Posted by jonvon on November 04, 2001 at 23:56:31:
In Reply to: REAL FOLLOWUP TO WOW! posted by giveawayboy on November 03, 2001 at 07:56:27:
: Who would have thought, in those days you were merely an idol for me. I looked up to you with some weird kind of feeling that you could pull me up somewhere higher than where I had been. You know, it was true, but then the more you allowed yourself to do that, the more equal I felt we had become. There was a neat chemistry at work there. I looked up to someone and was challenged to match his stride and then to eventually find my own swagger, my own way of walking. But, I had to imitate for awhile. That was good though, since I learned that you were not a god, only a very strong beacon, not to mention a great friend. I love Scott and I love you.
dude it is really weird to read that. i guess we've had this conversation before to some degree but i just can't ever really believe that you looked up to me like that, i'm really not sure why anyone would have. man by the time i left that scene i could hardly even talk to anyone anymore. but i guess that was the beginning of a new thing for me, a new phase of life so i guess that wouldn't have had anything to do with it. when i think of the church all i can remember is this weird scene that had so much about it that was forced and artificial. a lot of good things happened, i learned a lot about God and about myself, but there was this whole other thing, this mentality or way of looking at the world that sort of accreted onto my brain, onto my heart. it was like if other people weren't into what i was into that they weren't where it was really happening, no matter who they were or how much they had happening. when i see news reports on the fundamentalist attitudes among some of these crazed islamics there is something about it that is rather familiar. i think i've been in a kind of iron lung for a long while since then, isolated and slowly recovering. sometimes i think i could go off and live in the woods and never come out again. i think, ok, that was the groupthink thing, the thing that makes you feel superior to everyone else, the thing that makes you think that you and your little group "gets it" and everyone else just doesn't. but then there was this thing happening on the inside, this concentration where you are moving inward, becoming a kind of shaman in a way, moving deeper into glory, into wisdom, into invisible. all the time all that crap is attaching and accreting itself all over you there is still this thing shining somewhere, moving and growing and slipping out of the grasp of all that bullshit that tries to silence it.
its weird, you know re-reading what i wrote about that scene, it was like i was bragging about it or something, after all these years there is still a part of me that is caught up in the ego trip that was at the center of the subculture. man i hate that stuff. i don't regret those years, i feel like there is a kind of blessing hanging around my shoulders from a lot of that in a way, not sure how to phrase it. but i could never go back to it. about the only place i have felt ok was when crossover/refuge was really happening. those were some good times. it was like, it was ok to think, it was ok to have some real structure underneath my faith, it was ok if everyone had a hundred tatoos or whatever because we could dig all that stuff but we could also see through the illusion or not get hung up on it, and it was ok if you weren't freaking superman, it was ok if GOD wasn't saying something to you every 5 minutes. it was really great sitting in that church and looking over at you drawing "Star Boy" or "Jaime" and looking up and seeing Steve playing guitar and Suzy singing. it felt like i was home. i haven't felt like that in a church in a long time. i remember going to denny's with the gang after church one time, one of the first times i went, and jason daniels was there. man that was one of the coolest days ever. looking back on it, its a little like the feeling you got on the first day that really felt like fall when you were in the 10th grade and something about it felt like anything could happen, that magic could appear from anywhere, there was just something good about it.
: apparently, who knows what other adventures lie in wait for us!
adventures indeed... i hope there is still something left to do.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
(from tennyson's ulysses, one of my fave all time poems)