Boxing, Meryl Streep, and Indie Folk

Say something. Say anything. No, not the John Cusack movie. Find something that you're passionate about, and write about it. Often I am assigned in school to write about something that means a lot to me, and I always come quickly to the conclusion that I don't care about anything important. At least, not intellectually important. I can never find a topic about which I can construct 4 page argument, defending its claims or legitimacy or whatever else the teacher wants me to do in order to cultivate a brain.

These assignments have held me captive for a while. I remember in sophomore English, we were required to give a speech on something we cared about, and I spoke about caring about something. Creative, I know. I intended to have The Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris" playing lightly in the background (this song didn't have anything to do with my topic except that it sounded passionate), and I even had my speech timed perfectly to end at the crescendo, leaving my listeners simultaneously spell-bound yet motivated to act. Sadly, we couldn't get the iPod player to work.

I usually end up writing about movies, which is fine because I am a big fan of the art form. But I end up asking myself "why am I not passionate about anything the way that other people are?" I know I'm not alone in this wondering--in the film "Adaptation," Merryl Streep's character Susan Orlean expresses the same type of angst when she admits she has "one unembarrassed passion. I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately."

People want to want something terribly and completely. I assume that the majority of people I'm surrounded by have nothing that occupies the free space in their mind, mainly because we are all the people Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet didn't want to become but eventually did in "Revolutionary Road." We go to work, we eat dinner with our families, we read the newspaper and shop for groceries and watch tv; and none of it makes us happy. None of that gives us purpose. And, strangely, we perpetually continue these unfulfilling actions because they create a rapid lifestyle void of self-reflection. We keep living this way because if we stop, we'll realize that this type of life is doing nothing but making us sadder and emptier.

My favorite character in film history is Hilary Swank's Maggie Fitzgerald in "Million Dollar Baby." You see, Maggie wants to box. That's all she wants. She doesn't want the money or the fame or anything else that would entice someone to lace up gloves; somewhere deep within Maggie, an unidentifiable yet unmistakable force makes boxing the only thing in life that makes her happy. And even though she is much too old to start professional training, Maggie continues to pursue the one part of life that she ever felt good doing. While everything in her life is shit, boxing makes it worth living. And if she's too old for it, then she's got nothing.

How do you find that? I mean, seriously. A person gets verbally abused by her obese mother, who throws the gift of a new house back in her daughter's face, humiliated by other boxers, repeatedly rejected by a trainer, and she still holds on to a dream? How can you do that? There is nothing in my life that would make me put up with all that shit in order to keep it around. I can't understand it.

In order to find that ultimate satisfaction, I'll list what I like doing/ being around:
1. Movies.
2. People.
3. Slacklining.
4. Geocaching.
5. Long hair (mine).
6. Vibrams.
7. The Strokes and indie folk.

I can't think of anything else that equals the love I have for these things. I understand that I have come from a sheltered, religious background, thus prohibiting access to many things that could possibly make the list. But seriously, this is all I can come up with? And some of these shouldn't be here-I just put them on the list to make it longer so I wouldn't feel like a loser.

Maybe the one passion I find that drives me is to discover what I'm passionate about. I hope to God that's not my life's purpose, because that would mean that I'm not passionate about anything except thinking I'm passionate about something and trying to find it even though it doesn't exist. Yikes.
I think I have the capacity to love something as much as Maggie Fitzgerald loved boxing. I just haven't found it yet. So I guess I'll have to fake it until I find it, because teachers won't be too impressed if I answer their questions with "I have no idea."

Inception

What if I were living in a dream and the people I see are just projections from my subconscious? If I interacted with these projections, they had personalities and characteristics, they were people. What would it say about me if I identified a certain type of people as hostile or angry towards me, just upon first glace? What would it say about me if I accepted a person, if only subconsciously, by the type of car he/she drove? What must I be if I stereotyped people and places and things?

Letting go of the memory of a person is difficult when you think you drove that person away.

Finding an object that only you know its weight (or merit), its texture (or feeling), is the only way to remind one of what is reality, and what is not. This seems like a memory. A memory tells us what is real, whether it is a person changing or a place unfamiliar.

I am the center of my life/dream. I don't remember the beginning-no, I only remember it mes-en-scene.

If I had the choice of knowing if pure happiness was real or not, would I choose to know? Would it last if I knew? If I didn't? Would truth be separate from love? From contentment? I don't think so.

Keeping the idea of someone captive in the recesses of the mind is not beneficial to either party.

Happiness

A moment when you realize you have friends
that you have youth
athleticism
family
happiness
can not be explained.
I just tried to articulate what it makes me feel
and it went away.
It snuck up on me like a theif, and I tried to take a picture with it.

Oh well. Next time I'll just sit and smile.