Excerpt (Take It or Love It)

"It is not something I really want to do; most of me could give a damn what Big Red has to say about my father, but I am an actor, a performer, a slummer of life stories and tragic and funny events, a character actor. I want to have a different script to play out right now, but this is the only script handed to me, this ridiculous notion to sly away from friends in Arizona, from friends in Newport, from friends in Laguna and retreat alone to find out more about the prick who walked away from Garden Grove. I don’t want to be forgotten among my peers, among my colleagues, so I must fill this gap in with this script, this hunting. I am doing this for attention, but not for sympathy. Those who would know me would tell me that I am using the script metaphor as a cover to hide my true feelings, and I would tell them they were wrong, so wrong, and sad, sad for thinking that I gave a damn about any of this. These people who are too wrapped up in their day-to-day must live through my own vicarious adventures because they are too chained and too heavy to go out into their soul, out into their world, and have any vicarious adventures of their own; too restrained to explore the deep recesses of their minds so I do it for them! Oh you fucking need me! These people who need me, who applaud me, who laud on me their emotional woes fucking need me to be there and be vulnerable so that they can feel half normal and then I’m here for them and they have the nerve, the endless nerve, to tell me that it’s not like this. By denying my existence as I state it exists they in turn deny yet another part of themselves, and I am left, by default and by this repeated cycle, as being the only one who fully understands themselves! Everyone else is a cast and I hate this — accept what I tell you! Accept what I say as your truth my truth, but do it not for me — no! — do it for yourselves so that you may not become the weak and empty casts of the non-vicarious, the martyrs for your ideals rather then for your dreams — you need me to be weak so that you may feel strong! Otherwise, again, I am the only one who has it all together, and that perfection in sanity is a burden that is not too strong for me to handle, no, but you will miss out on your own perfection, and for that, I will pity you."

–"Destruction and Peace from the Ramparts at Damascus Gate" (formerly Avenue of the Giants), by William J. Nash-McAdam