The Cracked Blade

Oh yeah, on a fun note…happy b-day to me and horrah that there are no elections on my b-day this year:)

Well sitting here in the darkness of my appartment watching the minutes count down towards midnight is a strange feeling. Most of my old friends, and me included at times, would still be at the bar counting down the seconds until my birthday hits at midnight, without a care in the world. God I sometimes miss the self-delusions of youth. I guess that growing up and finally taking hold of the responsibility for my life has that effect on people, it had a huge effect on myself. I am very much a kid and troublemaker at heart, I still love a good joke and sitting down with friends and talking, but now the simple things in life such as having a beer with those you care about or even just seeing their faces light up in surpise and joy seem heavenly. I guess that is one of the greatest things about sitting alone in the dark, you can realize what the important things are in your life because you are no longer distracted by the world around you. With soft music in the background and the gentle motion of my kitten as he sleeps on my feet, it can bring things into focus on a level which is difficult to obtain outside of meditating for hours or spending the same time spent on a punching bag. The dark of the night does wonderous things for my perspective on life, and how it draws everything I do into crystal clarity right before I concieve of falling asleep, only to be forgotten in the halls of slumber before I awake the next day. I could force myself to stay awake, refuse to sleep lest the night steal away my life, but I remember those 4 summers at camp where I did that for 2 and a half months at a time. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but sometimes at a price you don’t understand at the time and often unwilling to pay later. Sleeping just enough so not to go insane is not a way to live, I don’t recommend it one bit. But all of those nights staring at the bright stars in that tapastry of black silk in the sky, talking philosophy until our throats burned dry of ideas only to be refreshed by realizations of life, that was what the ancients ment when they said the gods drank their ambrosia. It is life and death rolled up in a small little package and all you have to do is to just taste it with the tip of your tongue and no more…and after that knowledge you are given that slight taste and banished from Eden or Utopia or Heaven, and you are told that you cannot come back. The taste will drive you insane, but there is nothing that you can do about it, just to live with the fact that now you know what it tastes like and all you can do is to attempt to recreate that taste through other means. It is like the man in the cave, until he steps out of the cave he knows nothing of bright colors outside of the dark, nothing of smells of flowers and trees and grass, or of the feel of falling rain hitting your cheek on a warm spring day; after that you cannot tell that man that he has to return to the cave for the rest of his life…that there will drive him insane. Knowledge can do that to a person, so can love, or hate, or greed, or valor…once tasted you can never escape it again. Sitting here in my apartment with no-one to call, to talk to, to escape with…I am now the man in the cave, aren’t I. I could talk with Trouble, but from experence that means he will just play “rub my body against your face till you shut up”, or that I will get the reputation of being the “crazy cat-man who lives in apartment 123″. Definately don’t want to be the “crazy cat-man”…I may be slightly crazy, but I can blame that on life:) I’ve tried to recreate those moments though of perfect clarity…of when I thought I knew what was going on with life until I fall asleep again…but the superfical ways that I have tried to do this have failed. I’ve taken philosophy classes thinking that we might actually talk about philosophy…but sorely mistaken as each class turned into a debate between democrates and republicans because the instructor doesn’t care he isn’t leading the class in concepts such as ethics, or religeon, or even life (god forbid a class thinking and discussing that topic). Each passing year it gets more difficult sometimes to find those people to talk to about life, about how it is and isn’t or is it (chew on that idea for a while…I intended to write it that way). You can take the high road, and I will take the low road, and maybe we can find somewhere in the middle to go.
Thinking back on today I spent it doing trivial things leading up to not much occuring today. I spent my morning after I woke up sitting in Red Barn waiting to get my tire fixed due to a teenager deciding that it was his right to try and force a collision that I was in no mood for yesterday. There were no injuries, not bloody crash or flaming vehicles crashing out of control…but I had a tire rim pay the ultimate price yesterday to avoid those outcomes. Nothing so much bothers me about it more than just having to be told that the tire, although it will work for now, will eventually have to have all of it replaced without any sort of simple sorry for the inconvienence. Heck, even a wave and a thumbs up or down would have been appreciated. But I did get to spend an hour of my day yesterday doing something that I love to do, just stand in the rain and enjoy the feeling of it hitting my face. And I discovered where in my car my spare tire is hidden and the rediculously small jack that they ship with it (i’m asking for a large one for christmas). Getting all dirty and slimey was fun, doing things with your hands and solving problems, that can be fun when your not in a rush. I even had a fantastic doughnut and coffee while I waited for AA to send a truck to help me out (when you break down, break down in the parking lot of a good doughnut place with hot coffee…not a bad way to wait). And after I got on my way, I was able to drop off some of my infamous coffee cake to a good friend of mine to help brighten up her day even more:) She has one of the best smiles ever and it is great to see it:) Today after the fun with the tire, I was able to get some laundry done, attend my office hours and catch up on some archaeological mags that I have had stacked up waiting to be read for a month, made a fantastic pot of chili that I will regret come bedtime (note to self…habanaro is a privilage and not a right…and i shouldn’t abuse that right when i put it into my bowl of chili without cheese), and I cleaned most of my kitchen up (minus just wiping down everything with disinfectent and hand mopping the floor…i hate cheap white tiles that just soak up dirt), watched King Arthur and National Treasure (Arthur was fun, and National Treasure was so silly it was fun), and read for class tomorrow morning. Thinking of that unholy time, I should be getting to bed, I have to be awake in 6 hours or so (better not be the so) and make sure i’m awake incase the doc needs to send someone to meet with his 930 again.