Accela-writing

“The sunlight and the music. The joy and laughter, the light of my life.

They won’t make it better, nothing will.

I can’t let you help me.

And you can’t tear down these walls...”

And then

Your granite cliff came crashing into mine

I stood at a railing today And stared at the ground Two stories down Wondering what people would say If suddenly the railing went away

And there was nothing holding me back From falling to the ground Two stories down I could hear the way my bones would crack How blood would seep from my broken back

It wouldn’t be pretty, that’s for sure A fall to ground From two stories down It wouldn’t kill me, that’s for sure I’ll be a bit more broken than I was before

But if the sun rises And I’m not on the ground Two stories down? The only thing broken

Rock music has been my life. Guitars have emptied their weeping, lightning souls into mine since 5th grade. Through multiple moves to cities across the world, through every step of my life from elementary to middle to high school to college, from hopeful longing to heartache, from homesickness to loss, rock music has been in my ear, holding together my heart like glue, giving me the strength to wake up in the morning and smile. There’s something about the six (or seven, eight, even nine) strings, something locked deep inside their tightly wound cords that shakes awake something real within the strings of my own heart.

I’ve grown up worshipping the guitar, and the guitarist. Hammett, Young, Slash, and before them, Iommi, Clapton and Hendrix. Today they lost an idol that they grew up with, an idol whose effects I have had the privilege of experiencing through the bands of my childhood. Only very recently I understood the effect Chuck Berry has had on my life. If it hadn’t been for his guitar, his inimitable style, his flair and virtuosity, the music I grew up with might not have awakened something so primal and real inside of me. I owe a fundamental part of who I am to him. Rock music owes a fundamental part of its sound to him. More bands than I can count cite him as an influence and an inspiration, or cite a band inspired and influence by him as an influence and inspiration. He was the pioneer, and we are where we are because he did what he did and he did it so well.

But then I leave my room and there are people out there with jokes ten times better than mine that they, check this, came up with on the spot. They made it fit into the actual flow of a conversation without a pause. 

Like how fuckin wild is that? There are people out there with synapses firing so rapidly they can come up with in nanoseconds what would have taken me at least 15 minutes and a nap to create and perfect.

So today for no reason whatsoever I decided to meditate while listening to Afraid by the Neighborhood. So I’m sitting there in my living room couch, legs crossed, eyes closed, just real focused and one with the universe and shit, just having a real nice excuse to just ignore everything going on around me like I hear my baby niece running around, being chased around by my mom, I hear my not-so-baby nephew shouting said niece’s name excitedly and it’s super chaotic and there I am, an island of calm, sitting on the couch. Meditating.

Once the song, and my four minutes of bliss, ends I take off my earphones and slowly open my eyes all calm and serene-like and wham! There’s my father, standing there staring at me, scaring all that hippy bullshit straight out of my system in a flash of adrenaline. 

“What were you listening to?” he asks.

For some reason I didn’t want to admit that I was listening to goddamn Afraid by The goddamn Neighborhood so I kinda stutter and say, “Wh- just white noise, you know?”

He nods and walks away and I just sit there questioning myself and also realizing.

“....is paved with-” Fucking fucknuggets what?

He leaned back in his chair. Where was he going with this? Where the fuck did the other end of that thought go?

The path to judgement. The path away from judgement...

Fuck if he knew anymore. Fuck it, just write. Don’t worry about coherence. Your mind has that shit down. You start worrying about coherence, and you start worrying about someone looking at this piece of writing and going “That’s Incoherent!”

Fuck that person, fuck their judgement. Who gives a shit if they don’t understand, you don’t let that stop yourself from saying what you wanna say. You don’t say things so people understand them. You’re not here to be understood.

You’re here to spout the noodly-shit stewing around in YOUR brain, in YOUR head. Just siphon it out there. That was your assigned purpose in this cold fuckin Universe. Someone up there was like “Ha! Look at these people with their upside-down-bowl-shaped heads! I’m gonna fill up that bowl with SHIT.”

Except the bowl is upside down, right? The shit that our heads came filled with should’ve emptied itself immediately as we made impact with the ground and gravity became a thing. Proof: take a bowl of noodles right now and turn it upside down. That shit is not gonna be sticking around in that bowl for much longer, I promise you- swear on Newton’s life.

So why, then, didn’t our upside-down-noodle-bowls not empty themselves in the first fateful seconds of our time here on this lovely, dying ball of water and dirt? What was holding our shit back from emptying out of our heads and joining the mountains of shit we’ve surrounded ourselves with instantaneously?

Inhibition? Fear? 

Other.... emotions?

Something. I couldn’t tell you. 

I’m not here to be coherent. I’m here to let some of that shit out of my own head. I’m here to let it out, and try gaining some knowledge- what little I can- from the little piece of the Universe I’ve kept locked up inside of me. 

When quotations of love and beautiful lovers start to lose their rosy sheen, When you’ve made that aching climb and seen that dreary, aching, made up scene

You’ll be ready

When skies are just blue, the world is just there, you just can’t bring yourself to care When kisses are habit, not godsent gifts of burning glory goosebumping your skin everywhere You’ll be ready

The confluence has ended, the twisting turning currents of passion calming down Just like before Moving forward, gently, sedately, you have a choice And you’ll be ready

You’ll be ready for the depths of someone’s soul Ready to look in and choose it to make you whole Or ready to not like what you find And gently flow away and leave it behind

It’ll break your heart, you’ll be crushed against rocks You’ll spread so thin, your self forgot But it all comes together in the end You will all come together in the end

This can be anything And that line was art And art can be everywhere You I Us Every line a complete, uninterrupted thought You don’t want to read this You think this sucks What in the fuck even am I saying

I don’t have a clue But words pour out and I’m tired of being a dam, I just wanna be a damn river

Ha!

Not that clever Not nearly as clever as. Whatever it is you consider clever. I know you want to leave And go back to the Harambe memes

Is this all this is going to be? Just me, endlessly, saying you want to leave? Nothing This is nothing

Anything. And nothing.

I can’t be everything to everyone. I can’t dissociate so much that I lose who I am. I can’t make people happy.

No. I can’t make all people happy. But I do want to make some people happy.

What would make some people happy?

Who are these “some people”?

My parents, of course. I’m actually surprised they’re the first people I thought of, considering how little they’ve been on my mind lately.

My mom would be happy to see me live to see next year. Ok no, not really. She has more belief in my ability to survive than that. She would be happy if I stayed healthy and slept well, to be honest.

What would my dad want from me? Nothing. I can’t give him anything that would make him happy.

Wow. I really don’t know what my parents want of me. Do they want me to be a good person? But they’ve encouraged me to do some real bad things. Lie to your friends, they’ve told me. You can’t make them all happy, they’ve said. And even if you did, YOU wouldn’t be happy, they said.

Ok. Maybe they want me to be happy. They want me to do what makes me happy. Maybe at some point in life love becomes less about what the other person can do for you and more about what the other person can be- with or without you in their lives. And my parents love me.

They do.

It’s in the best interests of my sanity to assume they do. My parents love me. They love me. How much, though?

Enough to be happy if I’m happy, even if they are physically incapable of showing it by the time I get there.

Ok. So love is a transaction of happiness. Being happy makes others happy, but what is happiness?

Can’t say. Don’t know. Doing what I want?

What would make me happy? In this instant, in this moment, what would make me happy? Getting closer to, nay, just straight-up finishing my 1200 word essay- due in 39 hours- would drive me insane. I might even do a little hopscotch diggity bop dance on the carpet. Get crumbs all up in my grill but so what? When you’re nothing like Atlas, in that the burden on your back wouldn’t change at all if the weight of one single essay was taken away- you get to enjoy the little things.

I rather like enjoying little things. The simple joy of watching random bits of grass flick and move as the lawn-insects leap and frolic about, using the green blades like launching pads. Getting lost, eyes flicking to every little motion you see- it’s never in front of you, is it? Like those dots you see out the corner of your eyes between the corners of those black squares with white borders- you know what I’m talking about, right?

I’m not the guy to look at stars and be intimidated by how big it all must be, all the distance and the emptiness between the flecks of matter in a swirling soup of darkness. I can see that we’re tiny, but I can see things tinier than us, shivering in the darkness of our shadows. We are, in our Universe, a Universe ourselves. Tiny things make us up, define us, yet fail to do so in any comprehensible capacity. An explanation, an answer we get closer to that we’ll never fully realize.

Such is the struggle of life. Stare at the random movement of the blades, pick up or discover the tiniest of detail, and you get sucked in  entranced, like a tiny boy that’s found this shiny toy to explore and absorb. Here I was, so happy in the blades of grass full of life and motion, that I lost myself just thinking about them.

But back to my point. What makes me happy?

Contemplation.

The outside world serves as a channel to inner thoughts. Every now and then inner thoughts have a tendency to surprise you with inescapable truth, and no greater joy exists in the world than coming to an epiphany, a conclusion that you know deep down is true, and being able to remember it even as the shock of its discovery jolts you out of the mental state through which you found it.

These people, they live in my head. Lives I hold in my mind. 

I remember the M-shape of my best friend’s fringe. I remember his jokes about being fated to fall in love with someone whose name began with ‘M’. Now, three years later and ten thousand miles away, he is in the arms of his love. 

Her name begins with a T. 

Funny how “fated to fall in love with a girl whose initials are ‘M’ ” has a subclause “Fated to Fall in Love” built into it. 

It really was fate, how they met. But that’s a story for another time. 

I don’t talk to him much. I don’t know what to say, don’t know how to start a conversation with the three years of silence heaped up between us like a chasm neither of us has the energy to shout across. It’s a crying shame, but there he lives, back in India, and here he lives, holed up in my head, two images, one rushing past without me, one unchanging and forever there.  

Other people reside here too. 

Childhood friends. Neighbors I played with when I was ten. 

I took a fall off the monkey bars in the park next to my house once. Landed on my left arm. It went dead, and took my mind with it. I stumbled home in a daze, her left arm guiding my way, her right arm dragging my silly bike.

She kind of hated me. I guess that’s why we had to become best friends.

My life is spurned affection sitting atop a pile of broken hearts.

Here lie the meagre ashes of a first love, a little spark that never really caught. Suffocated and crushed under the doldrums of fear and timidity. In these ashes lie two promises, one broken in pieces around the wholeness of the other.

‘We’ll stay friends, right?’

Fools. Fools to agree, fools to believe it was anything but a lie. 

I don’t keep my friends. 

I know what it feels like to be forgotten.

I don’t mind the feeling. These people I hold in my head, and my heart, they’ll stay with me forever. They’ll never have to leave. I never have to leave them.