Life, Times, and Other Intangible Things.

So, check this out. Imagine there’s a horror movie called, “A Machine for Pigs”. Let your imagination wander for a moment as to what that movie would be before you read on.

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Yeah. Which is why it’s great that they’re making a game called Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, sequel to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a highly acclaimed horror game released in 2010. But the title “A Machine for Pigs” just stirs up so many disgusting, revolting, slaughter-house, ramshackle, bio-mechanical (…) thoughts, it’s kind of brilliant. I would rather not know anything else about that game before I play it. 

A Machine for Pigs… That’s definitely what my nightmares are made of. *shiver* Maybe it just affects me in a way more than most, but I just can’t stop thinking about it. The possibilities are astounding, the more you think about it. It’s one of those things where you start to want to write your own horrible, demented story about something called, “A Machine for Pigs”, or even, “The Pig Machine”. It’s certainly an ambiguous enough title where you could have seven people write a short-story about it, and they would all be different. That would be a really cool thing to try and do, especially with something like tumblr… *wink* 

“Who can deny, who can deny, its not just a change in style?
One step done and another begun and I wonder how many miles.
I spent a little time on the mountain, I spent a little time on the hill   Things went down we don’t understand, but I think in time we will.
Now, I don’t know but I was told in the heat of the sun a man died of cold.
Keep on coming or stand and wait,
with the sun so dark and the hour so late.
You cant overlook the lack, jack, of any other highway to ride.
Its got no signs or dividing lines and very few rules to guide.”

“New Speedway Boogie”, The Grateful Dead

These lyrics were written over 40 years ago, and released on Workingman’s Dead back in 1970. I can’t help but listen to those words now and think, “Damn, those guys knew what was really going on”. Not only that, but it seems they are more and more applicable to what’s going on now. That’s how you can tell a great work, I think: it has to remain representative of a certain time or place, yet stay timeless and endlessly applicable at the same time.

These lyrics pertain also to this very transitional time in our lives. “It’s not just a change in style”. There’s also the overwhelming sense of confusion, of not knowing what’s going on, yet being forced into doing something/taking a specific path. Much like graduating high school and aimlessly floating into post-secondary, pretending like we have some idea of how things are going to work out while remaining clueless about so much. The world out there is incomprehensibly huge (no signs or dividing lines and very few rules to guide), so I hope that we can all find our way and make everything work out.

I was on my way to the local 7-11 to pick up a coke when I happened upon an interesting scene. In a parking lot across the road, a woman was leaning against a minivan, and a man stood facing her with his arms on her waist. One quick glance was all it took for me to know their story, and what was in the process of happening. Parked beside the minivan was the man’s fire red motorcycle, with his helmet dangling off the handlebars. It was no American Chopper, but rather a slim Japanese-style bike. 

      He wore a denim jacket and had scraggly short black hair and a handlebar mustache. She wore a modest brown sweater and had shoulder length blonde hair. They were both in their early forties. This sort of meeting was a common practice between them, for they took immense comfort in each other’s company. They had both been in multiple relationships before, yet their histories were very different.

She had exactly one previous lover, who happened to be her ex-husband who was simply never there. After the initial novelty of their marriage had worn off, their lives become nothing more than the same boring routines of working day-in and day-out. Her ex-husband had simply become bored with her, and so he left her after a dull seven years of marriage. She wanted kids, but he would hear nothing of it. His life was far too hectic and convoluted already.

The man in the denim jacket had never been able to find someone to be able to get close to. He worked out in the plants, many hours a week, so he rarely had time for that anyway. What relationships he was in would only last two weeks to a month at most. He would meet women at the local pub, start up conversation, take them back to his small apartment across the highway. From there they would either quickly loose interest (he was frequently seen as a loser), or he would not bother to call them back due to his low self-esteem.

Everything changed when he met her, though. He was attending his brother’s birthday party, and was introduced. She was a friend-of-a-friend of a co-worker, and they hit it off quickly after that.

Here was someone that he felt was worth all the time and effort. She saw someone who was, like her, looking for love. They were a classic TV couple that somehow existed in the real world. They felt a fiery passion and a nostalgic sense of rebellion like high-school sweethearts, even though they were both mature adults. That’s how they came to be, meeting in a vacant parking lot at sunset on a Saturday night. 

So i said I would post my notes and writings unedited. I quickly found out that I had almost no time to write about stuff as it happened, so that’s not happening. I will, however, still publish a bit probably tomorrow where I recount my experience filled with some of what you’d expect, and a bunch that you wouldn’t.    

…Is that I always feel far too much the victim of fate and circumstance and, as such, feel compelled to change things. Even if it’s the tiniest thing, I always feel like I have to instigate something that goes against the way things would be as opposed to the way it would be if I didn’t do anything. I think it’s a way of proving to myself that I do actually exist and make a difference, even if it is a miniscule difference. Even if I am the only person that would ever know about them… It’s quite the strange phenomenon, and I can’t decide if it’s for better or worse. Probably both, depending on the circumstances….

The hippies of the 1960’s had the right idea, even if they went about it the wrong way. I know there will never be such things as universal love or a unified sense of togetherness among everyone, but man, what a thought that would be. Their problem was that they used drugs to get their message across, which instantly alienated them from a large group of people. Which, I suppose, was the point of the whole counterculture movement. But if you try to bring it up with a square today they will dismiss them as a bunch of stoned lunatics preaching far flung and impossible ideas. 

There is definite validity in what they were saying, a definite point in their message. They saw the direction that things were going, and they tried to change it. But the force was too much. Government was too big and too important, and the mainstream was already far too fixed in their ways. The War in Vietnam marked the beginning of the end of the American Dream, and Nixon drove the final nail into the coffin of truly good, wholesome ideals.

Think how much better the world could be if the dominant figures of the past had tried to grasp a universal sense of love and a deep appreciation for any human life. Or any life at all, really. I’m not saying they all should have been vegan and lived in a forest, but they old counterculture was definitely on to something.

Timothy Leary certainly didn’t help, as he was promoting acid as a tool for self-discovery and mind expansion. I don’t buy that, and neither should you.

But despite their altered reality, they still managed to see what what happening, where the world was headed. Look at us now, no better off than 40 years ago. Still fighting pointless wars over nothing, people still dying for no good reason. Shit, they’re saying we might go into another Cold War, this time with China over rare earth minerals. I’ve always known that history is prone to repeating itself, but this is ridiculous.

You could blame it on greed or on some sort of primitive evil that dwells somewhere deep within the soul, but the point is I don’t think anyone is doing nearly enough to stop any of it. There’s no more momentum, no more positive energy all directed towards a common good. Everything has gotten far too complicated for that. Where is there room for all the abstract ideas? It seems society has systematically suppressed both free thought and free love alike without anyone realizing it.

Above all, I hope that our generation could be more free-thinking, more open to a new way of doing things. I hope that our future is one that doesn’t involve any of the ugly corporate whores or the Gatorade-Brain lunatics that run things now. 

But looking at most of the people around me who are the future, it seems just as hopeless as ever. Stupid teenagers are whoring themselves out over the internet and people can’t see past their phone screens. Society and pop-culture today is a repulsive personification of everything that there is to hate in this world. Is there any way to stop this? Can we somehow manage to recapture the energy that fueled the Flower Power of the sixties? Can that quest for universal love and acceptance ever come to fruition? Can we pick up the torch and carry on where they left off?

Cynically I doubt it. The sixties failed, and few people seem eager to return to any of the values that made that high and beautiful wave. This is the reason that I posted The Wave Speech a little while ago: To give this some context. Again, I think the emphasis on the drugs was a mistake, but I also think their hearts were in the right place. Peace and Love can’t be bought from some local dealer, and the environment won’t get better if you take acid.

I’m looking to the future with some sort of hope, but managing/rationalizing my expectations and bracing for disappointment. The only thing we can do now, in fact, is hope, and keep our ears to the ground, until all the grumpy old white men who don’t understand what real values are die off.

It’s a very strange yet wonderful thing that in any given instant, you can feel inundated by a fantastical assortment of memories that seem to whiz by you a million miles a minute. Be it the shape of a certain building, a certain fragrance, or a certain look in someone’s eyes, you seem to be taken prisoner by an ethereal force that grips your brain with a tragic ecstasy; you can’t help but smile at days past, and yet you feel internally melancholic because things were better then than they are now. 

Whether life actually was preferable back then when compared to the current status-quo is irrelevant, for you never could have known then what you know now. We always tend to look back with rose-colored glasses, and maybe purposely forget some parts of those things that we’d rather not remember.

There’s one specific memory that recently came back to me, and one that I remember quite clearly. It was a gorgeous summer day. A gathering of friends. An adventure in the woods turned bad by nefarious and bloodthirsty mosquitoes.

But, as one may expect, things are completely different now, and whether they have changed for better or for worse is impossible to say when thinking about the so called “grand scheme of things”. And yet… Strangely enough, some things are exactly the same as they were.  I suppose that’s part of life though. Some things never will change, which can be a very difficult thing to stomach when you desperately want certain things changed. But we’ve already bought in, and have to make the best of the hands we’re dealt. “Buy the ticket… Take the ride” says Hunter S. Thompson.

If I were to re-live that specific time, would I do anything differently? Probably. But then again, you could say that for almost anything that you go through. We always screw up and wish we could go back and do it all over. One of life’s biggest inconveniences is that it’s a one way ticket that we’ve purchased. No going back. We’re in it for the long haul, and that is what’s important to keep in mind.

Because for young folks like us, however many fond memories and nostalgic retrospectives that one has, there’s existentially more that are still to be made. The future is impossible to predict, and it’s coming up faster than ever before. Getting lost in the past is a dangerous thing, and you’ll go insane if you cling too dearly to the times of old. You have to keep pushing through and keep moving forward, never losing sight of what’s important to you.

This is like the fifth time I’ve restarted this damn thing. I just wanted to sit down and write something but all that came out was the same old boring existentialist crap with the same tone as my other blog posts. Screw that, man. I can’t just sit here and wax philosophical all day, because my brain gets really tired after writing stuff like that and rereading so many times and finding the right way to phrase things. The cosmic radiation is floating too freely these days, and to embark on a philosophical rant would just turn into a 3,000 word essay about nothing, and nobody wants to read that. Or if they do, I certainly am not in the mood to write that. It’s too bad for them that the vultures and the pigs and the politicians robbed me of my patience for that kind of thinking, at least for today. I’ve had about 357 existential crises in the past month and I am getting tired of thinking like that. I need a break, man. All of this heady, otherworldly, spacey philosophy is a bitch of a pill to swallow, and mine is still working its way to the back of my mouth.

I hope that getting past the teeth was the worst part. 

I can’t even tell if I’m even still in the mood to write this evening. I think I got discouraged with my previous failed attempts at writing this thing. Writing with no clear direction is one of the toughest things for me, yet writing with too firm a guideline is also less than enjoyable. I need to start a major work, something worthwhile that’s not a lame five paragraph blog post about whether the world exists or not. I’ve had several ideas, but I’m having a tough time figuring out what exactly I want to say. Getting this part figured out is clearly going to take much more time and effort than I previously thought.

You can’t stop and think about things like missed opportunities or how easily the world could end, otherwise you’ll end up in a mad-house somewhere in Ohio.

Well. I want to delete this and forget about it and go to bed, but I want to at least have something to show for all the time that I spent staring at the blank box on this website. I’ve gotta figure out what I’m gonna write next time before I start, so that it doesn’t turn into another one of these… messes. Mostly gibberish and boring tidbits of information about my life.

Though on the other side, i should do these more often, and just write whatever comes to mind. I rather like the sound of that. Maybe just come up with general ideas for stuff and write them down. Mental note: Start carrying a notebook. 

I took off at about 9:50 pm. I jumped in the car, tried to find something on the radio but was unsuccessful, then drove to Tim Horton’s to get a coffee. There was bound to be a long night ahead of me, so I definitely would need coffee. Just as I was pulling in I heard a flurry of horns. “Could that possibly be me that they’re honking at?” I thought. Usually when I do something stupid that would make people honk, I know what I did. This, however, was totally unprovoked, at least to my knowledge. I decided that it must be some drunk vagrant sonofabitch who stumbled onto the middle of the road somewhere further up. With my newly found peace of mind, I picked up my coffee, and high-tailed it to the house of the person who would take me the rest of the way. The night had officially begun.

The best thing i could find on the radio was some kind of Spanish-sounding mariachi music; the kind you would hear in an old western, just when the hero is about to make his stand against the outlaw… Or some such thing. “This is fitting,” I said to no one in particular. “It looks like it’s up to me now. I truly am the last hope.” The music was inspiring, leading me to imagine all sorts of crazy, whacked-out scenarios where I was a hero sent out into the field for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which was obtaining sensitive information while dodging the ruthless federal watchdogs.

There’s something special about driving all alone at night while the streets are wet and the air is clear, all while feeling the tension and urgency of blaring trumpets. The lights’ reflections on the road was truly a beautiful sight. There was a stillness and an elegance, a reformed sophistication that you just can’t find anywhere else. The perfect scene for a terribly sad movie is set right in front of you, and at almost any minute you feel like you should see a deeply involved romance be either blown to smithereens, ignited for the first time, or strengthened beyond any scientific explanation. There’s a certain weightlessness to your vehicle, and you sit on the edge of entering some other plane of existence entirely, where the only things that exist are you, the vehicle, the road, and the raindrops plaguing your windshield; a world where you are in complete isolation. Not a lonely isolation, mind you; a type of almost relaxing individualistic consciousness where you are experiencing all sorts of sensations that are completely unique unto you.

I was wondering how many other people, if any, experienced the same dignified repose in similar (if not identical) circumstances. Not many, i thought. That would ruin the pristine and somewhat surreal nature of what was going on.

After a solemn and surprisingly zen 15 minutes of driving, I reached the house, parked the car, and turned around to immediately see my friend coming down the driveway. A quick hello to a passenger debarking the rustic pickup truck vessel, and the frantic scrambling of getting into the back seat while the other passenger who was already aboard took shotgun. We were pressed for time, it seemed, and so off we went. Soon enough, the only evidence left that we were ever there was the deep impressions from our tires left in the sloppy muck.

Our vessel was bound for a theater, where there was an improv show going on. The venue was small, and these shows were usually pretty popular, so we knew if we were going to get in, we’d have to high-tail it. With some inspirational night driving music, we began our quest. It was one formed on the basis of a care-free night of entertainment and laughter.

We got there quickly, and parked the see-worthy vessel in a parking lot across the road. We encountered two other friends of ours, who happened to be fellow improv-affectionados. Briskly we shimmied over to the entrance, but were met with dismay upon arriving: all the seats were taken, and we couldn’t get in. So, instead of getting discouraged and going home, we did the next best thing: we left to go find some food.

We didn’t know where we were going. We had decided on Denny’s, but was there even one nearby? I had my doubts, but the others seemed certain. We ended up turning the wrong way and eventually had to re-group in the parking lot of a Value Village. There, we received a foggy idea of where we needed to go from our counterparts in the other vehicle. All of that turned out to be in vain, and somehow we ended up at McDonald’s: midnight on a rainy Friday night.

Most of the time was spent in deep discussion about everything from differing (and downright frustrating) uses of Tumblr, actors’ behavior while on a movie set, half hour sitcoms, and some other things that I can’t recall. Eventually we moved over to another section of the restaurant that was warmer, and that was when we began to play cards. We played for a decent amount of time, had laughs, shared in camaraderie, until we decided to go home. 

The whole thing was impromptu to be sure, yet we managed to salvage an otherwise disappointing outing, and for that, we felt proud and accomplished. It was at the same time unorthodox yet strangely logical, and as we ventured on home, we realized that we were indeed the pioneers of the new generation. Playing cards at 1:30 am in a McDonald’s restaurant may have been just for laughs, but I would like to think that it represents something more. 

Surely we will later reminisce, laugh, and joke about what we did. But it’s that unsung and largely unknown sensation that’s not to be taken lightly. It drives us to mold the world into a place that we want to be in, no matter how we choose to influence it, and no matter where life takes us.

For me, anyway, it represents a movement towards the future, and a milestone in a world that is so busy and convoluted that almost everyone will miss it. It’s difficult to describe what it represents, and it’s impossible to pin-point the exact nature of what we did. But I know for a fact that it represents more than any of us will ever be able to explain. It’s far more than the mere satisfaction of “being there” at that time, at that place. It’s an almost whimsical and romantic notion of youth, of carefree adventures, and of the adventures that are yet to take place. There’s a deep significance that you have to feel, and holding on to that significance is the only way we’re going to be able to preserve it.