Res Ipsa Loquitor

"Reality means you live until you die, the agent says. The real truth is nobody wants reality." -from SURVIVOR, by Chuck Palahniuk

It would seem more than a little obvious to most, that getting it all out there on the table in the beginning would be the most obvious way to get to know someone... but aside from the blatant truth of blatant honesty, relationships, at least for me, don't ever start out that way. Mentally, verbally, or even lyrically I am guarded and cold... and maybe the people I find attractive or find attraction to me are too much of the same, or too accepting of those traits in me. It is who I am and have been for far too long. This frustrates me to speechlessness, but maybe I'm too old to learn new tricks, and maybe it is time to accept who I am.

I may just be a bastard born from broken dreams, but I can't help but feel fine through the lies of the dying fantasies I live through each day. I cherish simple things. I treasure the few moments of uncontrollable honesty I find scattered about as time unmercifully passes by. Today, I'm sitting in the apartment of one incredible girl sipping my morning coffee while feeling amazing and refreshed, but I can't deny how much of all this is luck... I just don't deserve to be so happy.

Tomorrow is a different plague, a different self-examination. Schoolwork has its own set of demands for me, and passing a mid-term is paramount to my future and life. Seems everything is questioning me lately. The scariest thing about that is each day that passes I have less and less answers. Of all my perfervid posturing, of all my fancy words... these answers are seemingly growing more empty.

So as I sit here and type, fighting off the effects of a handful of sleeping pills taken down in a blinking LED Cuervo shotglass; drowning out the noises of screaming roommates, and letting Ray LaMontagne prophesy that "love is a poor man's food..."; all while chain-smoking my Marlboro Menthol Lights, I am comforted by only one thing... There isn't a single person alive that isn't trying to make up for lost time in some way, shape, or form.

///begin tangent.///

[woman:] Excuse me.
[man:] Excuse me.
[woman:]
Hey. Could we do that again? I know we haven't met, but I don't want to be an ant, you know? I mean, it's like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another, continuously on ant auto-pilot with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action basically for survival. All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient polite manner. "Here's your change." "Paper or plastic?" "Credit or debit?" "You want ketchup with that?" I don't want a straw, I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don't want to give that up. I don't want to be an ant, you know?
[man:]
Yeah. Yeah, no. I don't want to be an ant either. Heh. Yeah, thanks for kind of jostling me there. I've been kind of on zombie auto-pilot lately, I don't feel like an ant in my head, but I guess I probably look like one. It's kind of like D.H. Lawrence had this idea of two people meeting on a road. And instead of just passing and glancing away, they decide to accept what he calls "the confrontation between their souls." It's like, um, freeing the brave reckless gods within us all.
[woman:]
Then it's like we have met.

///from Chapter 14 of the movie "Waking Life"///

So I am in a ranting mood. I've been living like a ghost lost in a fog, but some amazing stuff has happened to me. Met a wonderful girl, and I haven't been so content in so long a time. I was randomly violated with an anonymous gift of $100 sent via snail mail in an unmarked envelope [don't worry, it was clear of anthrax, or atleast contained an amount so trace that I haven't died from it just yet]. I have come to the knowledge that I could be going to a college to nurture my god-given talent to be a writer for less than half the price of the school I am attending, and yet graduate in the same timeline I care to spend here at DeVry. I've become aware of the level of love people have for me. I've acquired a few dedicated readers and a re-kindled spirit to quench their appetites. But... I've been comatose, confused, and quelled. I'm more unsure of my desire to succeed as a writer, but finally ready to face some impending possibility of failing as a writer.

I am tired. I have tried too long to fight these sleeping pills... but tell me what you feel about disconnected love and the distraction that life is placing in your lives. What in your life are you trying to catch up to? One more cig and it's curtains for me.

Carpe Noctum,
-J.