There is only One Way to go from here.....
<Deep Breath>
It’s always daunting to make an attempt on recapping your experiences. I guess if you come across this blog you most likely have an idea of who I am and thus my background story. I like keep things concise so I’ll just stick to what happened tonight.
Not many people go to the movies by themselves…and when they do it’s never really a special experience. But tonight it was for me. After spending approximately 1.5 hours with my family at our yearly Christmas Eve gathering I came home and sat on the fat brown couch at the place I used to call home. Parents snoring, dog sitting politely in his cage, and it was 8:45PM. I thought about the other families that were still laughing up a storm, even called up a friend that was just wrapping up his evening on the East coast. I vented to him about how disconnected from my family I felt. Both of my brothers did not even show up to the Christmas party. My next closest relative – my cousin – was not up for hanging out. I texted a couple of people…of course all were busy with their families. My friend told me over the phone, “Home will never be home again. Smile.”
Many people have recommended I should watch “Up in the Air” starring George Clooney, directed by the Reitman brothers (Juno). For some reason people especially thought of me after watching this and thus it was a must-see for me. So I threw on my bear hat as my “plus one” and sped off to the movies to catch the last showing on Christmas Eve. I sat in the front-ish row so I could rest my feet against the bars. I watched George Clooney play the man who is always on the road (or plane) – who is disconnected from his family – who finds “love” and a reason to stop – but of course, thrown back into the air where he belongs – fated to be alone for the rest of his life. I watched this feeling a bit sad for this character, and realized that I might be in a similar situation. I have been moving every 6 months and have had a great time creating fleeting, transient relationships with various people. But at that moment I felt sad for myself. Talk about sob story central.
After the movie I was the first one to bolt from the theater. Once in the corridor I realized that nobody was around. Not a human in sight, not even the trash lady. I walked out into the mall. Same silence. Then I exited through the double glass
doors that led towards the parking lot and there was a young little hipster with his headphones on. I could hear techno music blasting. I asked him for a cigarette. He asked me, “What time is it?” And I said, “I don’t know.” The answer was apparently suffice and he let me have one of his Camel menthols. I then went exploring for a view to compliment my smoky treat and headed to the roof deck of the parking structure. When I reached the empty parking lot, my heart smiled as I saw the orange moon smile back at me. Underneath the moon, painted on the concrete floor were the words “ONE WAY” in bold, white letters. And a huge arrow pointing directly at the orange slice in the sky. I stood there for a really long time, feeling the crisp cold of the Californian night, in complete solitude. I’ve never felt so happy. I whipped out my iPhone to take a pic and saw the time – 12:09am. It was Christmas. What a great gift life has given me.
I thought about the quote from T.S. Eliot:
“We shall not cease from exploration, and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
I was happy because I knew that what I was doing was the right thing. For the last couple of years I have been feeling guilty for cutting ties and distancing myself from close family and friends. I always complained that home felt so different and that it had been taken away from me. But tie back to T.S. Eliot’s quote, discoveries can be made at home as well. And as I stood there in the lonely parking lot, I discovered that I was doing EXACTLY what I was supposed to be doing. There is only ONE WAY and it leads to the deep abyss where all explorers of the world should be headed. Tonight I will empty my backpack. And the first thing I pack will be the memory of tonight and my little discovery.
STAGNANT. NEED TO LEAVE THE COUNTRY. GET ME OUTTA HEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
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Filed under: Frontal Lobe, Garbage | Tags: boredom, cleveland, experience, fomo, Life
A long over-due post. Before embarking on an intense adventure through the Webiverse and having my raw, vulnerable, hungover-induced brain impacted by floating words – I shall write my own.
Finally, a lazy Sunday that I can just think the day away. I have been in Cleveland for 2 months now, obsessed with DOING and EXPERIENCING as much as I can in as little time as possible. Still living in a state of panicked urgency – a quality of life I oftentimes bring upon myself after recently being plugged into a new location. I thought this part of me would change after living in Cleveland, but despite my lowly expectations of an unexciting city, I’ve still been been able to take on any action that seems the least bit exciting and have a great deal of fun with it. Duel road trips to Chicago, Niagara Falls in Canada, fusing music with the experience, churning the corporate life, taking on a film class, kayaking in a dirty human river, fighting inebriation, cooking, exploring social media as a tool to connect, learning the intricacies of splitting an identical life with another, succumbing to impulsive materialistic indulgences, and acting upon random spontaneity most of all! I haven’t changed.
Every once in awhile, I will take a step back and observe this infuriatingly exciting life. Once learned, and repeatedly learned – my life is a series of forced actions driven by a maddening paranoia of time and long spells of boredom. BUT THE MOST INFURIATING PART IS: not all experience, is good experience lived wisely. What do I mean by this? I move and breathe as if I am this object in space traveling at a constant speed. And once another force strikes me and knocks me off the path I was currently traveling on, I shall naturally continue in that new direction – only to be knocked again by other forces into other directions. All this energy, all this life that I try to capture, squeeze, and condense into minutes – has no known purpose except to achieve the act of doing. What is so important that I see in this act, that drives this strange sense of maddening urgency? As my roommates likes to put it, I have an extreme case of FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out.
I have to willingly change my way of thinking. Perhaps I should stop conjuring magical thoughts and outlining outrageous goals that dissipate the moment I get distracted with the mundanity of a structured life. The fun game in victimizing myself as one whose sole purpose is to play against the grain. It’s like I’m trying to catch water with my hands. Within the last hour, I’ve dreamt of moving to Germany for a few years to study spoken German and sign language, whilst simultaneously studying Carl Jung’s Red Book in its native German language. I’ve thought maybe I could drop the whole business marketing thing, and stay in Cleveland to organically nurture my creativity and bring my visions alive through film. But I mean, I’m on the corporate fast track and I could potentially find a belayer to catapult me into piles of money – or at least die trying to fill out the gaps of a cookie-cutter life. Perhaps I will rot the day away with silly little thoughts and post them onto this blog and earn some money through Google ads. But, I love the idea of moving to Thailand to become a scuba diving master! Essentially, I want to mold and shape the earth as if it were playdough, making it into anything I wish it to be at any given moment in time. But the somber reality (and what perpetually drives my fear) is that the playdough I have in my palms today is nothing but liquid water, slipping through my fingers and evaporating into stale air.
I digress into the midwest, the fields of green await me but no. 35mph stretching roads sprinkled with traffic lights, most likely populated with GE bulbs. I’ve settled in, comforter has come to me in the mail to replace my cardboard corporate-bought blanket.
Shopping malls and chipotle make it slightly comfortable. Downtown Cleveland comprises of sticky divey bars with shiny fore-headed men. Picture dancing light bulbs with un-buttoned shirts and hair flowing out, dancing and intermingling with the glittering gold medallion necklaces, short skirts, brown leathery boobs – welcome to cougartown – my competition.
My sole purpose for the next 6 months is to make consumers like you care about light bulbs. CARE. carecarecarecare. I’ve joined the company softball team. I drink Leinenkugal and redbull & vodka. We make fun of ketchup stain who always wants two pizzaths! Rain, sun, cloud – who knows what pattern mixture of weather the day will bring?
Yes, interesting. Very, very interesting, Cleveland is.
