Life-Flavored Pie
I wouldn't say I've fully risen from this coma that I call life in Texas, but I had an interesting walk tonight that proved substantial in seeing things a bit more clearly.
In the midst of a mentally-and-emotionally-racking day at work, being made into the cause of all our department's problems by those around me and continually being thrown unnecessary attitude, I broke for lunch to sit in on a dial-in conference call orientation for the deployment job. It seems there is no shortage of obstacles presenting themselves regarding my acceptance into the program, but from a logical (and optimistic) standpoint it seems actually feasible that I stand a chance to pursue that which I feel will allow me to make infinitely beneficial progress toward th future goal of financial independance. Between an outstanding warrant in Utah from a speeding ticket, child-support-related passport issues, dental instability and a half-dozen other unsettling little facets my work is cut out for me; nothing worth doing was ever easy though right?
The time-sensitivity of it all is what puts the pressure on the most, things I wouldn't have expected pop up in the way of progressing smoothly through this process and they're mostly time-consuming and government-involved things which being in the holiday season doesn't help. Then there's the cost of some of these issues that creeps up around my feet and trips me up as well.
After going through all the intricacies of this process over and over in my head, I returned home and met Casey who was just arriving back from a 3-day duck hunting trip, and he met my concerns with the usual negative banter, which should go without saying is the last thing I needed to hear, but I quickly made him aware of this. I was on the phone with Jason at the time but gave it over to Casey so he could catch up as they haven't talked in a while. I sat down and immediately konked out due to the pulsation of an overly-difficult day, and when I woke up about an hour had passed. Since they were still talking on the phone, and knowing we still needed tortillas and cheese for our planned fajita dinner I went to the store. By the time I returned the phone had died so we commensed to cook, and strangely Casey appproached as I was chopping some veggies and presented a glass with a few shots of rum in it. At first I just thought it was water or something that I needed to do something special to the bell peppers with (Casey watches the Food Network religiously) but after taking the shots we began talking like we were hanging out, for the first time since I've been back. It was odd and refreshing, unexpected actually. There was laughter and connection, fairly far removed happenings in this household.
After we drank some more, ate and were merry, he put on the new Indiana Jones movie and it was strangely intriguing, like a cross between AVP, Mission to Mars, Indiana Jones and National Treasure. Pretty crazy. He retired to bed and I set out for what I figured would be a fairly long walk, water and cell phone in hand, and buzzed like nobody's business.
I started flipping through the phone book to determine who I needed to catch up with (given my recent deficit of social aptitude), and after getting 3 answering machines and 2 busy folks that will 'call me back later' I landed a call back from Lauren, who I've been missing dearly, and requested her stories of bountiful happiness (through which I could seek to live vicariously), and she of course provided the best anecdotes from this fairy-dream-world she lives in where everyone is beautiful in their own way (sorry, but my Texas blinders are on, I just can't see it here, and believe me I try). By the way, I found it interesting to know theres a difference between the words "antidote" and "anecdote"... See below...
Antidote- An agent that relieves or counteracts.
Anecdote- A short account of a particular incident or event of an interesting or amusing nature
My heart breaks for all those people out there for whom English is a second language. Seriously.
Anyway, Lauren spoke of lovely things and happiness and absurdity and laughter and mountains and frolicing, and I hung on her words as my imagination went wild with illustration. We sometimes forget exactly how much we need those colorful bursts of others' experiences to jumpstart our minds, dulled by self-reliance and introspect; it always becomes clear to me how trivial everything really is after talking with her. She was making cookies and smiles. I love her.
After we parted airwaves I called a few more answering machines and got a hold of Nyah, my Albuquerquian well-wisher and supporter of strange ways and liberal conspiracy theories. I seriously don't know how she can listen to me talk on and on about whatever it is I talk about, but I was finally in the mood to blabber on endlessly and it just flowed; it was well-needed conversation with no real point, just light touching on subjects and the brutal philosophy surrounding them.
Ah the many pieces of my life-flavored pie. Lost connections, lost minds, the depths of my confusion and the peaks of the realizations to come.
As my phone began to die I realized I had walked about 4 miles and had another 4 to go before I would be home again, so I turned the volume up on my headphones and proceeded to get lost in the only world that I truly own- fantasy. I realized that, regarding fantasy, the bulk of our basis for comparison on any given higher plane are all ideals, largely composed of movie-or-book-inspired and romanticized concepts. When we seek to define our love for a significant other for example, we dream of a scene from a piece of romantic fiction and weigh in the connection we share with our loved one. When we fantasize about travel, we imagine breathtaking landscapes or culturally-packed downtown streets as the entirety of our journey. We eventually realize through experiences in life that using these dreamscapes for comparisons leave us ultimately unfulfilled, they leave us thinking we should re-evaluate our relationships because they're not passionately-charged 100% of the time or thinking less of a roadtrip spent looking out the window for a thousand miles and seeing just a handful of sights worthy of commenting on.
Such are the errors of superficiality, these ideals we believe in and strive to see fulfilled; we waste so much of our lives in waiting for some impossible fantasy to reveal itself, as though we're prophesized to have all this stimulation just FIND us because we saw a story about it happening to someone else, and it's criminal that we can see ourselves throwing away connections with others and interest in the precious moments life affords us day in and day out. As with anything else as complex as quality in our lives it is in our perceptional aptitude that the key to that quality exists. I fear that more and more in our society we are drawn to ideals that represent fantasies designed to perpetually keep us discontent.
If we could all see with our hearts as we do with our eyes, the world would be exponentially brighter.
(entry still in progress)