Interesting note

I've not gotten any response from my "Zen" postings, so I'll curtail them for a few. Perhaps no one cares anymore. After all who really wants to think about anything? I guess I'm one of the last and final few that do. I may tend to over analyze, over scrutinize, and over observe things in general and in specific. I don't forget much. I think it's a curse more than a blessing. My memory only serves to show me my shortcomings and my pitfalls.

I have noticed patterns in my life that indicate a strong desire for failure. Whether desire is the correct word or if desire brings with it the connotation that I actually want to fail in my attempts, I do not know. What I do know is that my life has been a long string of buildups and catastophes. Perhaps I would be better off lying in the bottom of a grave. I don't know how I survived this long as it is. I know that I am a constant source of disappointment for those around me. I have no innate social skills and I'm not friendly, well I don't appear to be at first. I am a strange animal. I have separated myself into purely business Ed and purely banal Ed. The twain do not meet. I don't like to hang out with the people that I work with, and I don't like to work with the people that I hang out with. My sense of family is such that I don't really care as much about them as I should, and I rarely talk to them.

I play my guitar alot as a way of letting out my emotions. Funny though, there are times when I can't play, when I cannot feel. At those times nothing appeals to me whatsoever. Music is a release for me, yet I cannot help but think that it is a waste of time. That is what I was taught. Unless I am going to make a career of it, I shouldn't spend too much time in extracurricular activities. But I am good at it.

When I was in the Marine Corps, a group of my fellow Marines and I would play our guitars and sing, mostly folk music; Neil Young, America, Bob Dylan-that sort of stuff. When we were deployed to the Philippines, we used to frequent bars that hosted "open mike" stages. Scott, Steve and I would get up and play our guitars and sing our hearts out. The regular players there, Andy and Bong, would let us do our three songs and then throw us off the stage. Andy and Bong could play and sing like nobody's business. One night Bong was out doing whatever it was he did on his night off and Andy's throat was utterly destroyed by a cold. Steve and Scott were on base so Andy asked me up. I went up and played my three songs and started to get off the stage. Andy motioned for me to stay up there and continue playing and singing. I played for about an hour. I did some of my originals, "Redemption Song" by Bob Marley, some Neil Young and a bunch of other stuff I don't even remember. When I finally finished Andy bought me a beer and said something to me that I'll always remember. He said "Your friends are good but you, you've got it." Those were the sweetest words that have ever been said to me. I wish I could feel today that same music in my heart. I wish , I wish, I wish. That beer, a Red Horse, still ranks as the best tasting beer and most satisfying beer I've ever drank.

Since then my life has become a tragic comedy scattermarked with the stains of my failures, my lack of respect for myself and others and my utter contempt for life. I know you can't understand the gordion knot that is Edster, for that matter I cannot understand it either. I've never thought a problem through, I've always looked at it from every angle and tried to solve it backwards or forwards or sideways. Usually I just try to deny that problem's existence. I bury it and say "it doesn't matter." But it always does. It always comes back to haunt me. I'm a murderer, a thief and a liar. I'm cold blooded, conniving and sociopathic. I'm scared and I'm lonely. I'm scared of dying alone yet I don't want to take a chance on reaching out to someone. I don't like to be vulnerable. I want to control every situation, I want to understand and I want to know. I question authority. I thumb my nose at religion. I defy god. My defiance comes from the belief that if we are all "God's children" then he really fucked up when he made me. Sometimes I think that a slow thorazine drip would complete me. I could then enjoy the catatonic existence that I crave, my mind wouldn't always be thinking. I've tried to smell the roses and when I do I always think that there is something else to do, something more important. I hate myself for who I am, for who I was made to be. There are things in this world that should not be and I am one of them. Everything I touch turns to shit, everyone I know ends up hating me or at the very least being disappointed in me.

Don't get me wrong, suicide is not an answer. First of all I'm too much of a chicken shit to do that. Secondly my father suicided when I was a child. You want to talk about fucking someone's mind up, that's a good way to do it parents. Kill yourself when you child needs you the most. Even better, divorce your spouse and move away. Then your child can have a living "dead" parent. This world is going to shit and it appears that I'm leading the way. I've been depressed for who knows how many years and even now when March 15 (yeah that's right, the Ides of March) come around all I can think of is my father sucking the barrel of a revolver and pulling the fucking trigger. Oh he was a literati. He should have killed me first and saved me from this existence.

Silence is golden.


Hello darkness my old friend.
I've come to talk to you again.
Because a vision softly creeping
Left it's seeds while I was sleeping.
And the vision that was planted in my brain,
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

In restless dreams I walked alone
Down narrow streets of cobblestone.
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp.
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night.
And touched the sound of silence.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people maybe more.
People talking without speaking.
People listening without hearing.
People writing songs that voices never shared.
No one dared.
Disturb the sound of silence.

Fools said I you do not know.
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I may teach you.
Take my arms that I may reach you.
But my words like silent raindrops fell.
And echoed within the wells of silence.

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made.
And the sign flashed out it's warning.
In the words that it was forming.
The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls,
Tenement halls,
And whispered in the sound
Of silence.
-Paul Simon