MOURNING SUN

by Tobe Damit

”I always felt like some kinda extra-terrestrial, like an elephant in a glasshouse, and all I was saying was fucked up and dumb and clumsy, I had my head up in the sky and there was just no hope for it to come back down on my shoulders.”

Woke up this morning and found myself alive for a few minutes.

I couldn’t sleep at all last night (no worries I’m used to it) so I went to the pharmacy where the zombies go and for no specific reason decided to walk instead of using my van.. This orange spring/autumn morning like Fat Old Sun seemed full of promises, bringing back memories of an era when I still had ALL of my life ahead of me. September, back to school, my backpack smelling like brand new leather, happy to see all those friends I hadn’t seen all summer but mostly thinking about (my ”school girlfriend”that I hadn’t seen or wrote to the entire summer), the same girlfriend I tried not to think of when I met a new girl on June 24th, trying not to think that she might be doing the same thing, not knowing if I was doing this because I was too afraid she would be or just because I thought it was how things are supposed to be when you’re young – and careless

Back to reality… half of my life is already physically used up and maybe (for sure?) even 75% of it when you take all the ”other” aging factors into account. 100% of it if I rely on how I feel each time I get up and realise I have to face another day and put up with the usual stuff people go through without noticing, without any effort……Suddenly, dreadfully realising I had to tie up the laces of my jungle army boots I’m so proud of -how superficial of me…. Right then, I almost felt like giving up… However, I managed to make it a little further to the door, put on my lucky rings and my mirrored sunglasses so the light wouldn’t hurt my eyes.”It seems my memory is suspended by frames of scarred moments that seem to invade the foundations of an everyday smile…Outside… Daylight..” –Alex Soria

So… I abruptly and amazingly found myself walking the pavement at 7:30am. Looking at all these people to whom this is just another ”Manic Monday”, (of course Bob Geldof would have been very appropriate to quote too but I think this is dreadful enough already without having to think of some little 14-year-old girl from Denver who shot some poor lads at school just cuz she doesn’t like Mondays, you all know the story right? Just check out Bob Geldof and Mondays), just another week of 8 to 4, and for some reason I felt empathy and yes, even envy of their pillowed marked faces and their dreamy hair, still dazed and confused by the psychedelic junk their subconscious brain fed them last night and slowly beginning to realise, just like me, that they managed to engage the process that will probably get them through another week of their life. It’s rather unusual to have these kinds of feelings on a Monday morning but it almost all vanished as I realised that most of them probably enjoy their jobs and some are maybe even eager to take up some challenges and find comfort in knowing they sold more cars, beds, pencils, publicity, porn or whatever it is they can sell. That’s precisely when i felt such a distance. All of my life I tried so hard to find my place but wherever I was, with whomever I was with, whatever it was I was doing, I realised it was just milk and cookie time, recess all the way, that I spent all of my life accompanied by the nerve wrecking feeling that I was in fact just filling in the blanks. I’ve been looking for so long to find a place or people or something that would give me the feeling I might be able to blend in but it just never happened.

I always felt like some kinda extra-terrestrial, like an elephant in a glasshouse, and all I was saying was fucked up and dumb and clumsy, I had my head up in the sky and there was just no hope for it to come back down on my shoulders. At this point I feel I really must thank all the dogs and cats I owned for giving me the feeling that I’m ok and that it’s all good, that I am loved just the way I am and some (few) real good friends I have had in the past and some (even less) that I am still friends with today for giving me that feeling.

As I was thinking all these uplifting thoughts while listening to ”Sempiternal” by Bring Me The Horizon, I realised I had reached my goal and was standing in front of the pharmacy and that I was 5 minutes early, which I hate cuz it really makes me feel even more like stranded but this Fat Old Sun was shining bright up in a cloudless sky right on street corner so I decided, instead of just looking for a shadowy spot where people wouldn’t notice me, to lay low like I usually do under these circumstances, to stand right on that sunny spot on the corner of the street and stare directly at the sun, and by God, it didn’t feel bad at all (thanks to the sunglasses).

On the way back I was already feeling much better and felt some kind of admiration for all those people I talked about earlier, still shaking dreams from their hair, realizing how each human has its own colors and way of thinking and how each and every one of us are unique and all that kinda shit and just wished that whoever can help me just to find my place in the world and to give me the chance to leave some kinda mark, even if it’s just for one person…for a little time, would make me a happy camper. So one could say the way back was a most definitely merrier, not cuz I had found something but more cuz at least I know myself a little better as if I found some pivotal truth and reminded me that, in my early teens I thought I already had it all figured about what my goal in life should be but that I just had forgotten about it; I so wanted to be ”Un Imbécile Heureux” or ”A Happy Idiot?”( Whatever. you got what I meant, right?) I’m not so sure about that anymore….Maybe I just want to be someone who left a mark just by asking the right questions, or overdoing something I believe in? At least feel that I have found a place and people where I can be myself and feel that I belong to the way I am and the way I think, at least for a while. I just wanna be myself, be myself, and Still Fly towards this Fat Old Sun of mine… I will never forget that day when I fell asleep on the lake, deserted, silent, with my dog sleeping in the boat with me, allowing myself to rest by thinking that everything was gonna be alright (something I heard listening to movies from the 60s – or even the early 70s). Definitely too late for that but it’s not too late to make it better….

God, I miss spending time with my daughter….. I miss you Fred…. If only you could jump that wall that you’ve built around you and let me in sometime, I promise I won’t use up too much space, I won’t talk too much, I’d just be there by your side, feeling for once that I am at the right place at the right time with the right person doing the right thing. I’m not that different from you Fred…I used to smoke acid as well, you know! I too had those heartaches, I too felt betrayed, I too felt like fighting with fire,,”putting out the fire with gasoline”. Anyway, I’m going to try to share my feelings on here a little now and then, see what happens. Fred, you are my precious, fabulous, adorable daughter and before you came into this world, now I realise it meant nothing to me, I was a non-being, I know sometimes maybe you feel this way too but maybe, somehow, we can work it out……

Tobe Damit,2nd of April. 2012

Top illustration by Yuko Shimizu