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Old 09-21-2009, 10:33 PM
adam
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Vancouver
Posts: 873
"yeah, but i only as i pedalled past him"
For a few years after I graduated high school, I still lived at home with my parents. We had moved to the neighboring town from the one I grew up in, the one all my friends lived in. It was about a fifteen minute drive between the two.
My first car was a 1979 Impala, a car that felt as wide as an aircraft carrier and about as heavy. I've had more powerful cars, but none that hurtled through space quite like that one did. I would drive out to see my friends and my girlfriend nearly every night, and there were these wonderful back roads you could take between the towns where it was unusual to see other cars at the hours of night I'd be returning home. The back roads were a bit of a gamble in that there was a train crossing that you had to deal with, whereas if you took the highway there was an overpass and you would never be stuck staring at a freight train moving slowly in front of you (or worse, stopping right in front of you). But I preferred the back roads because of the wide open darkness of them; farmer's fields to the left and right, no cars, few houses, few lights.
I had my first serious girlfriend around this time. We saw each other for just short of four years, and between trips to her house, and to see my friends, that was a lot of back-and-forths on those back roads. When our relationship ended, I spent a lot of time thinking about what the past few years had been like, and it struck me that those night drives were maybe one of the most important, valuable things of that time of my life. And that struck me as an interesting notion, something to think about with regards to value, because the context for these drives was that there were not important, they were the in-between bits that were necessary to get to the important moments. Supposedly.
But I always felt so good on those drives. In my beast of a car, with the new thrill of driving, with the cassettes that I borrowed from my girlfriend, Pretty Hate Machine and Ritual de la Habitual and Perfect From Now On and all the mixtapes me and my friends were constantly exchanging. I would often drive with the window open to feel the cold air full force. And I think there was a certain contentedness often associated with those moments, having either recently smoked a joint or fucked or both, depending on whom I had been with that night, and heading towards my own bed and comfort and sleep.
So part of me wants to romanticize these moments in the sense that I'm taking something that's supposedly the least interesting part of the night, and I'm saying, "Look, maybe these moments are way more important than we tend to think they are." But I know that all I'm really saying is that I really liked those things, the music and the freedom of driving. The distinction I'm trying to articulate is that I'm using this thing, this memory, as the foundation of my idea that there are all these moments that are supposed to be unimportant, that are supposed to be in-between the real moments, and they're the real deal. They're the precious stuff. But I'm aware that this could be spun as all I'm really saying is that I misjudged how much I enjoy driving at night with music on, and the idea that there are any interesting generalizations to be drawn from this is false. I'm aware of that, but I'm not sure that's all there is to it.

I wrote something that I liked about it, at the time. A short little thing, not really a story, not really poetry (I can NOT write poetry) about the in-between places. I can't remember it very well. I know I went through four characters, I think, a first-person singular driving at night, a second-person, a "he" and a "she", I think, I can't recall what each was doing but I know one of them was on the bus, one was on a crowded sidewalk, and it was very much about this idea of being present, of not missing these little moments because of their perceived triviality. When I moved out, I posted it online at a website I frequented and someone there told me she printed it out and kept it underneath her bed. I wish I had paid more attention to that at the time because I'm really proud of that, of touching someone like that, and I don't think I ever knew anything about that person. I've lost the piece, too, which irritates me. Maybe it's for the better, it's probably much worse than I remember. But after trying to do all this "serious" writing and coming up with a bunch of garbage, I wish I still had this throw-away casual thing that someone had cared that much about.

Anyway, this sort of all sounds like, "it's the journey, not the destination," right? I know. And yet, it feels to me more profound than that. Or maybe that cliche is just so familiar it has lost all ability to suggest profundity. Maybe I should take note of the economy of it and cut this off now, right? Probably. But I feel like typing.

There are other layers to this thing that has become central to me. Another critical aspect of it was my adventures with pot cookies, around the same time as these night drives, and for a few years afterwards. Now, I don't know if you're familiar with pot cookies, but they can be summed up as, "Holy shit." You can smoke weed all night and have no idea how potent baking with marijuana is. I know the first time I encountered it, we could not believe the high we got was from pot alone.
I did them on a semi-regular basis for a while. Among other things, they produce a deep sense of euphoria (for me - not for everyone, apparently). I remember a couple of those night drives (and yes, I drove on pot cookies, and no, I will not do so again. Apologies on behalf of dumb teenage me) under the influence, and I remember thinking, realizing, "This moment is perfect." This music, this instant, this time and place is exactly how I want it to be.
And then it happened again, another night, another cookie. And then repeatedly, though I only recall two distinct driving occurrences - the rest were at home, at the movie theatre, wherever I was when I was stoned to ecstasy on horrible-tasting cookies (brownies mask the taste better). (Aside: here's how to make perfect pot butter. Grind your weed in a coffee grinder to maximize surface area. Boil water. Add butter and ground weed to boiling water and keep at a rolling boil for twenty minutes. THC is fat soluble, but not water soluble, so it gets absorbed into the melted butter. Strain the butter-weed-water through cheesecloth to remove the plant matter. Put the butter-water in the fridge. The butter will rise to the top and congeal. Once it's hard, remove from the fridge, lift the butter out of the water, throw the water out and you have perfect, awful-tasting THC butter. Where was I?) Oh, right, the perfection.
The thing is, my father is a severe depressive, and when you grow up with someone with a heavy mood disorder you get used to the idea that our emotions are chemical. Some people seem to have an instinctive aversion to this idea; they feel that it's a reduction of our emotional lives. I've never really understood that point of view: Of course there's an underlying physical mechanism. Why is that a reduction?
My point, though, is that while I was used to the idea that there was a chemical basis for our emotions, I never really felt it until I noticed the trend of "this moment is perfect" pot cookie experiences. As soon as a noticed that this experience was repeating, I watched for it, and tried to examine it from within the confines of the moment, turning over the sensations as they hit me and looking for some sort of falsehood to them, looking for some sort of insincerity to them, evidence that this moment of pure happiness was chemically induced and this was different than a natural wonderful moment. I'm telling you, I could find no flaws in it, no hint that it was fool's gold. And I really looked. Repeatedly. I would stop, reflect, observe. I would try to describe. Examine. Dissect.
And so there was another part of The Idea: Perfection is mostly an internal state. We naturally tend to think of it as a product of our surroundings because most of our stresses have to do with things outside ourselves, but the evidence was there in front of me that if you are in a moment without hardship, whether that moment is beautiful or mundane only has to do with what is going on in your head. My drive home can be boring and a hassle or it can be sublime, and that is decided within my skull.
Now, of course it's very tempting to focus on the altered state and point to it as reason why these moments I describe are exceptional rather than normal. But I think they were only exceptional in the sense that they were repeatable, predictable, and intense: I think all of life is made up of moments not unlike these. Look, I have my hair cut really close to my head, so there's no good or bad hair days for me. They're all identical. I always look more or less the same. And it has always struck me as curious that I can look in the mirror one day and feel quite handsome and feel quite ugly the next, knowing that from an objective standpoint I look virtually identical. And I have certainly experienced other moments of perfection that have had nothing to do with anything I've eaten or smoked or drank. They have happened all over the place, at all times, and they are subtle and glorious and fleeting. And they do not have to do with some special convergence of events like, "Oh, I'm having a delicious meal and I just won the lotto and whatever." I'm talking about moments that have no external factors I can point to, but just become those instants when I can say, "I feel incredible and would change nothing about this." If you are averse to drug-induced examples, I think most of us are familiar at least with the pleasant after-effects of exercise.
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everybody makes mistakes...but i feel alright when i come undone
  #2  
Old 09-21-2009, 10:34 PM
adam
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Vancouver
Posts: 873
Re: "yeah, but i only as i pedalled past him"
Same thing; the world seems better because the exertion has caused an endorphin rush, not because it has changed.

Another layer: I feel like virtually anything can be beautiful, and I don't mean that in some lovey-dovey cheeseball embrace-the-universe way. I mean: photography has shown me that careful composition can make an interesting image out of the most mundane things. That any object can be interesting if you approach it correctly. Get close to it, get far from it, crop it here, just look at this portion of it, juxtapose that bit against the sky, against that tree, look at it with this person in the foreground. One of the camera or film companies ran an ad, "Even a parking lot can be beautiful." Damn straight. We've all come to appreciate the sensibility of the worn, the broken-down, the old and rusty and used, the abandoned. Electric wires crossing the sky. Concrete overpasses. Of course, as intrusions on nature it's easy to villainize these things, to lament their presence. It's harder to find their beauty, but it's there. Rotate your perspective, mentally, literally, figuratively.
I have to use a couple of movie comparisons. I sort of dislike this because there are people I like and respect who dislike these movies, so it risks being counter-productive to refer to them, but if I'm going to mention Nine Inch Nails and pot cookies I don't think I can do much further harm with a few pop culture references.
The first is the scene in American Beauty in which the kid plays the video of the bag blowing in the wind. I want to make love to that scene, because it absolutely, utterly nailed something that I have felt and completely despaired of ever being able to articulate. "I feel like there's so much beauty in the world that my heart is going to break." (from memory, might be wrong, don't care). Motherfucking amen. I've been there, I've desperately wanted to put it into words, to images, to something, to translate it, to communicate it, and I thought it was too subtle, too abstract, too vague. That scene nails it perfectly. The bag blowing in the wind as the carrier for the feeling, the words I quoted as the description. That's it.
The second is Wes Anderson movies in general. I adore Wes Anderson movies. I have friends I love who seem to hate them, and I can't really understand that, because his movies seem to embody this trick, this twist. They are real life, but they are real life swiveled so that every thing is a little funnier, a little sadder, a little prettier, better composed and framed. I feel like Wes Anderson is putting my mind down on film, and when my friend talks about hating one of his films I get sad because I feel like they're unknowingly hating me. But there it is, man, that's the whole deal: that our sorrows and breakdowns and triumphs and loves and lovers are all tragic and absurd and beautiful and poetic all at once. All you have to do is look at them from the right angle.

And there's something about it that ties into a child-like sense of wonder. I think we've all still got that but that we suppress it. It's a normal part of being an adult. But I think with a little effort you can turn those suppression actions off.
It has been many years since those drives. I have been through a few cars; sold my most recent one. I was feeling like it was the right thing to do, environmentally speaking - no judgment if you are unable, we all have responsibilities and sometimes the alternatives aren't workable. But I changed jobs, and I take the bus now. The bus is a tough challenge, because it's like driving, in all the mundane senses, with all the amazing fun shit about driving excised. Being packed in there like sardines when the weather is bad, when you're cold and wet, when the people around you are grumpy, it's tough to find the beauty. But, here's the thing, it's always there. Sometimes you can't do it, sometimes you can't remove yourself enough from the shit in your life, because we all have shit in our lives somedays, but it's not because beauty is not on that bus with you. Rotate, mentally crop, frame, compose the image. Look out that little cracked open window up at the trees and bricks and sky. Look at that person and understand that they're starring in their own series of tragedies and comedies, and that this is a moment where you're in their movie. Observe them. Read their cares on their faces. Be present. Recognize that these in-between moments can count for as much as you let them. Recognize that the perfection of the moment (or it's absence) is something going on inside your head. Recognize that you can reframe this instant into the most beautiful version of it, that there's something there in front of you that is interesting, or pretty, or sad. There is always something to engage with. There is always something.

I was talking to a friend of mine about this stuff, bouncing ideas off them, and I had really focused on the idea of importance, that every moment is important, or can be important if you want to let it be important. She called me out on the bullshit of that, and I see that. I see there is a certain bullshit to this. But I also know that in my head truth and beauty and importance are all sort of tangled up. And I'm not sure that is a set of beliefs I'd like to defend, philosophically. That is a bigger topic than I want to tackle, right now. But I can tell you how it feels. I keep on feeling like there's something important going on all around me and that it's my responsibility to point at it, and that thing has to do with beauty. Like, every sunset and every moment when the light hits the trees a certain way, when the wind is in the leaves, when I hear a musician do something right, when you hold someone's hand, when you kiss them, when you laugh your ass off with a friend, when you dream, that all this is worth saving. That it's all going to go, all going to be lost, that it seems very likely that someday there won't be any more humans and all this will be so far lost as to have never existed and that I want to know that I didn't neglect it, that I didn't let it thoughtlessly slip away, that I held on and loved it and cherished it as best I could, and that hopefully I helped other people feel it more than I hindered it.
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everybody makes mistakes...but i feel alright when i come undone
  #3  
Old 09-23-2009, 07:38 AM
BeautifulBurnout
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Join Date: Dec 2008
Posts: 2,522
Re: "yeah, but i only as i pedalled past him"
What a beautifully-written and thought-provoking piece.

I get the "every moment can be important" bit with bells on.

From the age of about 17 through to my early 30s I used to suffer from horrendous panic attacks. I still have no idea where they came from, but I would suddenly have this overwhelming sense of doom that would permeate every cell of my body, and start to shake and hyperventilate, sometimes cry, sometimes even vomit, feeling so utterly fearful of everything. I used to find "reasons" for them - when I was in my teens and 20s it was fear of nuclear war, for example - but the reasons were more a hook to hang my panic onto to try and rationalise it.

And then I met my husband and he talked me out of them. Yes. Actually talked me out of panic attacks. He would get me to explain how I was feeling for a minute or two, then get me to concentrate on the moments by saying "Well, this moment is all right, isn't it, here safe with me"... "Yes..." "And this next moment isn't too bad either is it?"... and so he would go on until the panic had abated. And gradually I would regain a sense of proportion until, eventually, I had no more panic attacks again because I was able to talk myself out of them, just how he had taught me to, by concentrating on the beauty and serenity of each individual moment.

The Tendai and other similar schools of Buddhism also have a concept called "ichinen sanzen", which is the notion that every life moment contains 3000 potential life states. I believe this is true too. I think that we can take each single moment and decide to move in a different way, think in a different way, create a different path for ourselves right there... right at that moment... by the choice we make.

But anyway. Enough of my ramblings.

Good to see you posting here again, and with something so brilliant!

J x
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"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution" - Emma Goldman
  #4  
Old 09-23-2009, 12:19 PM
Leon
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Join Date: Dec 2008
Posts: 1,231
Re: "yeah, but i only as i pedalled past him"
I guess everyone has their way of finding happiness, but I feel some don't succeed because they are searching for that big treasure, that ultimate goal.
Traveling by bus very regularly, I find those experiences very similar to your car trips. It helps that I'm doing night shifts, thus travel at late nights and early mornings with hardly any passengers.
I love to listen to music on the bus, with its engine's vibration and wide turns on empty freeways. Just watching the low lands of Holland go by, sometimes with a mist rising a few meters above it, and the rising sun in my eyes. Those uncomplicated moments make everything fall in its right place.
Eating potcookies with friends is a repeating event in my life as well. Priceless are the moments when we reach the same level and either conversate or laugh, untill we feel the time is there to enjoy the moment without sound (except music). Those moments help me realise that, even though my situation at the moment isn't how I want it to be, I can still enjoy myself.

It feels like I'm repeating your words, but I guess that's only a compliment to your well written story.
  #5  
Old 09-23-2009, 09:43 PM
adam
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Vancouver
Posts: 873
Re: "yeah, but i only as i pedalled past him"
Hey you two. Long time no post. Thanks for the kind words.

I thought I would mention something I had left out of this while writing it because I thought most people wouldn't know what I was on about. But, seeing as I've now posted this here, a lot of the visual aesthetic comparisons/reflections were partly inspired by Tomato. They helped me formalize some of thinking on the re-contextualization of urban environments.
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everybody makes mistakes...but i feel alright when i come undone
  #6  
Old 09-27-2009, 09:49 PM
IsiliRunite
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Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Ann Arbor
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Re: "yeah, but i only as i pedalled past him"
I can relate. A lot of times I feel people take in situations by comparing things to their idealized mock-ups of an unrealistic life and fail to observe the nuance that can be really quite beautiful. Part of beauty, for me, is experiencing the genesis of opportunity...
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