Of course, I would like to go back.
I’d love to go back to the days when music still meant something. I want to go back to the days when shows and music festivals were these big occasions. Youth was youth. The times were the times.
Everyone was outside, and the world was alive and free to live without the constant stream of information.
Do you remember?
What I mean is I would love to go back to the days before technology.
I say this and, at the same time, I understand that technology has made it possible for me to come here, every morning, to write my entries. Then I can push a button and send them to you.
I do appreciate the scribble of a pencil on a notepad. I remember being filled with angst, ideas, testosterone, and hopes.
I remember being too afraid to share my thoughts or to be myself. However, there was something beautiful about this time. There was something meaningful about the angst of being lost or the disdain for the common things.
I remember days in my room, alone as could be, and listening to music.
I remember the places I lived in my young adulthood, and more, I remember being lost in the vast and various comparisons that pushed me to believe that I was different or simply uncommon.
I never thought I would regard these times as wonderful or beautiful; however, I always knew that these times would become impactful and that somehow, I would look back and wonder why I thought the way I did.
Where did the ideas of personal ugliness begin and when was it that I fell to the inaccuracies that stemmed from this. When was it that I was misinformed about beauty? How did I lose sight of the truth, which is that beauty can be found anywhere, even in the ugliest of places.
Beauty can live anywhere, but like anything, beauty is like love and neither beauty nor love can survive in a vacuum, such as the empty void or coldness of something so bottomless as the ultimate despair.
I think of me, back before the world turned to the internet for everything. I think about the ideas behind my first poems, such as the thoughts and the emotion behind the time I wrote, “My world exists, only in you.”
I think about the first time I heard Jim Carroll or when he wrote, “Ah, the City is on my side.” Another one, even better, I remember when Jim closed one of his poems with, “I just want to be pure.”
Me too, Jim.
I just want to be pure.
I remember back when I would go out, just to be out, as in outside and living life. I remember when I would pass the playgrounds in my tiny town and yes, my tortured soul rejoiced to see the kids on slides or swinging on swings. These things are gone now. So is that version of me. That young man has grown older. He has advanced and regressed, and been reborn again in some ways, stagnant in others; but more, I have grown enough to notice the appreciation for things we missed along the way.
I want to take a walk on the beach.
Perhaps, I will too.
This Sunday will be a good day.
I will be sure to take a shell from the sands.
I’m going to bring it home, clean it up, and keep it as if this would be a remnant of you and a symbol of you and I – forever young, forever hopeful, and forever wild.
If I age and slip away or if I am to age to the graying point of retirement, and too old to dance, I would rather look to signify these times and keep these moments with tiny things, like huge mementos, and keepsakes of something beautiful.
I once wrote, no matter how pretty someone is on the outside then, at best, they can only be average if they are ugly on the inside.
I have my own ugly battles and thoughts to contend with. I have ugly truths and mistakes and times when I wish I went left instead of right.
I do not look back anymore and wonder what would have (or could have) happened, because nothing can change what took place.
However, if I am to look back now, or should I choose to regard these days or the wild times of my life, then let me look for the beautiful parts or the memories and scenes of simple things, like the innocence between a first kiss or the time when I saw you first, and oh, how I wish. . .
I wish I realized that you walked through the door for a reason. I wish that I saw you more or held you longer or shared more about the notes I used to keep in a box by my bed.
No matter how old I am or become—
I know the child in me is still alive.
Therefore, my love is alive.
So is my heart and my soul.
So are you and so are we,
if there is a “we” that is.
It’d been nice to dance with you on the beach at sunrise.
I can’t wake up to that right now,
but I can dream about it.
And I will . . .
God, I miss the days when music was still alive.
But the good thing about technology is we can bring it with us wherever we go. This includes the beach at Point Lookout, Long Island.
That’s where I’ll go.
The Written Addiction 