| Stranger in a Familiar Land |
[Dec. 1st, 2008|04:09 pm] |
I’m sitting in my room at 2 am in the morning and pondering the elliptic quality of all things. It’s a shrill mystery; this idea of living a life as you so choose, and to actively view the world as a measure of your own movements. Do I place too much responsibility on my own head? Doctor, doctor - help me through this somehow. Give me the pill. Take me away.
My bedroom is freezing cold. This happens most winters when it gets late and the heating has been off in my house for a few hours. I don’t mind. I sit here and wonder what my room will be like in Vancouver. I wonder what kind of person I’ll become inside their white canvas walls. I want to sit there and paint a world I’ve never seen before. There is a feeling floating in my guts: this perpetual flighty twitter and hum in my stomach; a fuzzy weak nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach. I am scared right now. I almost enjoy the shock and warm fear that fills me entirely. I’m so afraid of what is going to happen next. This is by far going to be the most radical thing I have ever done in my life.
I look around me everyday, at the snow covered streets, the weathered familiarity of the buildings, bridges, sidewalks, landscapes - and my heart slowly dies to them, minute by minute. I view this old town with a frozen isolated heart and somehow feel like a stranger to it. I feel like an odd observer to the events that occur day to day. I don’t have the foggiest clue of where I fit into this whole arrangement. My only true place is on the outside, working my damn hardest to get from here to somewhere far away. There is so little that holds truth to me each day. There is a handful of strong remaining relationships. My family seems closer to me than they have ever been in my life. It is going to be painfully sad to no longer have them around me. I am going to miss my parents' warm, smiling, loving faces. I am going to miss my sister’s everything. I am going to miss my dear friends. God damn, these people are all I’ve ever truly known in life. One thing I believe about me, and the life I've lived: is that I have been so blessed to know true friendship. Not everyone is that fortunate. It always shakes me up when I meet people who seem utterly alone in the world. They sit at the bar after work and drink beer alone, talking to anyone close by, and you can seem them in the background, they don’t feel connected to anything and it almost gives them a translucency; they seem so removed but act joyful on the outside in order to entertain the people around them.
I walk home in the winter chill, late at night when works the going done, and I wonder sorrowfully. I lament on the years that have brightly tunneled passed me. I wonder about the people in my life who have literally disappeared from it as if it’s nothing, and what’s disturbing most of all is that I hardly seem to care. I care sometimes, and I think about how awful it is to remember people who were once so dear to you, and to then realise that they somehow became disposable. People have came and went. Years have worn on war torn and broken by the weather. There is a hundred faces greeted, known, befriended, in my memory. There is dozens of faces loved, adored, admired in my mind's eye: will they one day simply fade away and be forgotten discarded roses?
When I was a child I thought the woman of my dreams would find me in the certainty of adulthood. When I was younger I thought we would grow up and live like our parents did. Everything would just find its place. We’d be married with children and that would be normal, we’d be completely prepared for that because adults knew everything there was to know about life. I used to think the world would become smaller, ideas would become easier to grasp; the learning would be done and that I’d be ready to take a son by the hand, a boy such as myself, and guide him confidently through the madness that is life - but nothing has become easier, the world seems bigger and more obscure, and I can't figure why, god damn, I don't know what to think or feel, walking home alone on this dark evening; whether I'm forgetting everything too fast or remembering too quickly. I guess that's all the precious little gem of mystery life promises to be.
I walk along the snow covered avenues of this town called home, going almost twenty five years strong now, and I’m confused about how I’m even connected to it anymore. It appears like a replica of the real; a carefully constructed movie set of the neighbourhood I once grew up in. It’s not the same home it was. It has been born, expired, reborn, deceased so many times over again through the years so that it no longer contains any of the ingredients of the past. It is strange in a sort of ghostly way. I guess really nothing about home is truly encompassed in landscape. Landscape is only temporary. Home is essentially within me and is a beautiful place I visit when I feel loved. Home is in my soul and I live there whenever I remember why I love me and the people close to me.
Still, I must admit, I feel such an astounding gloom fill me when I identify with the painful memories locked in each old building, in each familiar tree, in every sad sidewalk crack I pass. I can’t break off the chunks of regret and heartbreak stuck on me. And so I say out loud, ‘Please forgive me, I am sorry. I was once such a young boy, I didn’t know any better, I’ve been a liar and thief so many times. I’ve felt my heart break enough times to know it don’t feel good. I don’t wish anything but love for us all. I’m sorry I was careless with your feelings. I’m sorry when I failed to think about you, that I have ever been self centred and only concerned with my own troubles. I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you I loved you when you were sad. To all lost friends and lovers left behind, I offer my every last apology and I hope you succeed in all things you do. I really do. Now I must move on without you, I still have so much more living out here to do, you see, I can’t carry this hurt along with me any further. So I am going to leave it behind. I do thank you for forever impacting my life the way you did.’
I may be wrong in saying this. There will always be the potential for me to make mistakes. There will always be the possibility everything in life will fall apart in front of my eyes. The structure of self identity can so easily collapse inward if I base myself too much on my surroundings. I think I just always gotta keep carrying myself along and remember to be my own best friend. It’s important to remember when the world feels distant and communication seems cheap.
I walk home in a chilly winter evening, sick with anxiety but cool and collected, with a strong composure to my thoughts. I'm so scared of impending change but can’t wait for all the terrors and joys to come with it. I can’t wait to be put to the test. I feel so strong and confident. Every new piece I put into the puzzle on my own, the more independent and capable I feel. I have planned this trip essentially on my own. One year ago I would have never thought myself capable to pull this kind of move off. I have always looked for the guidance of others. I have always looked for assistance before proceeding on my own. I have always considered my life’s course to be in the caring hands of others. The band was, almost literally, a small traveling vessel moving through a frigid land, fueled by the life force of a small tightly-knit community. There was no I, there was only We. There was never an experience you had to go alone if you didn’t want to. The group lived and breathed as one, watched over its own and fended for itself. It survived on a system of giving and taking. It was a communicative effort between friends, a journey to find ourselves in each other while exploring a foreign land. It was always an experience together. I trusted and left my life there in their very hands.
This life support is gone and I am frightened of what’s going to happen. I am still walking these cold London streets and I can almost count the years of my life at twenty five now. I’ve spent them all here but it doesn’t feel like a home to me, not inside my heart. It is not a matter of me feeling superior or better than this city, because I am not thinking in those kind of terms. I think I’m just viewing my life a little differently now. I look over everything that is involved in this life of mine and there is no sense in remaining. There doesn’t seem to be any good reason to stay. No reason holds up to the undeniable reality that life must be lived and experienced to the fullest, and I am certain that continuing the way I live here would be the opposite of that. Why wouldn’t I jump headfirst into a wildly unpredictable future, to get along and see everything with brand new eyes? How could I resist the opportunity to experience the intangible, to taste the inexplicable? How could I ever deny to go a bold journey into the depths of my very self?
I just want to live my life with style and ease. I just want to live my life without shame. I just want to be me in my world and to continue finding out secrets about life. I am always smiling to myself over the little mysteries that gradually reveal themselves in time. It is always the things I never expected to bring happiness that fill me with the most explicit tenderness and joy. It is always the most minor interactions with others that brand themselves upon me with complete admiration and love for all humanity. It’s strange how things happen that way. It keeps you on your toes figuring it all out moment to moment. Some days you think your deaf and dumb to all meaning but then, poof, the walls come crashing down and you wake up from your apathetic slumber, and see the truth.
We eagerly comb the desert for purpose and fulfilment in life, as time takes us down the road; but maybe we should just allow things time. We rush to the destination, forgetting the whole time; the real reward is in a good journey. I just wanna to live my life without shame and always push myself forward on the lost highway of life. I want to keep growing into an inspiring and creative person, and to never again drift away into a life hiatus like rage or depression. I wanna be a passionate man who walks with surrender for change in his heart and a hope in his soul for the good to come in everything. |
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