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endless desire
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the santa ana winds are the bane of my existence:
truly, ive been constantly sick for as long as i can remember;
allergies and asthma and the like//ive never had too hot of an immune system.
& these winds come sweeping through LA, as blazing waves of heat that crash through the canyons,
and the temperature rises with no mercy for the bustling masses:
no empathy for the people below. the sun glares red, casting
fiery shadows on the dusty, dry earth. each branch, leaf, and window;
each car, can, and carpool lane--it all gleams as the sun sets in the pacific.
& as the winds blow the world to pieces, and the sun scorches red, tinting the very
sky a crimson glow, i can drive atop any hill and see the entire world before me.
i suppose ive become accustomed to the layer of smog and dirt that clings to the skyline,
so you can understand my surprise when i spy a scarlet ocean in the horizon.
yet, nothing startled me more than my los angeles skyline so golden and alive,
nestled between mountains, freeways, factories, and the glamorized crap.
the radiant beams cast from the sun in the windows of those skyscrapers
blinded my eyes as i rounded over the highest point of bastanchury road.
i nearly lost my mind, i swear, because the city was afire, the ocean was enraged,
and the mountains held the mass below with the tenderest of care.
i wanted to scoop my silhouetted los angeles skyline into my hands and hold it close
to my chest. it seemed like a fiery ball of euphoria, below the pink
& orange & purple sunset. i thought, just for a second, that if i held
it all with me that maybe i'd never feel tired or unhappy again--it would
keep me aflame and alive and assured even in the worst of times.
and i wasn't fucked up, believe it or not.
i had been sober for quite a few days, painfully sober,
but bearably so. i think i just felt so alive as i rounded that hill,
that anything was possible. that i could hold the world in my hand and skip
down the street without anyone knowing at all. things like that really keep me
going, because no one can touch me when i know who i am and what i see and what the world means to me.
i just love clarity. and if i can achieve complete clarity in my life, just a few times
over the whole stretch of it then i can harness those times in my soul
and recall them when im blinded by the shallowness of everything.
sometimes, when things are really awful, i sit back and ask my mind to recall all the moments
of pure clarity ive ever had. ive made a mental list of the ones chiseled so
vividly in my mind that i am in that place once again the moment i retrieve the memory from the mass collection of files and forders that i invision in my brain.
i usually begin with the one memory i have of my father before he left my mum when i was five. we're all
running around on the front yard, hitting each other with these plastic golf clubs and playing tag.
my papa always plays the bad guy and chases us around, whether we're in the pool or play ground.
i also have many memories of backpacking in mammoth in junior high and high school.
i remember this one waterfall that changed my life, and looking at these beautiful stones in the water,
all speckled and shimmering, and thinking that i wanted to remember that for the rest of my life.
i remember a lot of sunsets, a lot of shooting stars...mostly beautiful things in moments of grief.
i remember pieces of trash, and trippy highs, and perfect CDs.
i guess it's what charlie would call 'feeling infinite' ... because that's how you feel
when everything is clear and the world is not a burden.
sometimes there's just so much peace and utter joy inside of me
for no reason at all, and im afraid my chest will just explode with the euphoric pressure of being alive.
my mind is suddenly content with the idea of eternity; my heart is alone and loving it,
because im never alone. the air and the sky and the sun and the night keep me company
like this encompassing blanket of understanding that i could never invent words for.
you have to understand how incredible it all is. and how, if we just let it slip by,
we're losing so much more than we could ever gain through the trivial things we constantly invest in.
i don't want to miss these perfect seconds in the random scheme of everything
that i can never retrieve or recreate. tonight was one of the best nights of my life,
and i'll hold every second of clarity in my soul for the rest of eternity,
because the only thing i can ever truly appreciate in life is feeling infinite.
11/19/2006
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061018
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