…by leaving my home to go to college. It was my second freshman year, having left the University of Cincinnati a year earlier in a maelstrom quarter life crisis which ended with me breaking ties with my fraternity brothers, dropping out of school and undergoing a spiritual conversion on the level of tectonic plate shifts in the earth.

My God, ten years ago I left with a fire in my mind that was going to burn the earth to cinder. Ten years ago today, I stood holding my guitar case in front of Kohl Hall in Bowling Green State University after having told my parents goodbye. My hair was down to my shoulders and I didn’t bathe much. I had a Dugout full of marijuana in my jean shorts pocket which I wasted no time digging into and lighting up in full view of everyone. I was fearless and reckless and stoned, a dangerous combination for a suburanite white boy with a heavy intelligence and a dangerously ambitious lust for power and fame.

I would spend that entire Freshman year stoned on pot with periodic bouts of sobriety that felt uncomfortable and awkward.

If you would have asked me ten years ago where I’d be ten years from then–I probably would have told you I’d be looking out the window of my compound on the Moon, surveying my army of spiritual storm troopers who had conquered earth and finally escaped its surly bonds of gravity to bring the glowing presence of humanity into the outer reaches of our solar system–the progenitor of a terraforming race of humanity who, after solving all the earth’s problems, turned his attention to the final frontier.

Let’s blame that delusion of grandeur on too much pot mixed with too much Star Trek and Krishnamurti, shall we?

But seriously, I was a kid. I would be twenty-one a week from moving into a Freshman dorm, one of the only two residents who could legally purchase and consume alcohol in a dormitory of 18 year olds. I should have been getting laid like flowers at the feet of a Hawaiian prom queen–and I could have but I had other shit on my mind. Things like fixing all the bullshit problems we had created for ourselves as a species.

Call it a Jesus complex. Call it short man’s megalomania. Call it a hefty ego backed up by an above average penis size. Call it what you want. There was a fire in my mind and heart which has been raging to this very day and which still may help save the world inside my soul (which is the only one that ultimately matters to each of us).

Many have been scorched in the flames of perdition which lie inside me and a few might have been healed but I am the one who came out on the winning side of this past decade.

I found the best woman for me in the world. She grounded me and brought me back to reality from the edge of madness. We have a life together, children together. I have a career. Who ever would have thought that I would be so good at business, at understanding the intricacies of how human beings can best exchange goods and services with each other so that both profit most in the long run?

And I’m stone sober nowadays. Too sober sometimes.

Ten years is a long time for us but merely a speck on the cosmic calendar. It takes Saturn thirty years to go around the Sun so it’s only a third of the way along its revolutionary path since the time I stood outside Kohl Hall only ten years ago.

But that’s the thing about revolutions–they always come back around. And madness, like sobriety, is a sparse and wicked mole who tunnels for years only to pop its head above the surface at the most inconvenient times.

And that dreamer who raged against machine and man alike ten years ago will likely reawaken again someday in my lifetime. And don’t be surprised if, as an old man, you ask me where I’ll be ten years from then and you get a quibbling and ridiculous answer about storm troopers on the moon.

NOTES: Okay, the photo. Upper left is what I looked like on the day I moved into Kohl Hall. Upper right is me at a costume party with the girl I was trying to bang at the time (I think her name was Julie and it didn’t work–she was just using me for my astronomy notes). Lower left is my fraternity picture, included for the mere embarrassment of hair style. Lower right is my first legally purchased alcoholic beverage, a Long Island Iced Tea. It was purchased and consumed at Easy Street Cafe on Main Street in Bowling Green, OH.

LINKS:

TAGS:
, , ,

[Post to Twitter] Tweet This

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

You Should Also Check Out This Post:

More Active Posts: