Sometimes I just sit and stare at this damn screen knowing there is something that needs to come out but I’m not sure what the hell it is.
I like to write. There is something innate about it. It’s in my genes and I will always be composing prose in a way to expand the little bit of space that I contain. It’s how I deal with shit. When shit is real, the writing gets deeper and better.
But sometimes, the shit isn’t real, it’s just something in my head that is bouncing around within walls that no one has ever seen and that I cannot describe. It’s that unknown, that what if. It’s an unspoken wish that will never be real simply because you didn’t say it. Writing is putting the words to the wish and wishing they come out right.
One of my favorite things about riding bikes is the time it gives me to think. In an easy paced 30 minute ride, I can usually figure out my world and see things in perspective. Without that pedal time, nothing seems to line up. The world is worthless pile of toxic spewing bull shit that I just don’t care about.
But ask me about the world after a thirty minute ride, and I will tell you that there is purpose and we should all just fucking ride our bikes.
And then I sit down at a computer screen and write something that makes sense to me. It may not make sense to anyone else, but it makes me feel better. No one will probably understand it and it will go unheeded. But it makes sense to me and it served its purpose.
On occasion, KB will look at me and ask me about the conversation that is going on in my head. Apparently I give myself away by the look on my face. My expressions mirror the discussion in my head whether I want them to or not. I usually don’t want to explain what I’m thinking about and we leave it at that. I’ve found that the stuff in my head isn’t usually easy to explain and people find me to be weird.
I’m OK with that.
And after 369 words, I’m not sure what I am trying to say.
The thought is still there, whether it has meaning or not. It resides within my mind and I cannot find its exit. Maybe it’s not meant to come out. Maybe it’s there for me to feel and not understand. Maybe the synapses of my brain are too slow tonight due to the bourbon that I am imbibing. Maybe there really isn’t anything there and it’s just this slow, meaningless life that I lead that is trying to tell me to wake the fuck up and do something. Maybe I should go ride my bike longer than 30 minutes.
Does it matter? Does it change anything? When I wake up tomorrow, will the world have decided that freedom, equality and fraternity are in fact guiding principles that we should all espouse in all aspects of our lives? Will self determination make sense to the masses or will they be content to continue to be led? Will this pathetic excuse for a democracy decide that it is not enough to vote for the biggest shithead but rather to find a way to improve everyone’s existence that matters?
Will that guy that I refused to give money to but rather led inside the restaurant in Puerto Montt in ’03 and bought him dinner, still be hungry?
I bought him dinner. But I haven’t found a way to make sure he doesn’t go without. His story has haunted me ever since I met him. Alcoholic, once wealthy, wandering Chile in search of something to fill the hole that he found in his soul when he couldn’t express that which laid dormant within his mind. I walked inside the restaurant that I had just walked out of, asked him what he wanted and bought him a couple of cheese burgers. He cried when I handed them to him. And then I walked away. I was simply doing my good deed for the day. I had the money, it was no skin off of my chin. So I bought him dinner. Man, what kind of an ass hole am I?
Alcoholic.
I had no idea what alcohol was until I lived in Chile. To see the older gentlemen on the corner, in the afternoon, starting their nightly ritual of drinking their wine. Walking by later to see them laughing and falling over each other in a perpetual mood of whatever. I didn’t understand alcohol until I lived in poverty and understood that sometimes a man just needs a way to escape. A way to stop feeling that all is lost, to forget and to let the substance guide you through another night of just letting things go.
It was about half way through my mission that I learned that I understood why they gathered on the corner and drank. I understood the need to forget. The need to have a time when it didn’t matter, that everything was going to be OK simply because you didn’t feel anything.
I found it impossible to watch grown men be reduced to beasts simply for the want of bread. That is when I learned to drink. I learned to drink when I realized that my station in life gave me things that others will never experience. I could earn in 40 hours a month what a grown man would earn in 6 months of working full time. How fucked up is that system? How is that fair?
It haunts me to this day. I left because I could. Under the guise of finishing my education, I left. I came home. Home to place where life was easy. I left behind the men that congregated on the corner, that needed that release, that time away from reality. I left behind a “suegro” that worked more than I had ever seen a man work, simply to give his family something to eat. I came home, hoping that I wouldn’t need that release, but that man haunts me. He stands outside of that restaurant in my nightmares and begs for food. His face is dirty. His beard is untrimmed and his body is cold from exposure. He only wants something to eat and I can only give him that which will sustain him for the night.
How fucked up is that system? How is that fair?
Sometimes I just sit and stare at this damn screen knowing there is something that needs to come out but I’m not sure what the hell it is.
Declare your sovereignty!
P. L. and R. Or if you can’t have that, something similar…