2020 Vision

it was my first day at the hostel. so many people packed in to a relatively sizable residence in a small town full of ski bums, gossip, decent blow & alcoholics. i let them know i had talked to the landlord & agreed to rent out a room & signed all of the necessary housing agreements & paperwork. one of the guys said he’d give me a little tour: big living room, TVs, pretty big rooms with scenic views of the mountains & lake. we went downstairs & i got to chatting in an amicable way with one of the guys in the corner spot. the window let a considerably nice amount of light shine in & it looked right outside to the basketball court serving as a parking spot also & place where some of the guys skated. this ended up being my room as one of their roommates jus dipped out so the top bunk was open. some pretty cute girls who still looked like they weren’t quite out of college were walking around & i made acquaintances with a few of them in passing.

i was stoked on this new living arrangement, especially considering the fact that a month prior i had no money for rent & would’ve been forced to be homeless after spending a few months in a mental hospital somewhere in Northern California. But once i got out of the mental hospital, i stayed over next door at some crisis residential center where you could stay a month, go on the phone whenever, eat free nicely cooked meals, attend groups & smoke & vape whenever outside. it was nice & i met a guy who had found a loophole to getting unemployment money. i told him i hadn’t had a job in years, but he confidently assured me i could still get it. so we filled some things out online & since i made music that was on Spotify, we claimed i made 2,000 a month off streaming revenue. i ended up getting about $900 a month off my unemployment check that would last a few decently care free months & would help me bide my time & do little things & shop at the local snowboard outlets & coffee shops & restaurants.

i had originally gone to the mental hospital since i had jus got back from a stint of visiting family in the Midwest. i was getting pretty manic & staying up until 2 going to bars drinking every night & skating around town with reckless abandon. i was chain smoking cigarettes & not giving a fuck. it wasn’t until after my 51-50 that i realized how out of touch i was. every morning, they would give me a benzodiazepine — my favorite pharmaceutical — while i was in there so i was quite content. but eventually i met a girl on the inside as i always do. i wouldn’t say i was in love, but we kissed a few times & almost fucked if not for staff interrupting us. they’d give me Bluetooth headphones that played music off their computer & i could request any artist. and there was a basketball court outside with a portable stereo system that played any radio station. we always listened to Hip Hop. so this was far from my least favorite place i’d ever had to be at. even though that’s all mental hospitals really were to me, thinking about girls & listening to an album on repeat & finding a way to get prescribed Xanax or Ativan or Klonopin… the same things i do anyways outside of the hospital. the girl i liked & kissed & almost fucked somehow got into some disagreement or drama with me & we stopped talking & i ended up starting to get down bad & bang my head into the wall pretty hard until i knocked myself out. some kind of way to cope with trauma. but eventually they gave me an inter-muscular shot that would hold me over each month & i started getting a lot better (more balanced moods, less voices in my head, less irritability & anxiety & i was in better shape) so they let me go next door to the crisis residential & within a month i made it to the hostel in early Fall.

i unpacked most of my things in the corner spot. within a week, i got my record player, speakers & subwoofer in there. in our room, there was an old PlayStation or Xbox — i forget the exact console — and weed was always strewn about the coffee table with rolling papers, grinders, coffee mugs, packs of cigarettes, rolling trays, books nobody would ever read & anything else you could ever possibly think of. the coffee table was sacred. in fact, coffee tables everywhere all around the whole world are sacred. everybody’s coffee table tells a different story & conjures a unique feeling. come to think of it, i spent more time around our coffee table, sipping coffee, watching TV, listening to music & all that than i spent in the whole entire rest of the house combined. that is, before i got a job & ski pass for the season & started getting out of the house more to visit my girlfriend at the time that i ended up meeting my first day in the hostel. we’d fight a lot, but the sex made up for it & she liked most of the same music as me & sometimes brought home some kind of drugs after a long shift as a waitress at the end of the night & we’d sit up in bed getting high. it was a fun, carefree time & people would be drinking —heavily drinking & partying — with music on full blast all night. it was nice on the days i wanted, or even needed, to let off some steam, but our room was directly under the speakers in the upstairs living room so i’d be tossing & turning all night. Eventually i’d just give up, go upstairs, take a swig from the handle, do a bump or two & rage on.

we’d take trips to the lake beach & play music & drink the days away. i’d be lounging, smoking cigarettes, talking to whoever & the days went like that in pure bliss, each night a repeat of the last with a spliff to wake you up in the morning & a steaming cup of coffee to cure the hangover with day trips to the snowy mountains & pretty lake. it felt like we were the lost boys & girls in Neverland & we’d never get old, no matter how much drugs we did or how much we drank & smoke. within a year or two, everyone went their separate ways, but for a moment in time, it was a ski bum’s wet dream, paradise & Heaven. it’s funny how what you’re looking for could always be right around the corner. One moment, you’re going through something tough & the next you’re living the dream. Maybe it’s all perspective & manifestation. Life is an evenly balanced karmic distribution of highs & lows. we really never know what’s around the corner & jus got to keep going along with it all & staying optimistic & looking forward to at least something on the horizons, reflecting & learning from our past & accepting everything at hand.

We’re always closer to the light than we think.