Is This My Life? (NEW YORK)
What happened to us? We became old and we became the people we swore we'd never be.
We judged each other. We looked at each other with conservative eyes in a liberal world. We sold ourselves short of who we really could be. We gave in to perceptions and we lived up to every deception.
We fudged the vote.
Somedays, I think I should have grown up in NYC. I could have tracked with Hollywood celebs and famous comics. But instead, I'm here in Canada - in the nation's capital. The sad city.
Don't get me wrong - I wouldn't trade a moment of my life. I am truly grateful for every pixelated morsel.
I remember days and hours of praying on horsefly mountain.
I remember friends that have gone by the wayside, and who have disappeared into the ether.
But were they really friends or just people I knew for a while?
I remember love...and a love lost. But I am still here.
Waxing. Waning. With a heart for the stars while most others are happy with the sullen green grass under their feet.
When I was a child, I wanted everything. And I figured I could have it. But now, I am a withered man of dried up expectations and 'would-have-could-have' knowledge.
But as an adult, I worry about poverty. I worry about sexuality. I worry about lonely nights.
Poverty is a luxury of the living.
We Learn, We Live and We Grow On
Today, I scrolled back through the annals of YouTube documentation and found something.
I found a video I made in the year 2007 when I had just quit the worst job I had ever had in my life.
It's hard to re-encapsulate that feeling. I remember walking there, on my last day, and taking in all of the sights and sounds and lawns and bridges of my every day walk with a sacred view of the familiar.
I felt scared, and all the while, free. Unchained. Loosened. Fence-jumping.
My life has changed drastically since that video, and some of the events evade me, but I remember the feeling. I remember it distinctly.
You can watch it here:
At the end, I had just finished drinking three pints with coworkers, and I was running back home. I set my video camera down and ran by it awkwardly, and screamed giddily (or, as giddily as I know how).
I've been blessed and cursed with a vivid, technicolour memory that clings to everything - even when others have walked into the sunset of the forgotten.
Some people tell me that they have the luxury of forgetting - or blocking certain events out of their minds.
I am not that fortunate.
My life is in a strange spot - I'll admit it. But I think that sometimes, lives can be in strange spots - because they are just in a place of transition. I think that I am on the verge of something life-changing and beautiful. And I think that when all of the storms pass, and all of the blame and anger dies down, and when the smoke clears completely, and when the truth has finally surfaced, and when my seagoing vessel is busted to slivers and shreds of the once sturdy wood it embodied...I think it will all be worth it.
I think that what I am doing is for my best and for the best of those that I love - even though they may never understand it.
I'm not going to pretend I'm an innocent man. I am flawed and faulted just like the hardest and darkest hearts.
But to those with preconceived notions of who I am and what I'm doing with my life, I have this to say to you:
You're not even worth wasting good curse words on.
You live sad lives of rumour-mongering and worrying about the lives of other people because your own lives are so boring and bankrupt of anything vaguely invigorating or passionate.
I know what I am here to do; I am here to be a helper - an inspirer. An encourager towards the idea that there is something beyond all of us, and the intense beauty and mystery of that thought.
For without that thought, what are we? What could we possibly write about? What could we possibly sing about? What could possibly stir the drink of our passions more than that?
For all those that have left me and my cohorts this year - what else is there to look forward to - if not the thought of someday reconnecting, re-dreaming, re-laughing and re-dancing with those gloriously missed souls?
"Better to pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age."
-James Joyce
