Pack Your Bags, We're Going on a Guilt Trip

I probably would be a bestselling author by now.

But then, I see the many obstacles in my path: lack of a valid education; lack of finances; lack of a whole, well functioning mind; and what do I get? Right where I belong. No, I'm not overjoyed at my life, but I am violently happy to be alive. Yeah, I have to admit, the Abilify cranks up my metabolism and I do much, much, more than I ever could before, so this gives me a rarefied hope.

One day things will change. Like I told a friend of mine, prepare, don't expect, or hope, or think, but to PREPARE for your life to change drastically every five years. To test this, stop the clock on your life right now, go back five years, which would be December of 2005 and think about how your life was then. Heh, I was still working, making tons of money, drinking it up like a fish, having illicit sex, playing dangerous with my life when it came to driving drunk or hanging around the dangerous places in the city. I was a walking wound, screeching, like a skidding car on a path to destruction.

If someone could have hooked up a time machine then and showed me that I would be living like I am now, homeless, destitute, angry and alone, I wouldn't believe it. Then, lets turn the WABAC machine back five more years and I find myself happily married to a beautiful wife, making more money than we can count, preparing to buy my first home, needing a two car garage for our vehicles and two cats. We were terribly happy, and my ex was even talking about making a family. Something that I never wanted but when we got the house (We had picked it out already and the real estate agent was about to close the deal) I would have changed my mind.

If you were to show me then that I would be divorced from this wonderful woman, a woman who basically could no longer hold onto a corpse and allowed it to float off face down, bobbing on a river; If you were to tell me that I would experience the most harrowing sight in my entire life, and then forget all about it almost immediately; If you were to tell me that my life would be like it was five years ago; I would have laughed. I was at the top of my game. Such talk would have been crazy talk.

Five years....
That's all I have to wait for. Five years from today. Soon, this life will change drastically. Maybe I'll be back on the street; maybe a sanitarium; maybe a mansion in the Palisades; maybe floating face down, dead in the East River; maybe stuffed in the trunk of a car; maybe mugged and killed; maybe married to an ugly harpy; maybe in prison married to a 400 pound black man named Bubba; maybe entrenched in some kind of dangerous, illicit love affair; or suddenly an author of a best selling novel, an Emmy winning screenplay...but NOT sitting here in this chair, in the dim colors of the morning, typing like a lost, spectral ballerina, with nothing to do but exist.

I want more from what little I have. Like a thirsty man that gets a thimble to drink out of a bucket of water, I am keyed in for more. Someone said to me that I constantly want more. That I'm never satisfied with what I got. What? Why should I be? I'm not complacent and I'm twice not un-motivated. What? Should I be content with being homeless? Any sane person would say, NO. If you can get out and better your circumstances...if you can get more out of life, go for it. Shit, to me, that applies to EVERYTHING, from a glass of water, to sex, to money, to influence, to a work ethic, to a million dollars. NEVER be satisfied with 'what you have'. That's so lost that it's ridiculous.

I'm always reaching farther than I can grasp. If I don't, how do I know I can't have it. And some- times, things you can't have may not be all that great to have. Like the Aesop's fable the fox and the grapes. The fox tried all day to get get a bunch of grapes overhead, hanging from a branch. He spent the day jumping, and when he realized that he couldn't get at them, he walked off saying: "They were probably sour anyway." This is where we get the phrase 'Sour Grapes', when talking about the attitude behind a bitter defeat.

But if you look at it from a scientific approach, the grapes didn't prove to be anything. Sweet or sour, they could have only been one or the other. So why assume that they were sweet? Who the fuck cares if he feels now that they probably were sour?  I think that's a healthy attitude. Reach for the moon, if you can only gain the stars, well, you reached farther than your grasp and you no doubt benefited from it. As for the moon, it's looks like a silvery dime in the sky. Something of value. But to land on it's surface, you realize that it's nothing but a barren rock.

I'm reaching out for what I want, but scientific thinking has settled in. Effort is superseding worth. A value not yet proven. A value only assumed or implied. I am aware that this life will not hold me much longer. My five years from being homeless is almost drawing to a close. When I first hit the streets, I was sleeping on benches in the open. Now. I'm living in a tidy room, typing on my beautiful computer, the most important device I have ever come across, and I have a bed. But my five years are not up yet. More changes are looming.

As long as I make certain that I don't become complacent and be 'content' with what I have, because I have nothing. If I make decisions like that, I'll most likely be one of those ten options mentioned above. I don't have any intention of fighting so hard on the lowest wrung of life to end up like anything above. Like I said, there will be a change, and if I keep reaching for more, it'll be for the better.

Because, if I had to choose one of the options, it would probably be face down, bobbing in the East River. I always loved to travel.

Hobobob