With A Drunken Heart

I was tempted to write this blog while listening to music, then I realized that I don't write well with music playing.

Since this blog is read by a probable total of about five or six people in my life, I don't mind stating the most obvious and ultimately shameless facts about my life, such as why I'm still awake and still drunk from a night of realizing the motives behind people's actions, donning a snuggie for an obscenely long period of time while meditating on the quad at midnight, and of course, reading the truth that blazes forth from the eyes of everyone I'm around. Always.

If every person in the world were as honest as a squirrel, things would run a little bit more smoothly. Less people would get hurt. And I'm not even saying this in any sort of bitter way. It just finally occurred to me today that the more a person lies to themselves, the more people they eventually end up hurting. What does a lie get you? A false sense of security for a brief moment in time? Maybe a trickle of hope that whatever it was you were trying hide or escape isn't actually affecting you.

The truth is, squirrels will let you know when they're hungry. When they want to mate. When they just want to run in the grass because they like the way it makes them feel. It's absurd to think that a furry little squirrel would ever lie or manipulate a situation in order to accomplish something.

As I sit on my ripped faux leather couch rambling about the intentions of squirrels, doors continue to slam in the halls of Centennial, which, in my opinion, proves that a.) we're all in this together (no HSM reference intended), and b.) we are all inextricably linked to one another and legitimately intrigued by our fellow humans. Which causes us to seek and ask questions.

Sophomore year is beginning to look a lot more philosophical.

Relative News

For the first time in my life, I wrote graffiti on a bathroom stall today.

But more importantly, people are starting to annoy me. I find that it's harder to love people when you see straight through their shit. And I'm not mounting any white horse while I say this, by any means. Believe me. I'm just as trashy... Just as ultimately self-interested... Just as shameless. But the fact still remains that I used to be able to love people blindly and openly. I guess, in all honesty, I still do. At heart, I forgive birth traits and primal natures. Yet, transparency is transparency; cubic zirconias don't glitter as brightly when you take them out of the display case.

In accordance to some fortune cookie law, I should accept the truth of life that all people need to be loved despite their un-goodness. Whether or not they delve into noble endeavors, just sit on their bed and Facebook stalk, or practice a combination of the two, they're still kindred humans to me. Skin and bone and organically driven to produce happiness for themselves. And sometimes, juuuust sometimes... produce it for others.

Deuce In Between A Baker's Dozen

The time to leave Monkey Island has finally come. Well... kind of. I'm leaving next week, staying just long enough to finish my last two-week pay period at the restaurant. My mom is getting kicked out of her apartment. The idiot landlord who owns the two humble duplexes where my mom lives also owns a restaurant right by the duplexes, which he recently had to shut down due to lack of business. He and his wife are selling their house and moving into the duplexes. I guess they decided to kick Mom out because she hasn't been living there as long as the woman next door. Shitty? Yes. Completely legal? Also yes. By telling her thirty days in advance, he gave her the latest warning the law would allow. The point is, I'm going to egg his house before I leave.

I've noticed that the people on Monkey Island can be classified into three groups.

Group One is the vacationers. The drunken sunburnt college kids, old couples who dress like sailors, and upper middle-class suburbia families of three to five who are all seasonal guests of the island and who come here for one purpose and one purpose only--the lake.

Group Two is the wealthy property owners. These select few own all the land, restaurants, gas stations, marinas, horse farms, and vineyards on the island and live here year-round. They're generally older married couples who have lived here for centuries and accrued enough real estate to do whatever the hell want with.

Group Three is the laborers who work for the wealthy property owners. The people who actually work in and on the land, restaurants, gas stations, marinas, horse farms, and vineyards of Monkey Island. They too live here year-round, but unlike their upper class friends/employers, they make ends meet by scrubbing pots and pans in kitchens, waiting tables for $2.25 an hour, transporting drywall, hammering fences, and altogether doing anything the richer folk don't want to do themselves.

For the past couple of months, I have been in Group Three.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind it one bit. It's people like my mom I think about... Single people without a lot of education but a strong work ethic living paycheck to paycheck. It's just odd to see the richer people hiring their poorer friends to do their dirty work. I guess it all works out in the flow of the Monkey Island ecosystem. Whatever.

Today I had an epiphany at work. For someone who complains all the time about not having any consistency in his life, I realized that I am one of the most consistent people I know. It all has to do with my OCD. I was noticing the way I washed the dishes, and I realized that I had developed a specific system for washing them since the day I first started. That way, everything runs smoothly and I get the job done the most efficient way I know how. And I never deviate from that system. I consistently wash those dishes the exact same way each and every time. I gather the forks the same way, hang the glasses the same way, and do everything in a very particular and predictable fashion. I do the same thing in other areas of my life, too, I guess. Some times I complain about being a creature of habit, actually. How strange and slightly ironic.

I don't have a problem saying goodbye to this place. After thinking about what brought me here, I've decided that I came here for a vacation. A kitten named Gandhi, an anthology of Frank Sinatra hits, and one moderately attractive news anchorman later, I've barefootedly rediscovered a few simple truths and the applications thereof, which is all I can really hope to take from any place I live.

The Laundry List Keeps Getting Shorter & Shorter

I'm proud of my mom. She just broke up with her loser boyfriend who, among his many other charming qualities, has no job, sleeps all day, and lays the heaviest sets of judgment on people he doesn't even know. I say good riddance. He can take his inferiority complexes and bad attitude somewhere else. She doesn't deserve them. For a number of equally valid reasons, it seemed like such an achievement for her to dump his freeloading ass. First of all, she's never been the most forthcoming person, or even the type to say "no" to people. She aims to please and is scared of rejection, which leads her down the path of finding the absolute deadest of deadbeats as love interests, or, perhaps more truthfully, someone to sleep next to at night. I think she forgets sometimes that her life is HERS and not someone else's to do with as they please. She forgets that she deserves happiness in its fullest and that it's completely within her power to gain it.

But what she lacks in independence she makes up for in fervor. She's generally happy with her life, always looking for her next adventure, sometimes dreaming too far ahead of herself, and by that I mean that she doesn't always follow through with her intentions. A lover at heart and a worker til she dies, my mother has every right to be proud of herself for taking another step in the right direction, for not letting some idiot unwittingly steer her life.

I speak from experience. The reason I analyze my mom so critically is because I'm just like her. I can observe all my imperfections, stupid habits, and sometimes absurd thought patterns just by observing her. I tell people that if I were a 40-year-old woman, I'd be my mother.

Summertime has been cathartic for me. I like living with my mom because now that whatshisface is out of the picture, it's just me, her, and my kitten Gandhi. The days are languid and sunny. The weeks drag on for eternity, and I kind of like it that way. Having a lot of alone time presents me with the constant dilemma of solitude--I'm forced to either be happy with myself or be lonely, and I've been having surprising luck with keeping a positive, peaceful outlook on my life as of late. My job is monotonous yet fulfilling. Every time I leave I feel refreshed. That's irony for you... Washing dishes for five hours straight seems to keep my busy mind occupied and leaves out any room for pesky thoughts. Even though I'm covered head to toe in sweat and kitchen grime, I always feel at peace when I drive away from the restaurant, long after the sun has gone down over the island and the weekenders are lighting their fireworks and partying on pontoon boats.

Finding simplicity and balance has been easier than getting a tan.

Looking up at the stars on warm summer nights like this makes me feel poetic. Sadly, though, I can't write poetry for the life of me. Instead of being poetic, I'm stealing wifi from a metallurgical laboratory. Sounds intense, but all that really means is I'm sitting on asphalt across the street from our house on my laptop.

My Dreams Are Never That Imaginative

"Sometimes rain that's needed falls,
We float like two lovers in a painting by Chagall"
- The Weepies

I'm browsing Google images of Salvador Dalí paintings and entertaining the idea of living in one of them. Sometimes I wonder if artists make meaningless art just for the fun of it. Especially art that's avant-garde or surreal. Can art be meaningless? I half-expect 75% of the song lyrics I listen to to be meaningless, like "I Am The Walrus.". Someone told me those lyrics were just made up to confuse all the people who had been deciphering The Beatles' song lyrics trying to find deeper meaning in them. I guess it's not as critical to understand what the artist is trying to communicate as it is to find meaning in the art for yourself. Half the battle, maybe?

I do pointless things at various times in my life that, in retrospect, are unequivocally devoid of meaning. But I think to myself, Who's to say that art can't be a reflection of that inexplicable lack of meaning that characterizes human behavior from time to time? I could write a book on all the meaningless things I've done. Why, you ask? Who knows. Of that much I'm sure.

My brother and his girlfriend came down for his birthday. I didn't really know what to get him gift-wise, so I went looking at some antique shops outside of a nearby town. After a lonely old couple talked my ear off at the first gift shop, a nautical-themed store where I ended up buying a $4 Indian flute just to appease them, I wandered next door to a more peaceful venue. Shelves upon shelves filled with useless trinkets and knick-knacks made me feel pretty hopeless in finding a gift for my guitar-playing, Scottish beard-sporting older brother. But after looking through all the antique Coke bottles and porcelain chickens my heart could withstand, I finally found a German beer stein for $15. I figured he'd appreciate that, since he makes a hobby of brewing his own beer.

I guess you could say we celebrated by going to the lake the next day and swimming in what looked and smelled like dirty dishwater. But hey, that's Oklahoma for you. I didn't feel the tiniest ounce of guilt for peeing in that nasty lake. My family and I spent five hours in the sun, oiled up and getting drunk. Someone had tied their sail boat to some shrubbery nearby, which proved to be a bad idea, considering the boat ended up coming lose and drifting across the lake after being left unattended. Serves them right.

One of the cons of summer is that when you spend the night with your grandma who refuses to run her air conditioner at night, it makes it difficult to go to sleep. Hence I'm awake and blogging at 2:30 a.m. That's a small and infrequent price to pay, though, when one is at liberty to experience the simple pleasures summer has to offer. I love driving on the curvy serpentine roads of Monkey Island at night with the windows down and smelling the warm, musty summer air. It's almost intoxicating the way the scents morph in and out of one another: thick and woodsy to fragrant and flowery as well as other, more nameless smells that can only be described as Summer.

Life rarely makes sense. For instance, why do actors in movies with exotic or ancient settings always speak with British accents?

Home

If time is relative, then distance must also be. Driving back to my hometown with my sister was a sober reminder of just how mountainous the distance between the stages in a life can be. Even though the sum of actual driving time adds up to about three hours from the smoke-laden bingo parlors and discount auto dealerships of Enid, Oklahoma, to the windy, treeless frontier of the Oklahoma Panhandle, the trip itself seems endless, especially if it's been a while since you last made the journey to the middle of nowhere.

I haven't been here since Christmas, and I've always been divided on the issue of making trips back home. On one hand, I have a grand total of seven relatives who still live in Hooker (compared to the fifty who have, at one point or another, lived here throughout my childhood); on the other hand, a wealth of friends, school teachers, principals, pastors, community theater directors, and church family members still call this area their home. After moving away, I've since felt compelled to visit the people who I feel care so much about me, but in reality, I might just be exalting myself to the status of an overrated celebrity in the minds of those whom I always think bite their nails in anticipation of my return.

Nonetheless, I'm home as of now, at least technically. But what is "home," really? Where you grew up? Where your family is? A broken-down double wide mobile home on the outskirts of a meager town of less than two thousand people? When my friends would ask me where I was going for the summer, I never really said "home." I used phrases like, "going to live with my mom" or "moving upstate" to eliminate the boundaries that come with calling one place this or that. I guess I mean my home TOWN. In an ideal sense, I define home as where I feel safest, which is a number of different places. I have a home church, filled with people who care about me, and a town where I spent most of my childhood, filled with people who take notice of me. People who know my face and whose faces I recall by name. It seems like the more a person is in my life, the more they become a part of what comforts me.

Funny how so much can happen in a year.

Maury Says... You ARE The Father!

The merry month of May. Usually by this time of year, the weather is blazing hot in sunny, windswept Oklahoma. But not lately. We had three tornados on Monday and an entire week of rain and cloud weather. Who's complaining? Not me. Rain or shine, summer just brings a smile to my face. It's the freedom to stay up til 3 a.m. and wake up at noon the next day that really puts me in a good mood, though.

Do you ever have moments in your life when you feel like a character out of a movie? Last night I walked in on my aunt and her boyfriend making out on the couch, and as if the fact that I interrupted their cuddle session weren't awkward enough, they're both in their late forties, which made for an odd situation of role reversal. I felt like a parent who just walked in on a pair of teenagers. Given my aunt's apartment is so tiny (and the situation would've been even more awkward had I stayed) I lied and said I was going to visit some friends at OCU. After some driving around, I ended up parked in front of the apartment, listening to music and waiting for Mr. Online-Dating-Service to leave. I felt like Shia LaBeouf in "Disturbia," which, ironically enough, I watched earlier that day.

My cousin is graduating high school, so I'm driving back to my hometown next week with my sister. We're gonna stay for about a week, which will give me time to catch up with everyone and revisit the people I haven't seen in over a year. I feel somewhat bad for not going back to my hometown more often, especially over breaks during the school year when I had all the time in the world to do so. It's four hours away from Oklahoma City, but I never made the effort to drive out there. Well the time has come to make the seven-hour drive from Joplin, MO (where my sister lives) to the Panhandle of Oklahoma. Straight across the state.

I dislike social security offices. I hate the fact that you have to arrive early, before the office opens, secure a good spot in an already long line, wait for the doors to open, then wait some more in a crowded waiting room full of pamphlets and crying babies and coughing. I went this morning to apply for a new social security card, and thankfully it only took a grand total of three minutes once my number was called. I came prepared, armed with my passport, birth certificate, driver's license, and any other form of credible ID I could find so as to minimize complications. But no need. "Just answer a couple of questions, and I'll record your responses for security purposes." In and out. Simple. My new card should arrive in about a week.

My cousin and I have been watching Maury a lot lately. I remember the days when Maury was an actual talk show and not just a three-ring paternity testing circus. A girl from my hometown went on the show, to (get this) find out if her baby daddy was actually the father of her child. I bet the free trip to L.A., hotel accomidations, and $1,000 spending money more than made up for the embarrassment of making a fool out of yourself on national television. But who am I to judge.