There are problems with this, however. And it’s not what you’re thinking. Let me back up, I don’t mean to be presumptuous.

I take an issue with the ability to take a feeling as complex as love or hate, throw it into google, and be satisfied with the result, although I often do this. There are a handful of quotes I can pick from memory, but they don’t often apply. I can’t quote Palahniuk’s rebel yell against consumerism if I’m not feeling that same emotion. The square peg doesn’t always fit.

No, the issue is these quotes have no meaning to me personally. They are filtered out of their original context and placed on a page because they share a word or two with other famous sayings. The problem with this, in my opinion, is that these lines are often the fuse on the powder keg. By this I mean there is a  motif or theme building up to these all-too-poetic, transcendent words. I feel these are sublime moments for the author, the white whale of their novel- the words aren’t right for weeks, months, or years and then, they fall onto the page and are nothing else but perfect.

Who am I to cheat an author out of his work? To disregard the rest of those novel thoughts and words without which the quotation wouldn’t be powerful, quotable. These authors didn’t have google or yahoo or whatever the new, flavor-of-the-day search engine is- they read everything, made notes in the margin, wrote letters to their friends recommending books. We have it too easy now- so easy to be lazy and allow others to do the work for us.

I’ve started to write down the quotes and things that move me, that make me step back from the page and think to myself about what I read. Those moments don’t come fast enough, which is good, but what is true about them is they conjure up a thought and emotion in me. Something that is mine. It was me that witnessed the creation of a thought, that inkling of wonder or serendipity. It’s as if we have thought all of these things before, but the words are  l’esprit d’escalier; the words find us only after we need them.

Enough of that.

Today ended the first season of softball in my competitive league. We definitely came in last palce, which is altogether fine. I’m not worried about it, and we ended up going out to celebrate, or at the very worst commiserate, our season long struggle. I had an absolutely terrible offensive day, which I guess is forgivable seeing as how we lost by 12- Not much I could have done to sway the tide.

Speaking of tide, I’m starting to get tired of some cliched analogies: ocean, road, and car metaphors. If there are things in the world that are mentally grating to me, those are them. For some reason I don’t need to hear you are drowning in anything, an inspirational moment is not like coming up for air, and Robert Frost and Yogi Berra can talk about forks in the road, but you probably should leave it to them.

Why isn’t life like a bicycle? In fact, I like it better. Think about it this way: A bicycle is clean, ehalthy, self-powered, self-started, complicated gears working together to make things easier. If something is off, the bike moves forward but more difficultly, if things are really bad, you’re stuck. Compare to a car: Needs fuel, protects those doing the driving from the elements and the world, forward and reverse with a large turning radius- this isn’t life it’s a condom. It’s protection, keeping you from whatever is out there.

Let’s all agree to move on from the car analogies then. Perfect.

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.”