Naked

The internet and online world is the latest frontier. Like the universe itself it is vast and ever expanding. I have staked out my corner in this universe with my blog…which hardly anybody reads, or quite possibly nobody reads.

So why do I bother? Do I want to be heard? Do I just want to express myself? I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to be heard, but I’m not very good at self promotion. When I started writing it I only told two people. I didn’t even tell my family. The only way people knew about it was when I started posting links to my blog on my Facebook page.

On one hand I can count the people who have told me they have read some of my blog entries. The few who have read it tell me they like it but they are friends, what else would they say? I started off being somewhat prolific, writing 10 blog entries in the first month. Each month after that the number dropped. After a few months I was down to about 5 entries a month. In January I stopped writing the blog altogether and didn’t write another entry until last month. Some things came up in my life that I had to deal with that took some of the steam out of my desire to write.

But now I am back. I’m back with a different mind set. I’m in a different place now. I am less interested in being heard. Now I am just trying to save myself. When I started writing the blog I didn’t want to bring my present personal life into the mix. I wanted to write about topical things that had to do with what was going on in the world through my colored lens of being a black man in America with what I consider an uncommon perspective. I called my blog the Human Palette but it could just have easily been called Stranger in a Strange Land. That’s how I have felt my for most of my life. Like I don’t belong in this time or this place. The world goes one way and I go the other. I’m too stubborn to follow convention. Sometimes it works for me and other times it doesn’t. The older I get the more out of touch I feel.

As a young man it wasn’t a big deal because as a young person one’s main goal is to find out what adulthood means. It was what me and all my peers spent our early 20’s doing. Now, with 50 just around the corner, I know who I am but it hasn’t changed that feeling of not belonging. The world has changed for sure, but the direction it seems to be going does not want to make me jump for joy. I feel as disconnected as ever. I am sure a lot of that has to do with being without a job for over a year. I was raised to be a working class person and I don’t have any issues with that. I have been fortunate to have two careers that enabled me to have jobs that I loved and work that challenged me. I was blessed to be born into a loving family of people I have the highest admiration for. I have had the pleasure of meeting and becoming friends with many quality people. I know that the people in my life would do anything for me, all I have to do is ask. And therein lies the rub. I can’t bring myself to ask. There is still a chasm that exists between me and the world. In that chasm lies the intimacy that is required to feel connected.

I am a solitary person, it is my nature. Most of what I do in life only requires my presence. This is not a plan, this is just the way it is. My solitary nature is in conflict with the gifts I have been born with. I was given all the tools to be a highly social person. I can make friends with anybody, no matter their creed, race, religious affiliation, or level of income. I can make friends with my enemies. I don’t have ill will towards anyone or any group, but I do have despair. I am deeply troubled by that which I have little power to change, things that don’t necessarily affect me personally but I see affecting others in detrimental ways. I often ask, “what can I do?” My answer has always been to be an example by the way I carry myself and live my life which is basically having respect for all things, keeping my ego in check and letting myself be led by humility.

Now I can not even manage my own life. I am in limbo. I am waiting for something to happen. I live alone. I am not married, and I have no children. It seems strange because I am a robust and healthy person in mind and body, for the most part, the health of my mind IS debatable. I must admit though, I have a skewed sense of who I am, a self image that I sometimes question. I am an oddball, a weirdo, out of time and out of place. I am attracted to the void. I am not one who seeks the light, I am one who seeks the dark, not in the sense of the malevolent or evil, but in the sense of the unknown and the unknowable. I have always had great admiration for the explorers of the world. Those with the fortitude to set out for destinations unknown without the promise of return. I often wonder what it would be like to live in a world with unknown borders, where instead of knowledge exists lore and superstition, to set oneself on a one way path to whatever is out there, to cast oneself gleefully into the void.

Of virtue and vices, I have lost my virtues which leaves my vices lonely and out of balance. They mean nothing to me now so I will lose them too. I know I am not the first poor bastard to travel these nefarious roads, I just can’t see the others footprints, erased by the solar winds and celestial dust that exist beyond time and space. Am I a fool? Maybe life is simple and I’m just not getting it. Go to work (or not), pay your taxes, pay your bills, root for your favorite team, watch tv, go to college, have hobbies, collect things, fall in love, get married, buy a house, have children, die…yes, I am a fool, and an arrogant one at that. The most extraordinary people I know of are dead, people like Lord Byron and Bob Marley, and that bothers me because I will never be able to walk in their grace. They all die young, even Jesus.

I am being stripped bare, to be left naked, by everyday life. Nostalgia and déjà vu bring me to my knees. I drink too much wine and scream at movies I have seen a hundred times, or just cry. I read the daily news and it’s the same shit just a different day. I should be talking to someone right now about all of this chaos colliding in my skull but it’s Lakers and Celtics game 7 and I don’t want to bring my dark clouds and rain on righteous celebrations. So instead I’ve been hanging out with Don Draper since 7am, 11 episodes and counting. A madman watching Mad Men.

It’s a few days before the summer solstice and I’m turning on the heater and busting out the down because it’s San Francisco, the city global warming just refuses to acknowledge. We just got our first Assisted Suicide billboard, next to the 101 freeway. Life imitating art Children of Men style. Our city was chosen because they think we San Franciscans are “clear thinkers”. This town ain’t what it used to be. The City That Knows How is quickly becoming the City That Doesn’t Have a Clue. It’s almost hard to believe that this petri gentrified city was once the infamous Barbary Coast, hands down the wildest place that ever existed in the United States. A place that once felt like your favorite pair of jeans worn so much the denim is ready to evaporate now feels arthritic.

It is time to bring this meandering ramble to a close. If you made it to the end do not feel sorrow for me, I ask you, pity this fool.