One day I will be gone.
By then it will be too late.
You might never see me again. That's not a threat, more like a warning.
We don't operate our lives on the same rules. This is neither good nor bad - simply an observation.
What you want from life is not the same as what I want. The rules you play by and the rules I play by are different.
What keeps me up at the end of the night is much different than what you think about. What I want, need and desire is different, too.
You can only carry around the expectations of others so long. At some point we must all strike a path completely ours - undiluted by outside forces.
The decisions I make in my life will undoubtedly confuse you. That's ok. They're supposed to. I make them for me. I hope, too, that your decisions confuse other people, for your sake.
We are not meant to live according to what we think everyone expects from us. We are not meant to be the sum of all that surrounds us. We deserve better from ourselves.
I can only play by your rules so much longer before I abandon them for my own. Soon my time here will be done. And the days I've got left need to be lived on my terms, not yours.
And when it does happen, just remember that I gave you fair warning.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Oh, Canada
The only part as satisfying as first leaving on a long trip is first returning.
A week ago I had never been out of the country. Now I feel like Montreal is where I will end up one day, if only indefintely.
There's not really any way I can explain how I feel during a good road trip. So I won't try.
People love to ask why I went. Not sure why I need a reason. Road trips are always less about where you go than where you go along the way. Put another way, it's the journey not the destination.
It's also about accepting that you have no idea what will happen. About freeing yourself from certainity and letting the trip unfold as it does and just learning to accept and love every second.
The uncertainity doesn't confine you, it frees you.
Enables you to write off the shitty things that happen. Allows you to be surprised, good or bad.
These days, being surprised is more than most of us can ask for. When most of our days are for-gone conclusions we write off before they start, not knowing where you'll sleep at the end of the night or what city you'll be in is a freeing feeling indeed.
It's a nice reminder of what's out there. What's possible. What's not.
It's nice to turn your cellphone off for a week without hesitation. To put on your favorite cd and yell out your window for hours. To see sites you've never seen and meet people you couldn't have predicted.
Every road trip I ever go on teaches me something about myself. Too early to know what this one means, but New Year's Eve 2010 is one I'll never forget.
And in a world when too many of our days are hardly memorable, that's enough for me.
Happy New Year's. Or as they say in Canada, Happy New Year's.
A week ago I had never been out of the country. Now I feel like Montreal is where I will end up one day, if only indefintely.
There's not really any way I can explain how I feel during a good road trip. So I won't try.
People love to ask why I went. Not sure why I need a reason. Road trips are always less about where you go than where you go along the way. Put another way, it's the journey not the destination.
It's also about accepting that you have no idea what will happen. About freeing yourself from certainity and letting the trip unfold as it does and just learning to accept and love every second.
The uncertainity doesn't confine you, it frees you.
Enables you to write off the shitty things that happen. Allows you to be surprised, good or bad.
These days, being surprised is more than most of us can ask for. When most of our days are for-gone conclusions we write off before they start, not knowing where you'll sleep at the end of the night or what city you'll be in is a freeing feeling indeed.
It's a nice reminder of what's out there. What's possible. What's not.
It's nice to turn your cellphone off for a week without hesitation. To put on your favorite cd and yell out your window for hours. To see sites you've never seen and meet people you couldn't have predicted.
Every road trip I ever go on teaches me something about myself. Too early to know what this one means, but New Year's Eve 2010 is one I'll never forget.
And in a world when too many of our days are hardly memorable, that's enough for me.
Happy New Year's. Or as they say in Canada, Happy New Year's.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Round and Round
Today is Christmas.
Each that passes gets a little more depressing. They're never as good as when you're a kid, when you think everything is perfect this time of year.
The older we get the more we realize life is messy and rarely perfect. In some ways I think everyone realizes and deals with that in their own way this time of year.
For me, this year is just one more I spend alone.
I hate when I see happy couples in the winter months. I shouldn't, but a small part of me hates them for having what I don't.
What makes this year more depressing is that I've been putting myself out there again, finally. Small signs of hope, but nothing worth mentioning. I just don't understand some people. It's hard to open up to someone when you feel like their feelings about you change daily.
I liken being single and being "out there" to being a hampster. You try to find someone, get to know them and whatnot, but in the end you end up in the same place: alone and confused.
Don't get me wrong, it's not depressing persay in the sense that it gets me down and sulky. I'm over that. I'm happy being alone. I'm happy with the person I am and strive to match that with the person I want to be. It makes me depressed when I genuinely like someone and feel like something real or meaningful might take place just to realize I'm still a hampster in a wheel that never goes anywhere.
Just round and round. Which makes it all the tougher to open yourself up to someone in a real way.
It seems so much of getting to know someone is a game. Most people find it hard to actually say how they feel. I'm tired of guessing about how someone feels about me. I'm tired of thinking that their feelings for me fluctuate on a daily basis. One week they can't wait to see me and the next they hardly acknowledge my existence.
Round and round.
I'm tired of the proverbial carrotstick that both tantalizes and taunts me. Even haunts me, sometimes.
Deep down in each of us we have an inate desire to both love and be loved. To hold and to be held. To keep our egos on the earth but to not let our spirits fall off cliffs.
There's a point when we all question if we'll ever find this. I'm not there anymore, although these questions often swirl in the back of my mind. I'm not looking for love. I know you can't find it until its ready to find you. I just want something real and someone who is also tired of playing games.
Not someone to fall in love with, just someone to free me from this wheel.
Each that passes gets a little more depressing. They're never as good as when you're a kid, when you think everything is perfect this time of year.
The older we get the more we realize life is messy and rarely perfect. In some ways I think everyone realizes and deals with that in their own way this time of year.
For me, this year is just one more I spend alone.
I hate when I see happy couples in the winter months. I shouldn't, but a small part of me hates them for having what I don't.
What makes this year more depressing is that I've been putting myself out there again, finally. Small signs of hope, but nothing worth mentioning. I just don't understand some people. It's hard to open up to someone when you feel like their feelings about you change daily.
I liken being single and being "out there" to being a hampster. You try to find someone, get to know them and whatnot, but in the end you end up in the same place: alone and confused.
Don't get me wrong, it's not depressing persay in the sense that it gets me down and sulky. I'm over that. I'm happy being alone. I'm happy with the person I am and strive to match that with the person I want to be. It makes me depressed when I genuinely like someone and feel like something real or meaningful might take place just to realize I'm still a hampster in a wheel that never goes anywhere.
Just round and round. Which makes it all the tougher to open yourself up to someone in a real way.
It seems so much of getting to know someone is a game. Most people find it hard to actually say how they feel. I'm tired of guessing about how someone feels about me. I'm tired of thinking that their feelings for me fluctuate on a daily basis. One week they can't wait to see me and the next they hardly acknowledge my existence.
Round and round.
I'm tired of the proverbial carrotstick that both tantalizes and taunts me. Even haunts me, sometimes.
Deep down in each of us we have an inate desire to both love and be loved. To hold and to be held. To keep our egos on the earth but to not let our spirits fall off cliffs.
There's a point when we all question if we'll ever find this. I'm not there anymore, although these questions often swirl in the back of my mind. I'm not looking for love. I know you can't find it until its ready to find you. I just want something real and someone who is also tired of playing games.
Not someone to fall in love with, just someone to free me from this wheel.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Hey, it's me again
Hey You,
I know we haven't talked in ages, but I guess I've been thinking about you lately.
It's odd to say that because I haven't in a while really, I guess. The past few months we've almost accepted that we're both okay with where we are.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. People grow. Sometimes apart, even. I accepted this a long time ago.
But maybe sometimes people grow apart and sometimes they let themselves drift apart.
Anyway, there's no point to this, really. Just thought I'd throw a distant line into the language of 1s and 2s out here in cyberspace.
So like I said, I've been thinking about you again.
But this time it's been different. Not like before when it was always a little sad. Now it's just... curiousity. It's been forever, it seems.
I've changed a lot, and so have you, too, I'm sure.
I thought maybe the new you and the new me could meet, since the old you and the old me were such a big part of each other's lives.
But if not it's okay, these letters will just vanish into the sea of useless web posts.
Maybe that's where this letter belongs anyway...
Sincerely,
Ben
I know we haven't talked in ages, but I guess I've been thinking about you lately.
It's odd to say that because I haven't in a while really, I guess. The past few months we've almost accepted that we're both okay with where we are.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. People grow. Sometimes apart, even. I accepted this a long time ago.
But maybe sometimes people grow apart and sometimes they let themselves drift apart.
Anyway, there's no point to this, really. Just thought I'd throw a distant line into the language of 1s and 2s out here in cyberspace.
So like I said, I've been thinking about you again.
But this time it's been different. Not like before when it was always a little sad. Now it's just... curiousity. It's been forever, it seems.
I've changed a lot, and so have you, too, I'm sure.
I thought maybe the new you and the new me could meet, since the old you and the old me were such a big part of each other's lives.
But if not it's okay, these letters will just vanish into the sea of useless web posts.
Maybe that's where this letter belongs anyway...
Sincerely,
Ben
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
A Vision of West Texas
I need nothingness. The sweet expanse of land and space and time all laid out before me.
West Texas.
If you've never been there, you don't know what nothingness is.
There's a sweet peace about driving when what's before, ahead and beside you is the same. All the same brown land with powerlines running alongside a highway you'll never see a cop on. Stores along the highway no one goes in.
You can drive for hours and never receive cell reception.
That's what I need: an escape. To experience nothingness is to feel everything. To delete the peripheral, if only for a drive. To erase the unessential.
Feels like most of our days that make up most of our lives is about the inconsequential. We spend our lives racking up triple-letter scores on words no one will read. We all commit to play a game where everyone loses, some just less than others.
How did it get like this?
I need nothingness. The sweet expanse of land and space and time all laid out before me.
West Texas.
West Texas.
If you've never been there, you don't know what nothingness is.
There's a sweet peace about driving when what's before, ahead and beside you is the same. All the same brown land with powerlines running alongside a highway you'll never see a cop on. Stores along the highway no one goes in.
You can drive for hours and never receive cell reception.
That's what I need: an escape. To experience nothingness is to feel everything. To delete the peripheral, if only for a drive. To erase the unessential.
Feels like most of our days that make up most of our lives is about the inconsequential. We spend our lives racking up triple-letter scores on words no one will read. We all commit to play a game where everyone loses, some just less than others.
How did it get like this?
I need nothingness. The sweet expanse of land and space and time all laid out before me.
West Texas.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
About that time again
My apologies, folks (or maybe just folk?) for the delay. Haven't had a working computer in a few months, and there's no indication that is going to change anytime soon.
I find my relationships with people funny. It's scary how much they depend on where we are in our lives. How fast they can fall apart. Or come back to life.
Few I have are worth the trouble to keep them alive. Not in a depressing, whoa-is-me sorta way, but in a realistic this-is-the-world-we-live-in, realistic sorta way.
How many people come into our lives so quickly and become so important only to wash away a few days/weeks/months/years later. In the end, we're all just fleeting instances of paths crossing momentarily in the infinite realm of time.
People? Soon-to-be-decaying masses is more like it.
Time to go home and enjoy another bowl.
I find my relationships with people funny. It's scary how much they depend on where we are in our lives. How fast they can fall apart. Or come back to life.
Few I have are worth the trouble to keep them alive. Not in a depressing, whoa-is-me sorta way, but in a realistic this-is-the-world-we-live-in, realistic sorta way.
How many people come into our lives so quickly and become so important only to wash away a few days/weeks/months/years later. In the end, we're all just fleeting instances of paths crossing momentarily in the infinite realm of time.
People? Soon-to-be-decaying masses is more like it.
Time to go home and enjoy another bowl.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Home Sweet Home
Tonight I will go home and start packing. It will be close to 2 a.m. when I start. And probably about 5 by the time I'm done.
When you move as much as I do, you learn to live simply.
It will only take my a few hours to put almost everything I own in a few measly boxes. I think I like my things best when they're all stuffed in the back of my car.
In the past year I've had five different homes. And on Friday I will make it six.
In one year I've moved at least eight times - that I can remember. That's across four different cities in two states.
While I've never been homeless, I have been without a home.
The place I grew up in is like another world. I don't recognize it on the inside. Nor do I want to. Now it's just the place where my parents live, where I used to.
Sometimes the people that live there are like strangers to me. The walls are painted. The furniture is new. And so is the kitchen.
My mom asks why I never visit anymore. Maybe because there's nothing left for me. I've been in prisons that I'd sooner go back to.
When you know you're only living somewhere just enough time to get settled, you never get settled. That makes leaving easier. Like you were never really there to begin with.
And while I've never been homeless, I have been without a home for some time now.
Maybe that's why I feel so comfortable on the road. Cuz in the end, it's all just a journey. Wherever we are, we're always leaving somewhere or something behind for something new. Always leaving. Always arriving.
And the highway is the perfect representation of this. Cuz on the road, we're never stopped.
Always moving. Always leaving. Always arriving.
When you move as much as I do, you learn to live simply.
It will only take my a few hours to put almost everything I own in a few measly boxes. I think I like my things best when they're all stuffed in the back of my car.
In the past year I've had five different homes. And on Friday I will make it six.
In one year I've moved at least eight times - that I can remember. That's across four different cities in two states.
While I've never been homeless, I have been without a home.
The place I grew up in is like another world. I don't recognize it on the inside. Nor do I want to. Now it's just the place where my parents live, where I used to.
Sometimes the people that live there are like strangers to me. The walls are painted. The furniture is new. And so is the kitchen.
My mom asks why I never visit anymore. Maybe because there's nothing left for me. I've been in prisons that I'd sooner go back to.
When you know you're only living somewhere just enough time to get settled, you never get settled. That makes leaving easier. Like you were never really there to begin with.
And while I've never been homeless, I have been without a home for some time now.
Maybe that's why I feel so comfortable on the road. Cuz in the end, it's all just a journey. Wherever we are, we're always leaving somewhere or something behind for something new. Always leaving. Always arriving.
And the highway is the perfect representation of this. Cuz on the road, we're never stopped.
Always moving. Always leaving. Always arriving.
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