Incite Full

Sometimes you read something, and it resonates within you. Cake would call this a bowel shaking revelation, or something similar. I can’t begin to describe how spot on the following paragraph is at many times in my life:

Her work was all she had or wanted. But there were times, like tonight, when she felt that sudden, peculiar emptiness, which was not emptiness, but silence, not despair, but immobility, as if nothing within her were destroyed, but everything stood still. Then she felt the wish to find a moment’s joy outside, the wish to be held as a passive spectator by some work or sight of greatness. Not to make it, she thought, but to accept; not to begin, but to respond; not to create, but to admire. I need it to let me go on, she though, because joy is one’s fuel

I’d say more about this, but either you get it, or you don’t.

Writing is hard. I don’t consider myself brilliant or talented in this regard. Admitting one has a problem is always the first step.

Sometimes when I write entries, such as the one before this, I don’t have any clear reason for writing. For that I apologize. I don’t even care about my day, except for the rare, amusing story of which you will surely hear. But other than that, sometimes I am just writing down, like a laundry list, everything that happens. That’s so fucking boring.  Who cares if i went to a bar. Get to the meat Mike.

With that in mind, I don’t plan on writing putrid or insipid shit in this thing any longer. I want to write things that interest me, and hopefully through that, you. And it’s going to start with a memory that I had from childhood that was recently brought up while walking to Old Town.

I was passing the Pasadena theater with Katie when i saw the play “Of Mice and Men.” Now I’ve never read the book, but i have seen the film with John Malkovich, when I was 9 years old (1992, for those keeping score). Being so young, innocence was plentiful and easy to come by. Things were black and white, right and wrong, and much simpler. People say times used to be simpler; I think that’s just how we remember them when there weren’t 401K’s and bills to worry about. before i go off on a tangent, let me get to the meat.

The movie opens with, if memory serves me right, the two men, Lennie and George, escaping from prison to a small depression era town. This is pretty much where my memory gives way to imagination; I recall they wanted to have there own land with rabbits and other animals. This idea always calmed Lennie down, and in turn I could relate to him. We were both children.

Anyways, the movie continues, and Lennie fatally hurts one of the girls in the town. There is a man hunt and George and Lennie once again escape the city to the country, but there is no safety here this time. So George, to calm Lennie, asks him about the rabbits. As Lennie is finishing up, George shoots Lennie in the head.

And then the flood gates open. I cried louder and harder than I can remember in any other point in my life. I remember it so vividly- salt running from my eyes for hours, my mother trying to comfort me, and my dad being out of town. I might be exaggerating, which we tend to do as children, but I cried for three days straight on this one. That gun shot completely robbed me of my innocence. I still get sad when I think about it; I’m kind of misty right now.

Poor, little Mike.

This is the one story that is as true as I remember it. There are other stories of childhood, like the one where I accidentally hit a friend with a shovel, or throwing snowballs at our neighbors cars- all of them taller tales. Probably more exciting, too. They are the kind of stories that you’d see in a kids movie, not some child crying in the theater.
What’s more interesting about this story is its rawness. Pure emotion – something I really don’t feel anymore – that left a lasting impression on me. Ever since those days it’s been more worries, concerns, and fears. Mapping out my entire life. And I’ve always fretted about that as well. Metaconcerns. Reflexive fear. But, reading something yesterday, made me think of things anew.

Life is like driving. You don’t need to see your destination to get there. All you need is the road and you go. You drive. Sometimes you see no further than 4 feet in front of your car; fog, storms, flat tires: they all happen. But we weather it, forgive the pun, and keep going. Life is the same thing. The destination might be further, we might not know exactly where we are going, but we do know the general direction we should going. All we need to do is drive.

“There ain’t many guys travel around together. I don’t know why. Maybe everybody in the whole damn world’s scared of each other.”

Remember how I was craving a burrito? Well Friday night I got it, and it was good. Now, I have to explain a bit, it was a delicious burrito, but not in the true sense of the word. A burrito is meant to be eaten with hands, devoured primitively with prejudice- yet many a place choose to deliver this meat and cheese ship capsized by a wave ranchero. While tasty, it’s more of a giant enchilada than a burrito, and therefore my quest continues for the ultimate burrito.

After the burrito, Dan, Steph, and I headed downtown to the Truck Stop. A bar, where, well, I wasn’t going to meet my future wife- that’s probably the best way to put it. Aside from the girls dancing on the bar, which was amazing, we also ran into a person we had met last weekend at Neomeze- and when I saw her, drunk as she was, she did indeed tell me to do my best Jagger. It was funny, but that was about the extent of our reunion.

Saturday was similar, I actually don’t remember what I did during the day, but I know food (meat) was cooked, probably the first time that kitchen had chicken or beef in quite a while. It won’t be long before it sees it again.

Saturday night Kevin and I went to Lauren’s party, a send off to school, a celebration. Hardly. We’ll give it a year to see if she is as joyous about being “done” as she was that night. School and life are the same exact thing, except for school you’re surrounded by friends all the time. Life has you come home to an empty apartment, maybe a cat, thinking about what you’ll do that weekend. And you fool yourself into thinking that’s what life is like.

The party itself was fun. Seeing some old friends and meeting a few new people was actually a lot of fun. Good food was there too, and we all know I like that. Emily made some amazing peanut butter cookies for which my mouth still waters.

Afterwards kevin and I went to a bar, which i keep calling Tom Bergeron’s, near his chateau. The place was kind of a dump, and the bartender was pretty much a jerk. Which is fine, I don’t need people to like me, but the nonchalant assault on civility which this man displayed was nearing epic proportions. I can learn a lot from him.

The next day I got a new hairdo. It was probably the first time it’s changed in, oh, 15 years? Something ridiculous like that. What’s funny is that Steph and Brian kept saying it looked fine, while I wanted to immediately ostrich my head into the sand. But it’s growing on me, as long as I don’t see it. I would describe it as Cristopher Walken-esque, which makes me very… sad. We went out to lunch and then to the store to pick up some odds and ends for the days baking activities.

Normally I don’t bake- It’s too restrictive and the room for error is about the size of my new closet- but it was Eisha’s birthday and she wanted a cake, so a rich chocolate cake she would receive. The cake called for 2 cups of flour, butI ended up using 9, give or take. 2 for the cake, to be sure, the other 7 were instrumental in testing my vacuum when I dropped the flour container all over the kitchen, in what could only be described as a coke head’s dream. I also got to use a stand mixer for the first time in my life, and let me just say- I would bake a lot more if I had one of these bad boys. It really makes mixing a snap, and does a much better job than I am patient enough to attempt.

When it was all said and done, the cake was complete, delicious, and covered with a semi-sweet ganache to which people rejoiced. Eisha liked it, so that’s really all that matters.

I, lastly, caught the finale of season 1 of Dexter. And let me just say that I respect the show even more now. It had one of those “oh my God” moments near the end, and I now remember why I’m hooked on that show. October can’t come soon enough.

“I’m stepping into the abstract, in terms of how I view myself”

I have a lot of stuff.

I’m one of those guys who keeps everything. Free hot cocoa packet? It’s in a drawer. Old birthday card? In that shoe box. First toothbrush? Well I guess I exaggerated a little. But to a certain extent I have an issue letting go of this junk. Yes, some of it has value to me, but do I really need my old, busted iPod?

It’s interesting to see your entire ‘life’ in boxes. Rather Palahniuk-esque that I consider my possessions my life, but that’s not what I mean. Sure nothing can take away my memories or my feelings, but we spend our entire lives crafting and molding our outer appearance to portray who we are as people, hence my witty Threadless T-shirts. Okay, sometimes we portray what we want to be.

Recently I’ve given a friend a CD of music that I really enjoy. I learned today that she really enjoys the CDs I make, and that is awesome. Not necessarily because I want to be ‘hip’ or whatever the kids call it these days, but because I feel music, and any art for that matter, is a way to subconsciously communicate with people. No, I didn’t put a bunch of love songs on the CD; I feel that when two people share a connection to something, no matter how long or brief, they can share a connection to one another as well. And that’s awesome.

It’s why my favorite dates have been at zoos, museums, movies, cooking, Color Me Mine, or anything where you invest part of yourself in the process. How many dates have you been on where you just went to dinner? Maybe out with a group of people? These don’t work. Dinner is great, but there is no investment here (unless you’re cooking it). What I need and demand from myself and those I want to be around is that we’re invested in our time together. Sure there are going to be times not filled with emotional or intellectual growth, do you have any idea how exhausted you’d be if there wasn’t? But we all have a friend with whom we eat lunch at work, but never see outside those walls. That’s a person with which you share no greater bond than “We’re hungry.”

Part of why I write this thing is because I’m amazing, we all know it. The other reason, and probably more important, is that I’m simply questioning life and what the hell I want from it. How many times do you stop and ask yourself what you want and what are you doing to get it? Not, “I’m going to college,” but what do you do every single day that is bringing you closer to what you want? If you’re like me, you don’t even know what you want- and that’s scary as hell sometimes. But it’s even more scary, to me, not to question, not to ask what I want. I asked myself what I wanted a couple of months ago, and I ended up changing my life quite drastically. It wasn’t all good or bad, but I feel I made the right choice.

Okay, enough wax philosophical. But I leave you with my goal for the next year- I want to experience my emotions. I’ve read about them, seen them in movies and in the brush strokes of masterpieces. Now I want to paint my life with those emotions. I want to fill these pages with incredibly happy and unbelievably sad stories. As Jimmy Valvano said, we should laugh, think, and be moved to tears every day. I think I’ve got laughing down, but lets just see if I can’t get my cry on.

Maybe I should have started with “I have a lot of baggage”

“it’s not the right word, but it’s the first that comes to mind”

Facebook is incredibly dangerous.

I’m just browsing my news feed when I see things about people I haven’t seen in years- so I click. And nothing there is really shocking, all same old same old, until you see some random comment about something. And then, all of a sudden, you’re listening to a song that’s written about you. And you’re not sure it’s good.

Damn.

Like a breathing tube being pulled out, a mess of words I’d love to say come spilling out- although none of it comprehendable, or even vocal. Just mental verbiage I’m going through.

I’m not perfect, by any means, and I don’t think that saying anything about my past or past actions will have any affect- nor should they. Everyone is different now. But it’s just interesting to hear words or see a picture, and be transported back to some other time- It always happens when you think of “better” times. Truth be told, there are no better times. Just different times. I’ve learned a lot since the proverbial “then.” Whenever the hell that is. I don’t want to go back, and while these brief excursions into what could have been are fun and all, I get much more excited about what I’ll become, who I’ll meet, and where I’ll end up.

I was reading Choke the other day, and chuck describes sex as acquisition without the burden of possession. No matter how many women you take home, you never run out of room for them. This isn’t exactly a serious comment, but I digress. It’s a good reminder of the freedom that we all have to do whatever we want- good or bad. I was mad at someone recently for some random things- and I should have thought about it a bit more before I said certain things. I don’t regret saying them, they were true and emotional. But sometimes I need to tell myself that not everyone is like me- some people are afraid of things, other’s are foolish in the face of certain danger. And I’m still trying to figure out which one I am.