So yeah i havent written here in a while. again. i guess that if its not required for school then Im not much of a...writer? Hmmm. I never really thought about it before but thats probably exactly it. I mean, when I was in high school and college I wrote a shitload. That was always what I was best at. Truth is, I really dont like to write, I like to think.
Thinking is natural and beautiful. Ideas are what makes us who we are. You can listen to a person talk for days on end about their lives, their friends, their families, their jobs, yet never really know that person until you sit down and have a frank discussion about what they really believe in. What moves them. What shakes them down to their very core.....perhaps then the solution to my problem is simple:
Dont write, just think out loud. And be loud about it.
So then thats what I'll do from here on out. No one reads this, save maybe my buddy back in DC or my lady, but they probably dont even look at it anymore cause its been so long. So....yeah. Time to do some thinking :). (man that smiley face looks gay when its not on IM.)
Perhaps We'd Better Start From the Beginning....
In september of the year of our lord 2007 I and some of my bros moved from Fairfax, VA to San Diego, CA. We left every person we knew and loved in VA, and packed all of our wordly possessions into a 17' UHaul and drove across the country into the monolithic unknown that is our Divided States of America. John, who is one of my companions, and I had only visited San Diego once and for only a week back in March. We had no friends already there, but I had some family in San Diego that I barely knew so it seemed like some kind of connection. John and I had fallen in love with this place, instantly for me, on the first day. But I digress...
We packed everything up, drove across the south and southwest, and ended up on the complete opposite side of the country in a matter of 4 days. (Those four days will have to be explained later)
The year leading up to this drastic move was a mess for me mentally and emotionally. I guess thats the only way to describe it. It was November of 2006 and I was going through some kind of depression that was being caused by my stress from school and working a shitload, as well as my uncertainty about where the fuck I was going to go and what I was going to do in June when I graduated. I even went so stupidly far as to break up with my girlfriend because I didnt know where I was going and I didnt want to fuck up her life. Yeah, I know, sooooo melodramatic. Give me a fucking break I was stressed out and abusing the shit out of some booze so I wasnt thinking so clearly. Not only that but the darkness of my situation had me leaning again towards the darker side of spirituality (as I seem to do every few years), but only because I needed to explore other ways of thinking and seeing the world. It all goes back to my not knowing what the fuck to do with my life: I knew I didnt want to live like everyone else in DC/VA where they just get some fucking job and wake up and the buttcrack of dawn to sit in traffic and hate themselves and the lives that stealthily bound them like vines. I needed something different. Something better. Something cathartic. I needed release from what I saw as a world that wants to make you a slave to its old ways. So I freaked. But then there was that night that would change my life and how I saw life's possibilities forever.
It was my other Cali companion Corey's graduation party down in ChesaPAKE VA. Good times all night and for everybody (I always liked those chesapeake kids). I guess it was probably 3 or so in the morning when John and I got to talking about California.
John had been discussing this with a couple other buddies of ours, Justin and Tran, for a little while, maybe even a year or more, who knows. Regardless, they had been throwing around the idea, and somehow I got wind of it. I never once thought to myself, "hmm, Im gonna fucking move to California when I graduate," when I was growing up. I liked Cali, but I never really thought about actually moving there. But they had been talking about it, so I asked John about it. I dont remember every word of the conversation, but by the end of it I was seriously entertaining the idea of checking out the possibilities. just entertaining. But I was intrigued. Was this the excitement and adventure I had craved since I was old enough to imagine far away lands? Wow, sounds pretty gay when I type it, but its true.
But that was it; just a conversation. nothing more, nothing less. Until a night just a few weeks later, in an inebriated state and having some laughs, John and I brought it up again. But for some reason this time we started thinking about how we could orchestrate a visit, and came up with a ragtag plan that seemed do-able. Stay in hostels, rent a cheap ass car, find a bunch of places before hand that we could rent, and get smashed-abusingthelocals-drunk every night youre there. Yup. So we bought our plane ticket the next day and booked our car.....and accomplished our goal.
That trip was fucking nuts. Just three weeks after we bought the tickets we were in the air on our way to the Whales Vagina, which, by the way, we had randomly decided upon at some point. No real rhyme or reason, it just felt right. I dont really feel like going into every detail about that trip except to say tha....actually fuck it, I will
So the whole way there John is trying to pass out and Im glued to the window like a fucking child, just staring at every inch of ground we covered for five and a half hours. I was just in amazement at the way the land morphed from green to brown to red to blue, from trees to fields to deserts to ocean. The sky was cloudless and blue fading into azure blackness. Thoughts of friends and family cluttered my mind while a seed of rebellion grew in the back of my mind. not rebellion against them, but the rebellion against my own life and the way I was living it.
When we came out of the mountainous region surrounding San Diego I could see the city strecthing below me with its palm trees as tall as redwoods above its giant subburbs rolling into its small but lively heart. The airport is seriously so close to the city that when you fly in you are buzzing skyscrapers and freeways. Even just taxiing on the tarmac it felt warm and breezy compared to the bitterly cold snow of the metro are in winter. Once we stepped out into the sunlight to get to our cab I was overcome by a shock Id never felt before. (As I said before I have family here and a few miles north that I had visited when I was younger, as well as having lived in Monterey for about a year when I was much younger.) It felt like some veeeeery strange deja vu mixed with euphoria, almost like some crazy mushrooms when they first start kicking in. yah. well anyway, i dont think i'll capitilize for a little while. AND THATS ALL IM GONNA SAY ABOUT THAT FOR NOW MORE LATER.
So where was I? Ahhhhh yes. When I got back from my expedition hunting giant vaginas of female sperm whales I was pretty damn positive that I needed to get back there as soon as possible. Problem was I didnt have much money and hadnt been saving any cause I never saw this crazy shit coming. So I decided to pick up shifts as much as possible at work while still working harder in my final semester of school than at any other point in my career as a student. Not fun. and neither is writing about the shit that came next.
NEXT TIME ON SILENCEINDUCEDVIOLENCE: PHANTASMAGORIC EUPHORIA Pt. II!!!!!!!!!!!!!
