patchouliland

after a 4-day reprieve back in ol' b'more, we're back on the bus to mork & mindy-ville. we headed back east for a wedding, of which we enjoyed last night. spent some good quality time with the fam and caught up with a battery of old friends via vegan eats, coffee, & a wee bit of booze.

it perplexes me, the mental playground of revisiting shadows of your past.

stepping in the footsteps of your yesterday, reflecting on your own evolutionary path. in several respects, it is fascinating to feel the brunt of this confounding time-space derailment.

it had been well over a calendar year since returning to md. after a few hours, the synapses began to fire in the correct order, yet i stood beside myself in awe of how we are so easily swayed by life experiences to dictate our reality.

in this trip, i heard echoes of remembrances--so-and-so were robbed yesterday, such-and-such burnt down, this-and-that closed down...yet, these understandings of a reality, not necessarily my own in the current, are what have my mind skipping on the poorly articulated confounding plerplexion leading this post. it is concerning, yet fascinating how we adapt to different situations and accept them as reality--which can be drastic extremes of good and bad. i stumble on a memory of our old neighborhood in b'more occasionally--we were out for a stroll two blocks from our house one friday night. across the street was a cop talking to a guy slumped on a bus stop bench clutching his bleeding left shoulder. turns out he had been stabbed and they were getting a report as the minutes ticked closer to an ambulance arriving. we were curious, yet shrugged the man's injuries off and kept walking to our destination.

sure, what can you really do, you may ask. same city, two of our friends were inside their house watching a dvd. a series of gun shots punctuates their evening from outside of their home, followed by desperate cries for help. after a peek out the window, they go back to watching the movie.

how is it possible we can do this? it is survival, in many ways. evolution and acceptance, with a sprig of apathy and dash of nonchalant desensitization. in the same way I observed and associated spent junkies in my back yard as simply factors of my mundanity, i now see countless strips of bicycle lanes, soy lattes, and wafts of patchouli mildly interrupting my focused thoughts.

wisdom removed

at 34 years of age, i've gone through what i should have endured over a decade ago--having my wisdom teeth extracted. the nitrous oxide deluge withdrew my concerns for the gnarly prying that the dentist was engaged in. i chose pink floyd as my music of choice for the endeavor. recovery was quick, as i didn't require the hard pharmaceuticals past day 1 and relied on ibuprophen for the week following. kids, remove your teeth in your teens. no sense in waiting til later on.