That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In Gibberish

When you've wanted something long enough, the want can become a part of you. Like pain. Or love, I suppose. You wake up and the desire is there settled in the back of your mind. You go about your day and ignore the nagging itch beneath your thoughts like an old mosquito bite that never goes completely away. When you go to bed, you barely notice the hollow part of you that aches to be filled with the object of your desire. Most wants are pretty simple, and easily sated. I want a piece of chocolate, I go unwrap a candy bar. Mission accomplished. I want to watch a television show, I plop down on the couch and channel surf until I find what I'm after and veg out til the happy ending. Boom, another job well done.

Some wants are impossible, and we know it. An old man wants to be young again, a mother wants her dead child back, a battered wife wants her husband to change. It's just not going to happen, and for better or worse we find ways to live with that. Sometimes it winds up destroying us, sometimes we come out stronger. Sometimes it just fucking hurts, and that turns into a new want: we just want to stop hurting, however we can, whatever it takes.

That's not the kind of desire I'm thinking of tonight.

There's another kind of want, and I think it's both the best and worst of all. It's the desire of something you perhaps could attain, but aren't certain you ever will. Kind of on the edge between the first two. It stays nestled in your thoughts, like a pet snake you never feed, and it lashes out in bitter resentment and gleeful mockery every time something new comes along to remind you of its presence. A lead weight chained to your future. And because you doubt you'll ever satisfy it, you just get used to its mass dragging against you. It becomes a part of you, and you simply have to get strong enough to carry both yourself and the distantly reachable desire. Like the training weights athletes use to condition their bodies -- that can never be removed.

Until one day, it is. You reach this goal you'd secretly thought was impossible, the desire goes away, and you're left...hollow. Even emptier than before. Oh, there's the satisfaction of achieving your target, certainly. It might even be enough to outweigh the accompanying negative emotions, who knows. But sure enough, there's still a feeling of...I don't know what the hell to call it. Disappointment, that there's nothing more to look forward to? Longing, for the old days when the goal was still on the horizon to tantalize with dim hope? Relief, that at long last some relaxation can be found and attention has been freed up for other subjects? Anger, because dammit you've worked your ass off to reach this point and this is all there is to greet you? Joy, because dammit you've worked your ass off to reach this point and this is pretty fucking incredible? Apathy, because at the end of the day nobody else really gives a shit?

Some impossible jumble of all of the above? None of the above? Something completely different?

I hate that feeling. I'm filled with it right now. I did something tonight I've wanted to do for years, almost a decade. Nothing earth-shattering or anything; I just got to finish an old cartoon series I started watching as a kid, and I finally got to see how it ended. It was...fitting, I guess. Watching through the next to last episodes made me feel sort of giddy, like a school kid finally getting to see behind the magician's curtain. But as I clicked the play button on the last episode, I experienced...remorse, I suppose would be the best word for it. I'd carried this desire, this need to finish that series with me since I was in grade school. It was kind of a part of me, like it or not. And pressing that play button meant I was slicing that part of myself away, ending that piece of me. The unknown, which in some idle moments my imagination had toyed with picturing all the possible outcomes, was burnt away and the story's solid conclusion was installed in its place. No more room for guessing, this was what happened.

I had a plain wooden block that could have been anything, and now it's been carved into shape and will never be anything else again. An empty cup to play with, but now it's full and all I can do is spill it. You know. A hundred other goofy zen examples or taoist tropes or whatever. The point is, finality can sometimes be just as unpleasant as continuation. Take whatever moral out of that you want.

Me, I'm gonna go find a new empty cup.

Desperate to Shine

Ever since I was a kid, I've had people telling me that I was special. That I was above average, that I would accomplish great things in my lifetime. "You've got potential," they told me -- and then they would walk off, leaving me to wonder what they were talking about before I stuck my head back into whatever book or fantasy world I was currently inhabiting. I had all this enormous, wonderous potential, but no one ever really told me what to do with it. I guess they all thought if I had so much of it, I should know how to use it. Like it came with an instruction manual or something. Maybe none of them wanted the responsibility of helping me live up to that potential, so none of them would have to take the blame if I failed. Looking back, it was a lot like being told I had wings I'd never seen, and then being tossed off a cliff so they could see if I flew.

I had a lot of interests as a kid -- still do, really -- in all manner of subjects. I read voraciously, just about anything I could get my hands on, and I absorbed it all like a sponge. I read histories and biographies, manifestos, journals and diaries, papers and publications in fields of study ranging from medicine to astronomy to biology to politics to computer science. I read poetry and prose, and I absolutely devoured fiction, all the classics and much of the obscure. Frost, Angelou, Cummings, Shelley, Keats, Byron. Tolkien, Rowling, Pullman, Rice, King. Kipling and Stevenson and Wells.

I competed in marksmanship riflery competitions and public speaking contests in the local 4-H club, and went to National levels in both fields. I took a year of chorus in high school and really polished my own natural talent for singing. Never could dance worth a damn (I'm too white, haha) but I could always belt it out. I wrote papers on the American Civil War and English literature and cellular biological processes for amusement. And I studied computers, hardware and software, and how the internet worked, and how to build networks. All of that was back when the internet was still rather new, dial-up was king, and people were still using 3.5 floppies. Yeah, yeah, I'm a dinosaur. Shut the hell up.

In college, I wasn't much better. My interests were still scattered all over the place, and my energies were usually diffused over a wide range of material. I never really focused on anything in particular. I just cast my net wide over the surface of the ocean and dragged in not much of nothing. There's probably a lesson in there for someone else, but I refuse to be ashamed of that. Because of my 'lack of focus', I probably know more about any subject you could name than anyone else I know. 'I know a lot about a little, and a little about a lot.' In fact, I don't think it would be inaccurate to say I may well be the smartest man in this town.

And yet.

I'm so smart, and I'm so clever, but I'm still living in this little one-horse shithole. I have made exactly nothing of my life so far. All that potential that everyone used to see in me has apparently gone to waste, I guess. That's probably my fault. After all, if I had all that potential, I should have known what to do with it, right?

But I didn't. I think there's something you need more than potential, whatever the hell that is. You need passion in your life, a driving force that doesn't let you stop and rest because dammit there are THINGS TO DO. That is one quality that I have always lacked, I think. I've always thought of passion as this fire that burns down deep in your spirit, and everyone has it, some more, some less. The people I've always envied have always seemed to have such an abundance of it. I would look at them, and it was like looking at a forest fire, or a nuclear reaction. And then I'd look at myself and see a puny, piddling roman candle sputtering and struggling to make one more spark of light. Nothing in the world has ever made me feel so inadequate as a human being as the feeling I get when I examine my own lack of passion.

It's not always like that, either, and that's the worst part. There are times I can really get fired up about something and I can feel that fire inside me build up like a great, churning star, heat and passion and driving light that just wells up in me and inspires me to DO SOMETHING...but, it never lasts. Never. It always seems like it's just enough to get me started, to take the first steps, and sometimes even to make it through the first obstacles. But before too long, it dwindles and fizzles out, and I'm left alone on this strange, hard path without any of the light that brought me this far. As though it only burns bright enough to lure me deeper into the darkness, where the shadows of doubt can feast on the twitching corpse of my potential.

Part of me wonders if this is what it's like for everyone. Maybe those other people, those bright and shiny people feel this way too. Maybe their fire doesn't burn all the time, maybe it's just like mine. Perhaps the key is not to rely on the light as we walk the paths we choose, but to hold on to our faith that the light will come back when we really need it if only we just keep on walking. I think I like that thought.

I've been in the dark a long time, now. You could almost say I've grown comfortable in it. I think it's time I started walking again, though. Perhaps its time to challenge the darkness, and trust that my light will come back to me when the time is right. My doubts and my fears have nibbled and gnawed on my potential for a long time too, and I suspect there's not as much of it now as there once was. But maybe...maybe it'll be enough.

Shine a light, baby.

Friendly Fire

I ran into an old friend from high school today. It was...awkward. He looked like he'd been doing alright for himself. Pretty typical of him, I guess. Had sort of the 'office drone' look about him. We made small talk for a few minutes. Mostly about his siblings, because I didn't really have much else to talk to him about. He asked how I was doing, and I made up some stuff I hope sounded convincing. It might have been the truth; how the hell would he know? And what business would it have been of his, anyway?

I don't know why, but I've never really liked him. I mean, we hung out in high school, cheated off each other's papers and helped each other through the hard classes, worked on assignments and papers together, we got along pretty well, but...I just never really liked him. And I've never really understood that.

I've gone over our relationship, our similarities and our differences with a fine-tooth comb. He doesn't do anything in particular to annoy me. He's smart enough to hold a decent conversation with. He's reliable, and he's not a racist or a bigot or anything such. And even though I'm bisexual and he's not (I'm pretty sure, anyway) there's no sexual tension or underlying attraction or resentment or anything under the surface, I'm certain of that.

He's not really what you'd call a 'nemesis,' either. I can't remember ever competing with him for anything important, or even anything trivial. We actually have worked pretty well together in the past. We had a few mutual friends and acquaintances, and I got along with all of them very well, too. I even liked them, even when they actually gave me reason not to. But this guy just...ugh, I don't know.

So why don't I like him? You would think that a person like me, who has precious few friends in RL, would be grasping at every chance I had to have someone to talk to on a regular basis. But...I can't. Not him. Something about him just grates at something in me. It's like the mere fact that he exists is enough to irritate me, like a stone in my shoe or a seed stuck under a tooth, and I'm not really comfortable until we're out of each other's company again.

I'd like to think there's something I'm missing here. Maybe something dramatic, like maybe we were mortal enemies in a past life, battling each other for honor or treasure or the love of a woman. Or maybe something more mundane, such as a long-buried memory of a traumatic event from childhood; maybe we fought over a favorite toy while we were in day-care together, or perhaps he shoved me down on the playground or something. But honestly, I don't think that's it, either. It feels deeper than that. I don't really like this analogy, but I can't help but think it must be something similar to how a mongoose instinctively hates a cobra, even if it's never encountered one before. Pure, simple, instinctual dislike on a fundamental, lizard-brain level. I just don't like this guy. And that sort of disturbs me a little bit, that I could be such a slave to my own instincts.

But on the bright side, I'm pretty sure he feels the same thing about me. I take a little comfort in that.

Eyes of a Tiger

I was poking around on the internet the other night, which isn't really different than how I spend most of my nights, and I saw something that...really affected me. I don't know how else to say it. An image, a cartoon done in Calvin and Hobbes style ink and paint to be exact. It was a picture of Hobbes, the old stuffed tiger that so many of us probably grew up with. He was in his 'live' form, how he always looked whenever Calvin was playing with him, his young imagination giving him that certain anima. Except...it wasn't Calvin he was playing with.

It was a little girl, blonde, in a purple or blue dress, running down a path in the woods with a great big smile on her face, one hand behind her clutching at Hobbes' paw. Hobbes wasn't paying attention to where they were running, though. He was looking backward, at a man who stood at the far end of the path. You couldn't really see his face, but you could see enough to know he was smiling as he waved goodbye. His hair was still blonde, but it wasn't spikey anymore, and it almost looked like it was starting to recede into his dad's old hairline. He still wore that same style shirt, red and black, but now it had graduated to a polo style. Calvin, all grown up, watching his daughter and his childhood best friend rushing off to have their own brand-new adventures.

I think it was the expression on Hobbes' face, the look in his eyes, that really got to me. As he looked back, the make-believe tiger seemed torn between his chance for new adventures with his friend's little girl, and not wanting to lose the memories that he -- and all the rest of us, let's be honest -- worked to create with her dad. It felt like there was no middle ground, no way to go back. In that single image, three entire life stories were captured. The little girl, full of wonder and magic and possibility, what ifs and could bes and tomorrows; adult Calvin, relegated to the background, to the past, a life of imagination and adventure perhaps already passed by; and Hobbes, the epitomal observer, a symbol of "Let's go play, NOW!" to literally God only knows how many kids.

I honestly don't know why I was so...touched? Disturbed? by this, but gods help me I was. Bill Watterson ended the Calvin and Hobbes comic back in '95 (or maybe it was '91), but this...this felt like a door slamming on my childhood. For a minute, it was like I WAS Calvin, standing in the background, alone and all but forgotten or ignored as the next generation forged ahead with MY toys. Christ, it made me feel...old. Am I old? Is 26 old now? I don't think so. I don't believe so. I CAN'T believe so. But right then, and even right now, I still feel it. I just can't shake this feeling that all my adventures are behind me, too, that even though it feels like there's still so much left inside me, it's all going to go to waste.

I don't know who drew that cartoon; it might have been The Man himself. Certainly it was powerful enough to have been his. But whoever it was, if you read this (I know they probably won't, but this IS the internet, and stranger things do happen) I guess I should let you know...mission accomplished. Whatever your purpose was in drawing that comic, whether just as a lark to test your artistic prowess, or to reach out and affect someone in exactly the manner I've just described, you certainly achieved it. Well done, damn you.

Well done.

Blue Skies and Memories

There's a lot of my childhood I really don't remember. A few scraps, mostly, and a few really crystal clear memories that probably happened totally different than I remember. But most of it's a blank. I guess it's because we really don't do much as kids. Who remembers what they might have done when they were five, right? And there's not really much to remember about school, so. I remember my teachers, and some of my class mates. Don't remember learning much; it feels more like I always knew all the stuff they had to teach anyway. Maybe that's just the brain's way of integrating it into your mind or something.

I looked up at the sky today, and it was the clearest, deepest, most perfect blue that I've ever seen. It wasn't just blue, it was Blue. The Blue, against which all other shades of the color are measured. It was really amazing in its way, one of those little everyday miracles that seem to blossom all around us all the time. I looked up into that sky, and I don't know why, but I started thinking about my childhood. Which led to the question above.

Later I was in town, and I stopped to get gas at one of the local stations. It's right next door to the school I attended until eighth grade; a lot of us used to skip classes or jump the fences during recess to walk over and buy drinks and candy bars. I was at the island, had the nozzle in the tank and was letting the pump do its work, and I looked over at this huge, I mean enormous old, gnarly oak tree that stood in the middle of the school's yard. It's been there for decades, I think; definitely it was there when I was five, and it seems like its always been the same size. I've never seen leaves on it. There used to be a second oak that stood maybe fifty feet away from it, same size, same dead branches, everything.

I used to sit under the shade of those trees some days. I'd skip a class or go out during the lunch break and just sit there, watching the clouds roll over. Sometimes I'd pretend that one tree was good and the other was evil, and I'd imagine the fights they must have had. Then when I got a little older, I imagined they were in love with each other, and how horrible it must have been for them to be so close yet so far apart. (Yes, I was one of those stupid kids who had a thing for tragedy and drama. Sue me.)

The second tree must have been cut down a few years ago. I never noticed until today, when I looked over and saw just the lone oak tree. I wonder if any of the kids attending there now have any stories about those trees. Or just the one. Or at all. It saddens me to think that maybe they don't. Nothing to be done about it, though. The other will probably be cut down in a few more years. But until then, it'll still be there. God knows nothing else on earth is gonna move it.

I'm gonna keep pretending the evil one was the one that got cut down. It makes me feel a little better, thinking that the good guy won. Even if its only for a little while.

Masks and Anniversaries

My grandmother died today. Well, six years ago. But today was the day. So, today was pretty much scheduled to be a bad day from the get go. At first, it was just a bad day, period. You know the kind, like it doesn't really need a reason to suck. It just does. Then after a few hours, she reminded me that today was the anniversary. So I had a couple of all new reasons to feel miserable. I couldn't decide which made me feel worse: the anniversary, or that I hadn't given it any thought until she told me. And then I was angry at myself for not really caring as much as she seemed to. Seems to. Miserable day, for both of us.

So I've spent most of the rest of the day thinking about her. My grandmother, I mean. I'm not usually given over to sentimentality, or nostalgia, or whatever you want to call it. She believes in heaven, an afterlife and all that stuff. I don't. I wish I did, I really do. I wish I had her faith. Everyone around me seems to have it. Not me. I used to, maybe, when I was little and couldn't think for myself. I sort of miss that, a bit. It was easier. I think sometimes that's why everyone else believes, because it's easier. But I know that's not why, not really. They really, honestly believe it, I think. Maybe it's just never occurred to them to question it like I did. But question I did, and it all fell apart. Like a house of cards attacked with a shovel.

I think I probably shouldn't be writing this thing. My thoughts aren't really coherent enough for anyone to enjoy reading, and getting them written isn't really doing anything to solidify them in my head. I hoped it would. Maybe I just haven't been doing it long enough. Give the medicine time to work, she'd say. My grandmother, I mean. Actually, she wouldn't really say that; she never said that or anything like it in her life, at least not to me. But that's the sort of thing you expect grandmas to say, isn't it? Little pearls of wisdom that are really just common sense, but since it comes from someone older we instinctively think 'wow, that's really smart' or something.

Damn stream of consciousness.

I was driving into town today, digging on the radio for something to help pull me out of my funk, and I heard part of a commercial. It was for some local clinic or something, and it's hook line was 'We treat you like family!'. I thought to myself as I sat at the next red light, why would anyone want that? Being treated like family? Part of me recognizes that that's supposed to be a good thing, that family is supposed to treat each other better than they treat other people. That's the rational part of me that doesn't really give a damn about my feelings.

But the feelings part of me thought it sounded horrible. In my experience, being treated like family means being ignored. It means going to holiday meals and sunday lunches and being largely shoved out of the way for everyone else. Being treated like family means feeling like you could vanish from everywhere and nobody would give a damn. Because everyone has their own things to deal with, their own problems, and you're never that important anyway. It means being excluded from birthday parties and family milestones, because we didn't think you'd really be interested and you don't really matter anyway so what are you getting upset about? And it means that when you've got troubles, well, you've got troubles. Not them. They're doing fine, thank you, good to hear from you sorry you've got it so bad but don't worry, you can be certain we're not going to lift a finger for you, good luck with that.

It wasn't like that when she was alive. Grandma, I mean. They were, sure; they haven't really changed a bit, but she wasn't, and she was enough to make me feel like I had a family. She made me feel like someone cared. Now all I have left is her. She fades a little more each day, and it's an endless fight to keep her spark from failing completely. The others still don't care. Fine. Fuck them. I don't need them. I don't need anyone. I'll carry this weight on my own, for as long as it takes. It's just heavy sometimes, that's all. Not impossible.

Goddamn stream of consciousness. Joyce was an idiot, and so are his fans.

I suppose they might find this. I don't care. They might not understand why I feel like this. I don't care about that either. Maybe they'll never know. I'll never tell them, that's for certain. Keep that mask in place, man. Masks for everyone, and everything. Never let them crack. Never let them see. It hurts sometimes, a lot. I just want to scream, lash out, revenge myself upon a world that neither knows nor cares about what I've lost. A monstrous father. A fading mother. Beloved grandparents, lost just when I was really getting to know them. Relatives so closed off they may as well be on Mars. Abandoned by old friends. Ignored by new ones. The walls close in, and no way out appears like all those Imovies and cartoons of my childhood said it should. A lifetime spent as a slave to other people, chained down and taunted, teased, tortured with the inevitable promise of freedom that will only come now when it's too late. What happens to a lion when it's released from captivity into the wild for the first time? Nothing good. It can't fend for itself, because it doesn't know how. It was never allowed to. All I can do is fend for others. I know it won't be returned in kind. Never is.

Still, gotta keep the masks in place. Don't let them know. It's my pain, not theirs. She couldn't handle it. They wouldn't want it, or understand it. You probably don't care. You probably won't understand it, either. That's fine, really. I'm not really writing this to share it with you. Sometimes, the mask just has to come off for a little while. Sometimes, one just has to breathe. That is absolutely something she would have said.

I miss you.

Starlight Wonderings

I live out in the middle of nowhere. Well, maybe a bit off center, but pretty damn close, anyway. The sort of place where, on a good and windy day, if you scream as hard as you can in just the right direction, your neighbors might be able to hear you. Maybe.

During the day, it's like living anywhere else, I guess. Except, you know. More distant. But at night, it feels like living on a different planet. On clear nights, the stars shine with such an amazing beauty, it feels wrong to try and describe it with words. I sometimes feel a little ashamed of myself, because I'm not always as completely overwhelmed by this incredible celestial wonder as I maybe should be. It seems kind of bizarre to think I can live surrounded by something so fascinating, and yet only notice it every now and then instead of being totally enraptured by it.

I have a dog, a little one. A Chihuahua. He's not very bright, and he's too small to navigate the steps on the back porch. So I have to pick him up and carry him down on the ground, where he invariably bursts out of my arms and runs around the yard like a little black and white, four-legged rocket. In the fall when the dead leaves carpet the ground, it sounds like machine gun fire when he runs through them. And in winter, those rare seasons when ice and snow actually touch the ground, he's too scared to actually run, so he sort of pads his way around the yard. A dog scared of snow. It'd be funny, if it weren't so damn stupid. I guess it's kinda funny anyway.

He needs to go out about two or three times a day. When I take him out at night, that's when I end up sitting outside for an hour or two sometimes. Looking up at the moon, and the starlight. There's no other light around, not really; like I said, the neighbors are all too far away for the lights in their windows to shine too bright, and the county's emergency light only shines one night a week or so, so there's almost zero light pollution to obscure the night sky. If it's warm enough (pretty much from March until November, around here), I'll climb up on the roof of my car and lie back and just watch the stars twinkle. Chasing satellites, and tracing airplane lights, imagining distant alien civilizations. Composing stories of brave astronauts, thinking about all the scientists our there sending signals into that great black. Wondering if ever they'll maybe get some kind of answer back.

And contemplating how all those stars formed, each one starting as nothing but a little speck of hydrogen or helium, the miniscule gravity of those little clumps of matter slowly attracting more and more matter onto themselves over the course of countless millenia until finally their mass and their weight under all that increasing gravity sets them to spinning until they start getting so heavy, so dense, that the matter in their cores start to generate nuclear fusion and they ignite into enormous spheres of glorious light that will burn and shine for hundreds of millions of years.

(If you read that whole thing out loud, take a breath before you pass out.)

And I look up, and I wonder about humanity. Will we ever leave this world, really? Will our kind ever travel into that big black, the way we hop from continent to continent now? Will we ever, ever put aside our petty, childish differences long enough to work together to accomplish something so amazing? We could, I know it. If everyone woke up tomorrow and decided they were tired of all the bullshit, if we all could just put our minds and, yes, hearts, together, we could fly out into that unknown and make it ours within a lifetime. Not just like we've already done, a few manned space flights and a couple space stations and who knows how many satellites, but really conquer that wild frontier. We could find or build whole new worlds, create a whole new age of humanity.

I don't know. Maybe that's stupid and childish all on its own. Probably is, if someone like me thinks it's a good idea. But it seems to me the world needs this kind of stupidity a lot more than the kind it's already got. Can't hurt to dream, right?

Anyway. That's what I think about, out under the stars. While I wait for the dog to shit.