Monday August 3rd, 2009

The exercise:

I'm back from a lovely weekend in the mountains. I'll get pictures up soon, but for now this is the last writing I did this weekend.

The starter: you have to go crazy to stay sane.

Mine:

It's about a six hour drive from Vancouver to Osoyoos, which is the trip I made on Friday afternoon. I made the return trip today, for a total of twelve hours in the car over four days.

That's a long time to spend with a car, a road, my fellow drivers, and my mind.

I can't remember all of the silly shit I did to keep myself alert and entertained, but there was definitely some sub-par karaoke, a little pretend tour guide for my invisible passengers, and a touch of heavily accented (mostly Scottish) yelling at other drivers.

That last item was entirely good-natured - when I mean it there are no accents involved.

I remember thinking as I was coming into Osoyoos Friday night, "God it would be embarrassing if any of that was caught on tape. They'd toss me in the loony bin without a second thought."

Really, though? Sometimes you just need to go a little crazy if you want to stay sane.

3 comments:

Greg said...

Were you alone in the car then? I thought Kat was going with you, but I've gone back and checked your original post about it and you didn't actually say that, so now I wonder.
It still sounds like you had fun though, which isn't bad going for a long drive. I bet the pretend tour guide was good!

You have to go crazy to stay sane

Jagged edges slide away,
Strange colours blind my eyes,
A teddy bear has come to play,
He's brought a small surprise.

There's light and dark
And other things,
I've split the quark
and knotted strings
and all this quantum happening
...just makes me want to sing.

Whirring objects steal my mind
Pearls suffuse my brain
There's something that I've learned from here,
You must go crazy to stay sane

Marc said...

Kat is in Osoyoos for the summer, so I'm trying to get there as much as I can. I rented a car and made the trip on my own this weekend, hopefully I'll be able to drag some friends with me next time.

Haha, I really like your second stanza. Very impressive stuff in such a short amount of time :)

g2 (la pianista irlandesa) said...

I'm inclined to think Doc Esco would disagree... But I don't know if that'd be accurate, seeing as I haven't heard from him in a while in regards to our quirky friend Connor (and especially his evaluation)....

However, there's less impatience on this end than usual. I'm not sure how I should feel about that; either I've been too busy to be impatient, or that strange and bizarre "character building" of yours is working. I am not
yet thanking you for that.
- - - - -
I'm convinced that sanity, like reality, isn't constant, and because it's a relative "measurement" of sorts, there can't be two definitions of "sanity" that are exactly the same.

However, because I don't like unfulfiled expectations, I've never set a personal definition of sanity. I can mutter to myself, hold full conversations in my mind (some of which escape into the verbal realm), wake up hours before most in my age group would even think about stirring, be overcome with an inexplicable and near-irresistable urge to silly walk a-la-Monty-Python, but that's considered regular behavior in my preception of reality. And frankly, it keeps me going. "I like life, it's something to do," and the only way to keep it fresh, keep it going, keep it bearable, is to spice it up a bit with what the rest of the world calls "insanity".
- - - - -
Not bad for something whipped up during a quick practice-break, I'd say.