So all the ducks were in a row, and the mountains collided and time and space had been opened for me (AGAIN), and here I sit with something profound and noteworthy to say about being a writer, and how it encompasses my soul and blah, blah, BLAH! No matter how third grade it sounds, I actually have a best friend. I’m not sure he’d take a bullet for me, but I assure you I’d take one for him. I think that works out though, because I do believe his life is more important than mine, and perhaps that’s how I define my friendship with him: admiration and respect (and he makes me laugh). If you listened to my podcast this week (which you should have, because it’s brilliant, and you’ll drip over my voice), you’ll have gotten nothing out of it unless you read this entry. You will hear my voice but you won’t get its meaning; its hidden message have been reserved for between these lines, for you will walk away from my podcast being entertained, but not truly schooled in the methods of my soul without at least a small understanding of what I’m about to write. You will lie awake in anguish over what my motivation behind the depression and thoughtfulness had been, and your days will be spent pondering over my incentives for leaving gaping holes in my spoken word. The fear however has become the Red Sea, and I, Moses, and I will divulge the truth … here. All you need is to keep reading.
My best friend is an Orthodontist (I call him the Rubber Band Man, but that’s besides the point). He is a Harvard Graduate, and one of the best days of my life was when I heard he had been admitted to that grand school because I knew he had opened the chocolate bar with the golden ticket and he would emerge in the end offering up the “Everlasting Gotstopper,” and taking a ride for the rest of his life in the glass elevator that could take him anywhere. It’s a wonderful feeling when you feel that for someone else, because it affirms you are who you think you are; that you have the capacity for feeling truly happy for someone else’s achievements. If I were to get married tomorrow, which I won’t, but if I did, he would hands down be my best man (he’d be an awful best man though, he’d be way too busy to plan a decent bachelor party).
Don’t get angry with me Unpublishednotdeaders for bringing you on that sappy ride that should probably have ended up in his yearbook rather than this blog, but it has an end and this circle blends into all the other circles I describe to you. I spoke this week in my podcast that I gave up a pursuing degree in Engineering to chase literature, and how if you asked anyone at the time they would have told me that I was doing the right thing; that dream chasing was a noble endeavor, and that I was only one of the many talented and gifted writers who would have a story of a failed engineering background to laugh about over dinners with my publisher and poet friends. I was smug, and arrogant, and I have been paying the price for that ever since.
I had lived my life thinking that it would all be about the story I can tell afterwards, and I had woken up every morning reveling in the drudgery, the depression, and the displacement, because the end was so appealing. The end was triumph over adversity, and conquering my grind. It would be endless dinner parties with interesting people, and fascinating conversations with people who listened to me with more than an alert ear, and it was respect and admiration. My life is none of those things because of one and only one thing: I had failed to recognize that life is not a dream meant to be caught. Life is not feeding your soul and starving yourself. Life is not meant to be dreamed it is meant to be lived, and it is serious and real, and not subconscious. I didn’t run towards my dream to feed my soul, I ran away from my life and starved my actual potential. I did not yearn for literary greatness; I was yearning for acceptance, respect, and love from strangers, and cared not about the people around me or myself in the process. Writing was a gift that came easily and readily, where engineering was a discipline that would be hard fought and frustrating, and riddled with failure. Where writing had no right or wrong answers, engineering had plenty of them. Tests weren’t based on poetic license, they were based on numbers and patterns that were mapped and precise.
My best friend just wrote a short film that got made. IT GOT MADE, and the link is over the right, and I’m jealous. I’m not jealous that after all this time I’ve been reduced to the cliché of being a talented nobody with hours upon hours spend staring at this fucking computer screen (which surprising was easier on the eyes when it was flashing green dots) and have gotten nowhere, where he, in one glorious dive had not only written something worthy of having someone film, but something that was good and fresh; embodied his spirit and was honest to his core. I’m jealous that he got IT early in his life. He didn’t feed his soul and starve himself. He didn’t climb into an imagery world of art openings and backstage passes. He worked his ass off and took his life seriously. He made waxed teeth and studied hours upon hours of seemingly irrelevant material. I’m jealous that he was real when I was fake, and he was color while I was faded gray logic with Peter Pan syndrome.
But time is a soldier that fights along side of you, and not against you, and my jealously will fade and I will learn something from my best friend, yet again. I will learn that dreams do come true, and that creativity will shine regardless to what my day job is. I will learn something from him that I should have learned long ago. That I should spend more time on my life adding concrete to the structure so that Ant doesn’t have to take me in when the harsh winter is upon me. And all you other writers out there who read my blog … Learn from him as well. Writing is a passion and is just as important as any other aspect of your life. It is not more important. What is more important is that you’re not me someday rubbing the hot solder out of your eyes, and having someone disrespect you so much that he made you take your dirty shoes off before he let you into someone else’s house to rinse the blindness from your eyes, because not having to clean their wood floors had more value than your eyesight. And you should learn that depression, desperation, and anger are not the only things worthy of transcription. Ponder that for a while.