Quixotian Dreams

More a cacophony of cogitative gobbledygook, I do apologise for my late post-of-the-month not being much of a post-of-the-month.

Well, my self-confidence is at an all-time low. Not really. I've been worse, like when someone pushed me (with my heavy backpack) into a rather muddy puddle of mud for my performance as Red Ballerina in The Nutcracker (geddit?). Not really... this was more humiliating than confidence-destroying, but it did convince me that self-deprecating comedy was not the way to go.

Anyway, my future has never balanced on thinner a thread than at this very point.


Something that has consistently crept into my head every night (or morning, 7am nowadays) is the thought of disappearing.

Buying me one of those one-way plane tickets to the Caribbean or somewhere, and throwing away my passport and other proof that my name is Franklin Berklutz III (not my real name, of course, but one that preserves your humble Narrator's galaxy-shattering identity). And finally getting a job as a fisherman or something, or maybe simply living it up in the sunshine as a stinky but stress-free hobo. Drinking rum (which I don't) and smoking cigars (which I don't, either).
Better yet, I can move to Cuba. Where I'll get to smoke Cubans (with their fresh, cannibalistic goodness) and call myself Ernesto Guevara de la Serna while riding a mule called Rocinante.

This seems ludicrous, indeed. But one thing I envy about Don Quixote and his hilarious insanity is that very insanity... the fact that, in the beginning at least (I'm only a few chapters into Cervante's masterpiece), reality, in all its confidence-destroying and humiliating saintliness, doesn't exist for him.
His reality is some fanciful dream, that grand adventure.

I wish, then, at this point, that my reality was like Quixote's. That I could be unaware of reality's saintliness, it's harshness...

Funnily enough, I actually share something in common with Don Quixote. I am on a sort of grand adventure... that adventure being the pursuit of a cinematic chef-d'oeuvre.
But where the arteries of similarity separate is that, unlike Quixote, I haven't yet spent enough nights awake reading confounding heroic tales to befuddle my mind. I'm not insane, yet.

I'm fully aware of who, where, and what I am. Franklin, Manchester, and a slave.

A slave, I say, because - unlike Don Quixote (in the beginning, at least, and as long as his friends and family don't interfere) - I really am one. And I don't mean the slave to writing or creating (I do a little), but a slave of reality. Logic...

It's illogical (or should I say irrational, as not to befuddle SK1's members?) for me to get up and leave. To never say goodbye to my family and one friend who doesn't know I exist, to never come back, to never call what has come to be my "home" and say, "I've arrived, everything's fine, I'm happier now than I've ever been before."
Not only that, but it is stupid and insensitive. (Insensitive to their feelings, of course, not mine.)

And, indeedily-doo, it's illogical to think I'll be "happier" living as a homeless man, going back on the promises I've made to myself and my past regarding alcohol and tobacco. Illogical for me to move to Cuba (although I would quite enjoy the free healthcare and education) and inhale the vapour of combusting Cuban humans.

Illogical, then. Add a large question mark here, please.

Before you (and by "you" I mean the one with the big nose) go agreeing that I shouldn't take that trip to Bermuda, you should consider what I really am... a slave!

A slave. A fucking slave. A stupendously gory, bloody slave.

In case you (with the big nose) haven't caught on, the reason I seem to want to "throw it all away" is because "it" is slavery.
Logic has shackled me to... I don't know, my uncontrollable need to be "nice" to the "people I care about" and deal with any circumstance I find myself in, rather than hightail it as soon as I find that my shoelace is untied (which can and will inevitably result in me eating sweet-but-a-little-course gravel or sand or grass or faeces of some sort).

But, more importantly, logic is preventing me from donning my armour. So far, I've been able to put those thoughts, the confidence-destroying reality and truth, aside... to go on with what someone told me a very long time ago when he stopped me to ask the time: "If you've got the talent, all you need is the perseverance."

I don't know why he said that, maybe he was already living my vagabondian dream or perhaps I did more than give him the time.
But I do believe I have talent, in some form or other... whether it's writing (or filmmaking) or the sheer amount of - in my opinion - better than average work I can produce. The few teachers I respected (there are, in fact, a number of educators I considered - and still do - to be of inferior intellect... a premium-priced example I enjoy uncorking for complacency's sake is when I had to inform one such lad that taking our ID pictures in front of the school's shiny dedication contraption would render the picture unusable, he did, of course, disregard my comment and took the photo anyway... then looked down at the result, and with a stony face shifted us to a plain wall)... all right... the few teachers I respected would probably agree with Dr Cliché's estimation that I'm "brilliant but lazy".

And while I (if I do) have talent, the man was certainly correct in saying perseverance is required. Because quite often, talent isn't enough...

In the words of a another writer: "The thing can be a masterpiece, but one look at the last page is all it takes to chuck it out."

Right now, that may seem irrelevant to the point, but hold on (and be strong), this labyrinth has an exit.

One half of the above quote is that even if my work is the greatest to ever grace your eyes, that fact is moot if you won't even read it.
So what I have to do is take this here masterpiece and aim it squarely between your eyes... perseverance.

Problem is, and this is where Logic re-enters our story, I've persevered, I've gotten this far. My magnum opus is, for the moment, complete. Now what?
I've just gotten off my Rocinante, I have only just recovered from a rather bad series of kicks to the face, am I supposed jump back on and start on yet another stupendously gory, bloody adventure?!

I'll tells ya... I am tired. My back pain seems to have gotten worse. I've gotten fatter but, paradoxically, lost weight. And you know what, I think - just think! - that perhaps - just perhaps! - I'm maybe - just maybe! - afraid of horses. Seriously (well... not really, but I hope you and your nose get the metaphor).

And if I've managed to keep Logic at bay regarding my galaxy-shatteringly defiant chef-d'oeuvre; what, oh, what shall I do, now that she's learnt of my plans?

If logic prevailed, I wouldn't have started this grand adventure. If logic prevailed, I would've stopped and gone home before the first year ended, and if not then, then the second or third or fourth at the very least. If logic prevails, the little guy up there I like to call "Brain" should be all tuckered out by now (which it is).

But if, so ever more importantly, if logic and quite frankly truth prevails, my over-long, Jesus-defecating, anti-nationalist, apparently (yes, apparently) communist, anti-Spiritualist, anti-religion, anti-FBI (apparently), anti-police (while at the same time being anti-criminal), and very, very personal story about a character I've somehow gone and fallen in love with (not sexually, mind you... in a paternal sort of way) should never leave this little room.

So.

Which is more logical? Living the vagabondian dream in Saint Lucia, or being the most unproven and unlikely (if logic prevails) genius in history trying to go on the most impossible of Quixotian adventures?