| It's weird to be at an age where you're...well, fighting age Just two years ago you sit around in a parking lot with all your closest friends and you all look at each other confused by someone asking to bum a cigarette, and just 2 years later you might know something about this guy and the day he's having...and also have the cigarette to bum him. I guess that sounds ridiculous, or minute, but at the time I wonder if I would have been able to call it. It's not even really the cigarettes, that's just a metaphor for change. Change is inevitable, but its always strange to be at an age where you can see it happen so clearly. And do we have control over it too? I look at the people I know and how fast and quickly they've transformed and wonder if it was a conscious effort or if they just let go. I always laughed at those LTJ songs about "leavin' town", but flying down an interstate 200 miles from home because you don't want to be home makes you kind of relate to it. Sometimes I hate Bridgewater. Or not even Bridgewater, but suburbia. Suburbia attitudes, suburbia people, suburbia life. Sometimes it feels too constricting and too clean and too perfect. The only thing I've found that we're perfect at is imperfection, but its as if the people who built this town (and pretty much every lookalike town across America) were viciously denying it. The identical houses and streets, the nice cars, the business suits, this is a place where denying the possibility of perfection is almost a crime. Where giving it up and saying 'I don't want to be a successful businessman, or rich, or famous' is like some form of suicide. I know I'm still not grown up, but sometimes it feels like it. Like I'm struggling to grapple at all the immature parts of life because there won't be a chance in 2 years. It's like a giant hourglass, where the sand at the bottom can never go back to the top...everything, every second just slips into nostalgia. I hate nostalgia because I love it so much. The times when life was shitty, and how it seems so perfect in my mind. I thought I missed high school when I graduated. I thought I would hate college. The truth was, high school was awful. My mind paints the prettiest pictures. As a filmmaker, its always a struggle to try and project what it's in your mind onto the screen. And you find that you can't. At least I can't anyway. Because it always paints that impossible picture, and I guess that's why its doomed to stay in the confines of your mind. Sometimes I wonder if people we label "insane" are happier than we are. If they live in their delusions and dreams, what if those are delusions of a happy life? So are we better off than them, drudging in some miserable craphole trying to achieve that? I mean, I guess there's something to be said about reality and happiness, but sometimes I wonder. So anyway, this getting really fucking long. And boring and ranty and la di da. When my dad gave me the cliche line about "college: it's the best years of your life", I first brushed it off. I mean, what the fuck is so special about being lonely and depressed (on your first day away from home) and having the guy next door play fucking Coldplay at full blast making you feel even more lonely and depressed because Chris fucking Martin loves singing about loneliness and depression? (tongue in cheek, I don't feel strongly about Coldplay, just like everything else). But now I'm halfway through, and so far it has been. And that sometimes scares me alot. I mean, it's stupid to think about 4 years being the peak of your lifetime, but if it is, then what? I guess the irony in all this is that change happens so fast, that in 2 more years I might not even be able to relate to this. Who knows, maybe I'll fall in love with suburbia. Right now, I'm pretty sure the guy I am know would totally kick the shit out of the guy I used to be. Sadly maybe even make fun of him. The guy I am now would probably beat the shit out of alot of forms of me, maybe even the toddler form, because he's a d-bag (joke!). But seriously, I wonder if I will get acclimated to the life of the people I see around me. If I'll look back at my days, like right now, and dismiss it as the ridiculous rantings of a 'lost' 19 year old. And clean up and put on the suit and tie, halfheartedly talking to awkward teens nervously sitting behind a grocery store counter hoping I won't scream at them for bagging the fruits and breads together, all due to my neglect because I was too busy brokering some deal on my cellphone, which by the way by this point in the future will probably be able to unfold into my car, because its the future right? And to that I say...fuck no! The guy I would be then would be tasked with my current mission of beating the shit out of the tool I might theoretically become...so in English that means I'd be Ed Norton in Fight Club, beating the everloving shit out of myself because I defined myself by material possession. Not that I don't do that now, but music and movies are a little more innocent than cars and couches. Hopefully? I guess the thesis would be...fuck you, Vishal of the Future! Peace. |
