Good Or Bad, I Was One Of The Ones

I cannot say that I know what I believe or that I “definitively know” that yes, there is a God or that my God is right and yours is wrong.
I don’t know these things.
I don’t know if your God is stronger or mightier or that somehow, we’ve all been fed a narrative that draws us to believe in something stronger when we feel weakest.

I don’t know if we need to fight about the relevance or the existence of God.
But we do.

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Good Or Bad, I Was One Of The Ones

I wonder though.
What does it mean to go crazy? And when I say crazy, I don’t mean to go crazy in a bad regard or in the sense that this becomes clinical or sadly dangerous.
Not at all.

When I say crazy, I mean this in the best way possible. I say this because if I want to be one thing, or anything, I want to be the one who knows how to do this.
I want to know how to have fun.
I want to know how to let go and to let it all hang loose.
I want this.

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Good Or Bad, I Was One Of The Ones

There is no place like home
I agree . . .
Home
I love that world.
I love the feeling of it.
I love the idea that has been famously said, “be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”
And once more, I agree.

I can say that I have lived in different places. I have lived in different apartments and houses.
I lived in different areas, and I have lived in different spots for a decent amount of time.
I lived where I lived, but out of any of them, I would not call too many them home.

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Good Or Bad, I Was One Of The Ones

Do you know what I miss?
I miss the vibes. I miss the energy.
I miss the late nights and the gas tank, which was my ability to go all night long and somehow, I could still make it to work the next day.

I miss my younger years in the city.
I miss the feeling that came over me when the music turned loud. And I remember this well.
I miss the dance floor, crowded with bodies.
Everything was hot about this, including the bodies that moved and swayed with each other, like, up close and all too personal.

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Good Or Bad, I Was One Of The Ones

And so, in the case to find myself or to retrace the missing pieces of my life, I had to search through different dreams to see exactly where it was that I lost my place.
“I lost my place.”
Yes. That’s a great way to put it!”

I identify with these words.
And I have identified with these words for a long time.
At the same time, I identify with the ideas of losing my place differently now. Or maybe I relate to them differently each time I lose my place.
And each time I say that hey. “I lost my place,” I realize that this has happened more times and, in more ways than I could possibly count.

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Good Or Bad, I Was One Of The Ones

What do we know? And by the way, I think this is a fair question to ask.
What do we really know?
Let’s see . . .

What do we know about anyone, aside from what they’ve told us or what we’ve seen or what we’ve been shown?
And even still, even if we see something or even if someone shows us who they really are, do we still know as much as we think we do?
And again, I think it is fair question.
I think this is fair to ask and to assess this thing which we call truth.

And truth is a funny thing because in all fairness to myself and to anyone else—there is only one truth. Any variation of truth becomes opinion, and opinions, of course, are neither truth or false.
They just are . . .

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Good Or Bad, I Was One Of The Ones

I agree when you tell me the world is a mixed back of tricks.
Of course, it is.
Look around.
Do you see?

There was a man selling tickets to the resurrection on Vesey Street and Church the other day. I told him I had to work that day, but maybe I’ll catch my salvation on the flip side.
Who knows?

I agree there are beautiful things, all around us. Like, say the way sunrise looks when I am driving downtown on the FDR and then heading west on Fulton.
I have reasons for my connection to both the East River and The Hudson, of course.
Both sides of Manhattan have seen me through different periods of my life.

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Good Or Bad, I Was One Of The Ones

I have always had this thing for sunrise.
Always . . .
I suppose I’ve had this since, —I don’t know, I guess for as long as I can remember.

Maybe this is because sleep and I never seem to connect very well.
Maybe insomnia and I were too close and the ability to sleep was too distant.
But the sunrise and I have always had this “thing” together.
I know it.

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Good or Bad, I Was One of The Ones

The sense of smell has got to be one of the most interesting senses of all. For example, the smell of honeysuckles reminds me of a time when I was in grade school. Or the smell from low tide at the beach reminds me of a fishing trip I took out to a place called Shinnecock canal. I caught my first winter flounder there and this is one of my best memories of all.

You never forget the smells from places. I know this to be true, and while above smells that I mentioned are good, there are smells from places in my memory, which are ungodly to say the least and cruel to say it best.

You’ll never forget the smell –

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Good Or Bad, I Was One of The Ones

The strangest part is I am not sure I would recognize him.
That is, if I ever saw him again.

At the same time, we pass each other every day.
We see each other all the time.
All day.

I can’t say that I know what he was thinking, even though I know exactly what he was thinking.
I know exactly who he is because “he” is me and I am “him.”

I was a young man once and playing the dangerous game of cat and mouse and chicken too. My stance was imperfect at best and yet, I tied my best too pull off a look that made me seem bigger than I was.

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