Money is such a trivial thing. People spend their lives accumulating wealth in the form of dollars, euros, or fucking whatevers they can trade for a better lifestyle. Money isn’t worth anything. If the zombie apocalypse consumed the earth tomorrow, the petty change in your pocket and all the money in your bank wouldn’t be worth anything. All you would have is the person that you’ve created in the short time you’ve had on this planet.

Upon realizing this, I have become overly conscious of the life that I have lived. The life I have is far more valuable than any currency someone might offer me. My skills, my ideas, my thoughts, and the progression of my life has taken on a much larger role than it used to. Money has become as worthless as the dirt on the ground. It buys me food, and keeps me healthy, but what is it worth? It’s just prolonging the inevitable event of my death. When the moment comes that I must face death, and it will come, I will not think of the money I have accumulated in my life time, but the memories of the people I’ve met, the places I’ve been, the things I’ve seen! Oh, my life is not measured in dollars or cents or schillings or yen or euros or pesos or deutchmarks or francs or pounds or pence, but in things
I’ve done and the people I’ve met and the lives I’ve touched! Oh my god, the blinding light of money is far too bright, but I’ve seen past it, and realize what truly carries weight, and it is not currency, it is life itself, and I will live as much as I can so that my death will bear the weight of something that was truly valuable.

3mili:

my friend joe is crazy

crazy for the palma violets

officialpalmaviolets:

Credit: Danny North Converse Gigs @ 100 Club

officialpalmaviolets:

Credit: Danny North Converse Gigs @ 100 Club

Fuckin’ raw

There are very few moments I genuinely enjoy. I don’t know if everybody feels this way, or I’m just too cynical, but that doesn’t particularly matter because there’s not much to do in the way of changing it. However, while most points in my life just seem to drone by, there are moments of complete and total happiness, all made sweeter by their rarity. These moments instill a temporary emotional high for me; budding in my mind, and enveloping my emotions in a soft, velvet film. For a brief period of time I become untouchable by the ordinary happenings of my daily life. I breeze through the chores of my day with the utmost joy for no particular reason. It is moments like these that make the grind of my average existence worth working through. They are spots of sunshine on the rainy day that is life.

Sometimes life can simply become too hectic; whether it be in the moment or over a longer period of time. It’s a pain and the stress it induces could be described as a self-perpetuating hell devised to drive you crazy until the day you die. However, it is a necessity of life. The rat race is what gives it all purpose, and the absence of stress indicates a lack of aspiration to do better. There is no getting around it, just dealing with it. Some people deal with it by making time for themselves where they can just relax before returning to their lives. Others take up hobbies and activities like yoga, knitting, or whatever the fuck it is normal people do.

I smoke cigarettes.

There are very few things I enjoy more than taking a break from my life, lighting up a cigarette, and dragging on that sweet, dirt-flavored carcinogenic smoke for just a few minutes. The whole motion is just lovely. Walking outside, opening my cigarettes, taking one out, sliding it in between my lips, bringing the lighter to the other end of the cigarette, lighting the cigarette, and sentencing that cigarette to a slow death by inhalation. For five minutes, the world stops, and my head clears. The only thing I worry about is finishing that cigarette; everything else can wait to be dealt with. Some might say it’s unhealthy, but I say they can’t appreciate a fair trade between physical and mental health. If I’m as fit as a horse but as emotionally stable as Kurt Cobain, I might as well be dead.

As the world grows older, so do we. An inevitable fact of life is that at some point every person will get old and eventually die. However, mortality is hardly a concern, considering it is inevitable. What is concerning is who I will become as I age. I will have to live with myself so long as I am conscious. Before I die, I must live. And what will become of my life? What will my career be? Will I be happy? Miserable? Will I have a wife? What will her name be? What about my kids? What will their names be? Where will I live? These are all things that are so far out of my realm of current existence that they also fail to captivate my growing concern about the future. What worries me is what is happening right now, and will I lose this person that I’ve worked so hard to create. I have made myself who I am through unrelenting self deprecation and meditation on what exactly is important to me at this moment in time. However, many moments in time from this particular one, will I want the same things? Probably not, considering all the change that has happened in the few years I’ve had to realize who I am; more than likely I’ll have different aspirations and different things that make me happy. So what bothers me is that all I have done here could potentially be in vain. This moment in time will eventually collapse and a new era will be ushered in, and I won’t even know it until I think of my younger years, hanging my head in disgrace at my “naive” self. However, I hope I never regret all the things that I used to do to make my life what it is right now. To regret it would make it all a waste. To have wasted my life is my concern.

“Don’t regret anything you’ve done, because at one point in time, it was exactly what you wanted.”

In spite of what many may say, I firmly believe that suicide is a very romantic matter. It is the admission that the gift of conscience is simply too much to handle. It is the known end of one’s own life, by their own hand. For a thought as severe and permanent as suicide to occur, there must be a very strong occurrence or realization that happens in a persons life that leads them to believe that suicide is not the only option, but the best one.

Many say that it is a selfish act, but it is a personal matter, not to be shared with anyone else. If a person chooses suicide, then obviously the conditions surrounding their life are arranged in a way that it is easier to breathe their final breath than waste it talking to those around them. Those last few moments don’t belong to another person, just to the person taking their own life.

As the last drop of blood leaves the lips of the deceased, there will be sadness and mourning, but few take solace in the thought that they are happier this way. In fact, it could be considered selfish keeping these people bound to their mortal bodies. If they’re so miserable that suicide is the best option in their life, then the people that guilt them into staying alive are merely doing so to bring a means to their own ends.

Suicide is the act of conceding to life and life can be a real bitch. I don’t blame any person who went through with it for what they did. To look death in the face is one thing, to see that you are the face of death is another. It’s a complex matter riddled with uncertainties, but its not something to see and judge. It is beautifully dark ending to an ugly tale. It is the most personally romantic moment a person can face. It is you and your mortality. Nothing, no one, no force is present. Just you and yourself, making the last decision you’ll ever make

             The drunk is a strange creature, often pitied or despised by the community at large. They mill around aimlessly, forever trapped in an alcohol-induced state of inebriation, all by their own hand. It’s despicable. It’s gross to see a human poison themself in such a manner day after day. It eats away at their social life and their well-being. It’s sheer and utter madness, the ailment that is being an alcoholic          

            But I think that’s bullshit.

            I prefer to see the glass half-full, usually of scotch or whisky or something similar; something alcoholic. I dare someone to find something that imitates that smooth burning sensation in the pit of my stomach after a glass of red wine. It’s calming. It makes me feel alive. Only every so often can one feel what is happening inside their body. Some strong drink provides insight to the outline of my esophagus and stomach.

            And the feeling of being drunk, oh, it’s so wonderful. To rob one’s self of such joy could be considered criminal. A sadistic form of masochism where reality is all that there is. All of your body becomes weightless as your movements become more fluid in its motions. Oh how I adore the sweet tingling feeling at the ends of my fingers as I plunge into the wondrous cavern of intoxication. It’s pure bliss.

            I dare say I even become more sophisticated when I drink. My words flow from my brain to my neurons and out of my mouth into the conscience world seamlessly, with no hesitation or breaks in my speech. The things I never dared say out loud become acceptable, and my mind lets these thoughts tumult into brilliant ideas. As my mind becomes verbal due to all of the alcohol, my theories and ideas become more developed, as I don’t impede myself by keeping them all trapped within the confines of my skull.

            Social situations I would never dare cast myself into become the center of my desire. All I want to do is talk and talk and talk until the sunrises and sets again and into the next morning. The people I once despised become the best of friends, and those I hold dear become entities of such wonder and fascination that I hardly am able to keep myself from calling each and every one of them on my phone.

            I’m never expected to drive. All I worry about is getting drunk, and everyone else is willing to take care of the rest. If I go out with a group of people, through my intoxication it is understood that I should be left with no responsibility other than to my own personal safety, and all the in-betweens will come together as they need to be addressed, one by one. I am allowed to relinquish my duties to other people and fulfill the duty of enjoying myself.

            Last, but certainly not least, I become honest. I wouldn’t dare dream of lying to another person when I’m drunk. All questions directed at me are answered to the best of my ability, if not in great lengths when the question required no more than a few words to answer. If honesty is the best policy, then alcohol is the foundation on which that policy stands.

            Alcohol is the one thing that keeps life interesting. When it all becomes too mundane, it throws you a real curveball. I like my life to be exciting and strange, so alcohol is the gateway in which I can truly turn the world upside down. I consider it investing in my conscience.  

Time spent wasted is not wasted time.

As I nervously chew this cigarette butt to bits I fear it is time for me to fall asleep again. I shall give way to exhaustion and my dreams just for a moment, and when I wake up it will be tomorrow. Sleep itself is not what I fear, though. In my sleep I remain safe from the harsh realities of the world around me, even if it all should collapse while I lay adrift in my mind. No, what I fear is what stalks sleep and night alike; the dawn of a new day. Another 24 hours has past, and the harshest reality of all becomes all too clear in my mind. I recognize that time has gone by. Eventually, all of these 24 hour periods will add up, and one day I will wake up. It will be just like every other day, but it will be the day that I die, whether or not that day is six days from now or sixty years. It’s the fear that my time will come once time decides that mine has run out.

But that feeling of fear is temporary. It all passes, just the same way that time does, or myself. Even the daunting task of accepting death and eventually dying subsides, and happier and more successful moments will reveal themselves as time goes by. The fact that death is inevitable hardly gives validation to the act of giving up on life all together. If anything the pressing matter of death should force one to work as hard as they can in the time given to them. I doubt anybody could willingly say that this gift of life they have is useless, and if they do they haven’t come to appreciate death. But I digress.

Life continues to prove itself to be a series of moments, even if some of those moments bring darker thoughts than you might like. For me, moments are as simple as looking out the window to realize that even though 24 hours have passed, it’s a new day, the sun is shining, and I’m alive. It’s a wonderful feeling. I would hope others would strive to treat similar situations in such a manner.