Blunt Object Orchestra

Check check

Over the last few weeks I have had the oppurtunity to reevaluate what I am doing with my life.  Two Tuesdays ago, an old train hopping buddy of mine, Loose Bruce, passed away in his sleep of a heart attack.  He was 36.  Last Tuesday an old friend “Smiley,” passed away.  Smiley was the man that taught me what it meant to be a street soldier, to fight for what you believe, and what it meant to shelve street corner tough guy for the sake of friends who needed you to not be that guy in that moment.

A friend of mine turned 36, a had a two week long relationship, my sophmore year of college started and I have been stressed out about my upcoming book.  I constantly find myself thinking that we live in some weird kind of insular stasis, yet all around me was flux and shift.  I am constantly caught in a cycle of discovery.  I realized that it is not the life changing and momentum shifting discoveries that are being made at this age, but the kind of repositioning, or calculating of 16th of degrees type transitions.

The girl I dated was 13 years younger than me.  I was worried at first about the age difference, but thought that she had a good head on her shoulders.  And she does.  For a girl who is 13 years younger than me.  I am not ready to go through her growing pains with her again, just as much as I am not ready to be the voice of reason for someone who has not garnered the experience needed to have said reason be of any benefit.  She was behaving ways that I didn’t like.  However, she did NOTHING wrong.  I found myself expecting her to operate with my experience and the wisdom I have gained from it.  (Sidenote:  I find that I do not like using using the word “wisdom,” when referring to myself.  Anyway back to blog…)  Long story short, we decided it would be best if we broke it off now.  I really hope she finds someone who can find all the beauty in her that I see.  She is an amazing girl.  I can’t wait to see where her life takes her.

I have been reconnecting with old friends, from back of my years as a street punk.  It really is a blessing to reconnect to people who may be the only people I relate to in the entire world.  People from where I am from DO NOT survive.  It is just unheard of.  I know a few people who read this, this sentiment will not make sense to you, and for that I am sorry.  I would love to explain more but it would be a lot like trying to explain hell to someone who has always lived in heaven.  There really is no reliable contrast, experiencially.

I decided to do away with punk/hardcore/skinhead attire.  My definitions of these different subcultures are greatly different from the definitions of others who prescribe to said subcultures.  With this understanding, I came to the conclusion that culture does not so much define who I am, but who I amnot.  There i no longer wanted to outwardly identify as these things.  This does not mean that I willing separate myself entirely from these cultures, because I am of the belief that they will always be as much a part of me as my body, but that to continue to confine myself, and therefor these cultures would be a great disservice to said cultures.  So I have optioned to dress in blazers, dress shirts and slacks.  This will give me a less definitive exterior, allwoing only my words and my actions to be the defining factors of me, as well as give me the freedomt o be an extension and continuation of said cultures.

All of this has brought me to my point.  What am I?  Am I my past?  Am I my dress?  Am I the things I say or believe, or am I my actions?  I have been looking at the ties that bind me to other people.  I thought for many years that punk was a good bond, but I have hypothesized that such is not true.  Than I thought that it was being homeless and street culture.  But there are so many different “brands” of homeless people, so that rules that out.  Than I thought it was poetry.  Any poet can tell you, that there is poetry they like and poetry they dislike.  There is poetry that speaks to them and there is poetry that makes them sick to their stomach.  Even the current crowd I have chosen to identify myself with, have a very different approach to poetry than I do.  At one point, alcoholism and drug addiction, especially the recovery of, was a great bonding force.  However in the confines of a 12-Step community, there are different belief structures, customs and practices.

So how is one to find what they are looking for in others, can someone even be so bold as to think that anybody else can give them what they need.  Sure we are social creatures, but we also live in a society teaches us that to survive we must subjugate and objectify everybody and everything.  How are we to recognize who does not want to that to us.  I figured it.  I can only befriend those who are willing to practice self-discovery, who question absolutely everything, who are willing to take the stance as the bad guy against an obviously ignorant and harmful public opinion.  If I want to be wise, I can only surround myself with wisdom.  Wisdom is not transfered through osmosis, but ignorance is.

Just saw queer punk band Pansy Division for the first time in 14 years, waiting for the last MAX home so I can be up for school at 6:30am, reading Brian Ellis as he writes about the night shift as a cab driver, listening to rich collegiate white boy pseudo-thug exclaim loudly that there are no “ho’s” in Portland, all the while using the n-word more than a bigot would ever think appropriate. The juxtaposition of heaven and hell is a little overwhelming at times.