4:49am, What Were You Dreaming About?

As for me, I was wide awake at this moment, obviously.

On these late nights I like to come into this dinky little coffee shop and read what I've written. Studying myself, if you will. I guess I have noticed that more recently I have been taking the easy way out in writing more poetry and not enough good hearty wordmeal for you to gobble up. We'll see if I can't bring on back home for ya this time...

So it's officially Friday; the day before I leave this place for good. Had my last night at the strip club tonight. Not a bad night, but not a grand out either. The usual band of miscrients; twelve girls and two songs for the bottom half of the eve, then a little late, late dinner with the finest lady in St. Cloud; the manager of the club. We talked about the usual stuff. People who've been arrested at the club for being idiots, places we've been and jobs we've done, youth, funny names like Reuben and Chivas, (yes, there was actually some poor motherfucker she knew who's parents named him Chivas) and the likes. I thoroughly enjoy our conversations.

But enough of that banter; lets get on to more of my usual flavor of ridiculous word spasms...

Leaving: it's a hard thing to do. Here I am, all sentimental, when I thought I'd be good and dry of that sort of stuff. When you attach yourself to a new environment, completely fresh and unknown, you tend to draw your respective energies towards more worthy causes, thus extracting from life the exact stuff that should always be extracted. It is either that or you find yourself hiding behind falsified contrived experiences in order to preserve safety and prevent change. Now, I'm not a very brave boy, but I am always and forever drawn to the unknown and the risky and the harder, lesser traveled paths. Call it what you will, but it has done nothing but good for my growth as an individual and a human being since I began such the trend. Lesson One: Do Not Suffer By Comparison. If you sit there and think you are doing something that feels out of the ordinary and risky to you then you are thinking correctly, but if you in turn think of someone with a similar experience who is further ahead than you, alls you are doing is talking down your experience and thus ruining it. Perhaps that could have been stated more clearly, but in light of the day from which I have just come, I need a break. I guess for me, the evidence is in the way I think, which is something that you really cannot comprehend to the best that you would need. I mean, how could I EVER comprehend the way YOU think? It is impossible. You might pick out patterns. You might pick out habits and likes and dislikes, but nothing of the real connection. I don't know how it is for others but it feels like my mind is working far too fast for me sometimes. I'm left with only fractions and bits and pieces and I put them all together mut it never comes out right. That's why I'm such a preacher of feelings. A feeling is so goddamn hard to put into words enough to justify it, but you KNOW what you are feeling, and know exactly how to react, and almost entirely what it means. Isn't that funny? Dammit, sometimes this all feels ill-worth my time and in vain when I know exactly what it is I want to say and cannot say it. I once had an hour and a half rhetorical conversation with a friend about thinkers and doers. Who came first, who was more important/necessary, who moreso aids the other, etc. A balance is the most permeable solution, which is what we concluded. I want to say I have somewhat have that balance but yet I am unsure. I, by comparison to my peers have done a great many things that are contrary to normal experience for my age and upbringing. Yet, I have many a time hesitated from still greater or more foreign opportunities presented to me because my brain gets in the way of just DOING. Still, here I am, 700 miles away, first time away from home, not hiding behind a school or a group or in the name of my country with M16 in hand and blood on my shoulders. It was by my own means, with no promise of solidarity or success, and though the initial cause has been defeated, it was one of my greatest successes yet. Now that, my friends, is something of an example. Life itself is not hard. What is so hard for people, I think, is accepting life itself and that they are actively apart in it. I mean, really, here you are born, and raised and educated to function on a basic level with all your other earthly dwellers, and then you're free to roam wherever you want to. Most people still choose to just weigh themselves down with all the fucking commitments and debt, negating their own freedom and calling it the very thing of which they are losing in doing so. I don't mean to pass judgement on choices or anything. I mean if you a REALLY happy being a fucking accountant than far be it for me to intrude upon your happiness. For me thats just not very appealing. I would rather go through life kicking my values and opinions in everyones faces and turn upside down every establishment in my way in the name of real objectivity and questioning. Or I guess I could just go to a meager job everyday, put in my eight hours, then sit on the fucking couch and watch television until my eyes were sore from artificial light, telling me its time to go to bed on my craft-o-matic adjustible mattress that I ordered on the home shopping network. I will be stearn about one thing and one thing only regarding television and people, since I myself from time to time indulge in the depressive stimulation of television; fuck all you people who watch reality tv. It is the most horrific display of americana since fucking sit-coms. After releasing myself from the binds of television I will never go back. I'm sorry if I offended you in making that judgement but I really don't care. Go watch your reality tv if you want, but why don't you actually TRY reality sometime.

Christ, its getting light outside. I am contemplating sleep, however it can only really be no more than six hours, since my parents will be in town around that time, and I still have much to do in the ways of packing. Perhaps I won't sleep. I guess I'll figure it out when I actually go home and stop mumbling all this cosmic debris.

Until the next time,

-C