The Future is Unwritten. (Day 32)

A lot of the decisions I made in my life I made when I was younger.

This town is a cesspool. Theres no way in getting around that. For so many years we had nowhere for the youth to go around here. I mean, there was a bum-fuck arcade where all the burnouts (both present and future) used to spend all Friday and Saturday night outside smoking cigarettes and fingering their girlfriends sitting on the hoods of their dads dilapidated Ford truck. The only time they ever really went inside the arcade was to put on another rousing round of Korn's "All In the Family" with a beautiful and spirited cameo by the highly poetic Fred Durst, featuring such poignant and socially reflective lyrics such as:

My dick is bigger than yours {...} But you just can't get away
(Jon: Get a gay?) {...} You call yourself a singer?
(Jon: Yep)
You're more like Jerry Springer.
(Jon: Oh cool!)
Your favorite band is winger
(Jon: Winger?)
And all you eat is Zingers
You're like a Fruity Pebble
Your favorite flag is rebel
(Jon: Yeeeeeehaaaaaa!!)

Boy, oh boy. What clever word smiths they are. Equating someone to a Fruity Pebble is nothing short of devastation, ten fold.

I'm just trying to paint a vivid picture. It was like this every weekend. But eventually that scene would get tired with everyone, and the burnouts would gradually graduate to the bowling alley and once they were drinking age; the airport tavern (I'd like to clarify that the airport doesn't actually have commercial flights, per se) .

One of the things that would kill me when I was a kid was that I'd hear all these stories from my dad who used to be a truck driver. He'd talk about how he'd basically been everywhere there was to go in the Lower 48 states of America.

And I've always wanted that. To be everywhere at once, and have a story to tell at every diner in between here and there.

But people never leave this town. No one has that ambition to discover, to see and breathe both shores or taste foreign soil. The High School experience was so defeating day in and day out when you'd go to class and you'd likely hear at least three anecdotes after the lesson/lecture about how teacher nobody had went to the same school as a kid, and the teacher next door was his teacher not ten years ago.

You live here, you die here.

And for those who took a different path, who didn't become gutterballs at bowling alley or drank every weekend night at an airport tavern to an airport that fittingly never goes anywhere, they wound up strung out on meth with three different kids with two different partners.

It kills me to run into someone I went to school with. Either its a guy caked in dirt from their job at the Wal Mart Distribution Center with pock marks from too many nights burning the midnight oil, er, crystal methamphetamine or its a girl who every guy wanted to bury it in six with inches deep with a kid crying in a shopping cart, one sucking on a tit (poor child doesn't know how popular that tit was four years ago) and oh look, her waters breaking while and she's chomping a cigarette butt to the filter. Thank God the elite procreated.

Cause it's root, root, root for the home team, cause if they don't win it's a shame.

A few years ago I cut ties with a lot of it. It's solely about survival. But now I'm stuck wondering where I fit into this world.

I had a decent share of friends in high school, and the ones I cared about I still have. But somewhere along the line almost all of them got out of here, and are off to bigger and better things. I'm still shaking my head trying to figure out what it is I need to do, and where I need to be. I just know that its not here.

I made the decision when I was a kid not to become trapped, and I know I'm not. But I do know I'm in limbo at this point, and that's not exactly a beautiful place to be. At this point I'd consider my life a success if I died and wasn't buried in this towns graveyard.

I had a lot of problems with myself. I always have, and its always been easier for me to not focus on them. And so many times I tried to leave here with those issues unresolved, only to wind up back here choking on my own defeat. But not this time. When I leave, it will be the final time.

Politics have always been extremely important to me. It kills me to hear someone say "whats the point" or "it's boring". "Know your rights" is a phrase that should be ingrained in every free citizens brain, because slowly we're losing ourselves to materials and flashing lights.

Theres a romance to politics. Not everything political revolves around old white men in suits and ties on Capital Hill taking payoffs and selling your rights to Pfizer, or your Prime Minister siding with pure evil because he lost his backbone. The romance lies in that the words inspired in so many now live with us forever, whether they were said by Bruce Springsteen, Joe Strummer/the Clash, Bertrand Russel, Dr. Martin Luther King or George Orwell, these words influence and stick, and they've stuck with me for so long.

It's these politics that have never allowed me to sit still for too long.

I realized about five months ago that it's the fear of failing and winding up back here one day is the same fear thats kept me here. Now I'm seeing that fear is like quicksand. You either overcome it, or you sink to the destiny and the depths you were so vehemently trying to avoid.

I don't have heroes or idols or anything like that, outside of my Dad who I'd firmly consider a hero. I don't care how that translates to paper, it's the truth. If I wound up half as good hearted as he is now, then thats more than I could ever strive for with anything else. Thats a true accomplishment, in my eyes. He's not even my biological father, but who he's been has been both a father, and my best friend.

That being said I do admire a lot of people. Take Joe Strummer for instance. He's been the backbone inspiration for a full novel I'm writing. Watch "Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten" this documentary about him. That guy lived and breathed, and I'm not talking about how every sentient being who's been alive for more than a millisecond does. I'm talking about existing for something more than just to live and breathe in a concrete jungle, and drown in a sea of something plain and anonymous.

His voice still rings in my ears, almost akin to that of a prophet. Instead of just being a cult figure for punk rock, every boundary he could push he did and he never let someone telling him he was wrong stop him. Simply put, theres always a Beatles, Elvis and Rolling Stones...but there was only one band that mattered. Coupled with Mick Jones, "St. Strummer" (I think he was our only good teacher...) voiced that. Imagine voicing the only band that matters.

Near the end of his life he was in a band called 'Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros' and they never reached the same level of admiration that the Clash did, which is unfortunate but somewhat appropriate, albeit a shame nonetheless. Theres a song they wrote though, called "Johnny Appleseed" thats always read out as not only scripture, but the Last Testament.

I was lucky enough to've been in a situation where I lived in Upstate New York. In New York City, on 7th Street and Ave. A there is a memorial to Joe Strummer. I only wish I'd had a camera to take a picture of it, but one day I'll be back.





The future IS unwritten. It makes no sense for any of us to try and make plans for it, only good intentions. None of know if we'll wake up tomorrow. Hell, I can't guarantee that I'll be able to finish this thought. An aneurysm could make short work of that.

But the future is unwritten. Thats a powerful statement, if not for its simplicity then for its complexity. And while that in itself is a contradiction; both apply. If you had half the notion, you could spend a few hours thinking about the statement and realize thats it only looks like a shallow pond...if you dive in though, you might never feel the bottom.

We can make our own paths, we just can't dictate the outcome waiting for us at the end of every road. Flat tires happen, but so do picking up hitch hikers, and pit stops.

It's a long road. A long, long road if we're lucky. Just try not to run out of gas.

But I got to see this memorial. About an hour before I saw it, a friend and I had been talking about Joe Strummer, and she mentioned that it existed.

For so long I've always felt like maybe there isn't much else to see. When I get to feeling like back, I reference this memory...and all of a sudden I realize theres so much more left that I didn't even know existed, but would love if I'd had known about. Besides, if I ever feel like that again...I never got a picture. I can always go back and start over again.


And I want to step above every person that didn't have heart and soul, who didn't care to ever leave the confines of their zip code. Because once you accept that, you accept defeat. And if you accept that defeat...you might as well be dead.

All my life I've lived, as I feel almost everyone with a conscience do, by hook or crook. Maybe its time myself, and everyone as a whole should stop relying so much on the former of that statement and lot more on the latter. Most of us will never be given anything.

So I guess we have to fucking take it then.

What defines a generation are the people, mankind. What defines a man has to be his slight of hand; lest he fall victim to his own clumsy fingers he must continuously take and take, and learn when is appropriate to give back.

Until tomorrow.