The Computer Of Deep Thought
I've got a lot of thinking to do, these days. Scenarios and situations seem to be happening so quick - too quick - and beyond my control. I play a part. I fill a role. I shift my shape. I chameleonize.
But I can't continue on in that way.
I know that there is life to be lived - and good life, at that - just beyond the horizon. But I also know that there will be some hardships ahead. I hate talking in generalities but in a way, it's sort of comforting. Tolkein always told Lewis 'You're being too literal!' - I will always be more of a Tolkein.
The holidays are here and I'm in Port Hope. Thinking. Waiting. Trusting. Planning. Meditating.
Family will soon surround everything. Meaning will rise out of small conversations around the dining room table. We'll go the malls, and we'll hate it, but we'll secretly love it, too. It is those visits and those spiced coffees and those first world problems that make life cinematic.
I think life is cinematic. I really do.
Stick with me, pals. I'll figure this shit out.
Rob Lowe and the Lost Boys
I've been listening to Rob Lowe's life story lately and I have to say that it's pretty damned interesting. I mean, this guy grew up in Malibu in the same neigbourhood as Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez while their dad Martin jumped out of bushes, on Halloween night, with a baseball bat and scared kids.
His first real cinematic break came in the movie 'The Outsiders' - an adaptation by Francis Ford Coppola of S.E. Hinton's famous book. He was almost done with acting when he was given a call-back for The Outsiders and showed up at a sound stage with Emilio Estevez, C. Thomas Howell, 20 some other teen actors and a very young Tom Cruise.
Little did I know that 'the Lost Boys' (a movie made about disappearing teenagers that turn into vampires starring Corey Haim, Corey Feldman and Kiefer Sutherland) was a real thing in Malibu because teenagers actually disappeared. Lowe speaks of high school friends who were found in garages disemboweled by shotguns and drowned with their girlfriends while diving for lobsters and a kayaking couple eaten by a great white shark in Paradise Cove.
It was a real time and a raw time for the budding actor who was trying to make his way through faith, life and a greater grasp of the cosmos.
I idealize his words when I hear them because as a young gaffer, I watched a lot of movies. At times, I dreamed that Tom Cruise, Demi Moore and Arnold Schwarzeneger were my friends. I wanted the spotlight that they had - bright, un-waning and expedient. I wanted a chance for my creative vibe to shine. But as a Canadian kid with little connections, I would bide my time and let the players play.
To be an actor, or to be famous creatively, there is a lot of sacrifice. The sacrifice, however, comes in the form of betraying all that you hold dear and always looking out for number one. Lowe puts it ever so eloquently in his somber, reminiscent words that sum up the era of his teens.
"Underneath the glorious exuberance and the counter-culture ethos, the fantastical weather and dream-like beauty, Malibu's malignant undercurrents were a danger to adults as well...Why was hideous and untimely death so co-mingled in the experience that was Malibu in the mid 70's? There were drugs which weren't as understood as they are today. There were also the wild and the rough nature of the personalities Mailbu attracted. But more importantly, there was a price to be paid for a culture that idealizes the relentless pursuit of self.
Everything And Nothing
How can we be the ones we were perceived to be? It doesn't seem real. It's all angelic and posthumous in the way it floats, air-like in its breath.
I remember my Grandma. She was a beautiful lady with a massive heart. I have picked up some habits since I last saw her and I wonder at times what she thinks of me from the great beyond. I can smell the pie from the window sill - baked apples, cinnamon and coffee in clear cups where you could see
the cream going in.
Tonight, the window is open agape and I am dreaming aloud. The cold crack of December has startled something within the ashes of my creative fire. Listless and rollicking in the momentous seconds and ticks, I listen to streams of music flow through my brain and stimulate me - my core - my heart - my soul - my feel - my me.
I have put off writing for some time and in a lot of ways, this Journalism program has dried out my wet words. I feel a tad obscured and realm-struck by the vastness of living beyond Neptune, on a distant moon of thought. The words were once rife with struggle and stacked with chunky substance. Now, I'm eeking my way through most things and just living in the hour and the second and the moment.
And the words - the words seem so ridiculously calloused and dusty.
There are codes and keys and fabrics behind everything. We are floating on a fast-moving iceberg towards resolution and deeper thought.
Why don't we fucking understand each other? Why are we trying so hard to connect furiously when all we need is a warm contact to drive the spark?
We are alive.
We are here.
We are making it.
Rest assured, though, that all will change. We will zoom through cosmos and monolithic fractures in time. The gaps in the galaxy will be full and gleaming with answers.
My mind can't keep up, right now. My hands are an extension of something utterly gut-wrenching and real.
Your naked heart needs a jacket. Gets fuckin' cold out there.
I think things have changed and I'm adrift in some sort of sea of realization. The sea, however, has its own temptations. I want to float in it and swim in it and dip my being into its cool, blue luster. I'd like to stay in this sea for a while and bask in the embrace - but I can't. I must go. This sea is temporary and soon, the land will come. The land requires action. Building. Docking. Traveling. Navigating. Mountains. Pain.
I miss my old pals from Kingston, I really do. Even though I have become self-obsessed and fully absorbed into this world of writing and publishing and multi-tasking and selling myself, I still see the way that things were. It shines in my conscience - a wick of remorse. A pang of unresolved worth.
But I have new loving companions, now. Things have changed. I've left behind a lot of the stinking worlds that I thought were unscented. I thought many things were real but it turns out, they weren't - How can I tell?
Because they are not here, now. Real things stick around. Real things admit to their bullshit and man up.
The ones who are here are good folks. They are young and they are old. They fight hard and they work hard and they know how to fight and work with the mud of words and the soil of thoughts. They push through and make sense of the nonsensical. They are good people. Some, I've even learned to love in a way that I never knew, in the framework of all that is platonic.
These folks laugh. They have no money. They smoke. They smoke more than smoke. They eat the marrow out of the bones of life and they want to get their thought-seedlings into printed beings. They are a hearty breed and they have glass livers. They have lungs that are bruised and scabbed with the coughs of fulfillment.
I am fully immersed into this world, and I'm liking it and scared by it at the same time. I know only a few things can crop out the photography of memory, but really, the tools can only cut so much. The imperfection shines through. We are living in an ocean of slow motion sound. The academic clock ticks loudly and twangs the highway wires of our futures. We only know what we can get and we only know what we can do and we only ever do those things. We do those things. We do them.
We are counting down. We are all waiting. Waiting for God.
Waiting for everything to become nothing and for the playing field to be level, once again.
