Mad Friends

Man. . . the world gets weirder by the moment.  I don't know what anyone is talking about any more.  My friend Q has lost his mind in a diatribe on. . . ?  I love this boy, but he blames me for every trouble in his life.  No, that is not fair.  Only the ones that have to do with the direction in which I should have steered him.  What burns me is that he is right, of course.  But the trouble is that we are not like "other people."  Neither are you if you come here often.  We are different, no?  We feel things more deeply.  Ideas enter our DNA.  We get transformed by art and literature and romance.  For "others," it is ideology that enters their systems.  My friend C.C. has been speaking to me about an article he read on "Prudery."  He says I will like it.  I have not read it yet, but will after I write this.  It is better to post things before you vet them, I believe.

He also sent me a YouTube clip supposing to warn me about the terrible self-destructive path I am following just now.  It is true.  I know.  But as the song goes,

Sometimes falling feels like flying, 
For a little while.


Oh. . . it comes from him with a paraphrasing (I think) of a message in "Willy Wonka."

"Do you know what happened to the boy who got everything he wanted?


No, what?


He lived happily ever after."  

Here is the alternate ending.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEgGE81joB8

Sure, I know.  So what?

I've been very lucky in my life in many ways.  But never in games of chance.  And I'm not certain about love.  I seem to have a stamped on expiration date.  It is about seven years after inception.  Lucky?  I've been in love with incredible people.  It is only out of love that is problematic.  Which brings us back to Q's polemic discharge.

Q is a genuis.  O.K.  I make fun.  But he is truly smarter than I (though not so well trained) which I am smart enough to know.  But I am much more practiced.  I have a half-brother I never see who is in Einstein's I.Q. range.  No kidding.  They put him on television in the '5o's with other little genius kids to talk about how to get men to the moon.  He was the star.  And as it turns out, he was right.  But we played chess once for my father.  The genius hipster and the hippy.  And I beat him fairly quickly.  He hyperventilated and almost passed out.  But I had been in bed for months after a severe surgery and had spent my time reading chess books and knew many, many openings up to the 15th and 16th moves.  I'd also studied end games.  Trust me, I am not that man.  I never played another game of chess in my life.  But beating the genius in front of our father was worth that.  It was something

Practice.  And study.  It will beat raw talent sometimes.  That is what education does.  Like old money.  It eliminates random behavior.  Of which I am full. And so is Q.  And so is C.C.

Really, everyone I like is a maniac in some way.  They are not like "other people."  They have bigger appetites, stranger tastes.  They have a greater intelligence.  There are many people I cannot name here for various reasons.  But as Kerouac said, "they are mad to live."  Kerouac, right?

Oh.  And we know how that turns out.  Here it is again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEgGE81joB8