Optimistic Pessimism Awesomness

Warning, this post is full of dorky badassness and it's meant to be read that way.  Ego having fun with itself, but maintaining the balls to be a spectacle for others amusement. A Kung Fu Panda tribute.  Cause he's pretty bad ass, and we should hang out.  In fact, we hang out every day at the Foxhaven. 

Honestly I spend too much time on the pessimistic spectrum, but then it's not as if you weren't warned. Especially if you've made it thus far in the saga that has been my life. The saga of bad luck? Is luck a real thing? Or is it just a fantasy that is brought on as a side effect of optimistic laziness? Hell if I know; I do know that I am indeed an optimistic pessimist. A good friend convinced me that I have a way with creating connections with other humans with words. She is correct, but I am unable, at least nearly, to do the same thing in person using sound. Musical sound maybe. I pretend like I know what a guitar is from time to time, at my most rapturously rhapsodic. Music is beautiful, and easy, if you know how to surf with sound. That is the only requirement. Anybody, no matter how intellectual, can learn to surf...in some way.

Today, I swung on a swing with my son, and we watched a crescent moon in the blue Carolina sky swing back and forth with us. There was a rainbow overhead as well. It was beautiful in the Wordsworth Zen sort of way. My sons middle name is Zen, and I'm almost convinced that he is a reincarnation of something Japanese. Maybe it's because I trained in Nihon Goshin Aikido for four years, and subsequently blossomed spiritually in Buddhism and not Christianity, the religion I was born to. My name is a Christian name. Aaron, Moses's brother. But it's also chalk full of scotch/irish. McCarty is my fathers last name and McCant's is my mothers maiden. This is my real name. Aaron McCarty. Names have always been important to me, just as age has been. I'm not afraid to be alive, and this is who I am.

I found myself in the bowels of an Applebees today, cause this is America, if'n you don't liike it, git out. I could explain why I ended up in an Applbees, but I have to much stinky gas to comprehend it. Those farts sure do feel good, and with all kinds of sauces to. What kind of sauce you want for dippin' boy. Hell, a pitcher of good ole Bud wasn't but 5 dollars. Shiiit, fill me up bubba. This is the insanity that American's spend their hard earned Jihads on. What the fuck? Seriously...I'm reminded of Bill Hicks in these times of rhapsodic reminiscences. I'm reminded of him telling marketers to kill themselves right now, no this is not a joke, if you are a marketer...kill yourself because you are destroying everything that is sacred and holy. There is a lot of wisdom to be found in the concept of letting food be your medicine and medicine be your food. Applebees is on the poison end of this medicine I'm sure. I can't prove it cause that shit taste so good, but I have a hunch. I much prefer to get my out food all Mexicano. I trust Mexican food for some reason. Maybe because it's at least got a hint of an honest tradition. Corn chips with multiple dips composed of things that are actually containing recognizable whole foods. Honest cheese and dead animals. And the poor workin' man beer of the Mexican is waayyyy better than his Northern conquerors. A 32 oz. glass of Dos Equis Amber draft puts Bud to shame. Especially when you are used to drinking crafted beer made to poetic perfection in a brewery 10 miles from your house.

R.J. Rockers is the true Beacon of Spartanburg SC, where I've spent an overwhelming majority of my life. That's as close to Whoville's actual address as I'm ever going to hint at as well. I'm proud to call Spartanburg my home, and I am indeed a true Spartanite. In fact, when I came home from bombing Afghanistan, smoking green on a USN air craft Carrier during "Operation Enduring Freedom", and potentially making little tall, hairy, tan babies of half Eastern and half Druid descent all over Asia (talk about a fuckin' real life Kung Fu Panda), my high school was a level clay field. Why, might you ask, would a high school that was built in the 60's be a clay field? One word...Walmart. Yes, they bought my god damn high school and fuckin' turned it into a Walmart Supercenter the size of a typical city. Ever seen Walle? Spartanite pride right there. This goes a long way towards explaining why I hate the man...and Walmart.  

I feel like this is all very boring. That's how I feel when I'm trying to be optimistic...boring. Yet, I do have a tale that I can tell. It's a true first person account of Aikido awesomeness. Then I'll conclude this rather challenging feat of optimism I'm writing just now. My chickens were recently moved in next to Trailer Park America in the Whoville sector of Palookaville, and I wanted to warn those who might try to mess with my chickens. I wanted them to understand that it would be a dangerous proposition to be dishonest in the general vicinity of my chickens asses, or eggs, or...asses. They needed to know that allowing their youngins to say...throw rocks at them...could possibly result in somebodies broken bones, or feelings for that matter. So I got real stoned on a plant (not the stones the kids were throwing at my chickens) and decided to dust off my 32 year old Aikido joints for a spectacle. It wasn't the first ninja roll I ever did as a 30 year old either. I had done a few ninja rolls for my wife and sons amusement in the past month.

So there I am in my chicken run staring at the end of a circular fence that composes the perimeter of it. It's made of that 4' tall green plastic fencing that you can buy at Box Store America. My intention is to run twenty feet to it at full bore and do a ninja roll over it in the direction of the local drug dealers house. First I had to prepare for the jump (I should also mention that I pole vaulted in High School). I had to know exactly how many strides to take before jumping into a horizontal position whilst sailing over said fence. My landing pad was grass at about six inches tall on a slight hill towards the chain link fence that's about five feet past the run. I walked to the opposite end of the circular run and took some gallivanting leaps in slow motion towards the other end of the run to mark my strides. I did this again, and again, speeding up each time to get a good average memory in my leg muscles. I looked like a complete ratard to anybody watching, including my wife who was busting her guts open laughing at my stupid ass (although secretly very worried that her son was gettin' ready to be fatherless due to me breakin' my fool neck). By this time some of the trailer park was peakin at me all stealth like through their used sheet curtains and brown cigarette stained windows. It was time to commit to my chickens welfare.

I took off like a boomerang gone mad, counted my barreling strides, and from a distance you could see the grass that was getting flung as my feet broke the sound barrier. I hit the final mark and blasted off into the atmosphere into horizontal flight. With the chain link fence approaching, I tucked my head and turned myself into a circle. Aikido is all circles. I lightly made contact with the ground and circled to my feet while allowing all of the force to exit my body through my feet and into the earth. I ended in the Aikido stance ready to start parring the laughter that was about to be blasted my way. There was no laughter, just the sound of deafness at my pure awesomeness. Who wants some was what I said to the drug dealin' trailer park as sound once again returned from the gravity my flying ninja roll had created. Ever since that day, they have been too scared to anger me with their ridiculousness...and my chickens have been safe. I'm a Zombie Whispering Green Wizard Permaculture Ninja, and if you want to get down, you'll never see me coming...or leaving.

So that's it, my highly inflated superhero sized autobiographical description. My most optimistic true tale. Po is correct, in Kung Fu Panda, it doesn't matter who you were. Who you want to be, and therefore become, on the other hand, does. It's all in the dancing interplay between your fate and your destiny. One is foretold and the other is created by you and your actions. How you are in the world is what matters when the chips are down and the bill is due. How you conduct yourself and your intentions towards life are what you are scored on karmically. Whatever you want to call it, it's there. Our times are interesting and dark. There is a looming cloud out in the distance of our technological, industrial Wasteland. The Wasteland does end, but not all brilliant and apocalyptic in the biblical sense. It ends one person at a time, and it has always done so.