and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

Up is down. Left is right. Nothing, it would seem, is normal anymore.

But really it never was. I'm sorry, you all deserve better than the lacluster performance you've seen here of late but what can you do? I'm cripple. I'm mental. I'm metaphysically handicapped, it would seem. Apologies, to the nth degree, but in the end, what's a sorry, I fucked up? Apologies are like assholes. Everyone's got one.

Do, or do not. There is no try.

Some little green alien told me that once and it's not the worst advice in the world. Effect your own destiny? Is that what he was trying to say? Make your own life? Discover, explore, entertain the idea of a meaningful existence?

But it's all in your own little head, what is good, bad, indifferent. All in your head what success or failure is. These aren't new ideas. As old as the day is long, they are, and trite to boot.

The only real struggle in life is that of survival. Water, food, necessities. The rest is mental masturbation and damn if I haven't worn out my hand. My wrist is numb, folks. Numb. I've been running in circles and the rut is getting deep.

Almost completely

Someday I would like to look back on this fondly. Someday I'd like to look back on all of it fondly. I'd like to look back, look forward, look side to side, and embrace it all with a big happy acceptance of my place, my world, my exitence, my being. I'd like to be in tune as the musician might say. I'd like to strum happily at life's little guitar. I, my friends, would like to make some music.

The thing with music is that some of it's good, some of it's bad, and we don't all make the right kind.

I never did have any musical talent, really. Not a musical bone in my body. I love the stuff, eat it right up, but it doesn't treat me well flowing from these finger tips. That's one fate I've gotta live with. No amount of lessons or computer enhancement can make me make real music - nothing beyond my poor excuse for a minor pentatonic and a few chords, anyway.

So I gotta make music of a different colour. I gotta strum life's little guitar in my own way. I'm not saying it's as beautiful or wonderful as the next guys, I'm not saying it's better or worse, I'm not saying it is anything at all, really, but I am saying that it's all I got,

this music,

that I strum,

of mine.

Notes of weeping willows and the pitter-patter of staccato rain drops. Rolling tremelos of green hills and sharp beats of mountain peaks. Booming drums of distant thunder, humming patterns of sunshine summers.

I ain't saying it's good music but it's my music, with a little humour thrown in like eggs to fluff the flour.

I like music. Who doesn't like music? It's universal, that language of love, regret, despair, depression, eternal faith and hope and life.

I'm an asshole. A real asshole, sometimes. I don't mean it in the way most people do - not in a mean sorta way - just in a stupid regretful sort of way. An asshole, in my world, he doesn't take the opportunities handed to him. An asshole hits on 18 and stays on 11. An asshole, you see, steps on his own foot and breaks his own back for the opportunity to prove the point that's worn with age and blunt with disinterest. An asshole, my friend, doesn't get it.

Sometimes I really don't think I get it. I look around, people smiling, people shuffling about with their lifes doing things making things enjoying things sighing and thinking things maybe sometimes not always the best but carry on it's out there figure it out you've gotta give it a shot it might be worth it sometimes you just gotta go for broke people. People, out there, doing. People people. Don't you see? I don't get it and I'm the worst sort of asshole:

I know I don't get it.

Ignorance is bliss, fine. But just not knowing - awareness that you don't know - that's a crime perpetrated on humanity.

Humanity, my friends, is all we got.

If you noticed.

Somewhere out there a man is huddled in the cold believing almost-completely in free worldwide healthcare. A noble cause. Not unobtainable in the least, given the desire aspect. Given that not all those who can be helped want to be helped. Given the nature of the problem, it's solvable. Not in any complete or perfect way but almost-completely. That, my amigo, is the best we can do and that man, cold and hungry, that man is not wrong. He's not far off from what we can solve as a humanitarian unit, as a race, as a big self-help group. One big happy family where the black sheep are washed of the soot and grime and the father, the leader, he is free from the shackles of the power, free from the corruption of self because he - he does not exist, it's a we, he, close but for one letter, we are the leaders the control the power the final say-so wielded by all.

Control of one's own destiny. Control of one's own heart. Control of one's own self, it's almost-completely accessible. Not quite. Close. No cigar. These, these are the constraints, the limitations, the rules we must engage.

Imperfection.

The human mind, our brains about us, we can not imagine a world that could not be better. We cannot think of what cannot be improved. Our very power, our thinking ability to evolve, the part of us that makes us us, the mind part, the conscious part, the ever-aware part, this is the knife in our very own backs, as if our arms were double-jointed and long and able to swing the blade around behind us and impale our very own souls upon ourselves.

The ability to perceive the notion of perfection will kill us all. The ability to know there is chance for better, the very programming that gave us our freedom from the muck and grime of it, it's our catch-22. Our achilles heal. Our power and our pain.

The human condition is to suffer, to feel, to bleed, to know of our dilemma. The human condition is to effect change which effects change which effects change for the better so that we might realize that better is not good enough not good enough not good enough until somewhere, you'd think, you'd hope, there is an end in sight?

No.

The end is not near. The road, long and treacherous, is farther than the universe is wide. Immense.

So what've I got? What's the end-all-be-all-answer for tonight? What do I gotta say for myself? What do I take from it and work with? What, pray tell, is the ball of clay I sculpt tonight?

Nada. I got nada. zilch. zero. nothing. nil.

It comes back to the same old same old. Here, this little heart, it beats a song that can only be sung to one and so that, my friends, that is the fate I've come to know. It's the fate that, though perhaps malleable, I accept willingly. It is what I am and I am what it is. Done. It. Finished. Over.

I've solved nothing. I sit here and I perceive perfection. I sit here and I believe that it's possible, truly deeply honestly believe - almost completely. If I don't then I have nothing and to want for nothing is to truly have everything and have we not just gone over the trepidation of believing those possibilities? All I have is this, this perfection in my mind, this somewhere-down-that-long-treacherous-road-there-is-an-end-to-that-road-or-at-least-a-new-beginning..

Am I so wrong to want to believe it?

Am I so wrong to know in my heart?

Am I so wrong to want to survive, really survive, in a way that only your grandchildren can know about?

Almost?

Completely?