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music |
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jawbox - for your own special sweetheart |
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The arbitrary hour slips by and I have lived one quarter of my life. 21. The day of alcohol. But I still don?t want any. I just played chess; I just rediscovered chess. The game fascinates me, the dynamics and the possibilities. To see. As my mind continues to yearn for such intelligent expanders, chess, poetry, religion, writing, music, the universe, I become more and more frustrated. I check the world?s king only to discover its secret weapon. But the counter attack never crushes me. I have not yet been mated. But the frustration and disappointment slips into my cells and takes root. What sprouts becomes darker and darker every year. No one sees the world like me. Most of my closest friends still hate themselves enough to see drunkenness as cool or fun. Most of my closest friends took life?s brutal blows as children and retreated into superficial shells. They shun their intelligence because it was the cause for the chasm between them and the rest of the world. Instead of grasping the ability, they threw it in the dark corner of their brain, hoping to keep it hidden. They don?t thirst for the way the world works. They look for the theme and not the matter. They listen for the feeling but cannot see the beauty. They take the path of enjoyment and hope it is also the path of something greater. I hope, for their sakes, that the paths are the same. I sincerely doubt it. But if they are right, why have I blazed my lonely sojourn? It is the silence after this question that sticks in my gut. I feel with my entire person that my views are pure and worthwhile. But I cannot and will not know. I find myself looking less and less for love in another person. For so long I banked my happiness on finding love in another. The short times on the cusp of this type of love have up to this point led to deep disappointment. I no longer attempt to search for a girl. I wake up with no burning passion. In the past, these empty mornings (or afternoons) would drive me to despair. But I find the urge for love passion diminishes. I do not know whether this comes from pessimism through past defeat or the constantly increasing comfort I find in being. Have I finally arrived at the moment of self acceptance? Can I function on my own? I feel that love will one day bludgeon me as I stroll around a corner. The rational side of me doubts this will ever happen. But the rest of me no longer panics in the face of my darkness. Perhaps I feel that if it never happens I will be ok. This apathy leads me to other discouragement. Every where I go, especially in academia and English, I find spiked obstacles. People in places of authority who tell me I am a poor student or writer. The dreaded grader. These people refuse to see anything new; they are hard workers who dislike anyone with something original or someone who does not have to work to grasp material. I have no brilliance. But I do not impede on those who do, as these obstacles enjoy. I forgive my father by the liter, daily. His tank fills slowly. Time has dulled his hate for himself and the world. In his eyes, I grow more intelligent by the day, as each year passes I become someone with whom he does not mind to converse, as he will do with my sister too, I am sure. Time also grants me perspective. His brilliance surely faced the mindsets of me in his younger days. He probably did not have my steadfast stubbornness. I will not give in. I will not squash my depression with drunkenness. I will not turn off my mind. I will not abate the attempts at making those around me who can see the universe come back to their intelligence. I have my inspiration in what my mother has endured. I have my inspiration in that my sister went through a lot of the same things and came out with the same values, I?m not totally crazy. I will never fail to see the reason for Slint?s beauty. I will always celebrate Kurt?s voice at the end of ?Where Did You Sleep Last Night? not only for the emotion it creates within me but also always for it. If I can succeed with one person in the rejection of the darkness, we can create our own society of effulgence where the hurt cannot touch us. Why do I continue even though none of this has supremely succeeded? As Kafka felt: THE HAPPINESS OF BEING WITH PEOPLE. I am enough within myself but I will let the universe down without showing it to someone else. I sleep through the daylight but the sun still shines. The shadow of frustration often forces me to sleep again. But someday I will find you, who bears the torch of the God-stamp, who sees in the stars the proof, who knows and accepts the beauty, who will write my poem, who will meld with me, who will make glow in me what only my mother already sees, who will fall through the waves of mutilation unscathed, who will allow me to see the smile from heaven, who will fulfill all in all is all we are. This is what I have learned thus far.
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