Thursday, August 28, 2008

Change


I'm interested, you see, in change -- drastic change, change whose causes are likely more fascinating than the often lackluster outcomes. I'm interested in causes, the proverbial something. Some say demon; I say, in the vernacular, kiliti, or perhaps more precisely, kulo.


And when I speak of change & its causes, I speak also of expectations. I'm a child of expectations, you see -- groomed by various persons to be a certain way while life's circumstances have also been like a script I'm proactively privy to forgetting.


I've spoken before of looks & the superficiality of appearances. But let's get a little deeper & speak, for example, of survival -- the grace that people have said I should live out in a state of pure joy. Skeptics have assumed I've chosen to be skeptical, as if guilt from the luck-of-the-draw was something good-natured people volunteered for irrationally as opposed to merely feeling in all honesty. Something changed, you see, & that causes more changes that I admit I do not care for. But I don't despise circumstances enough to rid myself of what I believe I'm bearing -- sincerity.


So when I see a kid, my age, given the world of expectations by those we hold in reverence before hitting 18 because of a supposed gift for poetry, I pull for him. And when I see him now, going off like someone whose completely lost it, but still managing to explain himself in an intellectual manner, I say, It makes sense. Even if I've only heard rumored reasons. Even if I question his verbalized explanations. Whatever the real ones are I'll let him have them. It makes him him. Change is singing to true wounds. We don't owe that to anyone but ourselves.


People like the term rebelling a lot, so much so that  there's a culture of reveling in that spirit. But in a definition of the word written by someone I don't recall, I found its true essence: it is not a turning away; it is a searching. 


So we go back to the original word: change. It's change that's exciting, not how much for the better or the worse -- cuz judging would be all wrong. The point is that it happened, & for those living their lives true, the true cause is buried somewhere in them, rumbling. And that's what it's all about right there -- figuring it out, moving w/ the shifts it causes, believing confidently that wherever it takes you is where you were meant to be, at least for now.


Here I speak of possibility.


Last week I met a man -- a famous man -- whose reputation is that of neon colors, glitz, glamor, the good life & all its excesses. He speaks to me while pensively seated on a grey couch, his attire -- based on expectations -- a bland combination of plain jacket, jeans, & sneakers. We talk & our eyes never meet, he looking off to where his mind is, where his heart, I believe, thirsts for a place to beat true. We talk about London, Paris, & over a hundred pairs of shoes. I could almost hear him whispering, under his breath, Why? 


And in that moment, I decided that I care for him. And I'm looking to see where he goes from here.



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Belated Happy Birthday to Gin (August 25)!

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