Lost like Angeles

Eventually we all arrive. And usually

"we are no longer ourselves.

Each will know his own.

We have been aided, inspired, multiplied.”

-Deleuze & Guaitari’s A Thousand Plateaus “Introduction: Rhizome”

 

It may be 5'oclock somewhere but I refuse to drink

anything other than the nirvana that surrounds me.

“I have felt homesick my whole life”    

 –Kurt Cobain

yet I have always had a home.
It is not the bricks, the buildings, or  the bedrooms that define us.
It is the girl who reads through the night because she knows the limitations of time.
The boy who runs because he knows that staying stationary is the leading cause of death.

 

The world will always breed wanders.

 The journey in itself is the destination but in the destination we gain oblivion,
if only for a moment.

If only you could realize  these moments are enough.

 My only wish is for you too to feel infinite.
To stand in a room full of strangers and understand them, better than you could ever understand yourself,

to drive alone, on the highway,
and realize the significance in loneliness
and the inevitability of it all.

 

"Loneliness has followed me my whole life.

Everywhere.

In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere.

There's no escape.

I'm God's lonely man." -Taxi Driver


 

 

 

In the hours before sunrise,
most parents hope their children are never awake for,

I eventually arrived.

Staring at the ocean,
my
insignificance

created
the horizon.

Universally Speaking

Then stranger left and I had never felt so alone and so complete in a single moment. We met them an hour away from the California state line. Two brunettes, from Miami or New York, or someplace I didn't want to remember because it wasn't significant. I was fighting a losing battle.They were lost and I didn't care.
But stranger couldn't ignore the blatant truth of numbers. He said he had exploited the west enough, he needed a change in air.
I didn't care because he was the silent glance from across the room that hardly ever gets acted upon and the fact it had happened was good enough.
I kept his flannel shirt because it was comfortable not because it held sentimental value.
I'm sure I'll never see him again.
And I tried to think back to a time when I believed in love but for once my memory drew a blank. In the end we only have ourselves to blame.

Before long strangers become names and faces that transform into feelings. Before long these feelings run away, crossing borders, disappering before they are even recogonized. Then we meet new strangers who teach us things we wish we never knew.

I waited at the bus stop for the future. I didn't exactly care where I was going as long as it wasn't where I had been.
I waited for the other lost souls whose fate was changed by a bus ride and a bus stop where a stranger sat.
The music kept me sane.

When you're Strange

To:  You

Please don’t feel sorry for me.

I feel sorry for you, actually. But we all need someone to feel sorry for to make us feel better about ourselves.

But, like I said, don’t worry.  I’m with a friend, strumming, running, singing strong.

We got caught with a case of Jes Grew  along the way.

I know they claim it died, but its alive I swear.  It’s just hidden somewhere in that song you pretend to forget. Or in the night you remember too often.

The movement you try to ignore when you’re falling asleep at night while attempting to count sheep because you were told it helps. You can’t see it but you know it’s there. Outside in the pounding center of the city you were always too afraid to enter. The every fleeting glance you were too afraid to chase.

“Jes Grew has no end and no beginning.”

We’re trying to bring it to you, so maybe one day soon you can feel it too. Well not just you but everyone; all the people who find themselves alone at night, the people who God never gave a chance.

Sorry if it’s a while before I see you. We’re trying to meet them all along the way.

People pass, America attacks,

We are strong inside.

We have to be.

They have to be.

Don’t worry if I don’t write again.

We'll let the world know we're alive, somehow.

Sincerely,

me

PS:
Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed

Slow Motion

My mom told me never to talk to strangers because apparently she never had. It was that one particular day at the one particular music festival when I decided that strangers were the only people I ever wanted to talk to. They were always more fun.

It was the perfect combination of music, movement, and momentum that finally brought me to my senses. I refused to be complacent. Nothing provoked more fear in me than the idea of being stuck in the mundane routines of life, structured and uninspiring. So when stranger asked if I wanted to go West I naturally said yes. Because really who doesn’t? Plus it was the way he asked me, I knew he thought I wouldn’t say yes. But I did and the next day I jumped in his 1980 Jeep Cherokee with fifty dollars to my name and uneasy feeling in my stomach. The kind you get when you realize you actually have no control.

Luckily stranger had more experience with moving vehicles and we made it to Colorado in record me my etime. Timing was irrelevant; I was too caught up in everything. For some reason driving down miles of interstate with only the vague promise of west in my future forced me to slow down and just look, absorb the nature surrounding me that has been surrounding me my entire life. We’re so blinded by our selfish pursuits we never relish in the beauty that is here.  I wanted to relish all of it, forever. Stranger’s sudden switch too Bob Dylan couldn’t have been more perfect. There’s always the perfect music to fit the mood. I think he could sense a change in me. He had the insight only a person you barely know can have, without any preconceived notions, lacking knowledge of the past. You’re bound to disappoint everyone sooner or later.

“Just wait until we get to California” he said.

 



Castles Made of Sand

I was California Dreamin before I was born

It’s an innate disease, incurable

Constantly overtaking the body, the mind.

I remember the first time I saw the Los Angeles

You weren’t there so you wouldn’t know

How badly I needed to be part of it all

Part of the perpetual motion of the city, the state

The movement of people uncontrolled and uninhibited.

You can pretend like you’re satisfied but I know better

We all yearn for the west, somewhere deep inside our souls

We’re all pioneers after all,

And where did the frontier go?

You’re looking at it. It’s all around you

The people, the rhythm, the sounds

The movement is starting and this time I refuse to not follow it.

Correct my double negative, I beg you

Cause tomorrow I’ll be gone

I miss you now more than ever

Dear Prudence,

Tell me,

What shade is the color of lust?

As it drips from my skin, greedier still

Skimming the better half of my dreams

I long to join you

in the strawberry fields
For some reason

The bible pretends not to understand

While we get lost, deeper still, on the carousel of whores.
 

Sometimes, I admit, I've never felt more alone.

 

 Who cares when there’s really no reason behind feeling copasetic. Just an excuse.

 

“the only people for me are the mad ones,
the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved,
desirous of everything at the same time,
the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing,
but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles
exploding like spiders across the stars.” ― Jack Kerouac, On the Road