Consider the Turtle

Or don’t. It doesn’t really matter to me. Seriously. When I think about the things that are worthy of consideration, whether or not you consider the turtle doesn’t even make it on the top 500. But I’m beginning to think that this perspective is not in keeping with the public at large.
Let’s be honest. There are a helluva lot of people out their giving a helluva lot of attention and care to some super serious horse shit.
Bugger ‘em.
Relax, bro. You can’t really help it that you got involved in this situation, now do what’s right and get out.
Simple as.
But why does it seem like we want that kind of thing going on in the first place? It is as if people put themselves in these situations deliberately—if only to have something interesting to talk about.
My most extreme apologies if I don’t give a flying fuck about who’s fucking who. Excuse me if the goings on of Ryan Reynolds or Brad Pitt or one of the new ones that I’m not even aware of don’t have any bearing WHATSOEVER on my existence. Reading about other people’s shitty or glorious lives does nothing for me unless it’s surrounded by a few hundred pages so I can know EVERYTHING—or at least everything I’m supposed to know. This dealing in portions from parties to create a feast always winds up tasting foul.
I am distrustful of law because it deals with types and not individual instances. In higher courts you cite court precedent, but as soon as you do you are saying, “This is the same type of thing.” Nothing is ever the same. Nothing.
On the other hand, it is only through the proceedings of the trial that we can all attempt a kind of more-appropriate judgment.
If you dig too deeply into the facts, the facts will overwhelm you. If you don’t dig deep enough, they all begin to look the same.
What I’m saying is precisely the opposite of the unintended intentionality that you’ve recently been reading so much about.
Consulting slowly now the last remaining brain cells bent on creation, what do we find but that which can be created can create
or destroy and that which can be destroyed can be created or destroyed.
Does that mean we’re all creators and destroyers?
Yes.
Yes, it does.
There once was a man named Roderick Jason Taffeta. Rodi, as his sister called him, was consistently careful.
Careful to jump out of airplanes only when the proper altitude had been reached. Careful to ensure that the bungee cable had been checked thoroughly before dropping 143 meters and screaming for what seemed like ever. Careful to pack exactly two days of food and no map for the three day hike in the mountains. Careful to experience as much as he could as safely as he could.
“Give recklessness a go!” came the din.
“No.”
“Once?!?!”
“I’ll do just about anything once, if it seems to be worth it… which only a vast array of experiences can tell you.”
“You are a strange sort of fellow… saying nothing and something simultaneously.”
“Thirsting I see.”
“Right…”
“We got hotdogs and American cheese on slices of bread with Mac and Cheese for dinner Rodi,” called his sister from somewhere in the distance, “come on down.”
Awesome, he thought to himself… Awesome to the max…

Dear Fates~

I am setting out, embarking as it were, on a new chapter—perhaps a new book—in my existence, and I suppose that this little epistolary communiqué is meant to be a plea. May the transition not be too easy, but neither make it too hard. May it be not unendurable at the very least, and endurable at the most.
You see, I’m especially susceptible to the visceral kinds of emotions and feelings that one encounters when doing what I am going to do, and there is a part of me that is almost excessively worried about what it going to happen to my brain when it begins to settle into a new mode of being. I’ve done it before, you know, and it’s something like a metaphysical hemorrhaging that happens: the spirit opens up, gushes forth, and it is everything a body can do to keep it basically enclosed. By this I mean that particular kind of gushing that is unbecoming of a spirit and makes the body and the mind vulnerable to all kinds of attacks. The gushing of the spirit in goodwill and kindness towards other human beings is downright beautiful, but this particular kind of gushing is dangerous. When the blood is gushing into the heart to be pumped into the lungs, where it is filled with oxygen, then gushed back into the heart and then sent to the extremities of the body where it nourishes needs, we have good gushing. When the skin has been ruptured due to some external force or implement, and blood is gushing out of the body, there is a distinct sense of peril.
Basically, I’m scared. Should we be afraid, at least a little bit, of the people we love? I think so. Love exists in at least two realms, and it has taken me a long time to come to terms with this: the love we share and the love we keep for ourselves. The love we share is combination love. When we love each other, when we say that we love our relationship it is a particular kind of love. When I say that I love ____. That is my love. That person cannot take away that love from me, so long as I choose to hold onto it. The love that is a combination of loves can be ripped asunder as soon as one person steps away from the equation. After all, if there is only one person in a love relationship, in what sense is there a relationship.
Family, being whatever it is, is in the unique situation that it manages to cross those two boundaries. Your immediate family cannot, technically, be ripped asunder. Your father is the man who impregnated your mother, and your siblings are those who were a further part of that union. You can say, “You’re not my father,” but that doesn’t make it any less true that your father is in fact your father. That’s family: even verbally disowned is still blood related. Divorce or disowning is the ending of the first kind of love, but the second kind of love remains as long as we hang onto it.
Is that romantic? That’s what I’m dealing with here. Do you see how it’s dangerous for me? Do you see why I need your help?
I’ve been gone so long. A decade IS a long time, isn’t it? I know that from the high point of knowledge of history, ten years is not a very long time, but on the scale of a human life, and during the formative years especially, a decade can be forever.
I know that all I can do is be the me that I’ve become, and believe me that’s what I plan to do, but I’m just hoping (against hope) and praying (to whoever/whatever might hear me) that what I have become is worthy of where I’ve been and what I’ve done. You have been so good to me already, and it is my ardent desire that the gifts I have been granted, the possibilities I have ridden, and the events of my existence have carved out of the marble block of me a suitable character.
All that being said, I’ll cut you a deal… if you even make deals. I will do my best to continue on the path to becoming the best me that I can be if you continue to offer me the blessings you have so consistently offered and the lessons you have so unswervingly, parentally taught me. The balance I feel in my life is thoroughgoing. For every opportunity I have taken, it feels as though an equal effort to experience that opportunity fully has followed, and I only hope that I am not mistaken in this. So, if I continue to work hard to improve myself: mind, body and soul, will your lot continue to reward me when you see fit and teach me when necessary?
Let my fear be a sign unto your greatness. I don’t know your official title (the title of this piece is simply perfunctory and expedient), and I can’t say that you go by the same name everywhere, but I am quite certain that you are, whatever that may mean. And I will take that old mystic fallacy of the drug culture with me to the end of my days, and perhaps beyond, but there must be somebody tending the light at the end of the tunnel.
I feel you when lost in the music in my guitar.
I feel you in the words that issue from my fingers.
I feel you in the motion of the seasons.
I feel you are everything.
I feel you might be composed of nothingness.
I am afraid of you.
I do love you.
I go to meet you wherever you are.
I am in perpetual awe,
and I think you appreciate that more than anything.
Peace
Love &
Gonzo
Eli
p.s. If it’s not too much trouble, could you find it in your infiniteness to direct my course to people I can help to grow and people who can help me to grow.