October 5, 2023: Confidence & Swagger
Oct. 16th, 2023 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eerietomI took the Yellow Line to the Delta Park/Vanport station and decided to walk to the Expo Center station, which goes through a nice little wooded area.
The road and the wooded area made me feel like I was in a 1960s French New Wave film. And for whatever reason that day, I felt like Michael Hutchence or Jim Morrison, full of confidence and a little swagger. And when you feel like that, you don’t walk, you mosey. And despite the swagger, I felt relaxed with nothing to prove to anyone, so I smiled beatifically at everyone I passed.
And then I wondered, where was this confident guy when I was in my 20s, or 30s, or 40s? Instead, at various times, I was a young man who was lonely, closeted, who didn’t think he was attractive in any way, who came across as shy, quiet, and uncertain. But I bet that confident person had been there all along, just waiting to express himself. Oh! What that young man might have become! And I wept a little for him and for lost opportunities.
But ya know what? I’m that person now. Even when I’m not stoned, I remember that feeling of confidence, and for that I’m grateful that I didn’t have to wait until I was in my 60s or 70s to realize this. “I am an astonishingly remarkable person,” I texted to myself.
Later that evening I listened to Eftsoons by Hal Russell and Mars William (1981). A real mind-blowing album, very experimental, with what sounded like random household objects used as percussion. There were moments when I could not tell the saxophone from a human voice, if there were any voices at all.
The road and the wooded area made me feel like I was in a 1960s French New Wave film. And for whatever reason that day, I felt like Michael Hutchence or Jim Morrison, full of confidence and a little swagger. And when you feel like that, you don’t walk, you mosey. And despite the swagger, I felt relaxed with nothing to prove to anyone, so I smiled beatifically at everyone I passed.
And then I wondered, where was this confident guy when I was in my 20s, or 30s, or 40s? Instead, at various times, I was a young man who was lonely, closeted, who didn’t think he was attractive in any way, who came across as shy, quiet, and uncertain. But I bet that confident person had been there all along, just waiting to express himself. Oh! What that young man might have become! And I wept a little for him and for lost opportunities.
But ya know what? I’m that person now. Even when I’m not stoned, I remember that feeling of confidence, and for that I’m grateful that I didn’t have to wait until I was in my 60s or 70s to realize this. “I am an astonishingly remarkable person,” I texted to myself.
Later that evening I listened to Eftsoons by Hal Russell and Mars William (1981). A real mind-blowing album, very experimental, with what sounded like random household objects used as percussion. There were moments when I could not tell the saxophone from a human voice, if there were any voices at all.
