"Wait till you see the American sunsets"!!!

[izeveryboyin]

A friend of mine named Andrew who lives in Edinburgh, (ed-din-bur-row) Scotland posted this on one of his blogs:

All I ever wanted to do with my life was to fuck my way across America and reach California; set myself up in a free-rolling hot rock band playing on the Sunset Strip; find peace, find a girl, then settle down into a (comparatively) normal life.

Somewhere things went wrong. I became stuck here, the weight of possessions, the weight of rent; hauling myself through miserable days, thinking "it's ok... something will happen at some point that will make all this seem worthwhile". I'm beginning to realise that day is never coming.

To which I replied:

The "American Dream" is a lot cheaper than you think. I've fucked my way acrosee America (or rather drunk my way across, but whatever) and I'm reeling to get out of here. The cheap California sunsets don't excite me anymore. the whole fucking nation smells like sweat and booze and misery. The national addiction is anti-depressants, and our president's a dickhead who's screwed us all over and hidden under an episcopalian cloak of righteousness. Now I live in Chicago, paying rent, smoking cigarettes and getting whistled at by california creaps in cheap jackets who wanna know when my shift ends at work so they can "give me my tip". Don't feel depressed about not driving across America, we've all done it, and we hate it here.

I just could not understand how a person could be so miserable surrounded by this:






But aparently, Scotland's not all it's crack up to be either. The Edinburgh city life seems to please him, but not enough, he wants more. he's a nomad, like me, And I didn't know how to console him. Instead I used satire, and bland sarcasm:

But that is definetly not to say that we don't want you here... *rubs hands together mischievously* it'll give us something to do aside from legal addictive stimulants.

What do you think guys... am I just being cynical here, or has America really lost it's sheen? Did it ever have it to begin with?

--k

[mousey1]

America has plenty of sheen. You're blessed to be living there, mustn't take it for granted. You live in a country that alot of people are envious of. Most people see America as the land of opportunity. And it is.

We can all concentrate on the bad. There's certainly plenty of it everywhere. But don't lose sight of the good.

Ya, so stop being so damned cynical or not.....

[shamatha1]

So your friend's life doesn't conform exactly to the fantasy he dreamed up for himself? Poor guy. He should expect nothing less out of life. Most people's lives go exactly as how they want it to.

He probably ended up in Bonnie Scotland through reasons completely beyond his control. That's how most people end up 4,000 miles away across an ocean.

And all those possessions he has that are 'weighing him down?' Those probably aren't his by choice either. I'm sure they were thrust on him by other people, and then chained to his limbs so he had no way of getting rid of them.

And the fact that nothing happens to 'make it all worthwhile" while he sits passively by, waiting. That just truly sucks. You see, most of us, we just think of something we want, and it falls into our laps. We don't have to do a damn thing to make it happen, besides wishing for it. And believe me, wishing is effort enough.

This is one of the saddest stories I've ever heard. This guy lives is a city he likes, he has possessions, some kind of way of making a living, and a place to live; but he'd really rather be living a fantasy life in California. I have no idea how this poor soul makes it through a day.

[izeveryboyin]

mousey, it depresses me when non-americans find some sort of falsified greatness in America. Many people back in the 1800s actually came to America digging up the streets believing the old cliche that it actually WAS paved with gold. Please don't be one of them. While america does have it's ups, it's no better than any other country. Our currency is dropping, and as stated above, our president sucks, we have a Republican-led government *shreik* and there are more homeless and/or illiterate people than would seem possible. The NCLB act is almost a failure, especially in Illinois, where get this... because of the low test scores, it has been mandated that federal funds not be used for tutoring students!!!! Is that insane or what? We waste frivoulous amounts of money on crappy art and propoganda, and we stick our noses in everyone's business. While we have offered Iraq elections, we have left their social and political structure in shambles and at least 20 people a day are said to annonuce the phrase "Sadaam was better" Because at least with him in power, there was some form of order. It goes back to the old adage of "better to have a familiar enemy, than a new one" or however it goes. Don't be disillisuioned by the seemingly "pristine" society of "american bliss", it's treacherous here, and more and more, poeple are starting to figure it out. As for Sham's comment, I agree except for the whole, "things just fall in your lap bit". I don't know what your experiences have been, so obviously, I can't speak for you, but in spite of that, the general consensus to my knowledge has been quite the opposite. People struggle to get what they want and when they do get it, it's cheapened by pop culture and bullshit. He didn't exactly end up in Scotland as much as being born there, lol, but the possessions weighing him down are mostly bad deciscions and personal fuck-ups gone horribly, horribly wrong. More or less though, you grasp the concept. I'll send him, your condolenses(sp?)

--k

[mousey1]

I'm well aware of America's weaknesses, and Canada's, well aware. And the majority, sure, we can blame on our respective governments, our duly elected officials. I dislike politicians, I dislike the politics of things. I'm just saying we're both lucky to be living where we do. We're a damned sight better off than in a lot of countries I can think of. At least the people still have a voice.....for now!

Don't get me wrong, I have lots of bones to pick with big brother America. We've been shit on many times. But the world situation is fucked up everywhere, not just in your back yard.

You need to travel the world, see how the other half lives. It would be a nice little wake up call I would think.

it depresses me when non-americans find some sort of falsified greatness in America

Don't be depressed, I'm not a complete arsehole(:roll: well, sometimes I am) I can see the good and the bad and I'm actually being quite realistic. You should talk to some landed immigrants, they've tasted the bitter and the sweet, they know the difference.

I understand we're you're coming from though, you're fed up with the bullshit.......it just could be a whole shitload worse, trust me.

I'd rather be homeless in America as opposed to say, well, just about anywhere else.

Change comes from within. We are still allowed to bitch and moan, at least for the time being, let's enjoy and appreciate the opportunity. And all while we stuff our fat fucking collective faces. We don't know what poverty is, not real poverty.

Anyway, I stand by what I said, tis my opinion.

[sooZen]

iz...Beauty is where you look for it.
If you want to find the flaws
they are there for exposure.
You can look at the cracks
or the flower that grows within.
Perspective...

When I look at this country
or the world for that matter
I can see pain and misery
if I want to or I can see the
beauty and mystery of life.
I am not an idealist or a dreamer
that is reality
We choose to be burdened
it is a choice
conscious or not

Zen helped me to see the shine in the spit...and perfection in imperfection...

Peace,
SooZen

[knip]

i've been to a lot of places, and have yet to find the peace your friend is looking for...every place has its ups and downs...yet i am repeatedly amazed by the joy and love i find all over the world in spite of what might seem, to us westerners, as overwhelming odds

i think your friend should take the plunge, anyway, and try to find shangrila, if only to discover that perhaps, it isn't a place, but an outlook or feeling

as for america, i love most of the americans i meet, and don't find them a whole lot different than canadians...the geography doesn't impress me much, but really, i am talking mainly about the cities, as i haven't seen any of the countryside...yet i often wonder why american cities, even the smaller ones, have such a wide disparity between haves and have-nots...a smaller city like colorado springs, for instance, has a much larger proportion of depressed and crime-ridden areas (what is known as low-rent, or slums), than similar sized cities in canada...makes sense, i suppose, given we are more socialistic

i also read a paper a few days ago (or maybe a magazine article) that showed the less the income disparity between the upper and lower classes, the taller its people are...canadians are taller than americans, and the dutch are taller than everybody...this may be related to life expectancies, as well, where canadians live, on average, two years longer than americans...but i digress

as for edinborough, which i believe is pronounced ed-in-burr-ah...my brother just returned from 9 months there, and his initial wonderment and appreciation of its charm was dispelled over time by a desire to get out of there...whether this was due to edinborough itself, or merely wanting to get back home i don't know, i haven't talked to him yet...but i do know he got tired of the charm of peat fireplaces to get warm by...

[stilltrucking]

Most people's lives go exactly as how they want it to.

That is so true. Freud’s comment about all he could do for his patients was make their unconscious misery conscious.
Just because they are living their lives as they want to, don’t mean they know it. I watch a 22 year old poser star in his own melodrama. Not so easy to reach him. He is so bad. He tries to figure out what is to be a man. His childhood trashed. Up against the wall red necked mothers, you mothers who have raised your sons so well. But his mothers childhood trashed by her father. tHE GIFT of a dysfunctional family, it keeps on giving. I do what I can to make ammends

Dear curley headed sister
I don't have a clue, but here is a ramble for what it is worth

America is lost in the nineteenth century. But I have hope for her. Free speech, our national treasure.

Keep on keeping on
I have rolled across this country many times. Cleaveland TN comes to mind. The 167 car pile on the interstate near the pulp paper plant. Yeah there are some stinky spots. But still a lot of fresh air. If it is the same guy I am thinking of , I been trying to talk him into visiting his honky relatives in the Shenandoah Valley. Maybe you should check out Scotland.

As good as it gets for me would be living on an island.

Go figure, one man’s poison another’s daydream

[izeveryboyin]

so I'll pile all my hum-dums and la-di-das in one comment, so as to save us time and space. First off, I'd like to say it's great that you all can and humored me with your comments and analysis. You're all fucking fantastic, no matter where on Earth you are. Secondly, I think you all need to note my constant state of depression over my own affairs which overshadows, or, sort of drips over into everything else, causing me to often see only the negative side of things, or mainly so.

As for Mousey, I wasn't ascertaining that you were unaware. Our dear Canadian friends have defiently smelled the shit right from the horse's ass, so I'm sure you know your stuff. I was merely just acknowledging the fact that some foreigners do. I've traveled a few places, seen a few things. I went to Jamaica a few years back, the poor side of Kingston town (all of it) is the most miserably destitute place. There are cows, chickens and goats running about the streets like motorists and pedestrians. Children with dirty mouths are playing by broken carts and smiling. So that was a huge wake-up for me. A slap in the fucking face actually. I don't think you're an asshole at all, mouse, and it's true that even the homeless here enjoy a certain sheltered comfort. But there's just one thing that I always want to say when poeple tell me... " it could be worse", and that is that "it could be better"!!! And true, everything could be better, but everything could be worse too!! It goes both ways. I'm tired of just execpting the whole "it could be worse" adage and leaving it at that. I have to try and do something for what's fucked in my country before I can feel right about anything. As much as I bitch about it, I love America. I'm no die-hard patriot, but I appreciate the history and the struggle within America's past. and while it hasn't done much for the blacker side, I still appreciate it for the passion it has instilled in me to make things better.

soozen(i love this name) there is always a flower in the concrete, and that's all well and good, but once again, we can't ignore the dirt. But I do think that we as a race (the human race) focus too much on what's negative, through the blindness of trying to fix it. I've done that a lot, but sometimes, that's what's needed. You'll never get up and fix the crack if you're too mesmerized by the daisies growing inside.

Knip, Americans are jokester pricks, and jerks, who do a good job making light of it. No, that was cynical, that was cynical, most Americans are uhm... They're uhm... well, we dress nice, right? As for edinburgh, it is spelled that way, but I think you're right on the pronunciation. I'm never quite sure. I used to call it "edin-burg" until I saw and episode of "Travels in Europe." LOL. But it's true about one man's poison being another man's dream. I find Europe beutiful and reeling in it's contrast of complex cultural diversity. Nowhere else in the world can you find a continent with so many different countries, cultures languages and customs all next door to one another. The charm to Europe is it's shocking closeness from one country to another. Like for instance you can get from London to Paris in a matter of hours, 4 or 5 even. And geographers have said that you have to go around England FIVE TIMES before you can get the size of Texas!!! Can you believe that! But again, I agree with you, I think he should go for it. If all else fail, he'll be no more miserable than he was before.

ST, Freud is an infinite source of strange and over-appreciated wisdom, but he's often right. But I suppose the power of the self-conscious is, I don't know. I think that while there is strength within ourselves, our lives our heavily shaped by outside influences and our enviroment. Which would mean that our lives don't really go the way WE want them to, but rather, they go the way the established society wants us to. It's strange how things work out that way, isn't it.

Okay, okay, I'm done ranting. Thanks again for commenting guys.

--k

[Marksman45]

Everyone has this idea of some thing that, if only they could get it, would make everything great. We're all waiting for our ships to come in.

Fact is, there's no time to wait. We're mortal beings, we are <i>going to die</i>. The ships might not even be coming -- and they aren't the only solution.
Your life <i>does</i> go exactly as you want it to, or, in the case of most people, <i>exactly how you let it</i>.
The influences of the environment, of the established society, those are an arbitrary, foreign installation. They have nothing to do with you and can be separated completely from you.


And as for the beauty of America -- it's there. Oh, it's most definitely there.
The beautiful side of America is one that people don't look at much these days: the Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Carl Sandberg, Richard Brautigan side; not the suit-and-tie, overcrowded slum, Enron, military-industrial complex, Patriot Act side.

If you want to see something beautiful, you first have to physically turn and look at it.

[stilltrucking]

When I think I have someone all figured out.

"Human behavior is over-determined."

Uncle Siggie reminds me. Problem with Fudd is his disciples. I think he was a pretty good cultural anthropologist. Reminds me of buddhabitch comment to me about Osho.

Don't through the baby out with the bath water.

Normon O Brown's book, Life Against Death, a very interesting look at Doctors Freud and Swift.

What we want.

Yeah tell me about it.

I always wanted to sail across the Atlantic single handed.

so now I want a motorcycle

I don't want a pickle,

[izeveryboyin]

St, I'm assuming that some of that wasn't dripping in staccato, lol, but then again, I think it is. What all were you saying friend, I think I'm confused here. Mars, you've got a good quality for analysis my friend. I don't know. I could go into a whole 'nother tirade of the whys and why nots, but I'd rather smoke a cigarette and read Franz Kafka.

[stilltrucking]

bloody hell I don't know

sarcasm?

I think it was probably senility.

I am not sure what we are talking about. America is a fucked up place?

happy landings

[ZyzxzxzyZ]

Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Carl Sandberg, Richard Brautigan side; not the suit-and-tie, overcrowded slum, Enron, military-industrial complex, Patriot Act side.

Were a Thoreau to manifest himself in 2005 America, say in Vegas or El Lay, he would, after a brief survey of the Autopolis, hurry back into his garret in his Waldenic abode, or have a coronary and die. The pastoral liberty of Thoreau is now strictly for millionaires and celebrities: the Aspens and Lake Tahoes and Big Surs all bought up by former hipsters turned high financiers, wheeling up to their chateaus with their latest Teeny Marie riding shotgun with her knee pads on (see T. Southern for explanation). Perhaps Alaska is a counterexample: Walden-by-the-Tundra is a possibilty. We could use Thoreaus and Brautigans to be sure, but they would probably not be writing much but rather fighting neo-con frat boys on one side and sapphic stalinists on the other to get a substitute job in a local school district--or perhaps earning their living playing online poker.

Europe does have the eurorail and architecture and history, yet those naive yankees who think the Old Country is all about charm and splendor and tradition will, after a week or two of high priced hotels and food and railpasses, realize its pretty much America but with cathedrals and altstadts and whorehouses (inexpensive at least). True, there are few biblethumpng rednecks or moronic gangstas, but there is the whiff of battlefields and cemeteries and villonesque doom.

[Marksman45]

One doesn't need a Walden Pond to live deliberately.
Trout Fishing in America is about something much more important than trout fishing.

There are modern Thoreaus and Brautigans and other such American Wizards out there. They don't have a high profile, but then, wizardry is frowned upon these days