lush greenery.
I've been thinking about a road trip. A drive across the country. I've been thinking about the people I'd visit on the way. The person who I would want to go with me. I've been thinking about what I would do once I reached my destination. In this case, Seattle.
I didn't plan to write my one-hundred-first livejournal entry on the first day of the new year. It's fitting, I suppose, like a clean slate. I don't have any resolutions. I had forgotten that resolutions even existed until today. I had forgotten what it means to be resolute about anything. Living being at the top of the list. I don't want to be alive, yet I still have someone wake me up in the morning. For whatever reason. And now this is already sounding pathetic.
The thing is, I'm just trying to write something, anything, and get it done. Hoping it will spur me into action. Two years ago, I was morbidly motivated about writing. And then I burnt out. Unprofessionally broke off relationships with all my website editors without thinking that they would be valuable references in the future, and ended up where I am now. Clinical depression would be the diagnosis, I suppose.
My resolution is to blow my brains out.
Just kidding.
Every night, on the road, I would stop to take a rest, and I would drink. I could drink until I died; I could be a barroom hero for one night, and fade into legend. And in some obscure little dive bar off the interstate would be a plaque with my name on it. None of patrons would be locals, because the only people who wander into those lonely doors are the displaced. The ones with nowhere to go, the ones running away from something, the ones looking for something they'll never find, only feel. What am I?
"Honey, I'm just a drifter, just a good for nothing. But hey, sweetheart, maybe...maybe we can drift together."
You'll look at the bartender as he speaks those words. The light in the bar like a burgundy veil. His eyes are honest. You'll look into those eyes as he tells you the story of one of the displaced who walked in one night without saying a word and drank until he died. The bar is silent. The patrons listening intently. You're wrapped in a whiskey-soaked blanket of smoke. The bartender speaks those last words -and speaks them intently- and falls silent himself. You hear the clink of a glass. Without any other sound, the patrons raise their glasses in honor of a man, resolute.
I envision all the places I would go on my way to the end. Houses in suburbs, dorm rooms, studios apartments, basements. All the people I know.
I would catch up on old times. Fall asleep on a spare couch, and be gone before they woke up the next day. Sometimes I would stay later. I would explain what I was feeling, what motivated me to drive across the country without stopping at any landmarks.
"I feel like I'm going there to die," I would tell them, and droop my shoulders, stare at the floor. They would move closer, tell me that everything will be okay. I'd lean over and try to kiss them, but get a smack in the face in place of a kiss. That's all I really want. Just a kiss.
"You're pathetic," they'd say. I'd leave. A person sad enough to pity, depressed enough to hate.
I have a sister who lives in Washington state. She says that the people who live there play up the reputation that the area has for its never-ending rain. It rains a lot there, she says, but not as much as people think. The locals just don't want people moving into their beautiful part of the country.
Miyamoto Musashi, the greatest samurai to ever live, is said to have killed his first opponent at the age of thirteen. It is said that he often fought twenty or more opponents at a time. He was never defeated. He was a warrior. Days before he died, he completed The Book of Five Rings. He was a perfectionist, and strove to perfect his art throughout his entire life. When his time came, he retreated into the forest, and wrote the book. He knew when he was ready. He did what he set out to do.
We aren't expected to be perfect today. We're expected to have various interests and hobbies, and to concentrate on one thing only so that we can make a living off of it. Everyone has something. Everyone has a goal they secretly wish to devote themselves to, body and soul. But what do you do when that goal, that ultimate achievement, that state of perfection, is something completely different than what you imagined? What if it's just moving from point "A" to point "B"?
I would be well past Seattle by the time I stopped driving. At the entrance to a verdant forest. It would be raining warm rain. I would walk inside. A green infinity. And never come back.
I didn't plan to write my one-hundred-first livejournal entry on the first day of the new year. It's fitting, I suppose, like a clean slate. I don't have any resolutions. I had forgotten that resolutions even existed until today. I had forgotten what it means to be resolute about anything. Living being at the top of the list. I don't want to be alive, yet I still have someone wake me up in the morning. For whatever reason. And now this is already sounding pathetic.
The thing is, I'm just trying to write something, anything, and get it done. Hoping it will spur me into action. Two years ago, I was morbidly motivated about writing. And then I burnt out. Unprofessionally broke off relationships with all my website editors without thinking that they would be valuable references in the future, and ended up where I am now. Clinical depression would be the diagnosis, I suppose.
My resolution is to blow my brains out.
Just kidding.
Every night, on the road, I would stop to take a rest, and I would drink. I could drink until I died; I could be a barroom hero for one night, and fade into legend. And in some obscure little dive bar off the interstate would be a plaque with my name on it. None of patrons would be locals, because the only people who wander into those lonely doors are the displaced. The ones with nowhere to go, the ones running away from something, the ones looking for something they'll never find, only feel. What am I?
"Honey, I'm just a drifter, just a good for nothing. But hey, sweetheart, maybe...maybe we can drift together."
You'll look at the bartender as he speaks those words. The light in the bar like a burgundy veil. His eyes are honest. You'll look into those eyes as he tells you the story of one of the displaced who walked in one night without saying a word and drank until he died. The bar is silent. The patrons listening intently. You're wrapped in a whiskey-soaked blanket of smoke. The bartender speaks those last words -and speaks them intently- and falls silent himself. You hear the clink of a glass. Without any other sound, the patrons raise their glasses in honor of a man, resolute.
I envision all the places I would go on my way to the end. Houses in suburbs, dorm rooms, studios apartments, basements. All the people I know.
I would catch up on old times. Fall asleep on a spare couch, and be gone before they woke up the next day. Sometimes I would stay later. I would explain what I was feeling, what motivated me to drive across the country without stopping at any landmarks.
"I feel like I'm going there to die," I would tell them, and droop my shoulders, stare at the floor. They would move closer, tell me that everything will be okay. I'd lean over and try to kiss them, but get a smack in the face in place of a kiss. That's all I really want. Just a kiss.
"You're pathetic," they'd say. I'd leave. A person sad enough to pity, depressed enough to hate.
I have a sister who lives in Washington state. She says that the people who live there play up the reputation that the area has for its never-ending rain. It rains a lot there, she says, but not as much as people think. The locals just don't want people moving into their beautiful part of the country.
Miyamoto Musashi, the greatest samurai to ever live, is said to have killed his first opponent at the age of thirteen. It is said that he often fought twenty or more opponents at a time. He was never defeated. He was a warrior. Days before he died, he completed The Book of Five Rings. He was a perfectionist, and strove to perfect his art throughout his entire life. When his time came, he retreated into the forest, and wrote the book. He knew when he was ready. He did what he set out to do.
We aren't expected to be perfect today. We're expected to have various interests and hobbies, and to concentrate on one thing only so that we can make a living off of it. Everyone has something. Everyone has a goal they secretly wish to devote themselves to, body and soul. But what do you do when that goal, that ultimate achievement, that state of perfection, is something completely different than what you imagined? What if it's just moving from point "A" to point "B"?
I would be well past Seattle by the time I stopped driving. At the entrance to a verdant forest. It would be raining warm rain. I would walk inside. A green infinity. And never come back.