The Seeker that Seeks but Never Finds

My cup for my cigarettes is getting full. My throat is rejecting the Marlboro Reds I bummed off of Jeremy, begging for a menthol, but I'm saving those for tomorrow. The unabashed poverty of my situation does not come to grips with the fact that my eyes burn and get blurry with each word and each page that I turn with each text book. This, my friends, is the first intense week of school I've encountered since I've come back to it. Back to back tests, for three days in a row, culminating with the Bio exam from hell on Thursday is the gauntlet in which I test the mettle that I've accumulated in the last few years.

I listen to a song my friend Justin Hancock wrote, that a couple of friends of ours remade called "Waiting." I am infatuated with the song. It is soft and subtle, and carries me through a kaleidescope of emotions, as my mind wanders late at night, and I give into my dreams and of fiction and truth, where the past somehow comes out to light, and my fantasies come to be sometimes the miserable hopes that can either keep me looking forward, or looking down at the ground.

To the right is a picture my friend Justin took of Korea. He lives there right now- he's been there for the past few years. I don't know where he is, but all I know is that he teaches English there. I am almost as infatuated with this picture as I am with his music. He is one of my musical icons, as well as a good friend of mine.

I haven't seen him in almost... God, I don't know how many years. I know he came and visited, but I just got out of rehab and was living in a half-way house in Kerrville and couldn't make it to College Station. I miss him so much that sometimes it hurts. Late at night, like it is now, I get reminded how strange it is to move to a new town and start a new life. I became to lose my sensibilities with numbers and political theories and cellular respiration. I begin to flash to times where all I had was a guitar and some rolling papers for my rolling tobacco, and then I flash to now and my stomach gets tight and apprehensive with the coming future. Can my faith handle it? But it's not a question of faith in God with me, it's faith in myself.

But, people with my disposition have it cruel. We, the bohemian type, whom launder our days with vapid thoughts of the "what ifs" and "is it possible" and "should I," worried that she didn't pay attention to me, even though I might've only said a word, plus to her. We, those whom throw ourselves at the mercy at the white water rapids of the world where we take a chance and let our minds run, let our fiction run loose in perils of song, verse, and art, hoping that others will take notice, but especially the important ones- and sometimes, not the important ones because we are scared. Of what? Rejection? Or even more, being disappointed. So we escape again, into our minds, where everything is what we make of it, and everything, at least for a few seconds is okay. The traumas we once faced are no longer our enemies, but just useless pieces of information. Now we are inundated with life and a freedom we have never known, if at least, just for a second.

There is the guitar. The pen. The voice. The stencil. The pad. The piano. The cello. The keyboard and the keyboard(s). There are those with talent, and there are those that find talent within themselves. But, in the end, there are those, that share with me this disposition, that during a week of tiring, blistering solitude, with only the feeble academics of undergraduate studies, put on hold for so many years and once again battled, in this new city, do I violate the constraints of civil society that chastise the man that says I cannot escape into a place where I picture myself happy in love, in life, in peace, without a worry in a world.

So, for all of you that searches day in and day out for that place, whether in your mind, or in your life, through art, sport, friendship, or whatever vessel, I pray that your search go well. I pray that you find what you search for, but don't forget to look in all of the places God grants you- even if you don't believe in him, believe that in even the most sordid spots, sometimes lie the brightest gold. And don't forget, sometimes the brightest gold is the heaviest to hold. Maybe you'll find just what you're looking for, and it's not what you expect it to be.

Or maybe, at one in the morning, you'll just get done studying for a math exam, in a town that you barely know, and with your mind wandering around to all the reaches of the world, listening to a song that you love, in my case, a song a friend wrote and was remade, you begin to write, just anything for the pure joy of writing and sharing knowing that probably no one will read this, but if someone does, he'll have to understand, I had no idea of where this was going, but I found some peace in the act; and for me, that's all I need before I go to sleep and wake up to the world that awaits me in the morning.

So, good night, good morning, and hello.

Sketch

P.S-

Mother, I'm wearing bigger shoes.
Maybe they'll fit better soon.
Snakes came after the rain
fell, but I was not afraid.

My first step led me to the floor,
yet your hands taught me to endure
pain, stand on my own, and
leave steps where I go.

You're waiting.

Father, I know you by your voice.
It's warm and soothing, yet course.
Made like an unfinished road.
It's good to know familiar sounds that
take my memories home.
Take my memories home.

You're waiting
and waiting.

My first step led me to the floor
but your voice taught me to endure
pain, stand on my own and
take my memories home.
Waiting.

Walking unfinished roads,
wearing these bigger shoes,
and waiting...

"Wating," by Justin Hancock