"in a world like this, i just want a kiss goodbye. we are not of this world... stuck inside this fleeting moment, tucked away where no one owns it, wrapped up in a haze and by mistake i've thrown away. and oh i am so homesick, but it ain't that bad, cause i'm homesick for the home i've never had."
this song makes me think of people i know, of myself, wandering around on this search for meaning that we never seem to find. echoes of it exist, draw us on, keep us hoping that someday we'll understand everything and be compensated somehow for all the pain we've gone through to get where we are. someday it'll all be worthwhile, this is just a prelim, a test run, a slight detour on the way home.
"how on earth did i get so jaded? life's mysteries seem so faded."
most days it feels like everything i know is either fake or irrelevant. or maybe it's both, and the joke is convincing myself otherwise. i have an inexhaustible belief in meaningfulness, in justice, in beauty. but are any of these things real? do they have any existence as anything but pretty light-pictures in my brain? sometimes, at 3 am when i'm lying in bed alone wondering if every night of the rest of my life will be like this, believing that i'm going to die by myself in a twin bed, i think the universe laughs at me and my high-toned ideas.
"i've got a lot i've got to do just to get through the end of the day. it hardly ever even happens, but i go to sleep the same anyway. and you can't believe in yourself, you can't believe in anyone else, so why sit and wait for the new world to begin?"
how can you ever tell which things are true, or does it matter? that's my current thesis: that it doesn't really matter whether any of this is real. if it's not inside my hamster ball, it doesn't count. the question of how things get inside without me getting out is open, of course. but if i just focus on what's in the ball and what's on the path, i can make the whole mess a little more manageable. pragmatism. decide that you can decide what matters. the only problem is, what happens when you're wrong?
"night driving without headlights, wearing sunglasses too. looking good but sure don't feel right; anything to be cool. doing hopscotch with my legs tied, jumping rope in wet cement. black leather in midday sunshine..."
but if i'm wrong, then i don't exist anymore, at least not as this person i've decided to make myself into. i deflate, collapse in on my fallibility, watch my masks crumble. only human after all, only real, real blood in my veins that pours out when they're sliced open. and i'm left with sticky red fingerprints on my surfaces wondering what happened, who told, how they found out that i really didn't know after all.
"there's one thing that i know that's perfectly clear: you never grow out of fear. but i'm growing into you...and will i ever ever ever get over it?"
sometimes i *do* know, though. do i get credit for those days? the times when everything lines up in front of me and fits together in interlocking logic, can i save them up and redeem them on those days when all the structures i've made of my chaos are falling down around my head in huge clouds of dust? proofs of purchase of truth, like karma boxtops and if i save up enough of them, i get enlightenment. or maybe i just get a cheap plastic imitation with shiny paint that flakes off after three weeks. but where do you take complaints? the person behind the returns counter looks awfully familiar. you can't sue yourself for misrepresentation.
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sine | deb
i really should try going to sleep earlier.