A Fleeting Thought

Courtney/Wilderness/Freedom/Patriotism

I live life so recklessly. As if I had never gotten the chance to laugh in the face of death, but had always wanted to. I had a friend one time, her name was Courtney. She was beautiful, but she didn't think so. Her smile said it all, you would have thought she was beautiful too. She had the pearly smile of a child star. The exact reason I think she thought so lowly of herself was because she came up from a broken childhood, at least the way she explained it. Her dad didn't want to be around her or her brother as they were children, but eventually decided to come back when they became young adults. She had been medicated from a very young age, on some heavy stuff. In a way, it made her permanently chemically imbalanced. However that imbalance she was so insecure with, that's part of what made her so beautiful. You see, Courtney was different than any girl I've ever met. She was completely fearless. Through all of the things she'd been through, she had learned what was actually scary. I was a scared soul from the beginning, newly born into a world full of death. When I met Courtney, she had this immediate calming effect on me. Like she had taken up all of my angst, and turned it into fight. She was completely fearless. She would fight anyone, and I mean anyone. One time she took on a large black fellow who was twice her hight, and four times her width. They fought for three hours, in rounds, like an old wresting match. Looking like a snowflake in the palm of a bear, she won. She's been known to try to fight cops. I would often have to neutralize the situation before she got a chance to become a part of it. I loved it though, I loved her fight. She was seventy-five percent fight, twenty-five percent concentrated laughter. These things would go together on her better than you'd think. The biggest part of her was her intense desire to laugh in the face of death. It was never boring to be beside her. She'd never say a common place thing. Once while I was at her house, she was at work, her mom ran into the laundry room nearly crying, and in complete hysterics. I couldn't understand what she was saying other than, "Oh god, tell her not to! Tell her not to be a hero! Oh my god my little girl!" She handed me her landline phone. I placed it up to my ear and asked her what in the world was going on. "We have shoplifters." She said, "But they tell us not to confront them. I don't know if I agree with that." I will tell you right now, someone who goes to a craft store to shoplift, is not a threat to anyones life. I don't agree with it either. So I laughed and told her not to be a hero, with a wink-wink-nudge-nudge in my voice, I said it for her mother more than anything. With her, there was nothing to great, or too small to throw your life down on. Then dance on it too. She could disarm anyone with laughter. She was my best friend. In all honesty she still is, I learned so much from her. Shortly after high school the traumas of my life began. It started with simple monetary issues, continued with my father's stroke, and the abuse he dealt me after that, and finally ended with my reckless challenge to him, and to life. I made a stand, and it made me homeless. All the while it gives me time to think. I got kicked out, and abused for doing what I thought was right. What I thought would make my father proud. I was going to college and hoping to study psychology, get my bachelors, my masters, a good job in Palo Alto where I was taught to be. Get paid three-hundred-thousand dollars yearly for talking to troubled youths like me. I didn't want to do that. I admit it was the lesser of all of the evils. Psychology was interesting but it, by no means, was what I actually wanted to do. I knew what I wanted to do already. I wanted to be a poet, not under any magazine, or newspaper. I wanted to write what I wrote, and not have to wrack my brain over something I only mildly care about. My life is art, and art is passion. It doesn't make sense to compromise. Art is one of the only things people will not dare compromise. Bob Dylan's song 'I'll Keep it with Mine' describes it perfectly. "You will search babe, at any cost. But how long babe, will you search for what is not lost?" A sin in my non-religious views, is to disregard my own desire for the desires of someone else. In other words, to do things to please others, that do not please me. What is the point anyway? I've never had anyone stick around in my life before, except Bob Dylan's music, and by default, his presence and mentality. So then why would I go out of my way to please anyone? Even my father. Recently I've decided that starving in the street, freezing in the December night, and being stared at by the wasps of the Bay Area like I'm some kind of freak, is miles better than doing something I feel lukewarm about. Here I may want to take my own life, every night before I go to sleep, but at least I don't go to sleep thinking nothing at all; falsely secure in the "stable" life. It's also a good life, this one that I currently live. If you have a hard time believing it listen to this. There's a sense of ownership that comes with becoming comfortable with the world outside of a house. I doubt any of you that read this actually know that Woody Guthrie wrote 'This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land', I bet even less of you know the feeling he describes in that song. True patriotism. And that's okay, there's truly nothing wrong with that. Patriotism has changed as a whole, but that, has stayed the same. It is the act of becoming wild. Like a home that has been overgrown with chaparral and wild cat grass. There is still a capacity for society, but it is disregarded. I am wild, and unpredictable. I not care for whoever this fruit tree belongs to, because I am hungry. In what world are the city's many historical orchards not meant for a poor animal to sleep in, or eat bruised apricots beneath its branches? Another point Woody made, why do they only print private property signs only on one side? Much good that will do from the other side of that fence. I live recklessly, with no regard for others, and all regard for my survival. It's simply an instinct. Do you blame a dog for an instinct? It's futile. Do not resent human wilderness, cherish it. Just as I cherish the memories I had with my best friend Courtney.