Being a Man

"COURAGE IS DOING WHAT YOU’RE AFRAID TO DO. THERE CAN BE NO COURAGE UNLESS YOU’RE SCARED."

— Eddie Rickenbacker

"Talking to God is Laurel Begging Hardy For a Gun..."

They say youth is wasted on the young...

They couldn't be more right.  When you get older you have to bend all the rules.  Every.  Damn.  One.  Of.  Them.  If the rules don't give you the bend you're expecting, then you owe it to yourself (in a form that calls on madness) to break them in half.  Break the holy shit out of them.  Let's call a spade a spade...there is a wick in every candle, and it's only so long.  When it burns out, you're just left with a mass of formless, empty residual.  I think that speaks volumes of the biology we've been so intrinsically tied to, and to some degree found prisoner to and (to an extent) our own little delicate psyches.

Growing old doesn't scare me.  Growing stale does.  That's why I want to burn bright.  Like that little ferocious birthday candle that won't give in to the wind.  I've never felt truly numb and I never want to.  In fact, I know that I won't.  It's just not going to happen to me.  However, the minute I do, the Good Lord has my invitation to take me home...no matter the age I find myself sitting in here...inside my own head.

It's funny...I've spent the better part of my life thinking that everything is going to click like a light bulb in the darkest night.  Like everything is going to be illuminated and tangible.  You can see it, you can pick it up, you can feel it's contours, hand it to your friend, show them how it works, heat burns their hand, looking at it through a magnifying glass, write instructions for playing with it, leave it on a shelf and be mobile without it...drop it on the floor and know it won't break.  If that does happen, I imagine it won't be that way.  It will be a little more intricate.  Or maybe it won't.  Maybe it is that simple.  Maybe it's that great simplicity that seems to be the problem...just flying under the radar of all our great complications and distractions, successes and victories.  Better said, maybe it's the undeniable ability to recognize the lives we live which is the problem, and maybe it's the hope for what they might turn into that's the blessing.

I was born at 10:10pm.  I was a lucky baby born on an unlucky day.

http://cults.bandcamp.com/track/go-outside?auto=mp3-320