we were driving home from work today listening to mmr's Jackson on the radio. He was reading reports about a huge forum for people 'dealing with depression' after seeing the movie Avatar. oh yes, this was a real thing. an online community for people obsessing over a james cameron movie.
My first thought was 'it's a movie jack-asses'. are people really suffering from bouts of depression and considering suicide because the mythical land of Pandora does, indeed, not exist?
my second thought was, 'oh my god, maybe that was why i was feeling so blah today!'.
my third thought was 'no, it's philadelphia suffer-monday' where we reflect on the weekend in football. ThAt's why i feel so blah. (incredible suffering and depression are to be expected after losing to the fucking cowboys)
my fourth thought was 'what's for dinner?'
--but the real point was, maybe it was a little of everything. and maybe seeing Avatar last night
has, in some way, made me feel kind of like i'm... missing something.
the special effects were insane. the imaginary world was complex, rich, deep and believable (as believable as human-kind overlooking a moon of jupiter as being perfect to support healthy, lush and incredibly advanced life can be). and aside from the pocahontas-predictable storyline it
was a kickass planet. and a part of me
does yearn for something that beautiful and that pristine and that wild and undiscovered.
so i guess, in a way, this movie has affected me in my daily life (for 1 day at least). i'm just like all these jamokes on the avatar forums, i guess. and i better sign up before all the good Navi names are taken!
except it's
not a depression per say. this feeling i've had all day-- it's a hunger. it's a self-destructive need. it's a primal force that belies reason. it's an urge to just see what happens when you set something on fire.
it's rooted deep within me and i can't explain it. it doesn't have a name or a face. and little things always touch upon it. they nibble at the edges. no one thing really captures it completely. it's always just out of focus.
it's in that moment the knockout punch lands in one of those epic hockey fights.
it's in the way the guitar note bends just the right way during the monumental solo.
it's in the taste of pain when your body tells you to stop running but you laugh and run harder.
it's in the swell of adrenaline that courses through your blood when you hear a car crash.
it's wanting to
escape.
whether it's to a magical beautiful world, or to a place beyond words, or a higher level of knowing, or a different spiritual plane. it's the will for release.
i am by no means suicidal. this should be clear to anyone who knows me. but i
do feel the pull from time to time. the pull towards chaos. i want to watch the speedometer needle press all the way to 140 and break. i want to dive headfirst over a cliff thousands of feet above the jagged rocks and crashing waves. i want to be launched into some spiraling supernova sunfire. i want to be twisted in some grand cataclysmic celestial event. i almost
need it.
i long to be devoured in flames and beauty, to be set ablaze and unfurl across a dull, grey sky. some sort of escape. i mean, we're trapped inside these bodies for oh so long sometimes. how many days in a row do we wake up in the same world? how many weeks in a row have we drove through the same traffic? how many times do we look in the mirror and see the same person? life is awesome and all, but.... what
is out there? what am i missing? what facet of living is yet to be discovered? what happens on the other side of life? is this step 1 of a 40-step program called 'Life, Death, and Beyond'?
i know most of us play it safe, myself especially (living at home, working for my parents, girlfriend up the street). it's tough for people to burn, burn, burn in this life because, frankly, it could be that this is it. no second chances. no start-overs. and that scares people and i understand why. it scares me, too.
but i just wonder what happens when you shake things up. maybe it's not so much about escaping 'life' as it is just escaping 'predictability'. escaping 'immobility'. i not only want to live, i want to live to the fullest. i want to taste every one of life's flavors. i want to punch random strangers in suits, i want to donate all of my money to a country musician i've never heard of, i want to climb a corporate building wearing a nixon mask, i want to have sex with the pope on a nationally televised episode of Oprah.
i want to do any and everything i can outside of 'normal'.
the repetitive nature of our lives just wears on the brain. my conscious can only take it so long before it needs change. maybe it's some inner, hopeless life-version of ADD. maybe it's a deep-rooted Fruedian obsessions with weiners. maybe i'm totally nuts and i really do have some serious self-destructive depressive urge towards suicide. but i think it's something else.
life, literally, is
literally too short, literally. (to use a cliche').
and while yes, sometimes i
do want to die flaming in an indy stock car hurtling off the Golden Gate bridge while listening to 'In Flames-The Hive' there are other things i want to do
while alive as well. Like wake up an hour early and smoke a cigar and go for a walk before work one day. Or take a train somewhere west of West Chester (I've never been farther west). just, escape the mundane. and maybe that's how it happens--just one simple step at a time. maybe i'll do hundreds of simple, tiny side-steps in life before i finally go covered in gasoline into the night air, free-falling from a plane without a parachute, hurtling down towards the earth like some shooting star, aimed directly at Freddy Hill.
so here's to those avatar goons, here's to those that read this, here's to the kids who dress up like superman, here's to the pope and his sweet ass, and here's to the hope that we all burn out bright into the night, raging, uncontrollable unconsolable infernos because --fuck it, that's all that's left to do in the end. and i want it.
yearnin' and burnin'.
PS - i'm telling you-- i'm
going to go to europe alone in the next year. and oh, i'll DO it.
i'm inSANE.
my avatar name woulda been:
AgroCrag
