All right. I'm apologizing up front for this but I want to find out if I am wasting my time at all. I want to enter a writing contest online. The topic is to come up with a relationship (friends, romantic, whatever) based journey that could possibly be used online with an issue/installment released on a periodic basis. This is freking long for here but if anyone can get through any or some of it, let me know what you think. Grabs interest? Well written? Would you want to hear more? Couldn't stand it? Stop littering the board with this because it's too long for anyone here to read? Thanks.
It was the day after a self-exploratory journey for PQ and me. It wasn’t the first time we had this type of conversation. You know, the kind where you take a look at every aspect of your life and talk it to death with someone who is doing exactly the same thing and then convince yourselves that if you didn’t have any ambition or self-awareness everything would be ok. But by merely possessing the capacity to have this conversation you both realize that you are doomed because of the desire to achieve, succeed and be truly happy.
Now I’m not talking about achieving and succeeding in a financial sense of the word. It could be in a materialistic sense in that ‘things’ or maybe more accurately, ‘luxuries’ can be enjoyable and help to provide that true happiness. We look at a materialistic world on a daily basis so that is the world we know and recognize that some of these ‘things’ would be fun to have. We were interested in true contentment and happiness. If ‘things’ were a part of that so be it!
Well, we had the several hour long conversation the previous day and then PQ called. He told me that it was time to have some fun. I agreed although thought that it was long overdue. I wasn’t sure what PQ had in mind or what ‘fun’ actually constituted but I surely didn’t want to once again reflect on my desire for happiness only to believe that it wasn’t attainable, as mediocratic was NOT acceptable.
Real quickly, PQ and I have known each other for a long time. We are great friends and have had many good times together. Our lives have been pretty easy and while there were touches of tragedy for each of us, nothing completely debilitating. We have been through a lot together. Again, not through a lot in terms of personal tragedy or anything, just the stresses, pressures, ideas, joys and experiences that one goes through by making decisions, interacting with others and living life. And of course there were our soul-searching talks with all the frustrations, sarcasms, whining and self-pitying. We both had our strengths and un-strengths (we really didn’t possess weaknesses) and could usually recognize the absurdity of the world around us.
It was this recognition and acknowledgement of absurdity that was of particular amusement and commonality to us. We were on the phone once. His house overlooked a fairly busy street. He interrupted our conversation with the following:
‘Hey. There’s this guy riding his bike outside and I think he’s going to get smashed by a car. He’s kind of half in the road and half on the shoulder. It’s pretty weird he would keep riding like that. There have been like 5 cars that have almost nailed him. Here comes one more. Oh yeah. He just got nailed.”
He was very calm and said this very matter of fact in his play-by-play. He said it didn’t look like the guy got hurt. I was pretty worked up about it but he assured me that it was no big deal. We continued our conversation.
Here’s a transcript from a phone call when we were both at our respective colleges:
PQ: Hello.
Me: Hey Dude.
PQ: Heeeeyyyy, how was your trip to school? Glad to be back?
Me: The trip was ok but I have a story for you about once I got here.
PQ: Cool. What’s up?
Me: This guy burned himself up.
PQ: What? What do you really mean? How’d he do that?
Me: Well, he chained himself to the fence by our soccer field and poured gasoline on himself and then set himself on fire. They had to leave him there for like 2 hours until the state medical examiner could get to the place. All the local news crews had gotten there and had spotlights on him so we went up and took a look.
PQ: Did you know him?
Me: No, he was some guy from the town, not a student.
PQ: That must have looked pretty messed up.
Me: Yeah well, his head was all charred and looked real small but it really looked kind of fake.
PQ: He must have been sad about something.
Me: I guess so.
PQ: Well have a good week but don’t barbeque anything.
Me: All right. I’ll talk to you next weekend.
***Too be continued***
[This message has been edited by armada1 (edited 23 April 2001).]
It was the day after a self-exploratory journey for PQ and me. It wasn’t the first time we had this type of conversation. You know, the kind where you take a look at every aspect of your life and talk it to death with someone who is doing exactly the same thing and then convince yourselves that if you didn’t have any ambition or self-awareness everything would be ok. But by merely possessing the capacity to have this conversation you both realize that you are doomed because of the desire to achieve, succeed and be truly happy.
Now I’m not talking about achieving and succeeding in a financial sense of the word. It could be in a materialistic sense in that ‘things’ or maybe more accurately, ‘luxuries’ can be enjoyable and help to provide that true happiness. We look at a materialistic world on a daily basis so that is the world we know and recognize that some of these ‘things’ would be fun to have. We were interested in true contentment and happiness. If ‘things’ were a part of that so be it!
Well, we had the several hour long conversation the previous day and then PQ called. He told me that it was time to have some fun. I agreed although thought that it was long overdue. I wasn’t sure what PQ had in mind or what ‘fun’ actually constituted but I surely didn’t want to once again reflect on my desire for happiness only to believe that it wasn’t attainable, as mediocratic was NOT acceptable.
Real quickly, PQ and I have known each other for a long time. We are great friends and have had many good times together. Our lives have been pretty easy and while there were touches of tragedy for each of us, nothing completely debilitating. We have been through a lot together. Again, not through a lot in terms of personal tragedy or anything, just the stresses, pressures, ideas, joys and experiences that one goes through by making decisions, interacting with others and living life. And of course there were our soul-searching talks with all the frustrations, sarcasms, whining and self-pitying. We both had our strengths and un-strengths (we really didn’t possess weaknesses) and could usually recognize the absurdity of the world around us.
It was this recognition and acknowledgement of absurdity that was of particular amusement and commonality to us. We were on the phone once. His house overlooked a fairly busy street. He interrupted our conversation with the following:
‘Hey. There’s this guy riding his bike outside and I think he’s going to get smashed by a car. He’s kind of half in the road and half on the shoulder. It’s pretty weird he would keep riding like that. There have been like 5 cars that have almost nailed him. Here comes one more. Oh yeah. He just got nailed.”
He was very calm and said this very matter of fact in his play-by-play. He said it didn’t look like the guy got hurt. I was pretty worked up about it but he assured me that it was no big deal. We continued our conversation.
Here’s a transcript from a phone call when we were both at our respective colleges:
PQ: Hello.
Me: Hey Dude.
PQ: Heeeeyyyy, how was your trip to school? Glad to be back?
Me: The trip was ok but I have a story for you about once I got here.
PQ: Cool. What’s up?
Me: This guy burned himself up.
PQ: What? What do you really mean? How’d he do that?
Me: Well, he chained himself to the fence by our soccer field and poured gasoline on himself and then set himself on fire. They had to leave him there for like 2 hours until the state medical examiner could get to the place. All the local news crews had gotten there and had spotlights on him so we went up and took a look.
PQ: Did you know him?
Me: No, he was some guy from the town, not a student.
PQ: That must have looked pretty messed up.
Me: Yeah well, his head was all charred and looked real small but it really looked kind of fake.
PQ: He must have been sad about something.
Me: I guess so.
PQ: Well have a good week but don’t barbeque anything.
Me: All right. I’ll talk to you next weekend.
***Too be continued***
[This message has been edited by armada1 (edited 23 April 2001).]
