S T R E A M # 2 8

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Last week was a better week. So what’s going wrong with this week? Could it be the cooler weather? You’re supposed to like the cooler weather. Your future is north of here. That’s what you believe. The national inclination is to move south, and/or west. You, though? You’re a contrarian. You’re always pointed in the other direction. “Against the wind.” But if not north, perhaps you’d go east. Then again, you’d consider going west. To Portland, Oregon. According to Chuck, you’d fit right in. Well. Ok. He hasn’t said so. Not exactly. Not explicitly. No. Besides, you’d rather go north. Way north. You’d rather be Canadian. You feel somehow lighter when you’re up there. There’s too much gravity down here. It weighs you down. Then again, Southern California – particularly during sunrise and sunset – felt good, too. But Canada felt better. Calmer. Lighter. Not brighter. Somehow lighter. But you don’t know if you’d actually relocate to Canada. Or even if you should, assuming that you could. You don’t want that feeling to burn itself out. You want to hang on to that fantasy of lightness forever. You want Canada to always feel like a sanctuary. That’s why you fear her. Canada. You love her and you fear her. Should you spend too much time with her, she’ll loose her luster. She’ll end up just another over-played, classic rock song. You don’t want that to happen to Canada. You want her to remain full of possibility. Forever. One thing’s for sure: You’ve got to get out of this state. You’ve been here way too long. This ain’t what Peter Coyote’s narrative voice would call positive “brain plasticity.” You’ve got to get the hell out, man! Maybe spend a year, or six months, in every state in the Union. Rent cheap studio apartments in small towns. Write. That’s the life. Travel and write. Be Seger’s “Travelin’ Man.” They gave you a book: Rilke’s Letters To A Young Poet. You haven’t really warmed up to Rilke’s poetry, but you dig this book on writing. It was a summer acting intensive for teens, and they gave you a book on writing – on finding the inspiration. In the book, your director scribbled a quote from Handke’s Offending The Audience, “We are NOT playing.” Below the quote she wrote, “Dream big, and amaze yourself.” Perhaps she wrote that in everybody’s book. And here you are; you’re less than a month away from thirty-[REDACTED]. Perhaps you haven’t dreamt big enough. And if you’re at all amazed, it’s at how little you’ve accomplished, and at how much you failed. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” That’s Beckett. Mr. Style (the PUA) would tell you that there is no failure. He’d tell you that there’s only “feedback.” It’s all in the conditioning. Forgive me. This is a false Stream. Not nearly impulsive enough. Gravity, man. Why is it so heavy today? It’s not really heavy, but something’s coating it all. There is a Weighing Down in play today. Here. In these parts. Perhaps you simply need a bite. You’ll be fine. It’s all chemical. And chemicals are fluid. Bottom reached?
24 June 2008

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