I’ve worked twelve hours today, smoked the better part of a pack, consumed a good 10 ounces of bourbon, 2 beers and some eighteen year old Caol Ila scotch whiskey. Now I’ve smoked a good one and am listening to “Sometimes” by Langhorne Slim off of his self titled album.

I realize, after conversation with my friend Orangutan, that I just don’t really care. I won’t elaborate on this. I just won’t. I will however say that it doesn’t really matter and I have to seek my own happiness. I can’t let myself be held back by the ghosts of my own wanton ways. I do of course mean (of a cruel or violent action) deliberate and unprovoked and not sexually immodest or promiscuous.. This comes from the dictionary. I can’t live my life by someone else’ wants.

Also, I really do have a tendency to make snap judgments about people, leaving them with the burden of proof that they aren’t who I assumed them to be. It’s a weakness of mine. More often than not things turn out fine in the end and honestly, I am often right. This said, it’s not fair and it often causes me to accuse people of things or of being a certain way that I don’t like. It really isn’t fair.

Hmmm… Well, we shall see. We shall see. For now, I’ll see what happens. Not really in a mood to push anything at all. I’ll just let it flow and see where I end up. Of course, this is usually what I do. Things don’t always end up where I expect them too. Sometimes I end up in not so great places, sometimes in great. All I know is that I’ve never regretted any of it as the journey there is always such a scenic route. People, places and things continue to surprise me and keep me on my toes. I’ve never regretted anything, anyone or anyplace. I can say that much.

And so, adieu, and wish me luck!

I was at the Pink Palace Crafts Fair a few years ago with my mother and my sister. I was standing toward the end of a huge tent full of shitty crafts. I looked outside and saw this little kid, maybe 4 years old, sitting on the ground in the dry, dusty dirt. He was scooping the dirt with his hands and moving it into a big pile of dusty brown. I watched him for a minute, wondering what in the hell the little tyke was doing. Then I saw the look on his face. This kid was mesmerized. He was so happy playing in the dirt and making himself a little dirt mound.

It made me wonderfully happy and yet, somehow sad. I realized that I had lost that. I had lost that simple ability to be happy no matter the situation. The ability to find joy in the smallest, simplest and most mundane of things. As you get older and become an adult, it takes bigger and more complicated things to make you happy. Objects, cars, houses, drinking, drugs, sex. A child can be happy with some dry dirt. Why do we lose this as we get older? What is it that changes in us?

A child is able to make a decision about something withing becoming paralyzed by the possible consequences of that decision. Without getting too sidetracked thinking about the other possibilities of outcomes if the had chosen a different path. A child picks a toy from a wall of toys and is content with that toy. The frustration of which toy to get doesn’t last as long as for an adult. The thoughts, wondering if you should have even bought it. Should I have done that? What would have happened if I hadn’t done that? Where would I be now? Was that the best way? The best decision? I don’t recall having that “the grass is greener on the other side” feeling so strongly when I was a child as I do now.

Now, as an adult, I’m able to reason more. With that comes doubt. With that comes analysis. The problem is, the analysis never yields answers. It only yields more questions. Should I have taken that job? Dated that girl? Let that person push me around? Shit gets more complicated and the decisions we’re faced with much more affecting on our lives. Do I play army or ninjas tonight has become do I work or get stupid drunk tonight? The consequences of these new things are much bigger. If I get drunk I may drive and get arrested. I may kill someone. If I work I can pay bills. Put food on the table and a roof over my head. If I don’t work tonight, can I still do those things? Is it worth it to blow off work for some booze tonight? I have to pay for the booze… Can I? Can I afford it? What if I get drunk and pick up some girl? Will we have sex? Will I knock her up? Will I get a disease? Will she be a serial killer and murder me in my sleep? What if I get drunk, pick up some girl, then drive and she ends up dead? What if I make a decision that has such massive and far reaching affects on my life that I can never take back?

Can’t I just go play in the dirt and be done with it? I’m tired of being an adult. I want to be a kid again. I want to not have to be stressed by thinking about the far reaching implications of every little thing I do.

Let’s all play in the dirt more often. Let’s stop all acting like we’re so important and so grown up. I think if the whole world did that, everyone would be much happier.

Sometimes we’re confused.

Sometimes we do things without thinking.

Sometimes without knowing why.

Sometimes we aren’t sure.

Sometimes we’re sure.

Sometimes we just act.

Sometimes we utterly fail to act.

Sometimes we regret.

Sometimes we love.

Sometimes we hurt.

Sometimes we laugh and sometimes we cry.

Sometimes we don’t even know why.

Sometimes we learn,

sometimes we don’t.

Sometimes I think about all of these things and realize that being a monkey is just really fucking confusing.

I have that urge sometimes. Mostly it coincides with a low point in my mental status. I’m manic depressive so I get these crazy lows sometimes. When this happens I get really confused about everything. I mean, life everything. I start thinking about why I’m doing the things I’m doing. What’s the point? I mean, I’m just gonna die someday so who cares if I went to school, read this book or that, etc. I mean, why do I have a job? Why do I pay my rent? I think about these things and get sad. I get sad because if there’s no point, then what’s the point? I’m not making sense.

I had coffee with a dear friend who I want to more than friends with but at the moment we’re just friends and all but that’s okay because I’d just like to have this person in my life and that’s what really matters.

Rambling again.

We had coffee and we started talking about all of this. We’re both having serious issues with school. She hates it and wants to quit. I hate it and am wondering why I started again. I mean, I’m always bitching about freedom. Freedom from societal expectations, freedom from my boss and work. All sorts of freedoms. I mean, what I really want is to live in the woods in a little house that I’ve built, growing most of my own food and taking photos when I feel like it. I want to be able to sit with a mug of tea on a fall afternoon, watching to sunset as the air gets slightly hazy, enjoying the view and the moment. Not having to listen to cars and planes. Not having to stress about work the next day, or paying the rent. Or school. Or anything. I want to be free. But is this possible? Where does school play into this? Do I need an education? If I die before I finish school, will I have missed out? I mean, would it have been worth the delay on seeking my own happiness?

So I guess the question now is, do I just get in the car and drive away? Leaving all of the stress, responsibility and expectations behind? Is that possible or will I just get somewhere else and discover that I get trapped in the same situation? Is it possible to escape? Will it always be like this?

But what is happiness anyway? I guess for me it’s a sunset, my toes in the grass, and a woman I love next to me. That about sums it up. Oh yeah, and not having to be somewhere. I’m so tired of always having to be somewhere. Why are people always in such a fucking rush? What’s the huge hurry? You’re gonna die either way. Who cares if you made it wherever on time? What’s on time anyway? Made up. That’s what. When you’re dead no one is gonna be like, “Oh he was a good guy, always on time for work.” Fuck that. Who cares if you were? I’m more concerned with, “He was an alright guy.” Or… “That guy was happy.” “He didn’t let shit get in the way of happy. Of having a good time.” I mean, I go to work 40 hours a week. That’s 160 hours a month. 1,920 a year. I spend more time at work than I do awake at home. What is that? For what? So I can have this laptop I’m typing on? Who gives a fuck? Time is limited man. Life is limited. Get out and see the sunshine. I only have one life, why waste any of it?

I mean, will the job and school make me happier? What I really want doesn’t involve them. If I won the lottery tomorrow I wouldn’t buy a whole bunch of stuff. I’d buy some land and setup a trust that would support the modest things I would need living in the middle of nowhere taking photos of the beautiful things I find. That would make me happy.

Anyhow, I’m just way jacked on coffee right now and am rambling after a wonderful time having coffee with a wonderful girl that won’t date me right now and maybe not ever and we talked about life and what it all means and everything. Lo Fidelity style. I’m SO Rob.

When I was in third grade, I designed my first house. Of course, when I say “designed” I don’t mean from a structural point of view. I was, of course, just a child. I did however give a fairly detailed layout or floor plan of what I considered to be the ideal house. This house was underground. It’s sprawling mass was so huge that tunnels connected the rooms and go karts were used to get around. It even included a launch pad for a Saturn V rocket so I could go to space. It was a dream, okay? This dream house had one item in particular that has since held a last impression on me. It had a front porch.

There may not have been much of a house behind it that one could see but there was a front porch of sorts. Even at the young age, I was able to see that a front porch was vital. It was a heart to an otherwise bleak existence. Living underground you would be more or less cut off from the surrounding world; never seeing your neighbors except for brief moments walking to the car or flying off to the moon in your giant rocket. A front porch, however, changes the equation. The front porch becomes the life line. It connects you.

I didn’t know it at the time but the front porch would eventually come to symbolize for me the downfalls of a modern society. A disposable society of individuals locked up inside their various underground bunkers. Bunkers both material and immaterial.

To me, the problems in our current society are undeniably linked to the lack of front porches in modern architecture. The stoop reigns supreme and the garage secures us in our air conditioned bunkers, free form the possibility of community. Think about it. You come home, pull into the driveway, click the remote for the garage door, it opens and you drive inside. Once inside you close the door, walk into your house completely concealed from prying eyes. Now that you’re inside you go about your daily rituals. Preparing dinner while watching the news. Eating dinner while watching prime time. Maybe you exercise a bit. Whatever you do, it’s inside. Away from the people next door or down the street. Eventually you go to bed only to wake up the next day and do it all again.

Back in the day, things worked fairly differently. My grandfather would come home from work, my grandmother preparing dinner, and he would go to his front yard. He would then take an old coffee can of grass seed and walk around, seeding his grass. After he finished a once over with the seed bucket he would bring out the hose and water the lawn. Now the interesting thing about this is what happened whenever someone walked by. He would ask them if they wanted a beer. Every. Single. Person. If they declined he would wish them a pleasant evening and continue about his work. If they accepted, he would put down the bucket or turn off the hose, walk inside, get two beers, wrap a napkin around each of them, secure it with a rubber band, and go back to the front yard. He would then sit with this stranger or neighbor and drink a beer in his front yard.

Back then, there was a sense of community. People knew their neighbors. Talked to their neighbors. They had front porches. The front porch was a place that people could hang out and see each other. See the people walking down the street. Crime was lower because there was always someone outside seeing what was happening. People knew who lived in the community.

Contrast that to now when people stay inside and choose to ignore what happens around them and the people around them. The idea and feeling of community has been put under the  guillotine called disposable. It’s often been called the Walmarting of America. Things are cheap, easy and disposable. iPod doesn’t work? Throw it away and get another! Paper towels. Use em once and throw it away! Cars are disposable for god’s sake. Engine busted? Get a new car!

As more and more products started to show up on the market being advertised as disposable, people started to expect this “feature.” As the idea and expectation of disposable permeated our society, it became the culture of America. It’s no longer a feature of certain isolated products but a feature of an entire culture and society. The problem with this is that it now extends to every facet of life. People are disposable. Divorce rates are soaring. Why? It’s easy. Marriage isn’t working? Throw it away. Got in a fight? Throw it away.

As our society embraced the idea that every is disposable, they lost a great human quality. That quality is patience. If everything is disposable you don’t have to wait for anything. The paper towel doesn’t have to dry because you dispose of the wet one and grab a brand new one that is perfectly dry. If you’re relationship is having problems, you throw it away and find the new sparkly one, never realizing that at some point it too will tarnish and you’ll end up doing the same thing over again. No one has the patience to fix anything anymore. No one patches their clothing anymore. It takes too much time.

They of course never realize that the most valuable things around you took time to make. The old pocket watch that belonged to your great grandfather that sits in your dresser drawer, loved so much that you leave it there, not wanting to lose it, was made with such painstaking care and though that it took weeks to create. It wasn’t pumped out of some assembly line, looking, feeling and operating exactly like the twenty million others that were made that year. It was a labor of love and it is valuable. It wasn’t made to be disposable, that’s why it has worth.

So it’s easy to assume that if something is disposable it has no worth. Now apply that logic to relationships. If a relationship with another person is considered to be disposable, then what value does it have? None. If you want a valuable relationship with another person, you can’t treat it as being disposable. You have to overcome the societal tendency to throw things away and you have to patch it up, repaint it, and fix it. People aren’t freakin’ disposable! A relationship or marriage takes a great amount of work. It’s not all about you. Sometimes you have to work at it. Sometimes you have to compromise.

If you want a marriage or relationship that you don’t care about then fine, let it be disposable. If you want a meaningful relationship with another person then work on being patient. Work on fixing. Then and only then will you be able to have a lasting relationship with meaning and value.

I’ve had this happen to me several times. I date someone and something goes wrong. Every time, without fail, someone immediately tells me to walk away, forget about it, etc. For me, I’m usually not willing to do that. I’ll stay with it for a long time trying to work it out. Sometimes you know it’s never gonna happen and it is best to walk away. But often, with some work, you can get it right. Take for example the girl I’ve been pursuing for about a year now. Most people would have given up long ago. For the first 6 months she was dating someone else so I let my intentions be known and left it at that. Karma man, I don’t wanna try and bust up someone else’s relationship. So eventually they broke up. We went out once but then I got really busy at work and she got really busy with school. My friends said I should forget it. I stayed with it. She had family problems and had to leave town. My friends said forget it, I stuck with it. Now, she’s back and we still aren’t dating. She’s having a pretty rough time and just can’t do it. What am I doing? Sticking with it. If I meet someone else, fine but, I’m not giving up on her yet. Why? The answer is simple. She means a lot to me. I think she’s a very special person that I would very much like to keep in my life. It’s not all about me. If she can’t make time for me at the moment, that’s okay. Deal with the issues you need to deal with.

In the meantime, I’ll be patient. Patient with her and patient the things that have value to me.

Patience. It’s a very valuable thing.

Fuck, I want a rain storm already. Although I need a new porch.