Universal Ruler's blog: "Rambling Randomness"

 I'm drifting.

It's a hell of a thing to drift through your own life. To haunt the places you've called home, to live without really living. I don't even really know how long I've been here like this. It seems like an eternity, but it can't have been more than just a few months at most. I think most people would find it boring, and it is, but in a Zen kind of way. After a while, you just sort of tune out and ponder the greater meanings. Which is what lead me to thinking about this in the first place.

I guess the big question I keep asking is, “What is living?” I mean, what does it honestly take to constitute life? The more I think about it, it seems that living is progression. I've started to believe humans are more like sharks than we'd care to admit. We need to keep moving, propelling ourselves forward, or we'll die. If that's the case, does that make us mindless? Simple automatons that are active simply because we have to be? I think it does. We do the things we do because we have to, because we don't have a choice. Oh, sure, there are some choices. What to eat, what to wear, where to go. But if we stop doing those things, we die. So how can we say we truly have free will? And if we stop moving, does this mean we're no longer alive?

I stopped moving a while back. Like I said, I'm not sure how long it's been. At some point everything started to run together. I guess the monotony will do that to you. Endless strings of daytime talk shows and cigarettes, the same bland meals day after day, the same act of waiting for the day to darken so you'll have an excuse to go to sleep and get away from it all for a while. And it's strange, because once you stop moving, time becomes mutable. It's like you create your own personal time vortex. Time slows and speeds without any sort of reason. Days creep past and nights blow by. And you're left with your questions and your ponderings, or at least I am.

I remember how it started. Or at least, I think it was the start. She left. It's as simple as that. She was my world, and she left, and I was stuck in this place with what felt like nothing. If you make someone your world, and your world is destroyed, are you still technically alive? I mean, we can't live without the earth. So, if she leaves, doesn't that mean that by proxy she's taken all my oxygen, all my shelter from the cold? Doesn't that mean that she's taken my life?

After she left, I lost my motivation. Lost my motivation to talk to anyone, then to leave the apartment, then to get out of bed at all. I lost my forward movement, my progression of life. She still has her life. She left, meaning she has forward motion. I stayed behind. She propelled herself off of me, stopping me from continued motion, a simple act of physics. I was a body at motion until an outside force acted upon me to stop said motion. There was a transference of energy, wherein she took my energy to fuel hers. Does anything in that scenario constitute free will? I didn't ask her to leave, didn't ask her to steal my motivation or my energy. And yet, it happened. I stopped moving.

So the question is, am I alive or am I dead? I haven't left my apartment in what feels like weeks. And the time seems to have run together, with huge gaps in it. I don't remember the last time I ate. I feel like I haunt this place, like I'm just drifting around. Everything seems exactly the same as it always has. So if there's no sense of motion, doesn't that mean that, like a shark, I've died? I've stopped swimming, I've stopped moving. I find it odd. Once upon a time, I didn't have the free time to think about these things, but now I do, meaning my life is no longer filled with motion. Am I simply a ghost, left to haunt the places I used to live? And if so, doesn't that mean that I'm as much a mindless machine as a living human, as mechanical in my drifting as I was in life? Am I really alive or did a lack of motion take my life?

What is life if not forward motion?

 

 I set out in my old white Cadillac convertible, traveling the highways and byways to find the American dream, but I woke up screaming and crying from the nightmare.

In Arizona, I met a man that couldn't have been more then nineteen, thin stubble trying hard to look like a beard hanging from his face. He told me the interstate system was the death of America. It killed the small towns. The place he grew up in had fallen into disarray, his graduating class had only eight people. When the school burned down the previous winter, no one had even bothered to rebuild it. The kids had to find their own way to get their education. He told me the desert was littered with towns like that. He stayed on the small highways and backroads, always looking for the mythical town that had survived.

In Louisiana I met a hooker with no name. She told me names don't matter on the road. All that mattered was the soul of the traveler, and the fact that the sun would always rise in the east and set in the west. She offered to blow me for the ride, but it would cost me fifteen if I wanted her to swallow. I politely declined.

In upstate New York I helped an old man rob a bank. I didn't even know we were doing it. I just sat in the car and drove. The bank was rolling in syrup money. The man wanted to rob it because the money no longer went to the local citizens; the bigger corporations had long since bought out the small local producers. He gave me half of what he took, and gave the other half to his church.

In Seattle, I drank vodka and danced with a young girl, much too young for me. Thanks to the drink, we continued dancing long after the music stopped. She told me this was all we had left, the one thing they could never take away from us no matter how hard they tried.

In Charleston, South Carolina, I met a twenty-one year old immigrant nicknamed Fly. Fly needed a ride across town to meet up with his brother who was bringing in a shipment of high-grade heroin. He told me the heroin was so pure it would kill any junkie that wasn't careful with it. He planned to sell it next the basketball courts down the street from his house, hoping to make enough money to get his seven year old daughter into private school.

In California, I met Sara. She told me she was making a documentary about the corruption and corporate greed of the film industry. She felt very passionate about it, ever since she got turned down for a job as a production assistant with Disney. She stayed with me for two days and paid for all the gas and food with her father's American Express.

In Georgia, I met a young guy who stole gas from the gas station he worked at. He defended it by telling me the station paid much less then they charged, but continually raised their prices every time the station down the street did. The two stations were in a price war to see who could go the highest.

In Minnesota, I met a man who told me the revolution was coming. When asked what it would be fought over, he told me bottled water. Water was the key, he said. Here we stood in the land of a thousand lakes, and the people spent a dollar on a twenty ounce bottle of something that used to be free to everyone. That's where it would start, he said. Being charged for what should be free to everyone.

In Indiana, I met a middle-aged man that had once been a lead engineer for one of the car companies. When the foreign cars took over the market, he lost his job. He offered to tune-up my engine for a warm meal.

In Denver, I picked up a guy who had just gotten a ticket from the cops. He'd been picked up for pissing on a Wal-Mart. He told me he used to own a general store, one of those mom and pop deals. It had been in his family for three generations. When Wal-Mart came to town, he just couldn't compete. He wandered around the country pissing on every Wal-Mart he saw.

In Kansas, I met a Cherokee that was living on the last bit of land that still belonged to his family. He had no house, only a beat up dome tent. I gave him my share of the stolen money to use as kindling for a fire. In the morning, he made herbal tea and I asked if I could stay with him. He seemed self-sufficient. He told me I needed to move on. This land was no place for a white man. He scattered the ashes of last night's fire and walked away. He stopped only to say over his shoulder that we all reaped what we sowed.

Then he went back to his America, and me to mine.

I'm barreling down I-90, twelve hours out of Austin. I've somehow made a U-turn in the middle of America. I meant to be well on my way to sipping Canadian whiskey, but instead took a left when I saw mountains. It doesn't seem to matter how many cigarettes I smoke, I can't seem to shake the smell of her off my clothes. And believe me, I've tried. I've made six gas station stops and scrubbed my hands at every one. I've tried every cheap cologne I can find. Nothing works. I can't shake her smell any more than I can the thoughts of her. It sucks. Maybe that's why I'm on the road again. It's amazing to me. In just twelve hours, I could've been in an entirely different world if I'd continued north. In only a day, you can change the world you live in, like some sort of strange transporter. You can drive for a day and go from America's asshole to armpit. In just twelve hours, you can run away from all your problems. Instead, I took that damn turn. I swore to myself I was going to shake the dust of Texas off my boots. No more deserts or high plains. And yet, here I am in Nevada. Not much of a change. That's okay. This is my favorite part of the drive. The sky is darkening and I'm here in the middle of that great transporter, riding America's hidden highways. My radio is loud and sad. So am I. I light up a spliff, even though it's something I don't do very often. But Floyd's on the radio and I've got things on my mind. Roger Waters singing “Wish You Were Here”. It just makes me think of her. But I've put twelve hours between us and still the smell of her, that beautiful, lovely, dark smell, persists. I get off the interstate and her smell is suddenly gone. It's a barren exit with a sign for a little town called Desolation a mile away. I drive to it. The new smell gets stronger. It's the smell of hog farms and backyard barbecues. A weird mixture. But not unpleasant. I drive through the town. There's nothing. But there on the far edge of town, is a little steel building all lit up. It's a bar and I immediately stop. It's the name that does it. The Weary Traveler. Sounds like my kind of place. I step out of the car and smell peanuts and cheap beer. I'm sure this is just another country bar, just a redneck hillbilly dive. But I think it looks like a good place for a shot of tequila. The Weary Traveler. I smile. Looks like home to me.

I sit in my chair twitching, itching. I'm a fiend. Waiting for the lights to go down, for the sound, for the fury. Waiting to hear the whiring sound that tells me it's time to go away to a far off place. But it's taking too long and I feel sick, I feel sick, I feel sick. I wish there was someway I could inject this directly into myself. Jimmy Choo, that kooky chink, smiles me that smile and sometimes I hate him so much I could kiss him. He feels the same way. His eyes are bugged out in anticipation of the ride, of the glorious trip through mindscapes not our own. He reeks of someone who hasn't left the house in days and I do too.

I hear the whiring. It starts behind me and fills my ears. The lights go down and the color comes up. The sound starts. The fury starts. I bite the bullet and ride the snake. I go away for a bit.

Two hours later we hit the streets. Fucking Brando in The Wild Ones. I'm buzzed and he's tweaking. We ride the train to the big M. Chinatown is the shit after dark. Jimmy Choo, that chinky kook, wants to walk down 5th and re-enact Midnight Cowboy, scare the stiffs and sometimes I love him so much I could punch him in the teeth. We swig sake from a secret stash and I feel alive and sick at the same time. Brando and DeNiro. The modern day gods. Forget the big H when I've got the big M and R. Heroin doesn't compare and I've done it enough times to know. It always leaves you, they all do in the end. But Marlon and Robert won't, living on forever on a thin white screen. They can't ever leave, trapped in my mind like poor puppets made to dance whenever I want to recollect. They're mine, all mine, always mine, these gods of celluoid. And now I want a bike, something big and American, something that shouts conspicuous consumption. I want to ride and roar like the devil on his steed. I want to fuck on the handlebars and let the cigarette ashes fly into my eyes through the wind. I want to roar past a funeral and remind them who they pray to at night, the Wild Ones.

It won't be long before I'm fiending again. Jimmy Choo, that kooky chinky junkie does too. I want the lights to go down, want to hear the whiring, want The Sound and the Fury. I'm ready for an Apocalypse, Now. I want the world to die so I can be The Omega Man, The Last Man on Earth and I'll go live in a House of Sand and Fog.

Who needs heroin when I've seen my celluoid gods.