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| The other day I dismantled my wall. That's a good word to describe it I think. I've been trying to figure out what the good word was. It just came to me, as a leaf hits a cloud in a breeze.
I started with my videogame magazines, which were becoming steadily more unsightly and annoying to look at. Stupid PSM and EGM and all that nonsense. I used to be caught up in it, and the covers used to have meaning-- but now they are simply games I really enjoyed in my youth and would moderately enjoy today.
A small part of me misses games. That's beside the point.
I moved to the bigger stuff. The stuff probably all of you contributed a little bit to at some point. I can't recall if Peter gave me something for the wall. It doesn't matter now. It had to come down. When I was looking at it, there was really no other way for me to walk away from my room. It had to be bare.
So I started, and it was quick a thick experience. Nearly everything I tore off triggered some kind of memory. I remembered this conversation or that person or that picture or whatever. Memory works best in context. I learned this in psychology.
I moved along, and I found myself growing more and more satisfied with what I was doing. The deconstruction was proving strangely fruitful. I liked experiencing the memories, and I liked more tucking them into a box I wouldn't have to look at every day.
It's not that my friends or my family or happy pictures or memories make a burden for me. It's definitely not that. But what is bothering me about all of this is that I can't figure out what I liked about it.
I was thinking in the whole "new stage of existence" type thing, but I remain unconvinced by that. I think its a cop-out, because lots of people will make moderate/huge changes and cite that as being their primary motivation. There must be something else. I was feeling a little anxious while I did it, and also aggressive, two sentiments I found out of place. But there was a slight violence in me, especially when it came to ripping down the shitty video game posters above my door. For some reason they really made me mad.
And I don't think of it as a saying goodbye type thing either. That would be silly. I wasn't saying goodbye to anything, except possibly the state of immersing myself in those specific memories. I was through with them I suppose. But now I have to figure what else to do with my wall.
When a person outfits their room, they want to make it home. My room used to be this really secluded place I could fall back into when I needed. I spent a lot of time in there, and the wall created comfort. I could bask in there, bask among the presence of the love and kindness of my friends, and that was a most excellent feeling. But when I went to college, that didn't really work for me anymore. I slept in my brother's room most of the time when I would come up on the weekends, because my room is fucking freezing and uncomfortable, and I left it in a state of disarray that I never really fixed until I got back from college. Now I have a few months to spend here, and I want to change it, and make it something a little more permanent, so I could feel comfortable sleeping and being there.
Any ideas?
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| I learned a few things in college. I believe I'll have enough time in the remainder of my life to go over all of them. There's one I know for certain. Where you live affects everything.
When I say everything, I refer only to moods, attitudes, beliefs, outlooks, ideas, inspiration, relationships, thoughts, impulses, decisions, and emotions. Is there something I'm missing?
Riverside is not the best of cities available to those who want to live in California. I wouldn't even put it on top 50 locations. It's a huge city, so surely within the area there are a few exceptions. The key word is few. I've seen a house or two and thought "yeah, that'd be cool to live there". But those were passing thoughts, and before long, I returned back to the Riverside I know so well.
Cities have drug dealers, and prostitutes, and scorching temperatures. None of that makes Riverside unique. Cities have traffic and crappy street lights and bad areas that make you lock your doors instinctively when passing through. That is nothing special either. I think this is Riverside's problem. There's nothing notable about it.
The city is sometimes romanticized. I think its because people find that congregation of huge amounts of people to mean something important. Maybe its the potential for anything to happen. On a given day, thousands of people will collide in any city. Riverside is no different. There should be something special about it, when one considers this fact.
But I don't really care. Not in the case of Riverside.
The place, more often than not, depresses me. It feels like a failed idea. The people who started that city, so long ago, started it because of a booming citris industry. Riverside was founded on the developing muscles of optimism. But something didn't really hold.
I guess its a little bit negative to call Riverside a failure. Its got a gigantic population, a thriving university, and several attempts within it to generate some appreciation of culture.
So allow me to backtrack without hitting the backspace button. To do that would be to banish all of these misguided thoughts to a place they don't neccessarily belong.
The thing is, I feel there are so many other places in the world where I'd have an easier time belonging. I want to live some place where I can stand on my balcony at night and feel life around me. From my apartment in Riverside, I see and hear traffic. I hear people digging through trash. I hear people yelling. I see smog and dirty orangish lights from the street. I see nothing to move me.
Do I need nature? Not neccessarily. There are places I can think of right now that couldnt be more immersed in the output of human energy, but I'd feel more contentment there. I don't know exactly what a city needs. Riverside just... doesn't seem to have it.
Or, again, maybe I'm wrong. Many would tell me that a perspective like this is preventing me from reaching exactly what I'm yearning to reach. Maybe every place needs to be embraced. Maybe every place has something to be seen. The only time it isn't seen is when an observer refuses to.
That seems the most logical perspective. It seems to be the most agreeable with my general outlook on things (or the outlook I try most to adopt) which could be summed up in saying that loving more things in the world than not loving things is a worthwhile endeavour. Its simple, and obvious, but those are the most effective ways to see things. When you start coming up with rules and contingincies, people aren't likely to be convinced.
And shit, I have several years there. Why not make it enjoyable?
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| I don't know how successful this attempt will be. I know the xanga community has disentegrated into mere wisps of what it used to be, but by the same token, that's not neccessarily where the beauty of xanga lied. Lay? I dunno.
Either way, I always felt like it was a positive thing to contribute to, and, if nothing else, it always got my own head moving in terms of thinking about things I normally wouldn't have thought much about.
Plus I got to be a pretentious dick and act like I know a lot more than I really do.
I was thinking about shitty driving today.
Does it piss me off.
There's so many memories I have of people being total fuckheads, driving like douche bags, having no regard for the human lives they are coming very close to damaging in some way by driving irresponsibly. I sound like an elderly person. Perhaps because they tend to be ripe with wisdom.
There's so many types of shit drivers too.
You've got the kinds who weave, do double lane changes, don't signal, go to one lane and then revert back to their previous lane, squeeze in miniscule spots to bounce two cars ahead in line, and think that somehow if they weave like a drug addict through congested freeways they'll get wherever they are going THAT much faster.
I used to drive faster than I do now, and I don't think I'm a slow driver. I could be a better driver. But I have realized that the benefits of rapid driving are nearly nonexistent. You simply don't get wherever you're going that much faster. Many times I've raced up the hill only to find a person who was going at a normal speed is pulling up two or three cars behind me while I wait for a stop sign.
And in the end, that's all driving will get for you, is stops. So why race? You're going to be stopped somewhere, and then the people who had been going slower will be right behind how.
How could you not feel like a cocksucker for that.
I guess my above description of one "type" of driver was really a list of the kind of shit driving people can do. If you want to be an asshole, just pick and choose your style.
There's also the crazy road rage fucks, whose man (or woman) hood is irreparably damaged if you happen to pull in front of them or pass them on the freeway. Then what? They flip you off? whip behind and on the sides of you, trying to... distract you? intimidate you? you're both in cars. I guess it is scary knowing a moron is jamming his wheel left and right in some feeble-minded attempt to fuck with you. I just don't get it.
One time, Trevor and I were heading down to Erin's house, and this guy wanted in on our lane. We were going much faster then him, and he tried to dart in at the last second, but backed out because it was shitty driving and he was to wait for a more proper time.
That's what you'd think, but as we passed him I saw the belligerence of his middle finger wagging right at my face, his mouth half open in some kind of vengeful sneer.
I don't take being flipped off lightly.
So he got two of mine in return.
Granted, I didn't act very responsibly, but by the same token, he had no right to be so upset at the fact that we were going faster than him in the fast lane, and to flip us off, well, that was just rude.
So, it started this whole nonsense charade where he was trying desperately to follow us, WEAVING, DOUBLE LANE CHANGING, NOT SIGNALING, and in general being an idiot, the entire time, Trevor and I are laughing and feeling slightly worried that someone is overtaken by such a desire to attach himself to us on the freeway.
Then, at one point, he laughed manically (I didn't hear, but he was making crazy faces) while he flipped me off with one hand and shot an imaginary gun at me with the other (one of these hands was "steering"). I didn't quite know how to react to that except to laugh nervously. I mean, it wasn't a real gun.
So eventually, we found solace in the carpool lane, sped off and cracked up at the fact that we had ruined a severely irate man's day by returning the rudeness, simply because, in my humble opinion, we deserved no flippage.
I suppose, to be truly objective in this entire story, it's important to consider his side, which surely was defined by the reality where we had cut him off, denied him the opportunity to be on his way in a timely fashion, and then flipped him off with double the fervor, all because we had been the assholes. Even with that in mind, its hard to justify such childish behavior.
And this guy was like 40 too.
I guess some people just never grow up.
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| Who came up with the title feature? Xangites know where it's all at.
I could be anything I wanted, and if I decided that was a gas station
employee, I could move to alberquerque, open up the basement and start
selling homemade child pornography for a dime a dozen, and make only a
minimal amount of side profit.
But I could eat the children, since... well, I live in New Mexico, and
I work at a gas station, I wouldn't really have anything else to do.
I could become one of those "sidewalk prophets" who stand on the street
and rant about the end of the world and pretend they know a lot more
than a little when really they know much less than nothing. I'd say
that White Anglo Saxon Protestants were the cause of our ultimate
suffering and the source of all sin, and then a man with a mullet in a
bronco with a confederate flag in the back and texas license plates
could run me over and kill me.
I could become a Daoist, but only a casual Daoist, and collect Daoist
texts and teachings I never bother to read but keep them in highly
visible locations throughout my residence. I'd collect turtles and
cheap imitation art and eventually set my home on fire with myself
inside of it. But the note outside would say "I'm not burned, I joined
the Dao for lunch". But the firemen would find a charred body and
dental records would confirm it being mine.
I could say I'm a writer, but really just go home everyday and dig a
little bit deeper into this hole I'm working on in the center of my
living room, and one day I'd accidentally dig into a mass grave, and
then I'd cover up the entrance i made with me still inside and I could
start a family with the skeletons whose brains are now a little tiny
bullet rattling around in their skull.
Anything could work.
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| I'm reading about the religions of the asians, half a world away from
us, apparently stuck in the cycle of dying and being reborn again,
which, according to them, is one of the worst things we can experience.
Pretty interesting, but if I lived and died several times over, I'd be
excited. Who knows what could happen next, I could be a premature baby
born with an crippling addiction to cocaine, or I could be a columbian
drug lord, making money and complete with a crippling addication to
cocaine. OR, I could be a famous rock star, playing lead guitar and
singing and struggling with a crippling addication to cocaine.
The possibilities keep on going.
But, pretty much anything having to do with cocaine would do it for me.
What's it matter! Once I'm done with that life, I get to be an
astronaut or a lesbian or some kind of blue whale.
Jainists start hospitals that are committed to saving any animal you
could fathom. Except anteaters, which are the lowest of the low. They
even started a rat hospital. I wonder how the checking in process works
there. I guess if you're a jainist and you find a dead, dying or
injured rat, it's your jainist responsibility to bring them somewhere.
Any other asian would crush that rat with their toe and look forward to
a little added spice to their asian broth they were making tonight.
Not a jainist. He smiles and says "this rat needs a doctor."
Another Jainist jumps in unenthusiastically, because a jainist is
detached from all in the world, and though they call it bliss, i call
it forced apathy. But he says "I'll take him, give me the critter"
Yet a third tries to find this fucking rat hospital... who would start that. "Hey what do you do?"
"Oh, I'm a doctor."
"Oh that's nice."
"Yeah, I'll help save rats."
Silly Jainists.
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