I'm quite certain I've spent all of all of my life searching for that place of sustainability. As though, somehow, there's this lifelong nirvana waiting somewhere that I've missed out on. Alas, the inevitable mirage. There are these minuscule moments in time of new or wonder or awe! The view from an airplane where you're above the sky and the sun screams through a sea of clouds. Or an intensely met goal that leads elation. The high octane bar scene with its high on life. An artist's high? Yep, tried it. Dream world? About as close as it gets.
But really, where is it?
In being heard? If you've ever spent time alone with the local bar flies, you soon find you're a walking, breathing, ear. EVERYONE wants to be heard. So you listen, ask questions, be a good hearted, empathic person; but when you open your mouth, you're immediately drowned out by the drunken slurs. Folks begging, pleading, dying to be important. Their 'best' stories of grandeur roll effortlessly from tongues, waiting to be congratulated for times long gone.
Everyone wants to be somebody, or be special and yet it's clear this isn't the place to do it.
Martyr mothers or great mothers, either way under appreciated. Amazing lover moves onto another. The successful husband on his way to the upper class; laid off. Actors, celebrities, artists, musicians, under privileged, unfed, unwanted. We're all the same.
And the halfway to a voice box alcoholic who can't read or write hanging over my shoulder as I write? He tells me to "put him into my book." His name is Uncle Buck and he's crazy. Or so he says...
Everyone wants to be remembered.
Cooking dinners, folding laundry, clean this, suds that, who cares? Until it isn't being done. Where's the purpose in a life that seems to hold some crazy potential for fulfillment? It's not sustainable, just moments passing in time. It's in the past, often far before noticed as a future.
I'm not exempt. I find very few that actually listen when I speak. I'm not exempt. I have something to say. I want to be heard. The problem is, I know what it is, I just don't know how to say it and fight the ever present fear of deaf ears.
The disappointment of another failure to achieve the unachievable gone by. Dreams wash away the remnants until morning's amnesia dawns and the pursuit begins again...
I've spent half a lifetime in those bars, but have never spent more than five minutes trying to make myself look special. Lots of South Minneapolis boys of my age group found themselves wrapped up in the "beautiful loser" ethos of The Replacements, Soul Asylum, Run Westy Run, et al... We were accustomed to, expecting to, have our brightest talents dismissed and our glaring shortcomings highlighted, by our parents, our teachers, our clergy. We were indeed "the sons of no one" and we kept our best things close to the vest. Under the right circumstances we'd show just a tiny bit of whatever small amount of art, or beauty, or kindness, or romance, or talent that we had in us, but then if it was recognized at all, we'd pour beer on it, or find some other way to reinforce our own crappy self-opinions. Acheiving the unacheivable has always been out of the scope of the beautiful loser. For us, our victories came in rejecting, or at least deflecting, whatever attention that our small talents may have brought to us.
ReplyDeleteYou paint a grim picture that's somehow beautiful at the same time. I definitely understand what you're getting at with 'pouring beer on it' or 'find some other way to reinforce our own crappy self-opinions.' I think a lot of folks suffer from these dilemmas and counteract themselves when things look up... I just never understand why we haven't ben able to change it yet...
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