On the Benefits of Being Blind

Today I literally saw the blind leading the blind.  

3 blind men instead of 

3 blind mice.

Moments later I saw a beautiful girl 

self-mutilated; 

disfigured by those vile, lobe-stretching piercings that 

fools 

from all walks of life 

lately seem to 

adore.

A bleak sense of sorrow scratched at my heart 

while my insides performed 

their customary lurch

Perhaps blindness 

would not be so terrible a fate.  

Obliviousness may yet be 

preferable to 

Oblivion

.

Counting Crows @ Echo Beach!

Last Friday night I got to see my favourite band, Counting Crows, perform at Echo Beach in Toronto!

What an awesome show.  If you EVER have a chance to see these guys live, take it!  Even if you aren't a fan...this is one of the few bands who are maybe BETTER live than on their albums.  I've only seen them twice in concert now but both times I have been blown away!  I love every silly little song these guys have ever sang (yeah, even "Accidentally In Love", as ridiculous as it is) and can't say enough good things about them!  If I had the money, I would happily quit my job to follow them around, Grateful Dead style...

Sadly, that's not to be.  I'll have to be content to await their return to Toronto...
 
Well, it was a great night except for one thing.  I'm a little disappointed in myself and my ability to "step up" as it were....See, although I was at the concert with my buddies, I spent most of the time talking to this girl Ally (spelling?) that I met at the show.  Without going into too much detail, I learned that she was an American, up to Toronto for the summer for some school related thing...she's far too young to be a Counting Crows fan (like, 21) but her dad got her into them back in the day...I dunno we just chatted between band sets and such...she was nice!  Sweet, even...

Anyway at the end of the night we just parted ways.  I didn't ask what she was doing or where she was going...didn't get a number or try to find out if I could see her again..nothing.  I just said good-bye and walked away, even given multiple chances to work a little harder.  I didn't even try, despite being pretty sure that she liked me and despite the fact that obviously, I liked her quite a bit. 

If this was an isolated event I guess it wouldn't matter...I could chalk it up to being "off my game" or some such...but it's NOT isolated.  I've had several similar opportunities this year, even dating a really nice girl for a while...a girl whom I proceeded to keep at arms length, treat inconsistently and, if I'm honest, rather poorly...then suddenly break off contact, for no great reason and through no fault of her own.

I don't get it. 

I constantly feel lonely and pine for a girlfriend whom I could really open up to and feel close with...someone I could share everything with.  I want that relationship where my girlfriend is my BEST friend...and yet whenever I'm presented with an opportunity to at least take a step in this direction, I balk...

When I was younger, I used to be scared that if I talked to a pretty girl, she might not like me.  Now I guess I am petrified that if I talk to that pretty girl, she WILL like me! 

Perhaps I'm just too hung up on the past.  "Love like you've never been hurt" sounds like both a silly dream and an impossible task to me. 

Or maybe I just don't know WHAT I  really want.

What the hell, man?  What AM I scared of?  What DO I want?  Obviously, I gotta figure this stuff out...

But yeah, Counting Crows.  What a great band and despite my silly complaints, what a terrific night!!  Come back soon, guys!

Collapse.

All of life's major problems and heartbreaks will seem like a hilarious and naive joke when the power goes out and stays out for good.

Isn't it odd that the entire nature of our existence, our society, Western Civilization itself is dependant on setting fire to the mortal remains of giant dead lizards that went extinct long before we ever existed?

How can we power the present with the corpses of the past and yet take no thought for the future?  

(Yes I've been listening to Michael Ruppert again..he's an interesting fellow, if a little bleak).

Anyway, so I'm looking at the city around me and the life that I lead, thinking about the plans that I have and the dreams that I dream and I know that they're all as fragile as spider's spun webs...

Electricity
Running Water
Easy and Affordable Food, Medication and Consumer Goods
Warmth and Shelter
Long Distance Communication and Travel
Et cetera, et cetera

So many things dependant on energy...some kind of fuel.  Remember the big blackout of 2003?  The have those all the time now in less fortunate places in the world.  It's very likely that soon we'll have frequent, long-lasting blackouts here, too.  Why?  Because our fuel is running out!

We need to find a better, cleaner, self-sustaining way to power the 21st century before it's too late.

I wish I was smarter and could somehow help with this.  It frustrates me that so many of us waste time and thought and energy hating and killing each other over completely meaningless, trivial divisive issues (who's god is strongest, should gay people get married, what politician is most "honest"...whatever) when there is this incredibly serious issue staring us in the face!  The very likely possibility that we are about the fall into a new Dark Ages and it could literally happen at ANY MINUTE. 

Howsabout we put all the stupidity aside for a while and instead  focus on saving our species from what could very possibly be our extinction event?  Anybody?  Bueller?

I guess it's too easy not to worry about it here in Canada because it really hasn't affected us yet in any truly meaningful way.  Remember though, we are all ONE.  Not attempting to fix this mess right now is short-sighted, perhaps suicidally so.  Living the way we do now is like contracting leprosy but not being concerned about it because so far only a few of our toes are rotting off.  It's not caring that your bedroom is on fire because you're in the kitchen right now.  It's worse than stupidity...it's INSANITY.

We need to get over ourselves and start dealing with the real problems threatening our race now.  How?  I don't know...I'm no scientist.  All I know is that it could start with all of us letting go of our differences, our petty hatreds and our silly fears and instead treating everyone around us with respect and dignity and kindness!  Maybe then we could stop spending money on bombs and death and instead research a better way to live?  One that won't kill us all in the next year or two?

I used to say that I wasn't trying to fix the world...I just wanted to leave it no worse than I found it.  No more.  I want to leave both the places I visit and the people around me BETTER than I found them!  Cleaner, nicer, more peaceful!  I want to be both productive for and protective of the world around me and the human beings scrambling about it's surface, too!

Look, if you go to the doctor and he says "You need to stop drinking and smoking or you WILL BE DEAD within 5 years...maybe even 5 weeks," you probably stop!  A sane person stops!  Well now the planet Earth needs us to be sane.  We need to fix the world or it will end soon!  NOW!

Playtime is over.  Like little children we've been fighting over every shiny scrap of nothing and now there's not going to be anything left worth fighting for.  It has to stop.  We have to stop!  Time to grow up!  

Evolve or Die.

From the Beach...

 Last Thursday, as I do most weeks I have a day off and the weather is nice, I went down to the beach to read a few comics, eat my breakfast and ponder life and the universe and everything.

I read Batman Annual #1 and it made me cry...it was one of those days anyway, where my moods felt brittle, like cheap glass or too-dry straw.  I was living right on the cutting edge of my emotions in my mind. 

My problem was that I couldn't reconcile two seperate ideas. 

1.  Love is the most important thing there is.

2.  All love is an illusion, a LIE, an intangible created only in one's mind and subject to the petty whims of fate and foolish humanity.

Both statements "feel" true to me, but also, if not contradictory, at least misguidedly dangerous.

So I finished my Tim Horton's and I put my comics away and I walked along my beach, along the edge of where the ocean meets the land just like in the song, feeling blue and confused about the nature of the universe and my part in it. 

A stick the approximate size and shape of a magic marker floated right up to my feet from Lake Ontario so I bent and retrieved it.  Then, when I came to the (arbitrarily) correct spot, I wrote in the sand, right at the waterline, I wrote a message to God or the Universe or whatever.

? Here I AM.  What do you want ?

I stripped down to my shorts and meditated on the sand.  I cleared my mind and waited for an answer.  I waited about an hour, listening to the waves, the gulls, feeling the sun play hide and seek with the clouds, feeling the wind blow around and through me, feeling isolated, insulated in my own private world even as I sat on the very edge of the largest city in Canada. 

& then the answer came.

"NOTHING"

Nothing at all.  What could God or the Universe or whatever possibly need from me?  Alone, I am insignificant.  A single grain of sand, a drop of water, a single cog in a vast, vast machine. 

Alone I am nothing

BUT

Together WE are everything.

Whatever I'm "supposed" to be doing, I'm doing it now.  I can no more help doing it that the waves can help crashing into shore.  I could no more STOP doing it than I could stop the moon from circling the Earth.

I might not know what I'm contributing, but we are all a part of one thing...the same thing, the ONLY thing.  Everything is ONE.  And although I'm unable to see the entire picture, nor judge it's worth, nor influence it in any meaningful way, at least I can take comfort in knowing that we are all a part of it, all a part of something much, much larger than our own insignificant little selves. 

So I guess that's something, right?