I have my fears
But they do not have me
---“Darkness”, Peter Gabriel
So the room tonite is the same it is every night, completely scattershot. Got my lamp over the top shelf of the desk, replete with the faux stain-glass Coca-Cola shade. Two Blackberry Passion candles flank me, since the candle aisle in Target is about as “Queer Eye for the RyGuy” as I can fiscally achieve. Glass of Diet Coke to the right, the handwritten list of the compilation blog in front of me, keyboard on the lap. Stacks of books line the bookshelf to my left, CDs, receipts, and yet more books take their usual spot on the dresser to my left. Clothes to be put away nestle against the foot of my bed, and the soft strains of Amy Ray’s voice float over the scene from the small CD player atop the small bookcase next to the head of my bed.
I mention all this because lately my life has been about taking inventory. Taking stock. Taking a tally of any and all things that encompass this life that is mine. Starting with the small things is usually a good tactic, I find, when such urges possess me. Without specificity, the task is simply overwhelming, and you wanna run and hide.
So you look around and start there, working your way outwards. That way, the first task on your checklist isn’t, “Ascertain meaning of life” and the last is “figure out how many matching pairs of non-white socks you own”. That’s just silly. (Oh, and four, for those of you wondering.) For me, it’s all part and parcel of evaluating, on this first day of winter (mother of GOD I’m not ready for this) to see exactly where it is I stand at 28 years of age. I mean, sure, I’m newly divisible by fourteen, and that’s great and all, but really, there’s more to it than mere mathematics, right?
I remember being a wide-eyed freshman in high school, with eyeglasses wider than J Lo’s ass. Remember walking around campus, and seeing all those seniors, and thinking, “Man, they are old and stuff!” Remember getting to Senior Year and thinking, “Man, we’re all old and stuff!” And going back a few years later and wondering when my high school started to let in 8 year olds. Not even out of college, and already the perspective had skewed. I think I stepped on a sophomore when I wasn’t looking. These kids seemed so tiny, but boy, they didn’t feel it. Those seniors walked around as kings, unaware of how small their kingdom truly was. After all, I was in college, and man, those seniors, they were OLD.
And then there we were, seniors in college. You knew the seniors because all of a sudden you’d see the kids you shared a keg with the weekend before strolling around during the week in their suits and newly purchased briefcases to attend recruiting meetings and interviews at Take My Life Away For Two Years Inc. because they weren’t old enough fast enough, and damnit, they wanted their slow march towards death to go faster faster faster. And you’d ask a few how it was going, but never why it was going, because for most people, there was no why. It’s what you were supposed to do, and those few of us who didn’t bother with the whole process…well, we were the ones forced to defend our rationales. We were guilty of the crime of not knowing what we wanted to do with our lives at 22. Hell, I didn't even know what kind of donut I wanted with my Dunkin Donuts combo. I knew a vocation had to enter into the picture at some point, but really, it could come to me, thank you very much.
So there I was, 2 months out of college and moving back into my parents’ place. If you look up “wake-up call” in the dictionary”, there’s a picture of me with a sullen look as I transport my CD collection into my parents’ basement. Needless to say, I got a job and an apartment pretty shortly thereafter, but nothing that could be mistaken for “mature” living: an admin job and a single room in a house with six strangers. Hardly bad living, but nothing to do with some sort of “grand scheme”, other than “get the heck out of my folks’ place before they start charging my rent”. Why I was keener to paying a scary Asian man over my father is something to potentially be explored, but not here, because he reads this site and he might hit me up for a few months of back-pay as his Christmas present.
To take a “Headline News” approach to the next five plus years, you find me in various jobs, with a few girlfriends, and even more apartments. But again, nothing resembling a plan per say. Inertia’s a powerful force if you allow it to be. I can barely be bothered to turn the radio station in my car unless they force my hand and start playing Kelly Clarkson or something. So Lord knows affecting some major change in my life is usually beyond my inclination. But again, here we are, at 28. OK, I am, at 28. You might be 28 as well, and if so, hey, high five and such. Point being, 28’s hardly old, but I’ve officially been handed my notice by the Mid 20’s Society. I got it in the mail in between my trips to Nashville and New York City. Here’s the transcript:
“Dear Mr. McGee,Well, you knew this day would come. Frankly, we’ll miss you. We’ve had some good times. We took you in at 23, when you were still doing theatre with college kids and thinking you were the cool, older guy at cats parties. Right around 25, you figured out you were just that guy everyone thought was too old to be at the cast parties. We supported you as you left your go-nowhere job without an actual job to go to, just as you were forced to move apartments and take a loan out from your folks. We were there during that really scary phase where you suddenly liked Enya.
Through it all, we’ve been there for you. We’ve supported your social and geographic inertia quite nicely, but we have to let you go now. You can, of course, hang on to those t-shirts you’ve had since freshman year of college, if you like really want to, but we wouldn’t suggest it. You might also want to stop trying to convince yourself that you have “fancy” flannel shirts, because dude, you have old flannel shirts, and ones that are simply not that old, but hardly chic. By all means keep your posters unframed, as long as you never hope to meet anyone with any sophistication.
You might want to think about a change, though. Now, we don’t have the solution. And Lord knows you’ve done some thinking about it, but a bit more concrete work wouldn’t kill you, Bald Boy. Yea, we made fun of your hair, whatcha do, quit the group? Too late, sucka. We’re firing you. It’s like “Children of the Corn”, only we don’t kill you, and there’s no corn. Other than that, it’s exactly the same. Oh, and no scary red-headed kid who’s inexplicably blonde and a foot taller in the sequels. Aside from these differences, we couldn’t be more alike. Oh, and no scythes. Know what? Forget the whole metaphor. We’ve been hanging out with you too much. Before we know it we’ll be mangling a Pat Benetar song and singing, “We’re running with the children…of…of the corn!” and confusing everyone.
Keep all that, though. The references and the off-key singing and all that weird stuff. You don’t have to lose any of that. That’s part of what makes you, well, you. That and the forearm hair. But seriously. You could be doing a lot worse, but you could be doing a lot better. You know it. We know it. We’d love to put you on the path, but you might find you’ve done it for yourself already.
So good luck, au revoir, domo arrigato, and all such pleasantries. We’ll see you at the reunion. You’re on our mailer. Plus, we planted that chip in your head. Bye bye.
---The Committee"
Well, that was very nice of them, in a Big Brother sort of way.
Going back again to eventually go forward: a few years ago, thanks in large part to Jenny, I got to direct my dream production of “Romeo and Juliet”. In the end, that production for me was about nothing less than answering the question, “How can one grow up and yet maintain the individuality that’s so often lost once the ‘real world’ starts?” And it’s a question I still grapple with. For that production, Romeo and Juliet had a chance to do it right, but are squashed by a misunderstanding and often jealous adult culture. But the other members of the youth culture in the production were as guilty as any in their own genocide---capitulating to the expectation of the elder generation. Doing what was expected. Following blindly in the footsteps. I may not as a director conveyed all that, but it’s certainly what I was going for, and my cast knew every well the stakes I was trying to imbue in the production.
And that’s sort of key in general, I think. It’s not important that everyone get why I do what I do. It’s key that I get what I do. It’s key that I’m clear on my own purpose, since no one else can possibly be expected to understand if I myself don’t have a smidgen of clue myself. Same goes, I feel, for just about anyone. You can’t sell someone on you if there’s no real you to sell. From there, who you try to sell is up to you. But it ain’t gonna be everyone. My investment banker friends can’t be sold on my paycheck-to-paycheck fiscal lifestyle any more than I can be sold on a lifestyle that includes overcrowded bars and $12 martinis. Neither life is “better” than the other, so long as it derives some modicum of happiness for the person living it.
Thing is, if you’re gonna be living the moderately impoverished option of the two above, and you’re still not happy, well, that sorta kinda really sucks ass. (That’s Dr. Phil’s term, not mine.) Might as well get that whole “but they are not REALLY as happy as me” moral superiority thing going. If you can’t, well, cry in your Ronzoni box, sistah. You’ve got some work to do.
Of course, it’s hardly a simple thing to figure out what it is you’re supposed to be doing. Working with the homeless? Juggling in the circus? Teaching three-toed sloths how to play the banjo? You can be empirical, but only to a point, unless you’ve got Paris Hilton type money and free time on your hands. So, having a general notion of “better” is about as good as you’re gonna get, unless you get hit with a lightening bolt of inspiration: “YES! I’m supposed to sell drywall in Topeka!” And hey, if you have a flash like that, and it works out, hey, check it out now, the funk soul brotha.
But whatever it is you do, it’s not going to please everyone. May not even please most people. You just have to decide who you can live with and without agreeing with your new life decision. Hell, they don’t even have to agree, they just have to support you. If they don’t, well, it’s time to maybe slag off some of the newly dead weight. It’s a tough call. You can turn around and find a drinking buddy is a newly minted worst enemy. It’s been know to happen. Have you ever seen “Elimidate”? Trust me on this. “Slag off” doesn’t mean “outright remove from your life”, but just as you are newly positioning yourself in life, you’re also realigning in many cases relationships that have been established under different parameters. Some adjust seamlessly and without change. Others take a bit of getting used to, like altered slacks after the stomach stapling. Others suddenly go together like Ben Affleck and a case of Johnny Walker Red Label…it’s a bad, bad combination.
So what to do? What will I do? Dunno for my part. After all, I haven’t gotten there yet. Then again, I’ve fairly used to an ever-changing lineup of friends…I’m like Peter Gabriel, mentioned at the outset. His touring band is constantly evolving…his 2002 lineup features some of the players from the ’93 tours, but about half are new. I doubt he got into a fistfight with his old drummer, but he’s got a new one all the same on the DVD I bought tonite. And that’s the thing: these changes are sometimes necessary but not necessarily changes of strife, simply practicality. People drift apart, the centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is not loosed upon the world though. No blood-dimmed tide flooding the landscape. (Mmm…blogs and Yeats, two great tastes that taste great together.)
It’s hard to predict my future…after all, somewhere around 2 pm this afternoon I thought my future held the dismantling of the website, and now I’m past 2,000 words for the evening, so that shows what I know. But I do know that some people propped me up when I needed it, and people more than likely will do so in the future. And that’s a pretty great feeling to have, at the end of the day, reeking of blackberry passion. (God golly these things are strong. I think I see my Aunt Martha. And I don’t even have an Aunt Martha.)
It’s all about taking stock, as I said before. Knowing what you have. More importantly, what you don’t have. Even more importantly, what you don’t have that you want. And figuring out ways to get them. An ongoing process. One not started tonite, but recently enough. Not always the easiest of tasks. Quite often the hardest. Can’t be afraid to try, tho. You have to jump sometimes without knowing someone will catch you. But you jump hoping they will.
It’s like they always say: Watch that first step. It’s a doozy.