Mundane-al-ities....
A very ordinary story.
Since I had to get up to answer the phone, I decided to get dressed and head out to the supermarket soon afterwards. One motion flowing into another, sort of like a 2-in-1, because I was changing my pants whilst holding the cordless phone to my ear.
My isolation, stagnation, fear of the marker... wait, I didn't really have any fear, but I had the masks which fear had cast off. Fear of the pain of living a lie. Fear of being in the same rut, forever... or, until I feel to yet a lower level of society.
Somehow, I had money... not money that I stole, borrowed, or found... but I had earned, acquired, traded to get... more than enough to get a loaf of bread and some domestic supplies.
I doubt that you can even go and buy groceries.
I doubt that it matters if you go or not.
I doubt that you have anything cool-looking to wear.
The distraction of answering the phone temporarily allowed me to short-circuit the negative self-talk within my mind... they were like invaders who had nested, breed, and now were raping my plans and pillaging my dreams, razing my life and leaving a listless ghoul in their wake.
However, they needed power to continue. My power. And any sort of distraction helped to rob them of this... but, then again, distractions themselves also took away my power... because they hooked my attention and diverted the energy I needed to maintaing awarness, and high levels of consciousness.
I didn't have anything cool-looking to wear, but I put on a jeans I had worn yesterday, a generic blue t-shirt, and these old slippers that looked like if they belonged in a dump or something, they were so old and tattered, but I haven't bothered to replace them.
I didn't care about clothes, but I suppose a person in my position: wanting to move forwards, to establish a higher place in society, and more importantly, in the material world, would want to care about appearences.
...but I wasn't going to a fashion show, I was going to the store in my neighbourhood to restock.
I couldn't want until tomorrow.
I couldn't allow the solitary confinement, under the jailer in my mind, to continue.
So I went out.
Along the way, I saw a guy walking towards me... he was unremarkable, I didn't notice his dress, nor his face, but I did notice that he walked with a bounce... most guys do. It's like "I am vigorously walking... yet I look calm about it."
You can almost feel the energy in each step; it's like the ginga in a way... exaggerated movements that, when mastered through practice, conceal the power and flexiblity contained in the body and ready to be unleased by the mind.
This wasn't just a major, mundane task... this was me following through on a decision. Actualizing my will.
My body felt stiff, though... the lack of exercise was telling.
It is not so much that I had gotten weak; it is more that I had gotten stiff, cold, inflexible, and unaware of my own body.
I also needed proper shoes.
Cut to the store...
Walking into the store always felt like walking into a "public house", or pub... and not a supermarket or grocery store. Actually, it was more like a small variety store. It wasn't very super. It did sell a wide variety of stuff, including pens and notebooks.
Tonight, though, I was here for a few things, which I picked up in short order.
I waited until the guy ahead of me was checking out, and rested my things on the conveyor belt, at the back, and then went and quickly grabbed a 1-litre carton of pineapple juice.
Too much attention to detail makes written stories boring.
It is true that words should be stung together in easy to digest portions. Bonus points for supplementing or even eliminating words with diagrams.
However, if you plan to replace words altogether with motion... ani-motion, ani-mation, then what you end up with is a detailed plan for a production.
You don't animate anything. At your level, you couldn't even do stick figures. You have no sense of follow-thru --
Then, what am I doing here?
Gee, looks like I made a plan and stuck to it.
Trivial!
Reality is that I'm taking action. All you are doing is bitching about things which I haven't yet even planned to do in any detail. The animation comes after the studio and after the day job/system. Not before, in some vague past.
At your age --
Just shut up with your nasty talk. For a mind-virus, you are very persistant, but useless. And your hassling is futile. Age is really just a number, and I was never pacing myself against anyone else.
What I've discovered might take generations to uncover... I don't regret a second of the immutable past, but I would regret wasting any more energy on sustaining your life.
....
The lights seemed to shimmer more brightly.
I handed $24 to the cashier, and got back my changed, shoving it roughtly into a pocket with the receipt.
Said goodnight to a lady by the door, on the way out.
She actually responded, which was sorta surprising.
It was raining. Not heavily, in fact, it was so light that I noticed that the ground was wet before I actually saw the rain. It was more like a find mist watering the earth.
So I walked through it without hesitation.
You forgot your umbrealla.
Who needs an umbrella for weather like this? Someone made of salt, maybe. Or sand. Not a man like me, with waterproof skin.
I got home, went inside, changed into "home clothes"....
I didn't even feel wet by the time I unpacked the booty of my swashbuckling adventure.
I was hungry, so I prepared some food... and ate some, but I was soon satisfied... or, disinterested in further eating. I think it was the corned beef. That stuff seems so high in salt, sugary greasy fat, that I wonder if there's any actual meat left. I should probally try preparing it in some sort of bread or pasta.
You know, when I'm not so hungry that I just want to devour it as soon as its warm....
Author's Notes
It took me about 5 1/2 hours to finish writing this.
Distractions: phone, chatting, watching epsidoes of Top Gear, tracking down a song which I wanted to hear again ("React" with Erick Sermon, Redman), and a thousand detours and a lot of time when I spent thinking "I'm acting as if I'm one person but I'm really another".
I mean, I act like if I don't want to do anything with my life... like if I'm happy to just live a laid back life of laziness... or like if I have something against having a career or more formal education... but that's not it at all.
What I need the most in my life is myself... to really be aware... not "aware of who I am", for that's just an image... that's "who I am to my friend Mike" or "who I am to the tax laws" or "who I am to the cashier"... no, I need to be aware that I am who I am. I need to be conscious of now. Not conscious of tomorrow, or five minutes from now, or to have a plan, but just to be conscious.
Everything else is meaningless without this self-awareness. Without nowness, plans can't even be actualized... distractions have to be used like gravity slingshots, rather than gravity wells.... and the prison of my mind must give way to the command castle of my abundant prosperity.
It takes me so long to do simple things, almost trivial things... but I won't become discouraged or label myself as lazy or deficient... my reformation and renewal... are really like a re-new-al... all new things take conscious effort sustained until the skills become second nature, mastered, learnt.
Everyone can learn to ride a bicycle, but not everyone learns to do "tricks"... and not everyone is even interested in learning... it may be that most people are happy just for the mainsteam functionality....
What I want from my life, is more than mainstream functionality.
A style of living which is full of living,
just as a trickster bicyclist is beyond just a self-transporter... they're a true artist.
Well, they also tend to fall a lot.
Esp. when practicing.
... but the falling is part of the process... it is not like it makes them weaker (assuming they don't totally break something, that is).
So I expect that living a soulful life would take more practice than living a soulless, mediocre, common life... and that it wouldn't make sense to a lot of people, and that I'll have some challenges... esp. as I don't actually have living a medicre, common life as a totally learnt skill in the first place....
But, that's all the more reason to concentrate more on doing it, rather than distracting myself and listening to reality-corrupting fear-based emotions.
Also, I don't actually hear voices in my head (not that I think people who do are weird or anything), but I find that putting things into word form benefits from a bit of dramatic re-interpetation. It is more clear here now that they're negative thought-patterns (show in italics) as well as more rational, self-supportive thought-patterns.
There is never a profit to embracing negative thought-patterns. However, ignoring, denying, or trivializing them can be just as bad as embracing them, since the masks of anger, jealousy, and other powerful emotions can be fueled by them even as the lurk below the lover consciousness level limit, outside of the span of awareness.