: searching the desert for the blues...
The following is an essay I wrote in my other journal,![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
onetwentyproof back on the 14th of October, but received no response on and generally got scared and nervous about, until I realized that nobody really did care about what I wrote in that journal.
I'm hoping that, even with the same crowd, it'll get more response here than there.
I've been tired for the longest time.
Since I ceased being a young man of mononumerical age, I've been propelled faster than my feet could move, coming closer and closer to tripping and feeling the wrath of time ill spent. I can recount the number of real times I've had since then on one hand; not that I haven't had a good time in my little safe box with my video games and sci-fi novels and weekly trips to the bookstore. It's been great, I'm not saying otherwise. It just feels like all my time has been spent waiting for an adventure, under the illusion that I wasn't missing out on any more than anyone else. However, I've noticed as time went on that people around me were progressing, slowly transmuting to gold, whereas I've been sitting on my leaden ass thinking that the philosopher's stone would come a-knocking on my door in due time, just like everyone else.
I'm not afraid of change. I'd be the first to admit it. I'm just anxious about the future. I've been spending my life procrastinating until the day that life dragged my kicking and screaming into the real world instead of living life and easing into it. Of all the people I've ever known, my life is the most boring. I read, I listen to music, I watch TV, I play video games, I talk to people I'm too afraid to socialize with in real life, and I wait for the day when I'll be forced to enter the world. I've got two brains in me, and the reasonable one has been too much of a pussy to smack some sense into the scared one, and force him to make friends and go out, and have fun, and party, and find some good experiences to stake his claim on and remember for the rest of the eternity I'll be on this earth. Sure, I've had fun, but it's the kind of fun you have while waiting in line, not the fun you have on the ride itself, and so far I've been procrastinating because I'm too afraid of shitting my pants at the top.
I've always wanted to return to the time when I was a careless child with time on my hands and small time fun to be had, with my toys and my sister and long summer days with no school and no worries. In those days I could wait for a while. It was okay to stand in line and joke and pass the time. It was still early and I had plenty of time before I got on the ride. Now I'm sixteen, and although it may have been fun before, I'm just letting the people behind me go ahead and it's becoming clear that I'm more scared than courteous.
I've been searching for truth since I was a child, learning as much as I could so that someday I could understand everything, not realizing that there was more to life than truth. I finally discovered all the truth in the universe recently, and I've never felt more melancholy. The truth was disappointing and sad and frustrating and limiting. It took all the magic and beauty out of life and explained everything as a mathematical rule with no room for exceptions.
I'd finally accomplished everything I'd worked for, everything I'd spurned the world for, and I no longer wanted it, and the world no longer held the door open for me. I had turned away from both Art and Science, and now I had no place in the world except as a sardonic consumer with no use for humans and no love for myself. I saw people as dirty destructive imbeciles with no appreciation for what they had; lives which I yearned for but would never wrench from their hands. I turned to animals and children as the only unblemished lives, and derived some small pleasure from their mindless happiness. I became a vegetarian because I couldn't stand to take happiness away from the few that could enjoy it.
And I trudged on, for no other reason than that I was too hopeful to kill myself. I built up in my mind a tragic self image that afforded some comfort. My ideal me trudged on through the snow, unkillable, unstoppable, destroyed on both the inside and out to such a point that I felt nothing and continued on, snear on my face, smashing the plans of the evil with a flick of my wrist. I was the fugitive or the incredible hulk, travelling the land and solving problems without dealing with my own and stealing away like a thief in the night, nothing but an astonishing memory to all but myself. In reality, I was none of these. The closest I came to making an impact on the world was periodic clumsy attempts to instill a revolutionary spirit into people on political message boards, but I saw myself as an eternal warrior, fighting a losing battle against an unforgiving world, and I've taken comfort in that over the past few years.
However, I've realized extremely recently that I'm none of this. I'm a flawed, scared little boy with deteriorating skills and a complete lack of any concept of beauty, gasping desperately to create it anyway and then lamenting in pain when I fail miserably.
I've wandered to hell and back in search of truth and been burned; I'd take ignorant beauty over truth any day. Comfort has destroyed me for the past seven years, and only now do I realize the knowledge that I once fleetingly employed during my flurry of good writing some five years ago.
Sometimes you need to brave the cold in search of beauty.
The following is an essay I wrote in my other journal,
onetwentyproof back on the 14th of October, but received no response on and generally got scared and nervous about, until I realized that nobody really did care about what I wrote in that journal.I'm hoping that, even with the same crowd, it'll get more response here than there.
I've been tired for the longest time.
Since I ceased being a young man of mononumerical age, I've been propelled faster than my feet could move, coming closer and closer to tripping and feeling the wrath of time ill spent. I can recount the number of real times I've had since then on one hand; not that I haven't had a good time in my little safe box with my video games and sci-fi novels and weekly trips to the bookstore. It's been great, I'm not saying otherwise. It just feels like all my time has been spent waiting for an adventure, under the illusion that I wasn't missing out on any more than anyone else. However, I've noticed as time went on that people around me were progressing, slowly transmuting to gold, whereas I've been sitting on my leaden ass thinking that the philosopher's stone would come a-knocking on my door in due time, just like everyone else.
I'm not afraid of change. I'd be the first to admit it. I'm just anxious about the future. I've been spending my life procrastinating until the day that life dragged my kicking and screaming into the real world instead of living life and easing into it. Of all the people I've ever known, my life is the most boring. I read, I listen to music, I watch TV, I play video games, I talk to people I'm too afraid to socialize with in real life, and I wait for the day when I'll be forced to enter the world. I've got two brains in me, and the reasonable one has been too much of a pussy to smack some sense into the scared one, and force him to make friends and go out, and have fun, and party, and find some good experiences to stake his claim on and remember for the rest of the eternity I'll be on this earth. Sure, I've had fun, but it's the kind of fun you have while waiting in line, not the fun you have on the ride itself, and so far I've been procrastinating because I'm too afraid of shitting my pants at the top.
I've always wanted to return to the time when I was a careless child with time on my hands and small time fun to be had, with my toys and my sister and long summer days with no school and no worries. In those days I could wait for a while. It was okay to stand in line and joke and pass the time. It was still early and I had plenty of time before I got on the ride. Now I'm sixteen, and although it may have been fun before, I'm just letting the people behind me go ahead and it's becoming clear that I'm more scared than courteous.
I've been searching for truth since I was a child, learning as much as I could so that someday I could understand everything, not realizing that there was more to life than truth. I finally discovered all the truth in the universe recently, and I've never felt more melancholy. The truth was disappointing and sad and frustrating and limiting. It took all the magic and beauty out of life and explained everything as a mathematical rule with no room for exceptions.
I'd finally accomplished everything I'd worked for, everything I'd spurned the world for, and I no longer wanted it, and the world no longer held the door open for me. I had turned away from both Art and Science, and now I had no place in the world except as a sardonic consumer with no use for humans and no love for myself. I saw people as dirty destructive imbeciles with no appreciation for what they had; lives which I yearned for but would never wrench from their hands. I turned to animals and children as the only unblemished lives, and derived some small pleasure from their mindless happiness. I became a vegetarian because I couldn't stand to take happiness away from the few that could enjoy it.
And I trudged on, for no other reason than that I was too hopeful to kill myself. I built up in my mind a tragic self image that afforded some comfort. My ideal me trudged on through the snow, unkillable, unstoppable, destroyed on both the inside and out to such a point that I felt nothing and continued on, snear on my face, smashing the plans of the evil with a flick of my wrist. I was the fugitive or the incredible hulk, travelling the land and solving problems without dealing with my own and stealing away like a thief in the night, nothing but an astonishing memory to all but myself. In reality, I was none of these. The closest I came to making an impact on the world was periodic clumsy attempts to instill a revolutionary spirit into people on political message boards, but I saw myself as an eternal warrior, fighting a losing battle against an unforgiving world, and I've taken comfort in that over the past few years.
However, I've realized extremely recently that I'm none of this. I'm a flawed, scared little boy with deteriorating skills and a complete lack of any concept of beauty, gasping desperately to create it anyway and then lamenting in pain when I fail miserably.
I've wandered to hell and back in search of truth and been burned; I'd take ignorant beauty over truth any day. Comfort has destroyed me for the past seven years, and only now do I realize the knowledge that I once fleetingly employed during my flurry of good writing some five years ago.
Sometimes you need to brave the cold in search of beauty.
Current Mood: lonely
Current Music: blind willie mctell...searching the desert for the blues