Short Attention Span Theatre…

Short Attention Span Theatre…

I’ve for­got­ten more good ideas than I can ever put to paper. Short Atten­tion Span. More great ideas and more world chang­ing (or at least life chang­ing) con­cepts than any one indi­vid­ual ought to have in a sin­gle life­time. And here I sit. Won­der­ing if I will ever actu­al­ly have any idea (or con­tri­bu­tion to human­i­ty) that will be worth pulling my name out from all the rest of these human remains left drift­ing in the wind once I join them and I’m gone.

Do you think we ever real­ly do some­thing spe­cial? I’d like to think so. But then I nev­er got the chance to BE Mar­tin Luthor king, Jr., or even Mar­tin Luthor, or. for that mat­ter, even fuck­ing Paris Hilton (and I must con­fess to even hat­ing myself for even com­mit­ting the lat­ter to this mem­oir). But  I must make the point — a point — some point that must be made for all of us nobod­ies who want­ed to be some­body, some­how, and wished for it, want­ed it, want­ed to do some­thing — be some­body that had the pow­er to impact peo­ple, or only one — the one that need­ed to hear and under­stand that they real­ly could attain some­thing “oth­er” — some­thing “spe­cial” — some­thing more than just tak­ing in the air around us and let­ting it go. You know! I always want­ed to “be some­body” — “do some­thing” — change the world in some small way. Make it bet­ter. Make a name for some­thign — maybe me!

And here I sit, short atten­tion span, hop­ing there’s still time to do the “it” that I dream of — see the “thing” that I wish for — make the one BIG dif­fer­ence in this all too com­mon human race. Did I say “race”? Real­ly? Race? The only real race is to the grave. Back to dirt. That’s the only real future we’ve all got — ever had. And here I sit, short atten­tion span, hop­ing there may actu­al­ly be more to it than what I can see — feel — sense with these five sens­es we share in com­mon, and under­stand more than we under­stand even the func­tion­ing of the mind that con­ceives them and gives them names and giv­en them some fake form of real­i­ty to live in.

I think some of the very best years of my life were in col­lege. And the thing that’s real­ly fucked up about that is that I flet the need to cut myself off from all of it almost as soon as I left it. Short atten­tion span. Work­ing hard­er to lim­it expo­sure than it ever did to make friends and influ­ence the folks we might live with, and for, for the rest of our lives. Col­lege. It was, in truth, a fan­ta­sy. A world I was able to touch because I was both poor and a lit­tle smart. Thank the Unites States gov­ern­ment (and the guilt of rich peo­ple) for that! Their guilt and extra mon­ey meant poor kids could taste a life they could oth­er­wise only dream of. A world I wished for, and a world I could only watch from its most extreme edge. A world that wat hand­ed to me for a minute, but­not for the hour. A world I might have wished to have been ready for when it was pre­sent­ed to me, and not some ten years lat­er when it was too late to tru­ly live it and make it into some­thing that I could car­ry with me into the rest of my life.

You know, one of my great grand­moth­ers ran a board­ing house. I nev­er knew any­thing about it except that it was a fact, I guess, most­ly because it was way before my time, and, to some less­er degree, because I think the rest of the familty thought it might just have been some­thing a lit­tle dirty. Fun­ny, that. They were all too hap­py to con­fess their oth­er sins — and there was/is cer­tain­ly no short­age of sin­full­ness there — but in some fun­ny ways, they thought some choic­es were more like­ly to cause dis­dain and dis­com­fort than oth­ers. Trust me. I’vew become one of them! I can tell.

It isn’t that I wouldn’t like to be able to focus more time and more ener­gy on a sin­gle thing or two. I would! It’s just that it isn’t in me, and/or if it is, it’s unfor­tu­nate­ly con­nect­ed to some­thing  so painful, and so destruc­tive, and so vile, that it can­not see the light of day with­out pulling forth all those deep and dark and dread­ful pieces of my self along with it. And so we leave it. Drop it. Let it go, while we search for all man­ner of thinge to fill our lives, and the void.