Homeless
2004-03-01 5:17 a.m.
I think I know why I took this trip. I wasn�t quite sure. I�ll break it all down tomorrow at the airport. Just know... it was absolutely PERFECT�Alone can be a twisted place.
The hard part about trying to understand a situation is that you have to remove yourself in order to see all ends. If you want to know how fucked up a car accident is, you gotta step away and see the damage. You don�t realize that dent in the windshield is the shape of your own head until you�re feeling out the contours of the bump on your head while standing 3 feet away. The blood on the dashboard didn�t look like yours until you saw it and looked at the hand you just removed from your mouth.
I�ve come to believe that incapability of foresight is a self taught mechanism to disallow us from understanding the simplicity of ourselves.
In order to understand your world and your society, you actually have to remove yourself as well. Look at the wreck and see whose paint is on whose bumper? See the tire marks to know who stopped too late?
The hard part isn�t necessarily the removal, although it�s not always immediately obvious. We�re not built to realize that. The hard part walks up and smacks you in the face when you decide to get back in. Some people never get into a car again after a serious accident. Of the ones who do, a great deal will never drive again.
You can�t get back in. You�re looking at that wreck in horror. Realizing your own mortality. Realizing your humility. Everyone is driving by slowly, staring. Death becomes too real, and in the same breath so does life. The difference between the two dwindles to the crushed glass on the asphalt.
I moved from home to look at life. And now I�m lost - so much more than I was before. I�ve grown so comfortable in my lack of place that I�ve learned to enjoy it. That awkwardness in every new conversation. Shit, I still feel that awkwardness talking to someone I�ve known for 8 years. That nervousness in the presence of new people. That confusion at a strange intersection you�ve never been to in a car you�ve never driven with no clue what the destination is or whether it even matters.
I�ve come here to remember this. I was pretty sure I had a reason, but it wasn�t one I could put a finger on. It wasn�t one I could explain in conversation. I�m ready to leave and all at once I�m not ready to go anywhere.
The ideals we were brought up on eventually become an inside joke we learn the punchline to as we come of age. We begin to understand cynicism and choose to become it, enjoy it and fear it. We choose it and hate the world. We enjoy it and make fun of the world. We fear it and go on with our eyes closed gripping religion and family and stories of grandeur.
Going back is the hard part because we�re not quite sure where back is, nor are we sure where we�re coming back from. 3 feet away from nowhere is nowhere.
I hate the world, which means I love the world. They are the yin and yang of emotion.. each being equally important, each equally consuming, each as beautiful as the other.
I make fun of the world as it makes fun of me. I sag my pants mostly of habit, but also as a caricature of myself. The baggy jeans, the sneakers, the consistently �just woke up� look� All a joke unto myself.
I fear the world and made up my own idea of what �god� is. I hold my relationships with other people as my religion and my education. I avoid attention and demand it all at once.
I'm pretty sure I'n jus about ready to start driving again, but I just can't seem to find the keys.