"Yeah, Sorry"

At the ripe young age of 17 was my first drink.  And by first drink, I mean the first time being drunk as hell.  It was the end of my sheltered existence, never being exposed to what’s really out in the world.  On that day, my 17th birthday, I was merely curious about the sensation.  To an impressionable, dumb teenager, there’s a mystique about underage drinking that can never be recaptured.  

Sitting in the back of a friend’s car on a frosty, December night, I didn’t care how it happened.  It wasn’t even supposed to happen.  For the first second of the first sip of the awful, cheap vodka, I just thought “oh okay this wasn’t so bad.”  Then, the actual taste kicked in and turned to “oh, that’s fucking disgusting.”  But you have to keep going because after a certain amount of time and a certain amount of drinks, it doesn’t matter.

I learned that drunk me is bitter and angry, not afraid to say the things that I thought.  There’s a surprise, that’s how it works for everyone else too.

But I guess I scarred everyone for life or something and people didn’t look at me the same anymore.  So for the rest of high school, I lived with the stigma of being the one that expressed my dislike of certain qualities of people directly to them.  Today, that’s not so weird but in high school, doing this is unholy blasphemy that you will be eternally cast out for.

Even with all the negative results, I still never truly captured the magic of being completely wasted for the first time.

http://kathmandukough.blogspot.com/

Urban Aura

There's something authentic about the street. Not stereotypically authentic in the way that you hear people say “the streets are real, man.” What happens on the streets are unique. Something different happens every single day; no day, no hour, no minute on the streets is the same.

The streets have a unique aura. The people you see, the smells you smell, the sound you hear, they are all unique to that second in that moment of time, like Walter Benjamin's “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”

As I sit and observe for the third day in a row, I notice a similar man in a similar outfit cross the street. Maybe you can say that this is the same thing that happened yesterday or the day before. But if you pay attention to the little details, you'll notice that on this day, this man has an aura that unique to him.

Today his tie is green instead of the dark violet that it was yesterday.

Today he has to sit and wait until he is able to cross the street, having a close encounter with a car that just got a little too close.

Today, he just isn't the same. Nothing is the same. All we have to do is just look at things differently.

Look differently, think differently.

http://chasingsomewherenew.blogspot.com