I was always like that. Maybe the injury radicalized me a bit, but still, I always had the wild spirit or as my father used to say, “You have a monkey in my head.” Since I can remember I was an annoying kid, whimsical, one who must answer, one who thinks he has all the answers and the one who knows how to ask the questions to prove you do not know nothing. Teachers didn’t tolerate me, the headmaster hated my guts, and the other students did not like me much, at least so it seems to me.
I was exposed to philosophy in my early teens and immediately I fell in love with it. Descartes was my favorite. His Cogito became a shining light in my life “I think therefore I am .” What I got from it was that a person can cast doubt on everything and namely that the very act of questioning is proof of human existence or presence. I would have taken the time to explain it but i’m too lazy right now and English esta muy complicado. In my head it works out fine, take a moment and maybe you will understand it too. Anyway, since I noticed this sentence, I started to cast doubt on everything I see, hear, think, feel, etc.. A Concept of life that is very challenging and very provocative to most people.
What most people fail to understand, and then get offended and hate me forever, is that I never claimed that I had the answers, I only questioned what they told me, and they thought I had questioned their, experience, wisdom, well-meaning, and so on, and they were so forth-willing to be offended to the depth of their souls and held a grudge against me to this day. Excellent. Because if they can not question the correctness of their statements, they are not present, they don’t exist. They live in a misconception about life and about themselves. And basically, they have no real ability to experience life to the fullest, not to say fulfill it, and I have no interest in the walking dead. Have I already mentioned how annoying I am.
At 15 or so, I received a CD from my mother, and I decided to become a rockstar. The CD was Beautiful Freak by The Eels and that CD is still going with me to this day. I left the computers, I bought a self-study book to play guitar and signed up for music school. To this day I can’t really play guitar that well but I can sing and put on a kick ass show. Over the years I also wrote some good songs, at least in the opinion of some people. I am not a rockstar yet, but I have time. Wait and see, this obnoxious kid will conquer the world one day.
Another factor for me being the dreamy child that I am, was a youth counselor I had back in my village. His name was Ophir and he used to hit us. Once he threw at me a 1.5L bottle of Coke. It hit my head and then continued through the window that was right behind me. No doubt those were interesting days. Ophir would take us into the woods and teach us to sneak-walk like Indians. He taught us how to make hunting tools from branches and rubbish we found in the forest. We would meet twice a week and play Dungeons and Dragons. And there, our imagination would fly to magical kingdoms Ophir built in his head. I was annoying even there. I played a fighter troubadour who was called Th’aladamis. With emphasis on the Th’.
In addition Cogito, Ophir and the CD, was the movie The Princess Bride. Wesley was, still and always will be my eternal hero. My example of how a man should behave. I am such a kid. I’m almost 30 and still I continue to dream like the boy that I was and still I try to experience life with the same power that only a child can experience. Wake up people and start to dream. Begin to live. Allow yourself to live in your imagination and make your imagination into reality. This might sound like pop psychology, and perhaps it is, but still it is better than to surrender to the ills of the reality created by people who did not dare to dream.
I volunteered to go to war because that’s what Wesley would do. The song that was playing in my head was Lucky Day in Hell by The Eels, I tried to think like an Indian when practiced walks on enemy territory, and I questioned everything I was told or that I saw in combat. Even after I was injured I did not submit to the dictates of the physical body and refused to accept the opinion of the doctors and of those who settle for just living. Haran Yaffe will not be beaten by any missile, I went back and argued, and apparently I was right. Like Wesley, I laid there only mostly dead, but this time I had completely different song playing in my head. Pearl Jam’s Alive. In fact, I’m still Alive