Straight Edge Life

Here it is again. That nearly overwhelming urge to go. To escape. To, in effect, vanish. But this time I can’t figure out whether it’s something wrong or something right that’s bringing it on. I’m most certainly sick of a lot of things. Sick of dealing with them, sick of watching them around me. Sick of being aware. But this is nothing new. My relationship with the world is always as Robert Frost called it, “a lover’s quarrel”. I love it and can’t stand it at the same time. But I do wonder pretty seriously about this need to escape. Maybe so long as I do it without screwing up my body by doing drugs, it’s ok. Maybe. But shit. I don’t know. It seems a strange line to draw. There are many kinds of death. I can sit and let the stress build up slowly over time, not ever taking my escapes, and eventually be killed by it. I can do drugs and speed up the process a bit. Or I can do something that seems to help provide a solution, climb, bike, hike, shoot photos, and risk dying very quickly in an accident. Yeah, I know shooting photos isn’t especially dangerous, but you know what I’m talking about. Either way, it’s all an escape. And who am I to judge what other people do with their lives and bodies as an escape.

Bottom line is that it feels like shit to judge other people. Being “straight edge” carries some responsibility. If you are going to go to the trouble of calling yourself straight-edge you should damn well know what it means and follow through with it. But even as a man who believes in keeping his body clean, I don’t feel it allows me to right to judge other’s or to forcibly apply my beliefs on other’s actions. I certainly wish to protect the right to exercise a clean straight edge life. Hell yes… And I know damn well, being straight edge, that this world might well genuinely fall apart without some general sort of rule of law and order… but then it seems to fall apart just as quickly with too much law and order. Which brings me to my final rambling question of the evening… Do you ever wonder if ignorant people are genuinely more happy than those of us who pay attention?

There is hardly time in the day to think about all of these things. Sometimes I just want to live my life. Sometimes I feel an overwhelming responsibility to try and make things better. But who is to say that my view of things would be better? Damn. I’ve worked myself into a corner again. As usual.