Existential Ick

Retail therapy, frequent naps, and a descending meniscus of Irish whiskey–whatever works, but isn't. I find myself falling into a familiar state of stupor and mild desperation.

Having just moved back to New Mexico from New York City, I find myself confronted with all the same tedious problems. I am like a pendulum reaching it's apogee, the potential energy rising as the kinetic ebbs and yet it does not give me a sense of hope.

To borrow poorly from Schopenhauer, what I seek is der Wille zum Leben, 'The will to life.' But in this case it's not the preternatural drive to have sex and reproduce, but rather a state of being inspired, curious and manifesting those traits as actions and results. But when the first two exist without the accompanying act of realization you get a seriously plugged mental drain. The Irish whiskey is a poor approximation for Drano, and it is only a temporary salve. And like so many other products whose design included its own obsolescence, the results are usually temporary and end up in more resilient stoppages.

You can take the boy out of the small town, but you can't take the small town out of the boy.

It's sad but true. As hard as I've tried, as far afield as I have traveled, as many tastes, sights and sounds I have tried to force-feed my person, I still feel stranded and perplexed–infinitely capable and yet intractably mute. I could, I would, I should: Learn French. Study meditation. Eat well. Hell, just getting out of the house would be an exodus of biblical proportions. [Again, I don't know if I am extolling my shortcomings in order to see them exposed or for the sake of engendering readers. I realize that this will be a constant dilemma and perhaps the clue to it all]

My lack of concentration is frightening, I get up and walk to the kitchen and in transit forget my original purpose. I came here to focus and simplify and yet my brain seems to be doing quite the opposite. I'm hoping it's simply a matter of unwinding tangled thread that has been entangling slowly over long periods of distraction–the proverbial eggs breaking above the omelet pan as I ready myself for some sort of Forrest Gump-like epiphany.

My best friend once touched on this subject after having read a particularly gloomy fantasy book when we were kids. The term that was used was, 'impotent rage.' That phrase has stuck with the two of us ever since. It seems to sum up how we felt growing up in such a small town and feeling like outsiders (me more than him) and not having the wherewithal to do anything about it. We endured and acquiesced, sneering from the fringes (again me sneering more than him) as we awaited our turn at bat.

We expected the college years to be much more fulfilling and in many ways they were. My friend definitely flourished and experimented with who he wanted to be, while I was still trying to be someone 'else.' So many expectations became shackles to experience and enjoyment and even college became like a prison.

Egads! This entry is all over the place (as above so below) and will, upon later reading, surely disappoint me in my attempts at out-of-the-blocks erudition. Fuck it. I do apologize to you, my imaginary reader, and if I still have your attention after this particular purge I worry about your sanity as well.

So here I am in a vast desert, frozen and beautiful, sitting around a small fire whose light is slowly fading. It's deafeningly quiet and my senses are dampened by the cold. My perception of place shrinks like booby-trapped walls set for unsuspecting looters, as I search in my bag of tricks for something to stunt the imminent existential squash.

Take it away Chuck...

Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning him-self to let it eat him away.