Dreary weather. Aggressive commercialism. Synthesized prerequisites for communal happiness. And all the wonderful reminders of your own loneliness, a fear in perpetuity.
Bah humbug, as said the classic holiday scapegoat. Not the green furry one. The one that’s pretty much C. Montgomery Burns, but in England and more covered in coal dust.
Don’t care for the holidays. Which should have no effect on my already questionable ability to allow myself to enjoy things. Right?
Right.
So anyway, the weather doesn’t bother me all that much. I can even recall fond memories of dreary days. Some around here, some in other lands near and far. And cooler climates agree with me far better than the other end of the spectrum. A machine that runs hot need have some sort of cooling system. Run that machine in a hot environment, and voila!- your shit broke.
Or is it viola?
Substitute the word machine for the spongey, fatty collection of neurons and such inside my skull, and you can see what I mean.
But the ‘Holidays’, as they are called, have become something other than just a celebration to change the seasons. Something I don’t care for. But me rambling about them won’t make them change or go away. It’s more just a setting note. A place for a plot point. Character background.
So, without forewarning or explanation, on to the next idea.
Because of recent symbolic occurrences and a regular diet of comic books, I’ve been pondering alternate timelines. The idea that a different choice at a specific point or points would have altered all subsequent matters. These massive moments seen as sculpting and defining based upon how they went down. And the colossal philosophical conundrum of what if.
Had I said the right words. Had I done more. Done less. If they had chose to stay. To leave. The days I was not there. And the ones I was and no one else. What if I had chosen different? Had a different job. And different path. What if those that had, never walked into my life. Who then may have filled those voids? Would anyone? What if I moved somewhere else? Or not gone to school. Or hell, even taken a different date to prom.
What if, what if, what if?
Even a single altered decision may have rippled through the whole of my life. My identity. My reality. My nights may have consisted of lonely microphones against dim lit brick walls. Or digging ditches on the other side of the continent. Or perhaps I may have already joined the ‘27 club’, forever young and dead. Or maybe it was always going to be this. And that no matter what, this was destined beyond any matter my mere mortal hands could control.
I think of those who have been. And those that have left. And those that may already be gone, and I am too thick skulled to know it. I think of paths lost or broken. I think of hearts the same way.
What if, what if, what if?
Some might call it a wasted effort. And they’re probably right. Nothing can be done about it now. The amber of the moment. Fossilized.
But even if it be a waste, I cannot help but always ponder. One of my many mild addictions. And no matter how good things might be, I can always wonder them some other way.
What if, what if?
What if it were all different?
Well- me thinks I would still wonder about the path I have found myself on now, were it not the path gone down. As the hypothetical I see elsewhere, I suppose. That the life I live now would be one of the ‘what if’ wonders in that other dimension. Greener grass eternal.
So, let the holidays come. For they will go again. And let the year come to a close as well. I have a year fresh behind to be prouder of far more than ashamed. Not that shame is ever really absent. Good ‘ol Catholic upbringing. But much has happened in this year. A journey mostly internal, as both inability and fear often cripple my journey’s outward. But it was a year of progress. Even with moments where it pooled stagnant.
And my heart has decided on the next solar spin’s creative endeavor. Specifics and methods to be worked, but I know what I mean to do. And outside of creative, I know what else I mean to try. You know, like maybe go on a few dates this year. If that’s still what the kids do, now-a-days.
So, I will work and wrap what must. And start again in another mode. Inquiries welcome. For that and the other parts of my life.
Ever onward. Until it can no longer be done.
The Veracious Facade 