Think About The Way XI (Denken Sie an den Weg)

By Doctor Gonzo 

7 March 2000

Minneapolis — It's the first week of March, but outside it feels like the first week of May. It is humid, the skies are threatening storms, and the temperature is near 70. Chalk it up to global warming or a pact with the devil; it doesn't matter. I am listening to Led Zeppelin, the great Presence album, and combined with the weather, it is summer for all I can tell. Nights like these, alone, usually don't bring much happiness. What they usually bring is much thinking about why I am here instead of enjoying the weather on Grand Cayman, or the equivalent decadent spot. At the very least, I wonder if I am moving at all.

Weather and music have always been a powerful combination, and I believe I have written about it before. In fact, I see that I have written about Presence before, to boot. No matter. If it still holds true today, that means it is significant. It is some thread that holds things together, a thread that I am not always able to keep in mind. But the tonight's rare permutation of atmosphere and mentality seems to allow me to think about this further.

Every year I look back and laugh about what I was doing before. At any given moment, I believe that I have pretty much figured out how things work in this world. At any given time, I have just conquered what I think to be the last problem, the single missing piece that has kept me from happiness forever. Of course, I also look back at the previous times that I thought I had finally found the key, in my ignorance, and laugh about how much I still had to learn. But now . . . ? It's a constantly moving frame, like the words yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Yesterday I was a silly goddamn fool. Today I have understood my past mistakes and I am ready to do only right. And tomorrow? Well, at some bars there is a sign that says "Free Beer Tomorrow." Unfortunately for the wino, tomorrow never comes.

Old habits die hard, however. Whenever I accidentally stumble upon the worn footsteps of my past, I follow them with such ease and certainty that it often frightens me. This I saw earlier today, when I was driving around to kill time and enjoy the weather. Driving down streets where I used to live or where I used to frequent, I automatically headed for those spots. So automatically, I had to stop myself and say, "What am I doing? Nobody lives there anymore. Nobody knows who I am, or wishes to see me." I saw this even stronger this past summer, when I visited my former place of education. I had been there for two weeks of my life, three years ago. But when I went back, it was as if I had never left. It was so damn spooky, I thought I was losing my mind.

How many times had I done that before? I can see a picture clear in my head as if I were doing it now: it is around eight o'clock in the evening. It was summer, and the light in the sky was rapidly fading, but there was still some blue left. My car Gonzo, before it was Gonzo, is sailing down some street, the street lights reflecting off the paint and turning it an indescribable color. I'm heading somewhere, to a friend's house, to a park, or nowhere in particular. I see people on the streets, cruising up and down the road on their crotch rockets and in their low riders, screaming and acting like the teenagers they are. I see tired families out for walks, or huddled in some minivan heading to Dairy Queen after the soccer game. I see trees blowing in the wind, an airport beacon, the river flowing by. I see the campus. I see myself on a motorcyle going to Dairy Queen and talking with my coworkers whom I had happened to run into. I see myself. I see others. I see connections.

But they are static. What do I tell those people, if I could go back, if I had the chance? Don't waste their fucking lives? Go crazy once in a while? For God's sake, why are you spending $400.000 on a house? Would it do any good for me to say something? The rare times when I did, the rare times when I was talking to some people under a sky full of fireworks or sitting on a rock in the Mississippi, did it do any good? Fate has put me in weird positions before, but how can I know that I am doing the right thing? I can't. It always seems like the right thing today, but when today becomes yesterday it will become extremely wrong. I have seen no signs that the path I have chosen is correct, other than my own mistaken beliefs at the time I choose.

Times like these, when I am fairly comfortable and happy with what I am doing, are the times when I have the most questions. When I am having serious problems due to my own idiocy, I usually have no questions about what I am doing, which makes sense; gotta keep my head above water and my ass outta jail. Moreover, rarely do I have a problem figuring out how I fucked up after the fact. I can be very certain about my mistakes and how I shouldn't repeat them, and so far that has worked rather well. Happiness, however, leads to questions. No longer are they of the type "Do I deserve this?" They are not even of the type "How the hell did this happen?" They are of a very strange type, as if I am asking myself if it is happiness that I am really seeking. That question probably doesn't make sense to most people, but I am troubled with it nonetheless.

My beliefs in the past few years have really focused on the value of those who have gone crazy and changed the world in a big way. People who didn't seek happiness, but sought some weird devil that was nobody's but their own. Some succeeded, but what exactly is success? Changing the world at the price of your own mind? Or is pulling back from the brink the real success? It didn't matter to me which one it was, I was determined to follow that path. However, I wasn't really ready to give up comfort and happiness. I thought I could chart a path between the two. With one foot firmly on the rail of insanity, and the other foot firmly on the rail of happiness, I would move forward wherever I may go.

At first, this worked pretty well. Rather, it didn't need to work at all, because art was long and happiness was very far off. I could follow the crazy path, for what it was worth, because I didn't have much in the other world. Not many people, not many connections. I was isolated and it worked well for me. The craziness was not very severe yet. Now, however, it seems that the rails are not going in the same direction; it seems that one is going left while the other goes right. I am torn between the two, wondering if it would be best to simply pull my feet off and run myself.

It is not so easy to continue to drive oneself mad. The hours are long, the pay sucks, and vacations tend to destroy whatever work you have accomplished. However, doing the opposite is absolutely out of the question. Whenever I think about giving in and selling my soul to our society's value system, I shudder. There is no way I could become so shallow, so thoughtless. But where is the right path? Without any allies, where am I to go?

I have spent many days and many more nights asking my friends these questions, in one way or another, and not getting any answers. Of course they don't know them, they aren't God. Instead of answers, I wish to find some insights. So far, I have found none. The people I thought who tilted towards giving in have done so, and the rest have simply become more confused and turned around. It has been how I have called it for the most part, which isn't helpful. Knowing who won't do what doesn't help. I need to look elsewhere.

Where do I look? Right now I have the image in my head of myself sitting outside at a restaurant on Cape Cod. I see myself looking around, looking in the little shops, watching people, writing, simply absorbing the atmosphere. I see that, but I don't know why I see that. Why is that image haunting me, what answers does it hold? If I think a bit more, I have another image in my head, the image of some random in the same place, on vacation, there to enjoy the sights and send postcards to friends. He and his family sure isn't worrying about any questions. They don't care about anything but taking pictures and spending money, and when they return it will be back to normal. They were not driven there by any search, but by the travel guide. Which picture is better? Which one should I try to emulate: the one that already drives me crazy, or the mindless vacation?

I see myself in my car at six in the morning, trying to clear off enough of the windshield so that I can see where I am driving. It's foggy as hell and I can hardly figure out where I am, a bonus when I am driving in a place I have never visited before. I am driving somebody to work because I happen to be up at the same time. Millions of other people are on the roads doing the exact same thing . . . but no! That's not it at all! There's so much more, the scene I painted is only a façade, the reality goes so much deeper but I cannot get into it for fear of hurting myself. What's the difference between myself and everybody else? Should there be a difference? I don't think that lives are such drama; instead, I wonder what people do with their days. From time to time, I glimpse something out of the ordinary in a person's life, but it is nothing more than a glimpse. I can see my personal troubles in that car, but I can't see them in any of the other cars I see.

Time is not running out, but it is passing relentlessly. Things don't change much, however. I see myself sitting on the mall of some foreign university, I see myself getting fresh ice cream on a summer night, I see myself rallying the troops to assault the pub. I do these things, and I continue to do them, because I enjoy them. But is that all that there is? Jesus Christ, shouldn't we be saving the world or something? Are we allowed to waste our time on such silly activities when we have higher goals to achieve?

It is nights like this that make me say no. I long to be enjoying the weather, playing tennis, sitting in a park, waiting for storms, serenading the street. Instead of driving myself mad in order to take control of the media, pushing myself to the limit to figure out what message I should be spreading, I simply want to be throwing a frisbee around. And I think back at all of those times I have missed, because I was too crazy to take advantage of them. Too involved in school, to busy, to goddamn stubborn to try and take advantage of beautiful freedom. I regret one thing one day, I turn around and regret the opposite the next day.

I have always been a volatile mix of opposites, but it seems that the mix is getting out of whack. It wasn't as important before for some reason. Now it is. I am happy and stuck. I am on patrol in Hué, singing Mickey Mouse tunes. I am bending the rules of this computer-generated world we call reality. I am racing through Indianapolis, trying not to get hit by lightning. I am with somebody I care about and enjoying it. I am running for President. I am all over the place, knowing full well that the only place that has the answers to my questions is the place I am in. But that doesn't stop me, it doesn't stop San Diego, it doesn't stop Beibei, it doesn't stop Santorini, Chicago, Boston, Washington, Austin, Kenosha, or Hanover.

I am trying to answer a question by finding another question. It is simply not working, and it never did. All the times in the past when I tried it stand out like glowing diamonds among a fog of those unimportant events. They are all connected, but the connections are starting to wear thin as everybody is getting bored with the same old game. It is hard to say exactly how that game has changed, but I can see it. It will change again next year as well. The end of the world didn't come as I perhaps thought it would, and things continue to go to hell in a handbasket unabated. The Rapture would have been a fitting, logical end to what has been happening in the world of late, but it didn't happen. Where this new slide will take us is anybody's guess.

Yesterday was foolish, but I still connect with it and feel I am missing something. Today I am happy and feel secure in how I live my life, but I wonder whether this has to do with fucking anything at all. Tomorrow is that weird time when I go to a job interview, get money, do all that shit, maybe go crazy, who knows. That will always be the ultimate goal, as it always has been. Always ambitious, reaching for new things. Maybe I'm content now, maybe I'm not, but I will be content sometime. Running around like some goddamn methedrine bat. The frame changes, the day advances, and I am back where I started.