Friday, December 26, 2008

Merry Xmas

Tis the season of struggle, suicide, religious fanaticism, and eggnog and yet this is my favorite time of the year. Not sure what that says about me nor my addiction to egg based beverages. It’s true I think about killing myself pretty much at this point every year which from what I’ve been told in leading men’s magazines is quite the norm. Thankfully every year my New Year’s resolution is to live another year, and make a new resolution, and being this close to my yearly goal it would be ashamed to cheat myself of that small moral victory. After all when we break our resolutions it’s only ourselves that get hurt.

December is a weird month for me and so many struggling Americans. The one day, December 25th, that makes us so panicked as a cultured is the day Jesus Christ and Jimmy Buffett were both born. Oddly both guys seem like swell laid back souls. Also a good day for music lovers everywhere I guess. Society has bamboozled and corrupted the most holiest of days forcing us to live up to the Norman Rockwell painting we all accept of Santa Clus, the baby Jesus, and an ice cold coca-cola.

Ice sheets cakes the world outside of my window leaving it both cold and slick like politicians and humanity as a whole struggling not to slip up and look like a fool falling in the process. Thankful I have the amber current of hard alcohol warming my blood allowing me to get lost in translation and warm up in the process.

My mother was born one week before both Jimmy Buffett and Jesus Christ. My fondest memories of my childhood, and really my life as a whole are more or less condensed into December. The joy of breaking away from the system and it’s education of my mind in favor of frivolous good times between me, my mom, and the three cats. My mother always made Christmas special for me as she buried her pain in my pleasure.

My mother was raped in December sometime in her twenties. I only know bits and pieces of the story as it never was discussed over our lean cuisine dinner cartons. The hell of the jagged edges where she stored those memories eventually drove her crazy, but during most of my childhood she hung on to the dream of normalcy. My mother was also a daddy’s girl, and he stepped on a rainbow in December magnifying the pain of the month even more. So to me it was always this joyous escape from my strange childhood, and I loved spending it with my mother, having no knowledge of the cross she carried.

I can only imagine the sheer and utter throbbing December was to her. Like walking barefoot across a broken set of Christmas lights with the shards of glass slicing and embedding themselves into her feet. She gave up alcohol and drugs when I was born leaving her with very little escape to kill the pain. Nobody should have to deal with anger and rage until it manifests and ages like a fine wine into pure potent pain. She did for as long as she could.

Sometimes the pain isn’t worth the living, and she came to this realization as she stood in front of a speeding train catching the first ride to heaven leaving this world still clutching to her oversized purse as the steel and speed tore her torso from her limbs. Not until her death almost a decade ago did I consider stepping on my own rainbow. Well now every year when I seek that love and togetherness I miss from my childhood with my mother, the blackness enters and the thoughts of sugar plums, extension cords, and hand guns dangle through my head like a bullet acting as an off switch on the emotional machines that we are.

I understand suicide and I respect those who choose to check out instead of waiting for the hotel clerk to knock on your door and ask you kindly to leave. The normal world paints suicide as a coward’s way out, or to the most basic of minds they see it as simply unfathomable. But ask yourself could you ever do it? I can’t say that I can I don’t have the courage to face the unknown and fear is the unknown personified. But if all the joy is gone in your life and this is really as good as it gets why carry on?

If you’ve experienced life’s full emotional roller coaster from the most intense pain to the most joyous pleasure and there is nothing else you want to feel, touch, taste, or fuck then why not want out? We have become such creatures of cycle that our lives are very predictable. In most cases we know what day in and day out is going to bring us, and most fellow travelers find comfort in that satiability. But what about those who don’t find that same comfort or those that find no pleasure in any aspect of their existence. Why not go on a lunch date with God, find out who shot JFK, and discover what the afterlife is all about. Of course the afterlife could be all hype and suck worse than life. Wouldn’t that be a bummer?

Me, I’m too God damn carious to leave here as I always want to know what happens next. Whoever said curiosity killed the cat should jump off a bridge because it’s the very thing that has saved this cat from jumping off of many bridges. No matter how bad things get I want to know what happens next regardless of how silly of meaningless. No matter what pleasure I’m living on, no matter if its sex, drugs, or Wok and Roll take out I want to experaince it. I want to see the God damn Chicago Bears win a Super Bowl without making a rap song. I want to see American Idol get canceled. I want to taste the next big popular fried delight. I want to see if Obama is the Messiah or another false prophet of lies. There simply is just too much to see in front of me regardless if it never seems to be as worthy as the hype. I despise the structure and the daily knowing of what’s next but the world does change just enough to give me something to hope for.

I feel like I’m living in one of those stupid books you get as a kid where you pick make decisions and it gives you the page number of what happens next. The author of this book is an asshole and my choices have been less then stellar but I’m enjoying the adventure none the less. Also with those books there is no way do you shut it until you find out your faith by enjoying the story and the ride and reading what happens next.

Hating my life, hating my actions, and generally hating myself (you would too if you met me I’m a real asshole) still brings about adventures. Sometimes mundane, but in that normalcy I’ve also come to the conclusion that its guys like me who make the world more adventurous for the rest, and I’m ok with that. I’m ok being weird and seeking the insane in the strongest solitude of sanity. I’m ok marching to the beat of the midget beating off on some weird porn site on the weird wide web. So bring on 2009 and allow me to be your humble reporter of the world around us.

More to come…

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