Sunday, August 16, 2009.
Reality.
Sixth St. is a oneway street. This is very easy to recognize as it is clearly marked at each intersection. While riding a bicycle, you are required to ride on the street as well as with the flow of traffic. Therefore, if you are going to ride your bicycle on sixth street you can only head West. This is what happens when you try to not only ride your bicycle on the sidewalk, but in the wrong direction while on one of the busiest streets in Austin.
I was looking at my movie collection and wondered to myself what exactly I was thinking when I purchased all of the films that I own. I am not upset with the movies I do own, but why do I own so many. I began to go through some of these films with the hope of identifying one thing from each film that I just had to own it for. “Coachella” remind me of my past. “Field of Dreams” makes me cry every time I see it. “Requiem for a Dream” is a film that every pretentious film student must own. This list can go on and on. I stopped when I found “Any Given Sunday.” The reason I stopped is not because the film is horrible or magnificent; I think that it is right in the middle of mediocre. But, there is one scene in the film that still sits in my top five of scenes ever. It is the “Inches Speech.”
The day started with breakfast tacos. A bike ride to the HEB then off to downtown. My girlfriend and I rode down Sixth St. to Congress and around the Capital. We went to a self portrait painted by Frida at the UT campus and stopped at the Texas Chili Parlor for lunch. We then went to Little Woodrow’s for a few drinks and Opal Divine’s for Pub trivia. After the trivia we mounted our bikes and began the ride home.
That speech gets me every time. Six inches. Six inches in front of your face is the only thing you are guaranteed in this life. The six inches between your ears will dictate how you spend that life you are so fortunate to have.
The bike ride started down Seventh, which was wise as it was a smaller side street and allowed for the avoidance of traffic. We rode a few blocks and hit a stoplight, rather than stop, I decided to make a right and keep my momentum to head down Sixth. In retrospect, I should have probably just waited at the light and continued law abiding cycling.
There are many times when I get lost in my thoughts. I go for long walks to try and figure out the future. I meditate to try and understand answers to everything that has happened. I try and look at other writers work to try and understand if what I am going through is normal. I watch films and always place myself in the lead, as each individual person is the lead in their own adventure. I like to think that I am everything that is good in these characters I watch and non of the bad. I try and exist as best as I can. I try to live.
We head through the intersection on Congress and Sixth and split. I am on the sidewalk to the left, my girlfriend to the right. I am in a Yellow Ten speed bike I purchased years ago for ten dollars. My girlfriend is on a blue beach cruiser. The sidewalks are fairly open as the evening is still early enough as people have not flooded into downtown. I am not sober.
Life is this constant fight to stay ahead. Not ahead of anything in particular, just ahead of yourself. I have to keep telling myself that I can only worry about the six inches in front of my face and everything else will be ok. Everything will be ok. Everything is meant to happen for a reason and these reasons are never apparent in the early stages of the action. Time needs to separate you from the event in order to understand why it had happened.
I lost track of my girlfriend as she snuck ahead of me on the other side walk. I did notice enough of that sidewalk to see it was a bit less crowded than mine. I was pedaling and avoiding pedestrians like Frogger. I was getting yelled at for being on the wrong side and didn’t care. I had only a few blocks until the Interstate, than it was one mile on a bike route to the house. We were almost home free.
The thing about this life that I lead is that it is a delicate balance. It is a balance to try and not worry too much about the future as you assess what has happened in the past. History repeats itself only if you allow it to. Sure, the same situations will be incarnated in different challenges for you and it is up to the skills you learned before to survive the newest threat.
The good thing about going down Sixth St the wrong was is that it is downhill. I was able to just maneuver and pick up speed without the task of pedaling. I was enjoying this part of the ride. I had just passed a long line in front of the Alamo Drafthouse Movie Theater and was looking back at one of the patrons yelling in my direction for my general “I don’t give a damn” attitude for cycling the wrong way on a sidewalk. I was laughing about the person when I looked forward. Only two more blocks to the Interstate than home to the East side. When my dilated eyes refocused forward there was a wall of people. The men had Capri pants and cameras around their neck. Europeans.
I think of myself as Al Pacino from the film. I think of myself as this desperate person hoping for redemption. I have no reason to do this as my life does not look like his at all. But, as I learned in film school, you must identify with the character and be in their skin to understand their motifs. With this understood, I feel the pain he is going through even though I have never experienced it. This is because of the six inches between your ears. Your mind can be your worst enemy and cause you to perceive any reality and experience however you want to experience it.
I don’t really remember it because I was so embarrassed and just hopped on and rode off like nothing happened. When I looked down, my hand was mangled. My leg was bruising and sore. Blood was flowing from the top of my hand to the handlebars of the Schwinn. I had officially wrecked on my bike to avoid Europeans on Sixth St. It didn’t really hurt at all. I think it was the adreniline and alcohol that had me bounce of the wall like it was a bouncy house and it didn’t have any effect on my body. The reality that my mind created with the booze allowed me to bounce off and pretend nothing happened. If I stub my toe sober, I will make a scene enough to get some attention and feel the pain it caused. Hitting a wall, it is like blank tape, I have the scars to prove it, but it never really hurt.
I believe in the notion of perspective reality. The understanding that you create your own experiences depending on your emotions. If you are sad and a dog barks, you freak out and yell at the dog for doing what it is hard wired to do. If you are happy and get a flat tire, you laugh it off, call AAA and it becomes a funny story at work. See, your perspective reality causes you to remember experiences differently depending on your mood. It is bliss when everything in your life is magical and you are happy as you wake up floating around on a cloud no one else can see. When you are depressed, everything that is good in the world turns to black and there is no way out.
I made it home that night and tossed my bike on the lawn. As, it was obviously, my bikes fault for running into a wall while it rode itself with me on top. Sometimes, we as humans, make absolutely no sense at all. I bandaged my hand and just laughed. I laughed at how stupid I was, I laughed at how drunk I was, I laughed about how I threw my bike on the lawn and I laughed about how ridiculous I must have looked hitting that wall. To this day, I wish it was taped so I can watch and I scampered off after impact like nothing happened. I can really be a funny person sometimes without trying to be.
These themes parallel when I realized why I was in the state that I was. Like anything, it didn’t make sense immediately, but after a few days it has developed like a photo in a dark room. I was trying to create another reality than the one I was living. I did this by trying to fit as many things into one day as humanly possible and drinking too much as it was happening. I was trying to create any sense of distraction that I could find to make it all go away. I wasn’t depressed, more repressed. I was getting cabin fever from my house and felt no way out. I felt like I needed to go make life happen rather than be patient and let it take it’s course. I was Al Pacino when he was his own worst enemy in the film. I was creating a monster inside of my head that was killing everything around me because I didn’t want to identify with the reality I was living. Life is out there, you can not make it happen, you have to just keep your mind clear enough to enjoy it when it presents itself.
Moral: “Any Given Sunday” was purchased for that one scene. Do not, I repeat, do not ride your bicycle down Sixth St on the sidewalk while going the wrong way. Life is however your mind creates it, do not get caught waiting for a ship that is never going to get t here.
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