demise at safari (and in response to Kyle)

September 12, 2005

I too have just returned home from the safari closing show, and after having read what Kyle had written, instead of leaving a comment, I have decided to write on a similar topic. Unlike Kyle I have not seen visions, but looking upon the crowd at the safari tonight left me with a similar feeling of human demise. Perhaps it is because these people, who's dank salty bodies surrounded me, have become so recognizable over these past five years, even those who are just faces in the background, that I've actually been witness to their aging. And this is easier to see when it is those people who I only see in a setting such as safari. At shows, prepped as much as socially needed for the seedy venue, wearing the same expressions, the same tattoos and for many of them, the same clothes. In reverse I suppose they could say the same about me. And I know I have changed over these years, aged is a way only others could begin to explain. It's funny that I don't feel older in as many ways as I should. I know that I have grown up, but feeling age isn't supposed to be something you feel until you start losing your hair, teeth and the sharp pain in your lower back that is associated with an aliment other than passing out drunk on the asphalt. Somehow I mentally feel younger now than I did when I was 20. I thought I knew a lot about life, love and the pursuit of happiness back then, now I know I really knew nothing at all. Anyway I guess the point of this is that regardless of how young and vibrent you feel, at any given moment it'll hit. The realization sets in that mortality is simply a device generated by your mind to live and do the things that you want to do (guided by moral and ethical consciousness, which help decide which of those things are actually worth doing). But somewhere along the line, as with any mechanism, the device faulters and the truth pours in like a stream of light through a pinhole camera; burning the real picture that our jubilance is nearing an end. This has not yet set in for me, but for others it has. And as long as there is a pinhole, there is really no way from stopping the light without covering it. But even with that you'll eventually get burned. I guess that explains why some 44 year old men (and women most likely) still act like they're 14 by whipping their dicks around at people (not the same for women however). Perhaps they were totally terrified at what they saw burned on their film. Or maybe, just maybe they haven't got a god damn clue in the world. Either way we're all aging every day and we will all die. It's just real freaky when you can see it all unfolding, and the vision becomes clear. Especially at a place like the safari.