Lately I've been wondering about what I'm doing with my life. Am I learning, discovering, questioning, evolving? Am I living a life worthwhile, and always pushing myself to strive for more? I look out the window at a morning already overcast with moody grays, and think: yes. I like myself. Or rather, I'm getting there at least.
Sometimes I'll sit in my room, bundled in blankets in my bed and stare intensely at the ceiling, wishing that I could find all the answers in the cracks. I'll lay there silently, or I'll lay there thinking, my mind churning with thoughts of the day. I tend to mull over things for long periods of time because I'm obsessive like that. I used to think that ruminating over past events would somehow "resolve" them in my head, but now I realize that it only makes for more sad poetry and a generally jaded, but perceptive view of the world.
Last night I was thinking about how I would love to be a nomad. Seriously. I know that sounds silly - "nomad" is a silly word. Right up there with vagrant or vagabond. But sometimes... all I want to do is throw everything I have away - except for my 2 books of poetry and some painting/drawing materials - and live life on the road, a la Jack Kerouac and his beatniks. Ah, the open road: living out of a suitcase, working at random jobs from place to place, meeting people from all over the world, abandoning the stifling American dream of the picket white fence, 2.5 kids, security, comfort, the bigger, better lifestyle...
Just saying "FUCK IT ALL."
And with a toss of my hair and a glint of mischief in my eyes, I'd take off on a mind-numbing-beatnik-Dean Moriarty sort of adventure, roaming around the world for maybe a year or so, like a Zen nomad whose only responsibility is to live life and to satiate my thirst for more knowledge, more experience, more adventure. I'd hike across Europe, party in Japan, explore the bowels of Eastern Asia, draw the pyramids, write poems about luscious South America... of course, all of this would be easier if I had $$ saved up beforehand, so I wouldn't end up poor as fuck and having to eat crusty bread crumbs out of a dumpster in a dark alley somewhere. But bear with me, this is my fucking fantasy...
Ah, to move wherever the wind takes me. Grasping after life as much as I can because I know I'll be dead someday. In the words of Kerouac, "the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious." Yes, they fucking are. I'd live the ambling, groping, existentialist life, leaving nothing but cigarettes, laughter, and some poems in my turbulent wake. Answering to no one. Tattooing memories of my adventures along the way, so I'd come home one day covered in color, a walking canvas full of stories. Simple, peaceful, going with the flow of things... exploring all that life has to offer... experiencing new definitions of beauty... living like the true Dharma Bum.
PS. I read somewhere that On the Road is being made into a movie with Francis Ford Coppola behind it. 
It's fun to share
Sure, I know Mission Viejo. I used to ride my there from San Clemente during the summer after 7th grade. The mission viejo mall -- that place was rad! I saw Return of the Jedi and many, many other movies there.
You haven't seen the world yet? Well you gotta get out and check it out then!
Yeah, the beatnik wanderer life. I'm too "boozwha" for that now, but I like to travel. The idea of just wandering into some town and meeting new people, sampling life there and moving on sounds great.
In reality though more and more often it's just another place with strip malls and the same TV shows.
The commercialized homogenation is kind of a drag... but then again the "differentness" of life is out there in the US you just have to look harder. Under the covers and in between the lines.
And smoking and drinking? Eehh... man that just makes me feel like crap. It is nihilistic though, true. See, for nowadays you have to put a different twist on it and sip wheatgrass juice and eat organic goat cheese in different small towns.
For me, now, I've been on more on the clean living path with occasional forays into the dirt, hehe. I already did my offroading earlier in life.
Foreign travel is really where it's at. Especially the more foreign it gets. Then there's the expat life which is different than just passing through.
Have you ever read electric kool aid acid test?
That's a good recounting of the whole beat/hippie pioneers from a third perspective. The whole history of acid, how it entered popular culture and affected, as well as all of it's CIA history is interesting.
This comment's getting too long!
later...