Home On the Range
The fictional account of Jayne's world.
Looking out beyond the houses in the neighborhood, I saw nothing. the darkness was thicker here than back home. The air was thinner, but the darkness was thicker. I don't know why it mattered. I wanted to be able to see. I had hoped that being out here, away from the megalopolis mean that I could see more sky, learn to count the stars, settle into a simpler, more peaceful life. That has not been the case. My life has been enveloped by middle-class living: furniture, credit cards, national chain grocery stores and retailers, and lots of driving to and fro. This life, out here, it doesn't feel any simpler than what I knew before. It doesn't feel any more based in small joys than life in the megalopolis. I had hoped to find something peaceful and approachable. It was not found.
I have failed to make a real life. I have failed to become a real person. What does that even mean? It means whatever I want it to mean so I can be right. It's too late for me to become a real person. No matter what I put together at this point, no matter what it looks like, it will never be what it was supposed to be. It will never be as good as what others have brought about. I am left a lone man in the wilderness. If I were real, I would have a real relationship. I would have real children. I would have a real job, a real profession. For whatever gifts I started out with, I have wasted them, or, at the least, they have been wasted on me. What do I have to show for all of these things? A very real nothing. And what do I propose to do about it? Keep trying I guess. Keep trying, but with a little less hope I suppose. I don't know.
The call to action at this point must include a call to change behaviors to stick to the task at hand, to hold out for longer than I have held out in the past, to not get hung up on having all of the answers. The funny thing is--funny at least in the context of this call to action--this call to action has always been my response in this situation, and, no matter how many times I dig in and try to go forward, I never move into a more real position than I was before. I never can say that I am really farther, or more accomplished than before. The only substantive change that occurs is that I grow older. I grow older and I lose more hair. I lose more hair and I lose a little more of my vitality. Some of my vitality and some of my hope. It is hard to be the rock, to share great hope with others when your life slowly slips away without any of the grand moments that we herald as that which brings meaning to life. In the wake of a life without such markers, I have come up with boatload after boatload of statements and rhetorical positions about the value of life outside of conventional, normative expectations. And, yet, I fall short when I go to sweet talk myself. I can't quite swallow my own story. Perhaps that is why the story is so powerful to others: I have been trying for a great while to convince the greatest cynic I know, myself.
What do you do? What can you say? Is there any hope to escape this mess, to move beyond clichéd despair and loathing? Escaping is a tactic I have often tried when dealing with such emotions. Some people say I run away. I don't think of it so much as running away as running around like a chicken with my head cut off just to feel something. What is a guy supposed to do? And the thing is now, even if by some miracle I was capable of existing outside of these patterns that have so infected my mind and behavior, I am deplorably too late to the game. I understand very well the futility with which my older peers see their life. How can I argue? I mean, really, I've only messed up life up to this point; it's unlikely that I will be able to get much better than the better I've already gotten. I suppose the key would be to be grateful for that little improvement, hoping to making another small improvement when next I take a turn on this earth, perhaps as a grasshopper or wombat.
I just wish that there was some way to move beyond these weaknesses. I know, though, that I want too much. I look for more than what I should. I should practice gratitude. I am just antsy, antsy for not having moved at all in so long, antsy for having accomplished so little, for knowing so little. What a dream it would be to have some idea of how to separate all of my crazy thoughts, the flood of desires, hopes, concepts, analyses that overwhelm my brain on a second by second basis. It is worse as of late: I constantly catch myself with my jaw half-clenched. I am wasting away, and it doesn't even really matter. I just wish I had some idea of what direction to move. I wish there was some way to know that I wasn't just building another prison of misery. I just wish I didn't have to exist in a space of continual self-inflicted mental anguish. It seems like a rather immature practice to perpetuate, and yet, I am caught in this very trap. If only. If only.
Looking out beyond the houses in the neighborhood, I saw nothing. the darkness was thicker here than back home. The air was thinner, but the darkness was thicker. I don't know why it mattered. I wanted to be able to see. I had hoped that being out here, away from the megalopolis mean that I could see more sky, learn to count the stars, settle into a simpler, more peaceful life. That has not been the case. My life has been enveloped by middle-class living: furniture, credit cards, national chain grocery stores and retailers, and lots of driving to and fro. This life, out here, it doesn't feel any simpler than what I knew before. It doesn't feel any more based in small joys than life in the megalopolis. I had hoped to find something peaceful and approachable. It was not found.
I have failed to make a real life. I have failed to become a real person. What does that even mean? It means whatever I want it to mean so I can be right. It's too late for me to become a real person. No matter what I put together at this point, no matter what it looks like, it will never be what it was supposed to be. It will never be as good as what others have brought about. I am left a lone man in the wilderness. If I were real, I would have a real relationship. I would have real children. I would have a real job, a real profession. For whatever gifts I started out with, I have wasted them, or, at the least, they have been wasted on me. What do I have to show for all of these things? A very real nothing. And what do I propose to do about it? Keep trying I guess. Keep trying, but with a little less hope I suppose. I don't know.
The call to action at this point must include a call to change behaviors to stick to the task at hand, to hold out for longer than I have held out in the past, to not get hung up on having all of the answers. The funny thing is--funny at least in the context of this call to action--this call to action has always been my response in this situation, and, no matter how many times I dig in and try to go forward, I never move into a more real position than I was before. I never can say that I am really farther, or more accomplished than before. The only substantive change that occurs is that I grow older. I grow older and I lose more hair. I lose more hair and I lose a little more of my vitality. Some of my vitality and some of my hope. It is hard to be the rock, to share great hope with others when your life slowly slips away without any of the grand moments that we herald as that which brings meaning to life. In the wake of a life without such markers, I have come up with boatload after boatload of statements and rhetorical positions about the value of life outside of conventional, normative expectations. And, yet, I fall short when I go to sweet talk myself. I can't quite swallow my own story. Perhaps that is why the story is so powerful to others: I have been trying for a great while to convince the greatest cynic I know, myself.
What do you do? What can you say? Is there any hope to escape this mess, to move beyond clichéd despair and loathing? Escaping is a tactic I have often tried when dealing with such emotions. Some people say I run away. I don't think of it so much as running away as running around like a chicken with my head cut off just to feel something. What is a guy supposed to do? And the thing is now, even if by some miracle I was capable of existing outside of these patterns that have so infected my mind and behavior, I am deplorably too late to the game. I understand very well the futility with which my older peers see their life. How can I argue? I mean, really, I've only messed up life up to this point; it's unlikely that I will be able to get much better than the better I've already gotten. I suppose the key would be to be grateful for that little improvement, hoping to making another small improvement when next I take a turn on this earth, perhaps as a grasshopper or wombat.
I just wish that there was some way to move beyond these weaknesses. I know, though, that I want too much. I look for more than what I should. I should practice gratitude. I am just antsy, antsy for not having moved at all in so long, antsy for having accomplished so little, for knowing so little. What a dream it would be to have some idea of how to separate all of my crazy thoughts, the flood of desires, hopes, concepts, analyses that overwhelm my brain on a second by second basis. It is worse as of late: I constantly catch myself with my jaw half-clenched. I am wasting away, and it doesn't even really matter. I just wish I had some idea of what direction to move. I wish there was some way to know that I wasn't just building another prison of misery. I just wish I didn't have to exist in a space of continual self-inflicted mental anguish. It seems like a rather immature practice to perpetuate, and yet, I am caught in this very trap. If only. If only.
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