I am here to laugh at the odds and live my life so well that death will tremble to take me.

I don't want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride. All you do is get to breathe and copulate and finally die. I don't want to go with the smooth skin and the calm brow. I hope I end up a blithering idiot cursing the sun - hallucinating, screaming, giving obscene and inane lectures on street corners and public parks. People will walk by and say, "Look at that drooling idiot. What a basket case." I will turn and say to them, "It is you who are the basket case. For every moment you hated your job, cursed your wife and sold yourself to a dream that you didn't even conceive. For the times your soul screamed yes and you said no. For all of that. For your self-torture, I see the glowing eyes of the sun! The air talks to me! I am at all times!" And maybe, the passers by will drop a coin into my cup.

As the title says, I am here to laugh at the odds and live my life so well that death will tremble to take me. 

Provocation Catalyst II

As I re-read On the Road I am reminded of why it is my soul mate in book form. I feel as time goes on we get more and more disillusioned and more and more afraid to truly seize the day. Where is the life lost in living? Where does that once wild and rebellious dreamer go? I think at times we all need to visit our inner Dean Moriarty and get in touch with that part of us that was once "tremendously excited with life" and race around this mad, mad world testing our limits. 

It seems to me the beat generation had one ideology...and that was life. The fear of death subconsciously follows us all. The greatest fear being that death will come too soon, before we have had the time to do what we've always wanted to do. Heck, isn't it always too soon? The beat generation acknowledged this aversion and did all in their power to experience as much livelihood as they could while they were still alive. They were wise enough to see through materialism. It's no wonder Kerouac presents the beat generation as a "holy" generation. It was a generation liberated by the peril of pretension, materialism and useless dogmas. Instead, they were in constant search for some greater truth that life would teach them.

What truly inspires me is how Kerouac expresses the refusal to miss out on life and a determination to get the most out of the now. I was in awe when I first picked up this book and continue to be in awe of it years upon years later. We only get one life...don't sit on the sidelines...go out and live. Or as another one of my favorite authors Henry David Thoreau  said, "Live deliberately." 

No Apologies

My fatal handicap is nothing has ever come easy for me. It could be the most minuscule, effortless task for everyone, their Mom, Grandma and second cousins. But for me, oh no. This task will take hours upon hours of grueling, laborious effort. Clawing, struggling, striving, bleeding, sweating, crying and barely getting there. Tediously I will review, analyze, reflect while screaming at myself and eventually...I get it.

In example, I have a vast, vast knowledge of philosophy and a decent vocabulary. Digesting this information is seemingly effortless for most. But me? Not a snowball's chance in hell. I had to go to war with knowledge. Highlight, underline, read, re-read, reevaluate and inevitably go insane.

Sometimes I curse at this flaw but at the end of the day it has made me both stronger and wiser. I appreciate all that I have gained because I had to work my ass off to get there and cope with the embarrassment of it being easy for everyone around me and I'm sitting there damn near tearing my hair out. Perhaps I'll never look smooth or suave. I don't think it's in my DNA. I feel my life is filled with moments that mimic the movie Bridget Jones's Diary (pop culture reference, get off my rhetorical nuts!)  I can never be the one to show up on the first day and sync up with everyone else. Instead I fall down a firepole and my entire ass is shown to all of Britain. There are many elements of ridiculous about me but it's all in my charm. ;)

Ramblings

I feel this wave of maturity wash over me, acceptance. I feel whole, alive again. Guarded still, perhaps always guarded and perhaps it is these instances that keep me guarded. I'll take it as a blessing and stomp down the road, taking no prisoners. I know the road holds something amazing, something beyond my wildest dreams. So I am a sucker like Sisyphus and I will continue rolling my rock up that mountain called life. It's a never ending cycle of ups and downs. Would we really want it any other way? Our pain is personal, molds us, defines us and grants us this beautiful gift...perspective. The optimist in me will never die. This optimist is insane, punches adversity in the face and keeps going. I feel that I can do anything as long as I stay in the fight. If being a dreamer makes me foolish....so be it. I'd rather be a fool than aloof and apathetic.

Not-So-Shakespearian

You were a thing of beauty I had long known. Stood there tenacious, you didn't need anyone, you were like me. I was bewitched, magnetized by your presence. I sometimes wonder why I was not the one person who could capture your heart, make you come alive, make you see the long ignored burning embers that you held deep within. As I look past the artificial grandeur I see your despondency, all of the wounds covered up with a bandage of fortitude. A counterfeit passion that you have fooled yourself into believing.  I realize that I was trying to make you something you were not. I saw the you I wanted to see as opposed to the you in front of me. Lost in the false bravado. I do not blame you, I blame myself. Perhaps when I pull back the curtain of pessimism there's this annoying optimist who made you the everything I had been searching for, made me senseless, made me delusional.

You will never know any of this. There are millions of you out there. You're all the same. ...and I am always drawn to you. Sometimes I get angry at the road, sometimes I yell at it, curse it... Why must I ride alone? Where is that wild soul to ride beside me? Then I meet you and am reminded why I ride alone...it's better that way.

Homecoming

Someday, I would like to go home. The exact location of this place, I don't know, but someday I would like to go. There would be a pleasing feeling of familiarity and a sense of welcome in everything I saw. People would greet me warmly. They would remind me of the length of my absence and the thousands of miles I had travelled in those restless years, but mostly, they would tell me that I had been missed, and that things were better now I had returned. Autumn would come to this place of welcome, this place I would know to be home. Autumn would come and the air would grow cool, dry and magic, as it does that time of the year. At night, I would walk the streets but not feel lonely, for these are the streets of my home town. These are the streets that I had thought about while far away, and now I was back, and all was as it should be. The trees and the falling leaves would welcome me. I would look up at the moon, and remember seeing it in countries all over the world as I had restlessly journeyed for decades, never remembering it looking the same as when viewed from my hometown.

Provocation Catalyst

If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.

Unrequited: The Antithesis of a Love Story

"You're a lover, I'm a runner. ...Got a gypsy soul to blame and I was born for leaving." -  Zac Brown Band

I can jump out of a plane, jump off a bridge, scale a mountain, ride a bull, do just about anything that most people would deem insane with little or no fear. But I do have one fear...It ties my gut in knots and makes me want to run for the hills. The worst four letter word of them all, love.

I'm neither jaded nor optimistic when it comes to the topic. I feel most comfortable when I'm alone.Travel is my love. Travel is safe. The road isn't going to wake up one day and say, "Thanks for the past 22 years...but I don't like you all that much anymore." I feel a need to be in constant motion...always a new venture on the horizon. I looked into a copy of one of my old books and came across a mini rant about the road and how it takes a person over. Appears old habits die hard. Funny...I speak of living a life with passion, looking fear in the eye, never letting that fire die. However, when it comes to love I have become what I loathe the most...a nihilist. It'll take one hell of a person to change my ways, to convince me otherwise. Flawed, I know. But it works for me. Honestly, with the people I've come across they leave me more and more indifferent. So much bullshit, so little time. Injecting integrity into the dating world seems far-fetched.

Zen and the Art of The Road

There are books out there that are far from just books, their quotations are not just mere quotations...they are life....pure and raw. To me those books were On The Road and Zen and the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance.

I remember when I first read On The Road. I found myself nodding, over underlining and wanting to scream with alleviation. I consumed On The Road as if I were starved. I felt like it was speaking to me and me alone, it flowed in my blood, inspired me...

My copy of Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was put through the same torture my copy of On The Road was. This was a novel of traveling, analyzing human existence and pure truths (derived from Greek philosophy). Pirsig brought about a perception of the world embracing both the rational and the romantic. He truly expresses how being rational and "living in the moment" can coexist. A dash of reason to the romanticist philosophy! ;) I felt as if I were personally conversing with him. I soon dubbed him the Kerouac of our generation.

It makes me wonder....what novels have had that pure, all-consuming effect on others?