I didn't think this still existed. Apparently whatever I posted here like 15 years ago is gone. That's fine. It doesn't matter. I'm listening to music and feeling maudlin. What else is new? Whiskey and music bring things to the surface. A tune or lyric hits like a fist, crushing my chest with wistfulness for a particular moment lost in the past. Perfect little moments when everything was right and I was happy. Always fleeting. Happiness comes in fits and spurts. It isn't continuous. The longer I go on and the bleaker now gets, the less happy or fulfilled or hopeful I am, the harder the past contentments hit. Sudden knowledge that the happiness was almost 30 years ago. The knife twists in my heart. Sudden panic. That can't be right. Three of my five decades ago. That can't be right. It's been 20 years since I felt whole. It's been 30 years since I felt right. Fifty percent of my life living in self-loathing depression.
Realizing that the things I say could be hurtful and second-guessing everything I think and say. I can't really speak my mind any more. I'm too worried it will sound harsh or cruel. never the intent, but realizing perceptions are different makes it hard to do things right. Eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and being suddenly painfully aware that people don't know what I mean, so everything must be overexplained and couched in tact and diplomacy. Unable to be angry because what if I'm in the wrong. There's no way to articulate anything that doesn't end up sounding selfish. But everyone is selfish in their way. Everyone wants to think they're the good one, but is anyone ever really good?
Driving to canada with a carful of friends, this album playing on the tape deck, no passports or enhanced licenses, just four people who want to drink some Molson draught from quart mason jars and crash out at a motel, drive around and see the sights, have some Nanaimo bars, drink brandy and smoke our Marbs and some cheap vending-machine Cuban cigars. No worries, no cares; we have enough money for food and gas and a cheap place to sleep. Who needs more? Music and laughing and freedom. There's no way to reclaim that without giving up everything you've accumulated in the last 27 years, but you can't do that because those are the things that define you, that you sold your life in exchange for a salary to afford to get, and giving them up would be admitting you gave up 40,000 hours of your life for a few rooms full of junk and that nothing can be as good as it was when you were 21 and had nothing but freedom, but in the end isn't freedom all there is? Is there anything as good as living unfettered and free? The price of complacency is 40 hours of your life a week for as long as you're able to toil. How is freedom even more costly than that? Freedom only costs things. Comfort. But if you're beholden to a timeclock and a boss and all the things you bought with the pieces of your life you sold off to your job, can you ever be free? Happy? Truly content?
No comments:
Post a Comment