Mario's World

Even though we are pushed to work our whole lives out, are we actually making anything in doing so?

As the veil unfolds the true miniscule value of the dollar, more and more people are beginning to feel as if they’ve been robbed, hoodwinked, hornswaggled out of their energy, their life juice, their time.

Personally, I think they should have seen this coming a few miles away but then again I’ve forced a constantly changing peripheral for myself. If you run your life with blinders on some asshole is bound to take the reins. It’s an easy lesson learned if you’ve had to defend yourself a lot, poor people generally get this pretty well.
So the middle class boom that started in the fifties is now crashing horribly under the weight of its own lies… but why?

Generally, as per most philosophical disciplines, repetitive and banal periods of comfort only produce people who try as hard as possible not to think for themselves, try to make things easier on their conscious, avoid any belief that hardship lives anywhere let alone in their home and better yet in their minds.

Shit, in reality it goes even further, it’s in our very nature. Our genetic code is imprinted for progress therefore challenge.

Americans have become fat on more dimensions than the three in front of you. The craving for instant and easily attained gratification has grown to stupefying lengths that I can’t even begin to list for fear of making myself feel a bit dumber. We are mentally soft therefore fat around the culture, pudgy and awkward around the fingers.
Even our artists can only create pop, something directly reflecting a surface-valued world.

Our worth in the eyes of other Americans is weighed in professional success, our social standings mimic this, our attraction to the opposite sex has more to do with a bank number than it does with if this person can best make me stronger, feel more whole. If our work is empty and our time undernourished, can we ever feel complete?

To understand epic meaning, the long term view of your current actions and accomplishments, you must look ahead of your own life. Nintendo taught me this when I was nine. I had to save the princess from the evil turtle, I had to grow strong in the journey, I had to save the world with only a plunger, some mushrooms and my growing knowledge of pipe systems. I must work at this no matter how many times it throws me down the wrong tube. I must do it all over again in the next game. It fits perfectly with what we must do now to make the actual world we live in a better place where our children can fight for the very same values and progressive goals but with more weapons.

We work to die gracefully and with a legacy to leave behind. Some build families, some build nations, some build culture, some build education, some create art but every fucking one of us leaves a story behind.

I fear mine will never fill out the way I would want to read it, I keep this thought with me every time I venture into something I find myself enjoying, something I learn from, something I love.

I think about this every time I stick my hand in my pocket and am not able to pull out enough money for a coffee.

It is there when I wake up and there to keep me up right before sleep.

We will never be eternally happy, none of us will, but we can always find happiness and fulfillment in the things we do. Why in your right mind would you waste the only thing you can never get back on something that you don’t enjoy and that does nothing to further the person you want loved ones to read about during your funeral in the all too near future?

Quit your job.

Put the baby making on hold.

Rekindle that love affair you once had with your hands.

kitchen hut

I’ve been taking to writing in the kitchen these past few days. After so many hours spent alone, cooped up in my room I realize there is a void leftover. The craving for contact and interaction grows larger than what I can satiate by bouncing back and forth between my friends’ Facebook pages. I think this craving, or rather my growing understanding of the importance of it, has been guiding my mind and consequently my expression during our little conversations on this here binary clipboard.

This morning, like others this week, finds me sitting atop two pillows on our kitchen couch surrounded by lazy kitties and breathing in the aroma of blackberry pancakes being cooked by my wonderful roommate. Yeah, I’m too short to reach our table comfortably while writing… shut up. Even though I’m not working as fast as I do when I’m alone and staring constantly, I realize that I feel really damn good! I can even make jokes in the middle of a somewhat serious topic. I’m happy and aware and content which usually does not equate the recipe for great pieces of work, but who gives a shit about the relativity of greatness when surrounded by happiness.

Slowly but surely, I’m able to pour into this screen that which normally I must be alone to pull out. I write for them, because of them, why can’t I write with them around?

The more I think about art and its necessity for solitude, the more that idea begins to fall apart. Slowly, mainly because of those that I now call lovers and friends, I have grown my understanding of expression to be that which necessitates not solitude but rather a profound and very fundamental connection to others. Why else do we feel the need to express that which boils inside all of us other than to try and let the rest bearing the burdens know that they are nowhere near alone on this ride?

The pancakes now tucked happily into my stomach, I watch as Chloe floats effortlessly inside our beautiful kitchen. The cats are cuddled up next to each other on a penetrating strip of sunlight that’s filling up small sections of the couch with heat… something thoroughly lacking here at the hut during winter time. Another roommate stumbles from the door next to our kitchen, smiles, he chuckles, we chuckle and he continues off towards the bathroom with towel in hand in only a pair of boxers.

I sit, bang out a few sentences at a time, but more importantly I take in what is around me without any fear of the feelings that are growing ever stronger inside these seconds where I get to witness life. This is why my family is so important; they are the legs I stand on. The stronger they make me, the more I get to pile onto this life.

Mike returns from his shower and joins us at the table. More pancakes are piled, more coffee is made. Each time we sit, I close the lid of this thing and put it on the seat next to me. There is nothing ruder than ignoring the connections directly in front of you because of something much farther away.

The cats haven’t moved much but us humans have now shared our feelings of that first morning haze, cooked beside one another, shared coffee, ate together and are now finishing up our wonderful breakfast with a light conversation knowing soon we must disembark from this kitchen into the world outside where we must distance ourselves for safety’s sake from those who in other circumstances would be near us on some morning much like today’s.