PART 55

Morning. Morning. Morning.

Morning is waking up to the thought of the amount of days you have left in your life. The pressure to rise and the magnificent reluctance to move a muscle. Because when you move it becomes real and when it’s real you’re doomed. Then coffee. Liquid force that rams brain matter through a tube to explode all over the windshield of the future. Caffeine pouring through my third eye and everything that can be taken and destroyed and rebuilt… is now all mine. Everything is an ivory stepping stone and a honey flavored breeze that aids me into the version of the universe I demand.

In my dream last night, I met Leonard Cohen. He was sick and wanted to drive in the rain. So, I found my father’s old truck (from my childhood) and we drove and drove and drove. The rush of water covering our view and we didn’t use the wipers. Just lost and strangely safe in a bubble of nostalgia. Me turning into the darkness with no consequences. And in the storm he said to me:

“You have to fight to find the courage to reach past the things you think you want… to be able to discover something that changes you.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my own brain giving me shit. I just turned 32 and I think the older you get you keep waiting on that moment you’ve expected to be able to put things in order. To grow up and have answers and know yourself enough to know yourself for the rest of your life. But it never really seems to come. You wake up day after day in the haze of existence and work your way through doubt and anxiety to try to be someone that other people care about. And within that, try to find the gumption and clarity to do something that  lasts and/or at lest makes you happy while you’re still breathing. Because what are the things we want? What possibly could change us?

I think my 30’s have really started off as a man just beginning to tear himself away from the web of youth and find himself with a well of desire to accomplish something. Something that I can sink my entire body into and fall out the other side soaked in the radiant shine of achievement. Glimmering bright and acidic in the ray of the future before me. Birthed through the ruby canals of self importance and cradled in the hands of a mother made of fulfillment. But that’s so many of us around this age. The generation of… “Fuck, we’re not going to live forever?” So, we quickly shed the remaining planks of childhood from our walls and begin building new boulders to pile onto our crooked backs. Imposed pressure to turn our spines towards the ground in a prostrate humbled manner to the great god of time.

Bless us, oh sovereign clock. Give us the strength to reach past the things we thing we want. As your hands turn so viciously. Allow us to be able to discover something that changes us.

And in the end, I think we have to stand and stab the clock in it’s heart and look it in the eyes as it turns its last hand. Because eventually you have to take the boulders that held you down and taught you something and you have to destroy those as well.  Eat them whole and stand like a newly born god. You have to create the thing that will give you worth and make that radiant shine drip from your chin.

Because, eventually, we are all the man in the desert demanding a storm to try and come and knock us down. And we’re done waiting for it. So we not only make the demands… we create the dunes of sand as well. We build the swell of the approaching storm. It is all ours and it’s branded on our hearts. Because the second someone builds the storm for you is the second you’re not pursuing the true thing that is desired. That courage to reach past the thing you want. To close your eyes with confidence and let the storm tear your skin until the bones of your hand push through and grasp that golden object of perfection that is unspeakable to man. The unifying atom that ties galaxies to our beating hearts. The whistle in the wind that leads us through doorways unseen to the valley of all that we didn’t know we desired. The password to the back door of the black hole churning matter like melting butter across the lips that whisper the mantra of all mankind…

Discover something that changes you. Discover something that changes you. Discover something that changes you.