back. In finally realising that and thinking about myself as somebody other than an emotional cripple and long suffering artist, I finally accomplished something that means more to me than anything I'll ever write.
I'll never be a spiritual person. My lack of belief in all things supernatural forever precludes that. I've always felt that the responsibility for failure, success, tragedy, and the ever elusive glory lies exclusively in the hearts and minds of people. As a culture, I believe we're in perhaps the most exhausting and difficult era in history. I wonder if evolution isn't somehow on hold, if we'll ever get over this tiresome and ridiculous phase of relying on fairytales, conspiracies, and obvious lies to somehow show us truth. I wonder and I doubt and sometimes I despair.
Still, I live for the times that exist despite my cynicism, and the last couple of years have held more than their share. Driving Interate 15 through the Mojave Desert twice and sensing on both occasions that destiny was riding shotgun, falling asleep in a Las Vegas hotel room feeling nothing but love for the girl beside me and satisfaction at the thing we'd done, stumbling and mumbling my way through customs at LAX on my way to meet the very same girl at what the end of a long, strange journey I couldn't even have guessed at back in the days when all I did was sit in my bedroom with cigarettes and alcohol, darkly plotting my own bleak future.
Make no mistake, friends, that's the handle. The ability to change the world doesn't lie in grand gestures and theories of bloody revolution. It's in the little things. For a while there, back when this journal was in its infancy, I wasn't sure where I was going. Since then, I guess I've realised that it isn't really the destination that's important. It's how you get there.
I'll always feel the same way about the world, I think. Neither of us is looking like changing any time soon. As for the little things, I've managed to overcome the bad ones while learning to appreciate the good ones. I've put enough distance between myself and my addictions that I can appreciate cigarettes and alcohol as occasional treats instead of needs, and when she smiles at me a certain way or we go walking just as night falls gently over Southern California, I can appreciate just how good life is without qualifying my clichés.
So maybe that quote sitting below the title isn't as accurate as I once thought. Maybe flying isn't so much about hurling yourself at the ground as it is those sublime moments when you forget the ground is there at all.
And maybe turning twenty-seven isn't so bad. I married the girl I love, moved to a place that already feels more like home than home ever did, and finally found a big enough stick to beat back my demons. I have a novel on the go and a head full of ideas. At this time in this place, I'm starting to feel as though I can do anything at all. I'm starting to feel as though even I wouldn't bet against me chasing down that last dream.
Would you?
posted by Michael at 2:05 PM
2 Comments:
Happy Birthday. I originally typed a whole lot of philosophical mumbo jumbo but all it really would have accomplished is using different words to say what you did.
All the best!
You're in a good place. Congrats. See how long you can stay there. I've been in mine (more or less) a decade.
It's good to be us.
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