Get Out Of Your Head. (Letters to Erin)

Being an extremist it mostly isn’t a good thing, we have so many prophets preaching balance, but what I know is that extremes make life as fascinating as it can make it dull. 

Thinking of course about living hard or not living at all.

Like we say in Poker – going All In or Folding.

So I know that my thoughts tend to be this ravelled ball of yarn difficult to explain, but what I am trying to say is…

I think I am currently in the folded lapse of my extremist behaviour until All In notice.

My engines are drowned like the rusty blue truck when trying to rev and restart unsuccessfully.

So this is the quote I was looking for, I was surprised to see it belonged to Benjamin Franklin.
I realized I know so many quotes, I have so many of them hoarded and I hardly stop to see to “whom” they belong.

Sometimes I wonder what they were truly thinking about when they wrote or said them, or what they were going through to come across those tiny moments of epiphany and vague certainty. It is of course a curious drive that perishes as soon as it pops up because I never really look for the Eureka prelude of their lives.

Though…

Benjamin Franklin sounds grumpy in my mind saying that, like he was talking down someone out of an exasperated moment of listening to that person continuously bitch about perhaps being “stuck” or having a “writers block”. Like for FUCK-SAKES, shut up and DO something.

Still…

I like to think about them as conclusions at the end of a day, when you are nudging off your shoes, letting yourself sag in the cushions of your couch to recapitulate, make amends with yourself somehow, carpe diem, and this snippets happen. Like you came across one of your personal paradigms and you need to give to it closure.

I think all of them are some kind of soothing balm for an aching soul burn. Rejoin with your sensate side. Or try.

This afternoon I sat all day with Pawy (Pawy is my mom, her name is Paula, I just like to call her Pawy, which is a merge of Paw and Wee). And this afternoon felt particularly similar to another afternoon we had an year ago, before I moved to B.A. Deja-vu.

I think those were the most peaceful times we had together, in a very weird way of stuck co-dependence. My bunny “Poker” was still alive, our only dog was “Uma” which is a mini-toy poodle, and it was just the both of us in this tiny house that still was too big. It feels like it happened ages ago, when it was just last year.

I remember it because that day I told her I was clueless of what to do with my life, after she insistently prodded me about it a trillion times. She said it was ok to be clueless, but you can’t live your life being clueless. She asked me what I wanted to do, I said I wanted to write.

“So write” she answered, but even though I do, write I mean, I don’t do it as a way to gain a living or be a functional gear of society’s machine. The thing is I am so scared to make a bad decision, that I never make one. A decision that would imply being serious about something, like what you wanna do for the rest of your life, following a career, being stable.
I always had a bizarre sense of urgency towards time that sometimes becomes maddening, I don’t want to waste my time in something I might ditch again and wake up one day, 6 years later, thinking I arrived nowhere with it and go back to stand on zero ground.

But the truth is, I am already wasting my time. So what’s the difference between playing cards while you decide – try some hands, until you get the aces, or what’s better a royal straight, if you lose everything in a bad call, then you are back to zero, but if you are standing on zero with your cards folded in the deck, what’s there to lose anyway? – Though perhaps because you are already playing your cards you are missing out on something else, what you really should be doing, yet if you can’t see this… then, what?

So I moved, I went to play cards in B.A. I lived fast and hardcore for a couple of months and then I folded. I lost my hands.

The sad thing is that this was an year ago and I feel as though  haven’t yet moved on from anything, or sorted out anything in my head. I am back to square zero. I am standing on the Start. I have been standing on the Start for almost three years now. Should I begin to worry? I am already worried anyway about it.

I figured that the only things that made me happy back then, were little things, tiny moments like I told you, because I could forget about how useless I felt, or what kind of massive failure I am and just “be” in them, where the great picture of the whole doesn’t really matter and it can’t determine your worth. I guess I do live one minute at a time most of the time, but this isn’t good enough either. I wish the great X of the future would stop shifting and became a “something” I could visualize.

So like back then, we are in the kitchen ( she is still knitting owls by the way) I am in my computer, she on her laptop, sharing mates (something Argentinians religiously do when they are together doing nothing) and I was reading Bob Marley’s quotes.

This one – “None but ourselves can free our minds.” ― Bob Marley

I don’t know what he was trying to imply by it, it sounds cool if you ask me, but if you stop to really think about it, what does that truly mean? What meaning do you give to it?

I asked her then what did she think he meant. She said.. “I don’t know” after a long pause of pondering she asked me. “What’s freeing your mind anyway?”

“From what even? Bad vibes? Ill thoughts? Yeah, sure, you ‘are’ the only one that can free your mind from those things.”

I twitched my lips, which signifies I am doubting, or not content by the answer given.
So she concluded it with “He was surely high when he said that. That’s Mary Jane talking.” and the conversation perished there.

But I want to, to free my mind, from this… indecision and befogged cluelessness, that’s what I have yet to crack. How do you do that BOB MARLEY, HOW DO YOU DO THAT!

And I’ve been giving this introvert/extrovert thing a lot of thought in this couple of days.

Why do we live inside our heads, why do we think words all the time, why do we need to write so much, why everything is a potential story to tell.

Do you think that life could be lived that way? Like it’s a book we are writing…

It should be.

At least it makes me feel like I am not wasting my time and it rids me of this urgency I feel of being missing out.

Balm for an aching soul burn.

So yes, perhaps I am a mess, I am chaotic, I have nothing clear or defined, but everything is a little story I can tell even when I am folded in the deck.