The Flight of the Rocketman

And I'll drive till I feel better and I'll play my radio/ my radio real loud/ and I'll keep driving/ Till I drive outta these clouds. -- Outta These Clouds by Alisha's Attic (written by Karen & Shellie Poole and Terry Martin)

Yeah, you can survive without another hero -- Lay Low by Alisha's Attic (written by Karen & Shellie Poole and Terry Martin)

New Year's is coming up and while a lot of people are looking to the future and wondering what it will bring and others look back at the year that is about to end; I find myself looking at the spot that I am in, the exact moment of my realisation that this year is about to end. It takes an incredible amount of concentration and focus to really look at just the moment that you are inhabiting. It is as if man's natural capacity to understand time is only directed to what has happened and what will. It is as if we were never meant to just inhabit one moment so completely that we forget what the future holds and what our history has all mounted to. I guess, at one point, when we think of everything we've done, seen, heard, experienced we will just end up feeling so sad. The "Is this it?" feeling is enough to drive anybody insane. Or thinking about the future and how it is just so unclear, how foggy the direction forward appears to be just sends too many shivers down the spine, we'd think nothing about the future but electricity; for others, static.

I all of a sudden remember something Jewel wrote on the sleeve of the cover of her first album Pieces of You. She said, "What we call human nature is in actuality human habit." If I were to rephrase that, it would come off something like this: What we call human nature is actually, nothing more than, human habit. I think the "nothing more" is so important because it puts down this feeling that we can use it as an excuse. I hate it when people just use it as an excuse. Our very nature as human beings is that we can reason above animals and not have to go down to our baser instincts. We rise above the level of animals. Yet we continue to act like animals, just to a more sophisticated degree. We have better excuses and reasons for it. And this saddens me.

Fuck it! It depresses me. We look around and we don't see heroes anymore. They don't exist. That's why we love movies and books and songs so much. It shows us the world as it could've been. Not how it really is.

I just watched The Insider recently. I was crying. The sacrifices Jeffrey Wyngarde (I don't know if I spelled Russell Crowe's character's name correctly) made to make the world a better place. And the character of Al Pacino, the sacrifices his character made to keep his integrity and his honour and his belief in his duty to make what should be public information accessible to the public.

I was crying at the nature of good and evil among human beings. Sometimes, I just see animalism everywhere I look. I hear it in the stories we tell each other during drinks and night outs. And we laugh because it is funny but also because we know it's real. Sometimes we get shocked. Sometimes we tell our own story. We are still animals. Except we just articulate better and the ability to reason has given us the excuses we need to continue living our lives without guilt.

Maybe to inhabit one moment so completely and fully is something we need to do as a race, as a species. Then we can just look at ourselves, a compilation of past events and actions, and a potential for something greater and truly ask ourselves what it is we want this world to become.

God! How depressing... To think of these things several days before the New Year.

No... I have not been well. Maybe physically, I've been getting better. But emotionally, I think I might be seeing the point of no return. It has always been further than the horizon, for me. But I think I'm getting desperate, I'm breaking down. It is so sad. I'm so sad.

Happy New Year.

But then the dove of hope began its downward slope
And I believed for a moment that my chances
Were approaching to be grabbed
But as it came down near, so did a weary tear
-I thought it was a bird, but it was just a paper bag
-- Paper Bag by Fiona Apple