Raving Rants

Her beauty wasn’t ravenous in the supermodel, superficial sort of way. No, it was simplistic in its beauty, like the shadows of mountain tops etched on crystal clear lakes or the red and orange hues of the setting sun. Don’t be a fool though to mistake those traits as unimpressive though because to be genuine in one’s beauty is the mark of a good heart. I never forgot that about her but I wish I had told her it more often. She deserved that and not in the self-effacing way that a man says she deserves it only because he’s made too many mistakes and wants to put a chip on the board. No, she deserved it because good people, endearing people, such as her should be shown in a nearly constant manner that their shear presence in one’s life is appreciated.

Her near constant ability to care incessantly about her family and friends (and even me for the time we shared) is something I admired and yet loathed. I admired her for having the unwavering dedication to others that I had rarely seen in my own life. I had been dedicated all the way to the end with her but yet I had held this fear inside that I knew I was walking a tightrope where at any point I would fall. I told myself it was because greatness courts failure but in reality I am just a product of my surroundings and when I finally accepted that it signaled the end to what will always be one of the happiest times of my life. I wish it hadn’t had gone that way. I miss my friend. Though she didn’t deserve to be treated as she was all those years. I could have been better; I should have been better.

I think back fondly on the times we laughed together and shared our sorrows together and I find myself recounting more times she was the one steadying me rather than the other way around. I never saw it that way until afterward but its the truth. It became abundantly clear in the months that followed our separation in which I spiralled out of control into the chaos I knew I needed to suffer. She was always the saving grace in those times telling me it was okay and helping to put the pieces of me back together. It must have been hard to date, let alone try to love, someone with my obsessive addiction. Having lasted as long as you did is once again a testament to your strength that I too often took blindly and abused. I am, as about most things, sorry for putting you through that and for making you endure the backlash of my childish choices.

Mostly though I think about the times we made love. How our eyes would connect in the darkness and we could see the love within. The miles of road between us, the sleepless nights, the let downs, shortcomings, and heartaches all melted away in those moments. I could feel our heart beat sync and the pressures of the relationship fade into the ecstasy. It often led to our best moments together and some of our funniest. I was real there. The veneer was gone and I felt no fear with you in my arms. I hope someday to find that moment again for it seems to have left along with you and I blame no one but myself for that. Your love and beauty were a drug I couldn’t get enough of but like my own addiction I had become increasingly weary of its impact on the rest of me, for better or worse.

Though its unlikely I will hear from you I hope this finds you and brings some sort of comfort to you as I once did. I hope in someway it tells you how much I appreciated you and how much I love you and that though I hurt you in so many ways that were beyond unkind I never wanted too but just could never quite find my way to being the better me you deserved. I hope wherever you are a smile crosses your face and happiness touches your heart in the way your owed. If for nothing else, know that my love for you is still there, still beating strong, and still holding on.

Pushing for the bottom, she looks me long in the eyes and grabs my fractured hand and says, “Honey, you found it. Your right there.” She’s right. I know she’s right even as I sit here almost two weeks afterward. I damn near shattered my dominant hand in a drunk spree that culminated with a friend pulling the broken bottle away from my wrist as I sat cowaring in the corner of a shitty bar bathroom. Another minute and it would have been over. All over. The lights on this life gone forever. At least thats what I thought that night. I’m not that kind of person. I know that for certain but I let too many things cloud my mind in a drunken alternate to this reality we share. I let that reality feed the junkie in me. How did I get here? How did I get to that point?

Emotional advoidance perhaps. Alcholism and depression? Maybe. Lack of goals and vision? Yes. I had a plan when I came here. I was on a mission to turn it all around. To take a life that was clearly in the shitter and turn it into something else. Trouble is it wasn’t that clearly in the red. At least not by my standards. If I have to come from behind to succeed then I want to come from the edge, from the bottom of the endless pit before I do it. I had to find it. The junkie in me would not rest unless I did. I know now that I did in fact find it that night but what do I do to move myself from this low point?

All we know fo the truth is what we know in the moment. In that one given instance the truth exists without being distorted, perceived, or infringed upon. And then, it passes the lip of time into an issue of circumstance and instance rather then truth and conviction.

I had intended to post the next piece of my Memphis Dirty South tale but instead I find myself overcome with an an emotion of fear today. I’m not one that shirks his way out of a challenge or prefers easier paths in life. No I often seek out the unwise, the ill-fated and the misbegotten but today it’s that knowledge that has me living in fear. Fear that I have missed the opportunities to be more, chose more, have more, see more…to live more. There is a world beyond these eyes that I have not seen and though much of it is far so much more is near me. I face the potential to seize the moment on one of my own dreams in a few months and I am utterly terrified of it for the opportunity cost of that dream means the forgoing of another, or worse yet, several others. I passed on one fleeting dream several months back and not a day goes by that I don’t wonder if it was right or wrong. I know what I did was right most days because I know that I am often incapable of choosing the desires of others over my own and yet here I face an opportunity to seize my own and I feel reluctant. Reluctant that I may not find eternal happiness? No. Reluctant that I will not be a success? No. I am reluctant that I may not be taking the harder path, the one less chosen, and that I may fail to find the difference it may make. I hope those choices are not made in vain…..

As I write this I am currently nearing Bloomington, Illinois on my way back from another food journey to one of my favorite cities: Memphis, Tennessee. This is my second trip to this very unique town of blues, BBQ, fried chicken, and soul and I’m already left with a feeling of separation anxiety. My friend Greg and I made our first trip to Memphis on Halloween 2010 with the soul intents of consuming as much BBQ, blues, and beer as humanly possible (and since we’re from Wisconsin that means going even one step further). In the end, Memphis had left us filled with so much more. We found out that Miss Polly’s on Beale Street serves better fried chicken than the famous Gus’ Fried Chicken, the best bar downtown isn’t on Beale Street but instead its on Monroe Avenue and it’s called the Bardog Tavern, and PBR rains supreme as the beer of choice (I was more than delighted by this). Some other less glorified lessons we learned: pack yourself some heartburn meds cause your going to need it along with some soft backside papers (baby wipes are even better) cause your puckers going to need some tender loving care, and don’t let your notoriously flatulent friend have the bed nearest the window and AC. Sure we hit the tourist spots on the first trip such as Rendezvous, BB Kings, Gus’ Fried Chicken, Pig on Beale, the Rum Boogie, and the Blues Hall. A lot of it was good, hell, borderline great by my food standards and the music was good but not exceptional and the beer was beer. So all of this sounds like a mediocre review right? What brought the pair of us back? What kept the stories flowing over the last year and a half that inspired this most recent journey? Well I’ll tell ya all in my next post. Till then, thanks for your time and goodnight.

Tumblr says its been a month since I’ve posted anything and perhaps the question has been, “where has he gone?” Nowhere is the most accurate of descriptions. Yet I feel like the leap has been made finally to something I have desired for sometime, me on my own. Despite this, I have also met someone that has peaked my interest and to say the least, that’s nice. My last posts were in fact copies of posts made to another blog I had been keeping that were in fact several months old so as far as new material goes, well, this is it. I’ve decided that this blog will from hence forth be used daily by me and instead of this aimless mixture of videos, poetry, and general musings i intend to offer more precise opinions of specific cultural happenings. Stay tuned folks and spread the word should you enjoy what you read.

The business of the day is busy. Too much to do and certainly not enough time to get it all done. With that said, I’m itching to check my Facebook. Its nagging at me like an unfulfilled promise. I made a pact with Facebook to check it everyday and now I’m breaking that promise. Actually, I feel like I’m cheating on it with Tumblr because here I am blogging on this other virtual reality about the other one. Its like a twisted techi-threeway that just seems….stupid. So then the question is, why do it? Why I am not checking my Facebook and why am I blogging about it? So maybe its time for a bit of truth. Or at least as much truth and honesty as I can muster onto this page through my filtering fingertips.

I split with girlfriend of almost 5 years recently. My choice. So I should feel good, right? I don’t. I feel like shit some days. Other days I’m on top of the world. So its this roller coaster of emotional shit that I don’t care to deal with that helped drive this decision to ignore Facebook because for some perverse reason we decided to remain friends on Facebook. So everyday I read about how awesome her life is and all the fun shit she’s doing and I get……violent. So why not just unfriend her? I could do that but I also believe in the greatness of mankind and that people shouldn’t be so readily discarded and so in some way I am hanging onto that ideal via a Facebook friendship. With all that said, it lead me to think about how engaged we have all become in the lives of others via Facebook or actually how casually interested we have become in those lives. I don’t think people really develop the same kind of relationships in the technological age that they did before and I don’t think that we’re incapable of it but instead I think we’ve just lost the tools as humans. Where we had hoped to expand and build on the intricacies of relationships via social networks, texting, tweeting, blogging, etc we have inundated ourselves with choice. That choice has led to the mass consumption of other people’s lives as if we’re watching tv. We’re engaged only on a primitive level and with very few of our senses engaged and so I ask, are the relationships real?

Today is the first full day I have gone without looking at Facebook. I felt out of place all day. Disconnected from the world around me. It was as if I was in a foreign country with no way to communicate with my own life. Should I feel this estranged from my own existence because of a silly Internet program? Is this what the future holds for us all, a constant need to have our lives wired to the Internet? I don’t know but I’m thinking this kind of withdrawal is unhealthy given its only a social networking site. I’m an ex-smoker and a current hard drinker so I know my way around withdrawal symptoms and I’m having a few. Certainly not at the level as either one of those addictions but there is a need, a craving, that’s being unfulfilled and my mind and body know it. And they’re pissed about it. I can’t count how many times I had to stop myself from clicking that little blue F icon on my iPhone or clicking the favorite link on my favorites list on my laptop. It was part of my routine. Right there with email and the USAToday and coffee and big morning shits. Its my soft blanket of useless information and now it’s gone. I mean not really, it will be there whenever I choose to return to it all but already the question is do I want to? Will I ever want to? Maybe not. Do I really care that much about everyone else’s shit? No. Only emo’s and bitches post Debbie Downer shit and everything else is crap to make you feel bad about your own existence. All of the shit there in the news feed is just reminding you that you are not precious and you are not special because some asshole douche has already done the fifty things you wrote in your diary so long ago that you would do but haven’t. That’s the fuckin truth. Facebook has removed the exclusivity of friendships and in doing soon has made them trivial pieces of stock to be traded on the open market like a weak commodity. However, they also managed to make the demise of our social circles addictive and for that they are a ball and chain.