Dairy of a Madman

My head is a jumble of thoughts.

No, literally. No metaphorical speaking going on here. Atop my shoulders sits a jumble of thoughts.

Coherent at times but then jumping. One to another to another.

“I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dying
Are the best I’ve ever had”
- Tears for Fears / Mad World

What do I want? she asked. I want the same as everyone else: happiness. I want to live. I want fulfillment. I want knowledge and the woman of my dreams. I want things to be easier than they are. I want less questions and more answers. I want challenge and opportunity.

Somewhere in there is the answer, but not the one she wanted, nor the one that I meant to give.

“Dream on
(Dream on, dream on…)
Dream another way
’cause I know
(I know, I know…)
When the wind blows your name
…It’s a shame…
Things are strange but that’s OK
On a rainy Sunday afternoon…
In your place
In our place
In the swarm
So from the great plains
…From the void…
I will wait for you
I!
I will wait for you…
I will!!
I will wait for you
I will wait alone.
Ain’t it strange?
People change but that’s OK
It’s another night here, and all I’m thinking about is you.
In your place
In our place
In the swarm
So from the great plains
…From the void…
Yeah, from the deep field
…From the void…
I will wait for you…
I!
I will wait for you…
I will!!
I will wait for you”
- Sunday Afternoon / Devin Townsend

Am I heading for another brick wall (worse, a wall I’m all too familiar with)? Where do you draw the line? What makes the journey across the desert worth the pain and trouble? Perhaps the desert is not so hot as it appears — perhaps experience and common knowledge are wrong this time, and the desert is actually a boardwalk filled with cotton candy and lovers holding hands and children with kites.

Life isn’t fair. Life is what it is. I say this without malice or spite. It is what it is. Vonnegut said, “So it goes.”

“I closed my eyes several times…”

Am I too old to think like this, to act like this, to even consider things like this? I don’t know who or what I am, where I’m going, what I’m doing. And maybe that’s more normal than I think it is. It’s okay, that’s for sure — I want to say it has to be, but it doesn’t. It just is.

And maybe one day this Zen thing will come more naturally to me.

“Ah, these are the days
Let them roll as they roll
And be all you are
Because you’re beautiful
Material”
-Material / Devin Townsend

What I want is someone beautiful. Someone with a creative spark (a fire will suffice). Someone with talent and ambition and dreams. Someone who is misunderstood and understands. Someone who is lost. Passion, life. Danger. A sense of right and wrong and the knowledge that there’s a time and place for everything.

I wish it were otherwise, but I never know how to define what I’ve always dreamed of until it’s in front of me. And I won’t say that I’ve found what I’ve always dreamed of, but I will say that I no longer believe that it’s impossible. The set defines the subset, but the subset does nothing more than imply the whole set.

“Feels like reckless driving when we�re talking
It�s fun while it lasts, and it�s faster than walking
But no one�s going to sympathize when we crash
They�ll say you hit what you head for, you get what you ask
And we�ll say we didn�t know, we didn�t even try
One minute there was road beneath us, the next just sky”
-Falling is Like This / Ani DiFranco

I wish it were simpler sometimes, but this — this gnawing jumping velvet razor stuck in my throat is living. I would risk everything to feel this way every day forever. Alive. Awake in a dream that I’ll remember tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Does it feel dangerously on edge because I’m not accustomed to it, or because I’m getting that vertigo I get when the ground is a lot further away than it should be?

I want to scream and run and laugh. It’s not a hysterical feeling — there’s an undercurrent of calm, the anti-riptide. I am pushed and pulled, to shore and out to sea, and relaxed and right where I should be.

“It’s beautiful, the way it’s meant to be
Beautiful, but it don’t do shit for me…
So peel away a little skin and choke upon the bone
And ain’t it funny how, after trying to find my way home,
I’m in the middle now, and I won’t get lost again.”
-Stagnant / Devin Townsend

I’ve never been here before, but I recognize the place. Is that dream memory haunting me, or have I really been here and just don’t know it? And is the here important, or where I ‘m going?

“it doesn’t matter to me where i am; it is with whom i am that matters”

You had me at Amelie.

“I went out to the forest and caught
A hundred thousand fireflies
As they ricochet round the room
They remind me of your starry eyes
Someone else’s might not have made me so sad
But this is the worst night I ever had
’cause I’m afraid of the dark without you close to me”
-100,000 Fireflies / Magnetic Fields

“So there I was jabbering at her about my new job as a serious newsman - about anything at all - but all I could think was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful and yet again, wonderful.”
-Steve Martin, L.A. STORY