The Gales of November Came Early

Last month I traveled with my girlfriend to Chicago. While she worked at her office in Ravenswood I took the liberty of meandering my way downtown and checking into our hotel. I was tired and needed a nap, but the Windy City was stirring and I just had to immerse myself in it. After a lengthy walk and a salty snack, I needed a toke and casually strolled back toward the hotel.

During my pursuit for a discrete location to "partake" I came across this perfectly nestled courtyard. It was a beautiful hardscape with a massive trellis built out of timbers. The stone planters had hard angles and a checkerboard symmetry to their placement. Their flamboyant green and pink foliage had a majestic vibe among all of the concrete in the city. The shadows from the trellis seemed to be perfectly painted on the solid ground. I looked around and counted..1..2..3..4..5 bums sleeping in the late summer sun.
Not really sure of what my immediate future plans were, I opted to join these bottom-feeders. With my bag as my pillow, I slept for a bit and dreamed of nothing. When I awoke, I looked around and realized that my new acquaintances had not dreamed in years. They stalk the night diving in dumpsters and living off of the scraps of others. It's a lifestyle so grueling they shamelessly sleep it off surrounded by the loudness of traffic, construction and sirens.
Who were these guys? Had their whole lives been on the streets? I thought maybe one of them was a washed-up stock broker who (at one point) had everything he could have imagined. Then after some sort of tragedy he realized all of the things he had were truly nothing. That's when self-actualization set in and he slipped through the cracks. Regardless, all of these guys were fast asleep and I certainly wasn't going to interrupt their much needed rest before another night of urban foraging just to get their story. I slipped my arms through the straps on my backpack and carried on with my adventure.

I don't know why, but as I reflect on this today it came to me that these guys made a gallant abomination of the status-quo. Who am I to refer to these guys as "bottom-feeders"?? At that very moment in their lives that was their destiny. Just as mine was to lay among them then, realize that today and write about it now. Perhaps one of those guys in the courtyard had achieved an incredible level of enlightenment that I may never reach in a thousand lifetimes. They had not given up, these men weren't dead. They were genuine survivors and now I find myself admiring them.
The day we're born we start to die and that's the truth. We live in this society that is obsessed with prolonging our mortality (if we can afford it) and then wonder why we can't find happiness. Abraham Lincoln said, "In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.". There is no fucking point in living longer just to be miserable longer. We actually have the audacity to find a way to be offended by anything and people band together in this sad prideful hatred of the human essence.

It's amazing what you can find under the tracks. - Lincoln Square - Chicago, IL

I love street art because it defies the bullshit to which we're regularly subjected. We are all too shamefully influenced by the diabolical "mad men" of the world with their toxic slogans and fictitious imagery. Everywhere we look there's a creative reference to someone being more productive than ourselves. We try to ignore it all (or at least pretend), but to our avail it catches up with us from time to time. Hence me writing all of this.
Brass-Knuckle Love Butter. RAWdio Podcast. Producers United. Interestingly Human. These are the four projects to which I creatively contribute and channel my soul. In fact, Producers United is the only website that's really all put together with regularly updated content. It also happens to be the only project for which I am NOT the administrator. I know that intention is meaningless without action. I'm not doubting my ability to achieve my heart's desires, I'm just calling myself out right now. Holding back is starting to make me feel sickly and gross. It's like the world's cruelest form of suicide and I think most of us are suffering from it in one form or another.
Thanks to my friends in the courtyard, I realized we all have an unfathomable durability as humans. Though death is always out there lurking in so many forms, we can still live through so many unimaginable circumstances. We are all destined for something and it doesn't matter what the rest of the world thinks of it. Maybe mine is leading a renaissance of new age creators with old souls. Better yet, maybe it's helping people listen to their hearts. Who knows?? It could be creating a jankie knock-off version of Mr. Potato Head called Dr. Pineapple Face or perhaps it will just be impoverished squalor. Hell it could be all of the above, but that's neither here nor there.
Luck, circumstance and timing come and go like the wind. Sometimes it's at our backs helping push us along; other times it's right in our face pushing against us; and occasionally it's just stagnant, nowhere to be found. We have to remind ourselves to put into life what makes us feel alive. See, each day we are living our destiny. It transcends through our experiences, our actions and even our intentions. Destiny isn't something we choose, chase or avoid. It's constantly molding throughout our lifetime. It's a part of us...always.


Scotty J ~