of the people. . .

the changes for me, at 39, are amazing. in my prolonged bachelorhood i resented friends for suggesting family life was any better than my life or anyone else's (for that matter.) and i stand behind that. what it means to me, however, is growth. maybe some have children too early and so, are inclined to neglect some of what can be most rewarding in favor of doing their own thing. well, i did my own thing. i sought neither fame nor fortune but i did seek my own, and often until the wee hours of the morning. i know what it is to live for one's self. i have given to others but these past 20 years, i have lived for me. when i went blazing into the japanese night life, disco-disco in aomori city, drinking with the filipino waitresses on yellow pole road, playing snooker in sapporo so long a busload of people had to wait for me to rise the next morning, dancing with the australian models in the roppongi district, whiskey and water and hot baths, midday sakes at the appi ski resort, i was getting to know me. i was quieter then. i had need to listen closely. i liked that under the influence of alcohol, others said more, and what they said had more meaning and was more honest. back in the u.s. and living in the o.c., i experienced the life of a frat boy, though i was not in college at the time. four guys in a 4-bedroom house and we bought into the beer commercials on tv. while hollow at its core, that lifestyle was fun, (for a season.) some things that occurred there, (often in drunken stupors,) are embarrassing. what a vapid and stupefying life the quintessential frat boy lives. but, i was getting to know myself. years later i lived on the floor of a friend's apartment-i was that poor. got a job at a book store. went back to school. still, i drank, in order to experience, in order to touch, to know. and, i began to smoke pot again. it was during this time, writing a column in the college newspaper, that i began to find my voice. i loved writing from day one. i remember starting kindergarten a year early and getting kicked out only to return the next year. i remember being disappointed with the lack of stimulus i found there. the next year, (1st grade,) i met miss hintzoglu who encouraged me to make letters and i have enjoyed it ever since. but everything i ever wrote up until these years of drinking and smoking pot and writing in the college newspaper and other publications, was like grammar practice. it was like infield practice or drills with coach bobby knight. suddenly, i was alive to my own voice and it was alive to me and everything around me finally started to make sense. real sense-not that sense like, 'i'm a big dummy and why was i so slow.' that sense like, 'wow, why do i see this and get this, while 90% of everyone else thinks it folly to even consider?' my voice came from listening. often times, when writing in those days i would have a walkman strapped to my noggin with zack de la rocha and rage against the machine screaming inside my head. "turn on the the radio, nahhh fuck it! turn it off!" and i hardly heard it 'cause i was listening to me, trying to make out what i was feeling, why i was feeling it. and i suppose i discovered my voice. i sat in front of that little mac of mine for hours and days. and i was a savage in the land of lost covenants. i recognized the false promises and out-and-out lies i had ingested since childhood and my voice roared to the fore on the strength of indignation.
i am sure i discovered my voice once before, as terra does now. but when i discovered it the second time, i discovered myself. i discovered what was important to me. i discovered the lies about christopher columbus. i discovered the false notions of mine childhood: easter bunnies and tooth fairies and santa claus and cupid and leprechauns and the boogie-man and satan and god. i discovered the myriad contradictions all about me: yes, the love of money is the root of all evil, but no, gordon gecko is neither good nor to be admired.
here's the point. it will be nice to turn 40 this year. i am at peace with myself. i am happy i spent so much time drinking and smoking-those things helped me to become who i am, (mostly by helping me to know human nature.) i am happy i lived 20 years of my life for me. i think the next 20 will be for terra. as for the first 20, what did not kill me only made me stronger. i knew even at moments during it all, i would be blessed with a perspective all my own. unlike the rich kid who goes out and gets blasted on every drug imagineable to numb the pain of not being challenged in life, to numb the pain of not knowing the difference between love and material gain, to numb the pain of feeling apart from rather than a part of the fabric that is the common man, (the proletariat if you will,) i sought the casual high in which i revelled in the joy of being alive and the joy of touching and loving my fellow man.
"of the people." it is all i ever wanted. i feel rich somehow for having that perspective. i do not overidentify with my family, my roots, the color of my skin, the shape of my eyes, my city, my state, certainly not my country!?! i love my family. i love faith and terra. i do not, however, love them more than all of the other people in the world combined. i am of the people. it is important to me to be of the people. i am for humanity-that is my team and my cause.
when i discarded god, i did not leave a vacuum in that place. i filled the void with humanism. the humanism of paul kurtz and fidel castro.
i am unoffendable. call me a drunkard on account of my irish ancestry and i will look away. say i eat dog-meat because you heard they do that in the phillipines. why should i be offended by such a thing? say i have multiple chins or bad skin or that my 40-year-old paunch is showing, (as if i imagined myself the precious, supermodel, flower,) and i will defer to kundera. (these things are not me, i am on the inside.) i will define myself by subtraction. i grant not permission to offend me, not with words anyway.
i have read marx and nietzsche, dostoyevsky and chekov, hamsun and ibsen, bukowski and celine and rushdie and gibran and tayeb salih and the apostle paul and jane austen and garcia-marquez and richard rodriguez and malcolm x and gao xingjian and walt whitman. i found value in each and every one, great value. i have concluded there is no superior tribe. in fact, i recall mencken discussing the science of a widening gene pool and i suspect he was on track in suggesting the mongrel would have the leg up in any race for superiority.
and in wanting to lead by example i say, i am not interested in having a leg up. i have an overdeveloped sense of justice, to be sure, but i do not want more than. i require material only that allows me to socialize, (i.e. that which places me in the same social strata as my neighbors.) and for that, like almost every man i ever met, i am ready, willing and able to work.
perhaps we are a baby species and our borders are representative of this fact. perhaps nationalism has it's place and time, (now,) and one day it too will pass away. i know i feel no greater kinship with a man who pulls lobsters from the sea in maine than him who does the same in baja california. one is my countryman and one is my neighbor. one speaks my language while the other sounds like home. one was not involved in the revolt against king george and the other did not fight as an aztec nor as a spaniard. all flags are division symbols.
they are not of the people.
my voice, the one i discovered the second time, feels to me like it is, of the people.