Editing Editing Editing

The Fort (Unfinished)

Discovered is such an overused word about the experience of finding out something about ones self. It sounds dated and not very interesting. But here I sat tonight, Nicholas had turned out his light and I thought to myself, “I did’t do any real writing today.” And this thought became a, “I am not going to be able to sleep until I write something.” So here I am sitting up in our bed typing away. I’ve craved writing so here I am. 

I was thinking last night about a the time a few years ago where for about a year I slept in a fort that I built in my basement room of my parents house. I was twenty-three years old. I had a job working at a restaurant where sometimes the thought of having to go would literally have me in tears. But I would go and every night when I would come home there was the fort. 

The top of the fort was made of the sleeping bag that I asked for when I was going to the hippy college in the mountains and I never actually used outdoors. I secured it to the two posts on the side of my bed and pulled it across and attached it to a door handle and a cast iron heater that was not being used. The floor was two or three large heavy blankets and laid a sheet over the top as a make shift door. The only thing that was inside was my laptop, a stack of books on Mount Everest, and my dog Abby. Abby was the only one allowed to see the fort. I tried to keep it a secret to what success I am not sure. 

I would come home late from another shift. I would sneak down the stairs and I would crawl into the fort. Then I would fall asleep watching a mix of outdoor “survivalist” shows and Lost. I would wake up and the process would start over again. This went on for a solid year. Pretty much stopped when I moved in with my grandfather to help take care of him.

I wonder what it was about that fort that made it such a calming thing for me and the feeling of calm that it had for me? Was it some form of out of space escapism? I don’t know if I would ever do something like that again. If I have learned anything it is that “coming out of the fort” is that you cannot just hide away in the rut to make the problems go away. Life isn’t going to wait for you. I would sit in there and dream about climbing mountains and now I know that if I really want to. I can just go out and do it. I can climb that mountain.

9.4.12.

I really have no idea why this campus…these classmates of mine put me in such a fowl mood on a daily basis. School used to be the place for me to go and feel better. I could talk about books and what they mean and every thing that made me feel like shit would be gone for awhile. 

Now I just hear things like, “I don’t like reading…I would rather just watch the movie” and “I found the book really hard to read because the language was so offensive” and all I want to do is yell and throw things. Are these the people that I am going to have to teach one day? 

I think that some kind of switch has gone off in me that I do not care for. I think that it is time to evaluate the way that I look at things.

I have spent the past hour trying to write a sentence describing the way that you made that face this morning, because that was one of those moments where I fell in love with you again.

Home.

So this week I paid rent for the first time, ever. I am twenty-six years old. I have been waiting for this moment for quite awhile. This feeling of “I am my own person” is new to me and it is exciting and new and getting less scary day by day. It has been an interesting learning experience trying to figure out all of this for myself. It has been a little testing at times but a friend of mine told me one day, “not everything is going to be perfect…you will mess up, but you just have to learn from it.” So that is what I intend to do…live, love, get messy, and learn from my mistakes. 

“She sits in her apartment with her cat listening to Weezer.”

The Legend of Johnny Boy Blue, or How a Life Saves Itself

Johnny Boy Blue found himself as a man wayfaring,

growing older having  still not become a rendering

of the design of a man that he so desired to become.

The creation of the adventurous life was thundering

inside of the chest of his own design,  a voice roaring

out, FREEDOM, but Johnny Boy Blue had a problem.

Fear was an ever-growing occurrence in the backswing

of Johnny Boy Blue’s life. He would find fear hunting

in the bright spots of  his character often calling hokum

the oft illogical and impractical notions of his thinking.

He would sit with company listening to the exciting

lives others lead and would say a mantra of freedom.

So he enrolled in the life of knowledge where he found

a way of thinking that he never had before. Out of the cave

he walked step by step into the light. He was able to save

himself with his thinking and this was his higher ground.

He met an idea named boy and another thing came true

that someone could enter his walk, a partner on the way

 and that now no burdens he comes across outweigh

the knowledge that his life came to his own rescue.

April 2012