Misanthrope-Just Barely

There is some music that simply must be played loud enough as to allow no other thoughts to enter your brain except its pitch. Where you play it so that the vibrations shake your bed and the music travels from your ears to every other part of your body. Often times these songs are not even an old favorite or something that I typically listen to, its just some songs seem like they need to be listened to physically, with the body not just ears and emotions. You can feel these pitches grab your heart and accelerate its beat or pinches your leg and arm hairs and pulls them farther away from your body, as if a ghost was passing over your skin with withered banshee hands. I tend to use these songs in times where I need to be physically touched, where the issue does not lie within, but on a surface level. Sometimes electric shock treatment should come from your speakers...

Pardon

When it becomes impossible to simplify our thoughts, it becomes imperative that we find shelter in those that know them. This has been a source of comfort for me ever since I started seriously thinking about life and my part in it. It becomes a matter of sitting still with those that already understand the ramblings of a 23 year old traveler, they know because they helped write those thoughts. No matter what walks of life we find ourselves in, we still take the six years of friendship with us everywhere we go. So here I am two years removed from these friends, asking them to put back together that part of me that I once knew, to get a sense of what was once important and why it seems like I have forgotten some important truth. These answers do not come easily, I find that with every brush stroke I had to the canvas, there is another indefinable feeling that works its way into my consciousness. I wish I could write about this with more clarity, however I feel that the subject by nature is very vague and hard to grasp. Who am I? What does that question even mean? I suppose I feel like I get closer to answering that by studying my friends reflections of me, their thoughts and understanding of my mind but more importantly what they have come to value in me. I feel an urgency to become well again and answer these questions because I believe I owe it to these remarkable people who have held me for so long. I owe them a friend who can take care of them when they feel small.

dandelion.

His eyes turned towards me, his face followed.  He asked, "what do you wish for?"
"don't ask her that.  then it won't com true."

Sometimes my emotions manifest themselves as vivid images:  Silence.  Sunshine.  The moment of dispersal of a blown dandelion.

Maybe I'm a greedy wisher (god knows I'm a greedy sleeper).  What I wish for is always the same.  I wish it many times over, hoping that perhaps one wish will overlap one moment, unseen, unnoticed, when magic isn't just pretend.  I wish for everyone here on earth, and those who have yet to exist, to be happy sometime before they die.  Disgust: "Really?  I don't think everyone deserves to be happy.  There are certainly people that I don't wish happiness for."

I don't believe that bad people exist.  I believe that there is good, however small, however twisted in the most seemingly evil of people.  I see a breath on an ember glowing weakly, the revival of the human spirit.  My simple wish.  I believe in a happiness beyond the transient.  I believe that true happiness requires an understanding and appreciation of human existence.  I don't believe cruel people can be truly happy, but I don't believe that they are doomed to be bad people.  I guess I'm wishing for love worldwide and timeless.  The kind that is honest.  Love incorruptible.

Finally!

Five years of impulsive traveling and half way thought through plans and I still can not make sense of myself. Over these years I have lived with an almost psychotic urgency. A drive to surround myself in the madness of the world. To immerse myself in the love of the damned and fill my nights with the cries of the living dead.

These nights have been filled with passions that I still do not fully understand, a kind of love of the world that is bitter and melancholy. With each new home I stagger into I find new families whose love and kindness has allowed me to live a life of reckless abandon and pure emotion. I came to this realization while visiting Minnesota on a very recent trip.

After selling a handful of CDs and scrapping together what little money I had, two dear friends and I set off with the intention of setting the world on fire. We were going to bury ourselves in each other and what friends we had in the Twin Cities.

The specific events of the evening are of little importance. What is important is that once again I found myself in a space of complete escape, all that mattered was that the night belonged to me, it belonged to those who wanted to live with their hearts and their passions. Running through the freezing streets of Minneapolis I finally forgave the world for its failures. I forgave the world for slapping me and dragging me kicking and screaming through its hostility and destruction. I forgave the world for revealing its darkest secrets. I forgave its treachery its paranoia its vulnerability and its lust. I forgave it because I finally fell in love with it.