I Have Become A Silent Movie

Recently I was retracing footprints on a trail once trodden and I came across a quote by Thoreau. He said “How vain it is to sit down to write, when you have not stood up to live.” Ironically at the same time I came across another set of footprints of my past—some story written by some nascent indie girl, the kind that wear those spandex leotards under and over skirts, jeans, and dresses with tall striped and poka-dotted and other genres of outlandishly decorated socks. The chameleon kind of groupie girl that assumes which ever shade of black or ambiguous shape the trend is, so when you go to look at yourself in the mirror you are looking at hell, that kind of girl. Maybe even the kind of girl that when you ask about her life she points to the collaged Ran McNally atlas of tattoos on her body instead of something modest like a scrap book. The kind of girl that wear large wooden balls and various other trinkets on their ears and around their necks, you get the picture, well she was a writer. Really anyone can be one, but she thought she was, a “writer”. I suppose she took Emerson too seriously when he said something to the effect of (I always imagine this interpretation of his quote as him saying this to one of his die hard fans, possibly some little kid about 8 maybe who asked for advise and wants to be some great realist novelist when he grows up) “listen you little shit, you can't just write from you head, seriously, what the f#&$, what kind of idiot thought that up. Dude, go live life, get high, get crunk, get laid, then write about it” completely paraphrased of course, but that’s what he really meant, so she thought. I think he forgot to tell the kid and “you'll also die of either a STD, ODing, or a failing liver or any and all of a combination of those at age 22, but hey at least it was fun and you can write about it now, right?” these days that is. If I was that kid I would have punched him in the balls and called him a faggot and screamed “Not if I'm dead ass!” I would have felt better knowing that my recently dethroned childhood hero could share some of the pain I was experiencing, and that probably would have given him something to write about—so really it would be a win-win situation. I digress. I was sitting in a corner terribly humored to the point of almost inflicting myself with wounds to quiet the laughing, as she wrote a story. Who am I to say its not a masterpiece? Right? Well, really, it wasn’t. If you like reading some droning clichéd pulp fiction monologue about a girl and a guy and the guy lied and made the girl feel like shit and a guy cheated and a girl then some scandal and a mom and drink and a guy vomit and a girl and blah blah blah………so my point is made. She thinks that I think Emerson is a dick, and an asshole, and frankly the very idiot she is and he made me out to be—clearly he never read a fairy tale and she forgot she was living one. Wow really confusing, but really, I haven’t talked to her in 4 years, and counting, but its partially true—she would think that, and I partly agree. But I am more inclined to think of all the faithful acolytes as such endearing buffoons who actually read the literal extreme of what he said. Its like the sheer irony they are living is too comical. The professional writers and disillusioned amateurs, they cannot comprehend that they are being beat to death with their own literary device—and my laughing rampage continues. It wasn’t, “go kill your life kids”, it was “hey find the truth by living, and write about it cause that is real, that is beauty.” I'm sure Emerson like me would have stared at the pile of freshly conjured up vomit and said, “ What the hell am I doing? What is this? Who am I?” not “HELL YES! That was so REAL, I can't wait to wake up in two days and write about this after I marry the dorm lavatory and contract gonorrhea!” What I'm saying is that living isn't and doesn’t have to be a continual multi-sensory satisfying experience that involves countless entourages with Captain Morgan and the toothless Sorority chick that only looked decent after 10 shots of Smirnoff or Bacardi, it is more than that, way more. Experiencing the sunrise, a new day, a new beginning, new life stuff like that, that’s what he meant—and I'm sure the occasional outing shot of vodka could slip in, maybe. I mean part of the fun is figuring it out—living that is. One day when she wakes up I should still be around laughing, cloistered in my corner. Who cares if I didn’t live life to bottom of billions bottles and public toilet bowls, to the tops of brain cell destroying euphoria discovering that I do indeed have 10 prehensile fingers and toes, to unprotected fornication and STD infestation, at least I will have had a good laugh. I think that is something even Emerson would have appreciated. Anyway her name was _______, I found out too late like I always do.