The bearable lightness of being me.
May. 11th, 2009 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joegodaMy world is odd at times. This morning I took the trash out, which isn't terribly unusual. I had thought that the pickup was on Tuesday but in reality I wasn't sure what day the pick up was.
I have a weird phobia about folks digging through my trash, and in a communal dumpster, this does happen. A man, old and jacketed and driving a tiny yellow '83 Toyota truck, comes by on occasion and digs through the dumpster, looking for scraps and bits that are usable and potentially salable. Now, I don't know if my phobia is weird or not. Maybe it's perfectly normal to wonder what sort of secrets and mysteries might be gleaned from the bits of flotsam I throw out. Maybe it's normal to wonder what I'm tossing out that might be used for some purpose that I didn't intend. I suspect it is a normal thing to wonder, but my ego tend to hold to the idea that I am somehow 'special' and therefore, my concerns are special too.
So, this morning I took the trash out. I had missed the garbage pick up by mere minutes, and the dumpster was completely empty. It was a hollowed out shell of a dumpster, all largish and boxish and cave-like. Dropping my bag of trash into the hollow drum of the dumpster was sort of like desecrating the graveyard of those thousands who have gone before me. It's an odd feeling, a silly impression that my trash falls though layers of time and is disturbing the resting place of all the pizza boxes and drained soup cans and empty dreams that went before.
On this day, walking back to my apartment, the sun sort of shone through the clouds, sort of illuminating the world around me, and sort of burning away the damp. On the walk back, crunching through the gravel and the asphalt and the decaying pine cones, I was struck by the image of a whole different world.
It was just a flash, like a blast of light from one of those old glass flashbulbs. The ones that had some sort of glassine fabric wrapped around the filament, and when they went off, there would be pop and sizzle and it would be brighter than the sun on a high desert day. I remembered those flashbulbs... they always ended up with a brown outer shell, like an empty chrysalis, dried out and left behind by some incredibly wondrous and unseen butterfly. They had their own particular smell, those flashbulbs, a mixture of plastic and ozone. Sometimes I miss them, just for their unique way of passing away. Rather like humans, I would imagine. One incredible flare, and then gone, leaving only a husk of what we once were behind.
In this brief, oh so brief, moment of glimpse I saw a whole other blue skied world, with vibrant green trees and sea green grass. There wasn't any traffic on the road. Oh, there was a road, and it was still as black ribboned and solid as it was on this side of the vision, but it had a different life to it. It was like a road that was there because it had to be there, not because it served any particular function. It was the... perfect idea of a road.
And then, it was gone, and my mundane world returned with the noise of over-large bass speakers playing something Salsa at a level that breaks gene chains. I walked back to my apartment wondering at the strangeness of my mind, and why sometimes I just see things. It was like a thing I might write about in one of my stories, but instead it was as real as anything else that happens to me.
There are just things I don't talk much about.
On the other hand, my head is less mossy than it was, though I do still have a fluctuating temperature and my right ear tends to decide to ache on and off. These things shall pass, simply because they must and they do.
I've been thinking about Bags and Griz a lot recently. In story and in life. I have the ending of the BP&G adventure in my head... it just can't get to my fingers yet. Once the moss moves out, I imagine I'll be fine as a fiddle and even writing again. In life, I miss my chums a lot.
I am ready to go traveling, and there are times I wish I had someone just to hang with, so I wouldn't have to bug those two. I don't mean to the Faires, per se. I mean places unmarked and unexplored, places where a buck can buy a cup of hot black joe and an extra can get you a grilled tuna fish sandwich. And by someone, I don't exactly mean those folks who have other lives with other folks and other things to do, so we must schedule, schedule, schedule. I mean someone that calls me on some odd day and says "Take today off, let's go see what's over there!" And someone I can call with the same sort of come-hither cry. Or, dare I say it, roll over and open my eyes upon and whisper, "Morning, sunshine. Let's go 'splorin!"
I can see this other person in my head. I've seen her in my dreams, and I know her voice, her hair, her smile. I know the nuances of her looks and the seasons of her moods. Yeah, this one I've known for a very, very long time. Perhaps I'll meet her someday. Perhaps I already have.
Aw well.
I seem to be re-writing part of my personal fiction. Or at least I feel like I am. Pockets, that wonderful old scoundrel has lost an awful lot of his innocence. He's still around, but as the last chapter said, "He's everywhere at once.". In the literature, he'll be back, because he's a Puck, a Loki, a Trickster and a Pan. Simple belief in the character itself is enough to give the character life.
The Pockets that is in me doesn't really want the illusion of the Faire, he wishes and dreams for the reality of it. He wants the adventure that real life and strange people can bring, and yet he is terrified of it. There is so much more out here than drempt of in that small reality. I like the Faire for the variety, and I think I have figured out my place in it. I am a passer-thru, a traveler from there to over there, not exactly a participant, but not exactly separate from it either. I dunno, really. I think I'm still thinking.
I have come to the conclusion that there aren't any clear conclusions. That my fears and trepidations may be both a hindrance and a blessing, and that I need to continue to push, push, push, until I can climb that mountain and stand beside someone soft and warm and genuine. I want to meet my brothers and sisters, lovers and friends, on their own ground, in their own place, in their own space and look at them as equals and have them see me in the same light. I want to be a real boy, Pinocchio, and understand what it is that my mind and heart see.
Yep. It's been a weird couple of days. Or years. Like Paul Harvey used to say "and now... page two."
I have a weird phobia about folks digging through my trash, and in a communal dumpster, this does happen. A man, old and jacketed and driving a tiny yellow '83 Toyota truck, comes by on occasion and digs through the dumpster, looking for scraps and bits that are usable and potentially salable. Now, I don't know if my phobia is weird or not. Maybe it's perfectly normal to wonder what sort of secrets and mysteries might be gleaned from the bits of flotsam I throw out. Maybe it's normal to wonder what I'm tossing out that might be used for some purpose that I didn't intend. I suspect it is a normal thing to wonder, but my ego tend to hold to the idea that I am somehow 'special' and therefore, my concerns are special too.
So, this morning I took the trash out. I had missed the garbage pick up by mere minutes, and the dumpster was completely empty. It was a hollowed out shell of a dumpster, all largish and boxish and cave-like. Dropping my bag of trash into the hollow drum of the dumpster was sort of like desecrating the graveyard of those thousands who have gone before me. It's an odd feeling, a silly impression that my trash falls though layers of time and is disturbing the resting place of all the pizza boxes and drained soup cans and empty dreams that went before.
On this day, walking back to my apartment, the sun sort of shone through the clouds, sort of illuminating the world around me, and sort of burning away the damp. On the walk back, crunching through the gravel and the asphalt and the decaying pine cones, I was struck by the image of a whole different world.
It was just a flash, like a blast of light from one of those old glass flashbulbs. The ones that had some sort of glassine fabric wrapped around the filament, and when they went off, there would be pop and sizzle and it would be brighter than the sun on a high desert day. I remembered those flashbulbs... they always ended up with a brown outer shell, like an empty chrysalis, dried out and left behind by some incredibly wondrous and unseen butterfly. They had their own particular smell, those flashbulbs, a mixture of plastic and ozone. Sometimes I miss them, just for their unique way of passing away. Rather like humans, I would imagine. One incredible flare, and then gone, leaving only a husk of what we once were behind.
In this brief, oh so brief, moment of glimpse I saw a whole other blue skied world, with vibrant green trees and sea green grass. There wasn't any traffic on the road. Oh, there was a road, and it was still as black ribboned and solid as it was on this side of the vision, but it had a different life to it. It was like a road that was there because it had to be there, not because it served any particular function. It was the... perfect idea of a road.
And then, it was gone, and my mundane world returned with the noise of over-large bass speakers playing something Salsa at a level that breaks gene chains. I walked back to my apartment wondering at the strangeness of my mind, and why sometimes I just see things. It was like a thing I might write about in one of my stories, but instead it was as real as anything else that happens to me.
There are just things I don't talk much about.
On the other hand, my head is less mossy than it was, though I do still have a fluctuating temperature and my right ear tends to decide to ache on and off. These things shall pass, simply because they must and they do.
I've been thinking about Bags and Griz a lot recently. In story and in life. I have the ending of the BP&G adventure in my head... it just can't get to my fingers yet. Once the moss moves out, I imagine I'll be fine as a fiddle and even writing again. In life, I miss my chums a lot.
I am ready to go traveling, and there are times I wish I had someone just to hang with, so I wouldn't have to bug those two. I don't mean to the Faires, per se. I mean places unmarked and unexplored, places where a buck can buy a cup of hot black joe and an extra can get you a grilled tuna fish sandwich. And by someone, I don't exactly mean those folks who have other lives with other folks and other things to do, so we must schedule, schedule, schedule. I mean someone that calls me on some odd day and says "Take today off, let's go see what's over there!" And someone I can call with the same sort of come-hither cry. Or, dare I say it, roll over and open my eyes upon and whisper, "Morning, sunshine. Let's go 'splorin!"
I can see this other person in my head. I've seen her in my dreams, and I know her voice, her hair, her smile. I know the nuances of her looks and the seasons of her moods. Yeah, this one I've known for a very, very long time. Perhaps I'll meet her someday. Perhaps I already have.
Aw well.
I seem to be re-writing part of my personal fiction. Or at least I feel like I am. Pockets, that wonderful old scoundrel has lost an awful lot of his innocence. He's still around, but as the last chapter said, "He's everywhere at once.". In the literature, he'll be back, because he's a Puck, a Loki, a Trickster and a Pan. Simple belief in the character itself is enough to give the character life.
The Pockets that is in me doesn't really want the illusion of the Faire, he wishes and dreams for the reality of it. He wants the adventure that real life and strange people can bring, and yet he is terrified of it. There is so much more out here than drempt of in that small reality. I like the Faire for the variety, and I think I have figured out my place in it. I am a passer-thru, a traveler from there to over there, not exactly a participant, but not exactly separate from it either. I dunno, really. I think I'm still thinking.
I have come to the conclusion that there aren't any clear conclusions. That my fears and trepidations may be both a hindrance and a blessing, and that I need to continue to push, push, push, until I can climb that mountain and stand beside someone soft and warm and genuine. I want to meet my brothers and sisters, lovers and friends, on their own ground, in their own place, in their own space and look at them as equals and have them see me in the same light. I want to be a real boy, Pinocchio, and understand what it is that my mind and heart see.
Yep. It's been a weird couple of days. Or years. Like Paul Harvey used to say "and now... page two."
