Disappointing memories, revisited.

So I saw my cousin this weekend. I haven't seen him in years. I have so many fond memories. We used to run around outside on his land. Riding horses and ATVs. Dark tag. He was older than me, and I looked up to him. Then he made some poor choices. Now he's feeling the consequences of that.

Supposedly.

I couldn't help but distrust him. His motives for visiting. His words. I could smell the smoke on him and the sores on his arms gave me something to wonder about. He looked like he was in his 40's. It was hard to believe he just turned 21. I shook his hand and smiled. Then I checked my wallet. I thought he was going to steal something.

It took a lot of effort for me to laugh at his jokes. I didn't want to. He wasn't the same person I knew before. "It took you long enough to get here." I told him. "I got lost," He said. "I had to take every wrong road before I found the right one." It's like threading a bike chain, I thought to myself. Or the story of your life. I smiled and followed him out the door. You haven't even taken half of the roads.

I should feel bad for feeling that way about him. The truth is, I have no empathy for him. He put himself in that situation. His mistakes that he refuses to recognize. "I prefer to see them as 'lessons' that I can just look at." He told me. "I don't look back with regret." "Oh." I said.

That's okay. Seeing him again was a lesson. I won't forget it.

Comments

Side effects include constant irritability, being an ass.

It was a typical day in MUS 307 . A typical day where nobody pays attention to anything the professor talks about. A day where people play shitty flash games instead of take notes. A day where people sit and refresh their Facebook newsfeed instead of follow the slides. A day where people roll their eyes and go to sleep instead of listen to the music examples. A day where people get up and leave ten minutes before lecture ends instead of having the God damn decency to stay the whole time and pretend to be interested. I mean, if you're going to be so unaffected by the music we're studying in class then why the fuck did you take the class in the first place? Fuck it makes me mad. And I haven't even started talking about that fucker who sits in the back and tries to whistle along with every song that gets played in class. Alright, dude, we get it: you are just too cool and you know everything about jazz, ever. You know every standard ever written and everybody's so...

So, I mean, there's that.

So I went to church again. I slept through most of it but I woke up to hear this: "Oh Lord you are holy indeed. You are a fountain of holiness." Dang, I thought. That is pretty holy. I saw The Nightmare Before Christmas again recently. That is still one of my favorite movies. I never get tired of watching it for some reason. I remember the first time I saw it quite clearly. I was about 5 years old at the time, I think. My dad and I were in the Albertson's video store looking for something to watch as was our Friday night custom. I walked through the aisle, glossing over the scary movies as quickly as I could without looking like I was scared. My dad pulled me aside with a video in hand. "What do you think about this one?" He held up a cover with a skeleton on the cover and 'nightmare' in the title. "It doesn't look very good." I said nonchalantly. "It looks lame." I rolled my eyes and turned away, playing it cool....

Pseudo-science (like psych).

I consider myself a man of science. I try to approach problems and deal with them logically, using observations previously recorded to handle new problems. So of course my interest was piqued when someone I knew posited that men are needier and more complicated than women. An interesting theory. But to properly examine it, one must understand the concept of sexual selection and its two aspects: male competition and female choice. Which brings us to point one: men are needier [in relationships] than women. This is true. In a natural/primal setting, the males are generally love-'em-leave-'em kinds of guys. Their main objective is to reproduce as much as they can. Humans, in their infinite wisdom, have decreased the emphasis on this to the point where it has become a footnote in male purpose. Civilization dictates that, instead of finding a partner for the sole purpose of reproduction, males find females for life companionship. With the effective removal of their natur...

everything is fine

Search This Blog