Headphones

When he first saw the stars, he began to wonder. Like the stars, he then became abstract. He became abstract with knowledge. To fix the “Known” is to build a home, an origin. Ask the question; “what is?” And that question frames the possibility only of a certain predetermined definition. To suppose that “is” connects thoughts/ideas with the world of physical things is to build a belief system. The question pushes out any “other” possible meanings in the world of physical things—until, eventually and purposefully, all other definitions die. But soon enough, he will become disillusioned and full of despair for not being able to live up to the one, perfect definition that he created and is supposed to adhere to. Yet, through this despair, he will remember perspective. The question will be relative to his position in the world. He must come to forget all fixed definitions. But learning to forget won’t be enough. He must affirm relativity, he must renew. Renew and repeat, forever and always.

Before this is over. A rabbit, a snake, an elk, a dog, a drug dealer, an uncle, a maid, Heath Ledger, two out of three triplets, a lizard, a women, a middle school student and several mango trees will all die.

Sitting there, under a thin canopy that barely holds back the sun, sweating; with a tie on. I’m waiting for my turn at the podium. June 9, 2008. It’s middle school graduation day and, because I had won an award earlier in the school year for handling an incident that happened while I was on PE duty, I’ve been asked to say a few words to the class of 2008. I am introduced and I consider taking out a piece of paper I have scribbled down some comments on, but I don’t. The headmaster introduces me as the recipient of the Herbst Award for teaching excellence in 2007/2008. I say thank you and begin. “Hello. Welcome. I’m proud to see these young ambassadors to the future graduate today. This morning I asked the students to write down on a slip of paper how they will change after graduation. One student wrote down that she’ll most likely be less weird. This brought another student to comment, ’Why would you want to be less weird?’ The first student responded, ‘I don’t, that’s just it. Things get more complicated after graduation and so we must become less weird to deal with them. And that blows.’ Well, I encourage the graduates to turn around and look at the faces of your parents, grandparents and relatives sitting in the audience. Those people are the fucking weird ones.” Then I sit down. My name is Terry Ashkinos.

I drift down the sidewalk with my headphones on. Participation in life is not always necessary, but sensory observation is. Observation is a kind of life. It is how god created the world. See, god was bored. He or she just spat down into the abyss, and instead of feeling shame, he (or she) called it Good. The Good, as in Plato’s collection of knowledge of all the Forms. The creative force that created mankind and the cosmos was just a discarded gob of spit that some weird kid decided to play around with, when most of us would just smudge it out with our shoe.

People pass by me like oncoming traffic. I am the observer. An alien from another sliver of the gob who just landed on this sidewalk in the middle of the Mission District in San Francisco. It’s a lonely San Francisco day. A gray day, a tad bit cold. For me, this city always has a feeling of something just out of grasp. Some promise it never lived up to. Some goal is just out of reach. Too many shops and bars distract us from our love ones, our art, our purpose. Too much joy wrapped up in sorrow. Like a Miles Davis song. It’s a city with a deep longing, bordering on crushing melancholy. I’m ok with melancholy; it feels like the natural state of waking life. It’s a poem. Paul Westerberg once ran into Prince at a urinal and asked, “Hey man, what’s up?” Prince looked at him deadpan with his hand on his dick and said, “Life.”

Right now I’m looking at life through big pink fogged up and scratched, plastic sunglasses. Walking alone, rambling about. No destination. No path. No map. It’s a lifestyle. It’s the lifestyle of the side-walker, a reporter of the times. Some days this city can be all sunshine and short-shorts, but today it is dirty, smelly and cold. My mind is filled with silvery stars, honey kissed clouds of thought. My shoulders shrugging, my eyes barely open peering out of deep wells. I know there is something nagging, deep within me--within all of us. Something we need to tend to. But this is no reason to be dramatic; it’s a reason to soldier on. A wake up call. Keep moving forward in the time machine. I look into store windows and at my reflection in those same windows. My head is large and bulbous, with 4 days worth of hipster stubble and a coffee stain on my shirt. My hair is a mess of tossed grey, black and reddish paint. I lift up my sunglasses and there are dark blue pools reflecting back at me. So dark. Sometimes they are so dark blue that they go over the line and even black becomes jealous. From a distance my life must look like a tired balloon, losing hot air and moving this way and that. But if you get even further away, it’s a circle.

There is also more to see in my reflection. There are my headphones. These headphones frame my perception as well as my basketball-sized head. The headphones give me distance and distance has a way of making life understandable.