So shouldn’t we just stand and speak out and say, “I want to dance!” and then dance dance dance and stop when the time is right? Or maybe, conversely, shouldn’t we also sit, read, sleep, lie, worry, cheat, steal, forgive, repent, seclude, run, fear, love what it is to be tortured and worried and having everything be problematic? For when we are nervous, anxious, distressed, filled with heartache, filled with anguish, angry, tearing away at our own sense of being, are we not the definitive works of humanity? Oh, how merciful God is, to let us be humans.

Although, to tell you the truth, and to step away from all that, I’d probably be a hell of a lot happier being a well-fed puppy.

True happiness is really a subjective little thing a lot of us strive for when we’re alive. Well actually, fuck, I don’t want to say that, it seems so FORCED to say something like that, and I actually did force it, so let me try to be a little more free-flowing natural creekside riverish bouncy dance-like graceful but real all the same.

I had this conversation with my mom a few months ago which went something like this:

Me: “Mom, the happiest of us are right there in the middle. When you’re poor, it seems like the only thing that’ll make you happy is having more money. When you’re rich, the only thing that’ll make you happy is having more money. When you’re sorta in the middle there, things seem to be all right. Of course, it doesn’t work that way, but I like to think it does.”

Mom: “Yeah.”

Having too much worry seems to kill us inside. I’ve often preached about how having a worry-free life would be so blissful and heavenly. I don’t think I totally mean that anymore. Of course I believe it like hell, but I think the perfect life would be that of balance. Not structured, but rather, one where you do what you love doing without having to constantly worry about being okay financially. There are so many starving artists out there, but not that many who seem to be happy how they stand. There are exceptions, and really, it would be love to be an exception. Mrs. Vergis said she thought maybe I would be the one to find the balance in life, and I said, well yeah, I’d love to be the guy that does that, but I think by the time I figure it out, I’ll tell so many people how wonderful it is, that it won’t be so centered on me. I don’t want it to be centered on me, really. The most beautiful thing I could do would be to plant myself in a tree, have everyone breathe my oxygen, and having all of those little children plant themselves in trees of their own and have the rainbow stretch until our tiny eyes can’t see that gold at the end of it anymore.

What I want more than anything now is to have a million goals, to never achieve all of them, but to always be trying. Tony was right when he said that life was about finding something you love and keeping with it forever. I think life is about finding everything lovely (well, everything that really is lovely, not those truly ugly things which I won’t mention here) and trying to eat all the peaches off of every tree, but never really being able to, but hey, at least you ate as many as you could. Peaches are tasty this time of year, which is probably why most people are so happy.

The reason I identify with Catcher in the Rye so much is because it reminds me so much of my childhood. It was the first book I really read and got into, and it seems so fitting. I remember when we were all little kids and we had to dress up as what we wanted to be when we grew up, and everyone dressed up as something which offered some sort of freedom – astronauts, firefighters, policemen, actors actresses, doctors, teachers, athletes, caterpillars, flowers, jump ropes, candy canes, ice creams. There were hardly any lawyers or dollar bills or stock brokers. Sure, it was exciting to get a goddamn quarter every now and then, but that was a different story. It was always nicer to spend that quarter on some chiclets from a toys r us quarter-vending machine. Candy sure was tasty back then, and it still is now. I think candy tastes the best when you’re already happy.

I’m going to drive up to Carmel like my buddy Ansel Adams this summer and take photos until I drop dead. Before that, I’ll get a job at a bookstore or something so I’ll have enough money for the trip. Before that, I’ll learn how to play something beautiful on the piano. And before that, I’ll sleep in my warm bed and try to count sheep like I used to. And maybe before that, I’ll kneel beside my television with my baby blanket, pour myself a cup of hot chocolate, and beam brightly while watching the Princess Bride, which always made me feel warm inside when I was little.

And speaking of which, I think that a lot of us, the older generation, are finding ourselves wanting to reach out and help the little ones more and more. Our generation, well the youthful of us, we’re really fucking it up. No one seems happy in the end, which is frightful. Of course, there are the exceptions, and the exceptions seem to be coming back. Allen Ginsberg probably would put Uncle Sam hats on all of us and laugh, because he probably knows how political it’ll probably become, and then he’ll make all of us take some sort of LSD, which will make most of us run until we feel like we’re flying when that flight is soft against our cheeks and we can be kites for a while. I’d love to fly like that.

My lovely Dasha did something recently that made me incredibly happy. She wrote me this postcard from the Grand Canyon and in the middle of it was a box in which she wrote “Hi postman!” I know she just meant to be cute, but I know deeper that she really meant it. She really meant to say hi to that old postman and make him feel happy that day, because that’s the type of person she is. What a doll. God, it really made me feel good to think about that.

Interjecting myself, cigarettes have ruined a lot of writers trying to find the balance in life. The problem with cigarettes is that they make us feel TOO indifferent to everything. Sure, there needs to be that harmony in life, but never indifference. Balance is only perfect when it’s leaning one way or the other. I couldn’t stand Jane Austen until the end of Pride and Prejudice, when everything seemed to be balanced. Lizzy seemed the happiest out of everyone, having a little more money than she needed, but still, she had a life so nice.

I really don’t know what I was trying to say, but I think I want to try. Trying is the most wonderful thing people can do. People really need to try more often. It makes people seem so much prettier, don’t you think?

-george