The mainstream soul mate thing didn’t really work for me. It’s too fluffy. Too Hallmark. There’s this imaginary soul that we have that is all beautiful and loving and caring and you find your “the one” and the souls just line up in perfect harmony and buy each other a coke and ride off into the sunset together.
I want to put a resounding screech halt on that fucking record.
And, I think I did a minute ago as I pondered what a soul mate is for fucked up people like me. My soul is damaged man. A soul mate isn’t going to cut it. I need Ass Soul Mates…plural…people who are just as fucked up as me, but are trying like hell to make sense of it all, while milking every possible ounce of fun out of the teets of life.
Ass Soul Mates like me are the kind of people that the mainstreamers look at and can’t make sense of. They don’t like it when we won’t get in the stream with them. But, we’d just as soon piss in it than look at it. So, to them, we’re Ass Holes.
And I take that as a compliment, because I don’t want to go through the motions in this life. I don’t want to do it with half my ass (hole). I want to experience the shit out of life. And write about it and talk about it with other Ass Soul Mates. And take in the art of other people who think creatively.
Everywhere I turn these days creative people are speaking to my very Ass Soul. In my old life, my viewpoint was so narrow that I couldn’t appreciate all the great Ass Souls who are out there. In 5th grade I was convinced music was dead because there was a song about everything.
I’m glad I’ve gotten the chance to live a little life since then. And I’m thankful for having been through some shit so that I could get to this place where I will hear a song and shake my head and say, “Holy shit man…me too.”
Somehow I stumbled on this song tonight that Ben Gibbard and Jay Farrar wrote for a Jack Kerouac documentary, “One Fast Move or I’m Gone.” The whole song perfectly describes my Ass Soul world. “This river of road, it don’t flow like it used to. But, it’s more of a home than anywhere that I’ve ridden it to.”
I got out of the mainstream, which really just led me in circles. I felt like I was really going somewhere when I was floating on with the rest of the world, because everyone around me was so convinced we were on the right path. But, at some point something snapped. I couldn’t fucking take it. I jumped ship.
And because I did that, I got to experience that beautiful next step the song talks about...drinking alone. At first, it was almost overwhelmingly depressing to be out of the comfortable, known, already explored world.
The song describes it like this, “From the bottle to the tumbler is the only journey left I know.” Oh shit was I good at looking for the answers in the bottom of that glass. That’s a journey I’m still exploring. Nope…the answer wasn’t in that one. Pour me another. If I drink enough Jack and Cokes I’m sure to find the one with the crackerjack prize…the willy wonka ticket…the meaning of life has to be in there somewhere, right?
Maybe not. But, I’ve come to appreciate experiencing life and looking for answers on my own instead of taking someone else’s word for it. Again, the song says it for me, “The interstates they don’t connect where you are to what you’ve left.”
The path I left was a rut. It didn’t let me be the real me. There wasn’t the freedom to be your own Ass Soul. But, where I am now...this road I’m currently on…I couldn’t get a good view of it when I was in my rut. It looked scary and lonely. And it started out that way, but just because it was something new.
Once you get on this road, you start to acquire a taste for real life and there’s no going back. (It seems like there should be a once you go back (door) you never go back Ass Hole Mate joke to insert here) It’s almost comical to think that I was once a Christian/Accountant/Husband. To know I don’t have to go back to that life and there are shit tons of other Ass Souls like me...I’m home.
I’ve never really felt home until recently. For me, it’s not a place or a group of people, but this constant I’m exactly where I belong feeling. I’m doing what I love and spending time with people that I love. And I keep shaking my head when I realize that my old life was just a bad dream. I’ve awaken to the life I’ve always dreamed of.
After I listened to the Gibbard/Farrar song I found an NPR interview they did. It struck a chord with me right away when Farrar said, “I’ve always just been drawn to Kerouac’s message which was to go out and experience life and create based on that. Also his method…to get a lot of your first thoughts on paper and not worry about the form or structure so much.”
That is exactly what I’m doing. I’m living life. I’m in relationships and I’m fucking up and I’m trying to make changes and wanting to be a better person. I’m experiencing it. Not reading about it in a book. I’m fucking living it. And as I live it I write. I get my first thoughts out every morning, which has paved the way for me to write what I have on the blog, which in turn is chiseling further down so that I can eventually get to what my Ass Soul really wants to say.
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