The I-I-Was

from my notebook last night:
"I used to entertain such jubilance, not in joy but in zealous passion, a prophet and pariah for im/possibilities, for Love."

How far from that person I was am I. How far and miserable. Yet I, the I-I-was, used to be so unbelievably miserable, just as prone to violent rages and violent addictions and threats of suicide, though to be sure never as physically tending to actually make good on such threats. But the difference now? The parts of this which frighten me when compared to the I-I-was? The inspiration for my misery, the frustration which so shattered and tightened me. For then, so long ago, the base of it all was Love, was Possibility, was Believing In That Which Others Would Not.

"By God, I've loved!" I once wrote in a poem. "Why are no one else as interested in these fabulous failures of the heart?" I wrote in another.

That was it, I feel. I was balling my fists and standing so resolutely goddamn pissed because of the Love and Wonder and Awe that flowed through me and about me, and others' refusals to see all of the liberating power in these things. I was being spurned by friends, lovers, and the world-at-large, and it was depressing and nigh-defeating, but instead I only Loved more fiercely, Felt more fiercely, Believed more fiercely, raising myself to some sort of immolative frenzy of DOING IT ALL, IN SPITE, though never spitefully. Yet to be so Loving of Love and Others and Life that you wish you destroy yourself, is it worth it? I believed so, and maybe still do. But I didn't destroy myself, except

except I really, truly did. I smothered that I-I-was with selfishness, indifference, and a fatalist resolve to not put any such stock into Love/Compassion, as all things must end, and instead began worshiping at the altar of Self, of Death, and here is where the I-I-am has me so spooked, for a life lived, and ending, for naught but selfish compulsion and an identification with only Pain and Darkness and that bastard Self with the cold cold eyes and chilly atrophied heart (that heart! which once was so swollen near-bursting with LOVING LOVE UNTIL/IN SPITE OF/AND BECAUSE IT HURT SO FUCKING BAD) proves no-thing to no-one, especially my prideful self, shrugging and indifferent.

There are these weird mortification-of-the-flesh Jesuit-flagellation tendencies in my willingness to fill my shoes with glass and wrap my torso in barbed wire, but once it was to have a pain upon which to compare Wonder and Glory, to prevent the cultivation of a truly evil pride, though now I fear it is simply to remind myself that none are innocent, least of all I, and that Pain and Death are truly our only constant companions.

BUT

I do believe in the im/possibilities of Love, Wonder, Gawd, Life, and Glory. "To move towards beauty, and from pain". Yes, I believe that. Somewhere, deep in my cowardly guts and watery marrow, I believe it. Not a road exists which may not be retraced, retreated from, and it is up to I, and alone I, I now, to make that choice. The rope I climb back towards the realm of Idealism and Positivity will be rife with the briars of cynicism to which I have become so accustomed, but let this be my new frustration. For I cannot live without Pain and Anger, and if I may I will certainly retain some lessons from the past three or so years of Misanthropy/Cynicism/Fatalism, and especially this recent deadly Nihilism, for I understand now their inherent strengths, applicable in dealing with a cruel cold vicious world, but for Gawd's sake I no longer wish to be cruel, cold, or vicious. The world is not a reflection of Myself, it cannot be, for I know I can do better than this. I know I can kick against these pricks with all of my zeal for both the Real and Unreal, for there is no room for simply Darkness or simply Light.

The I-I-was now contains the past three years, all 27 years before that, and actually everything leading up to the I-I-am-and-will-be right fuckin now. Time to make changes. And if I'm going to be so fucking pissed and upset, I had better a damn good reason besides a selfish obsession with how I've been spurned by the shitworld we live in, and I had better be prepared to change that shitworld as willingly as I am to change myself. We can do it better. I don't want to throw up my hands and totter off a building howling about the atom bomb; I want to dismantle the entire system of thought which bore that atom bomb.

There is a loss of innocence as we age, as cruel realities creep upon us, but to consider this a Defeat is absolutely wrong. I'm only as defeated as I accept, and once upon a time I would never have even considered such acceptance. Surrender proves nothing, but putting up a fierce fight in the name of im/possibilities means everything, even in the face of Armageddon (to paraphrase Rorschach, natch).

I've lost some innocence. I have been spurned and damaged, yes. But I am bent, not broken. I will never again be the I-I-was, and to so wrongly be upset by this nearly destroyed me these last few years, and particularly these last few months.

But I will remember fondly how much the fulla-love I-I-was felt about things, and how fiercely and angrily the darkly-cold I-I-was didn't feel about things, and I will learn from both. The I-I-was is dead, long live the I-I-was.

post-script/epilogue:
besides, think of the ecstasies! the ecstasy of lovemaking while actually In Love, of being Loved, the ecstasy of crossing the California border, of catching bugs and looking at toads, the ecstasy I find in righteous political indignation (death to the pigs! to the warmongers! to the charlatan holy men and the greedy shitsuckers!), the ecstasies of reading reading reading and writing writing writing, of a stinking hot smoking tube amp, of Midnight Mass high as shit on marijuana and pondering the birth of ol' Jeezus Cristo, the stubborn ecstasy of not kissing ass but yes of kissing the moles on your beautiful butt. Here's to smiling at strangers.