So as you may have noticed, I've been increasingly absent from my blog recently. I guess a lot of things in my life are changing, mostly for the better and I haven't really found a need to write, but something happened today, or has been happening the last couple days. It sort of started recently when I watched the movie "Gonzo", I'd seen some of it before, it documents the career of Hunter S. Thompson and his brand of "Gonzo" journalism, which included incorporating himself into the narrative and often mixing fantasy and reality. One of the things I love about Hunter S. Thompson is that he seemed to have no inner critic. He said exactly what he thought and did exactly what he wanted to do at all times. Unfortunately, that probably lead to his early demise from greatness, due to a penchant for drugs and alcohol, but while he was at his peak his ability to capture truth was really amazing. Most of my favorite authors are at their core, non-fiction writers that are capturing a movement or a moment in history. Kerouac did it with the beat movement in On The Road and The Dharma Bums, Wolfe did it with the hippies in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Hunter S. Thompson did it with the McGovern v Nixon election in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972 and Norman Mailer did it with the protest movement in The Armies of the Night. In a way, these were all hybrid author/journalists that sought to cover a story and in some cases embedded themselves into the narrative they created.
About 9 months ago, when the Occupy movement started, I was fresh out of the hospital and was on Twitter in the very early moments of the occupation of Zuccotti Park. Every part of my being was telling me to go to New York, not necessarily to join the movement, but at least to cover it and figure out what it was, in the way these great authors from the past did. It was unfortunate timing. I had just tried to drive to El Salvador and had spent a week in the hospital. I didn't have the money or the mental fortitude to tackle such a task, also I was afraid of #1: Freaking out my family. #2: Risking the support of my aunt and uncle as my uncle works at an investment bank and is highly conservative.
Well, something happened today. It excites me to even say that, being that most days nothing happens, or nothing that I would really consider notable or important. But today I felt something. I was in Barnes and Noble, waiting to get lunch with Kevin, when I saw an Adbusters magazine. Adbusters organized the Occupy Movement. I will save some of the description of that moment for later, but I saw that May 19th the Occupy movement is starting back up in Chicago.
I went and ate with Kevin and while we were walking back toward my car, I realized I had a therapy session that afternoon, at 2:15pm, it was 1:45pm. I told him he should go back to work and I would hand in Barnes and Noble and then head over to it, being that it was right up the street on Wilshire. I read the magazine a bit more and decided to purchase it. Then I went to my therapy appointment.
It was a scary subject for me to broach with my therapist. I was feeling a great deal of excitement because I wanted to go to Chicago and cover the Occupy movement. I wasn't sure how she would react to me saying that, but I just said it and when I did, she told me that it didn't sound like I was manic at all. It made me feel so good to know that I could follow my intuition and the voice inside my head and not be crazy, that I could finally turn off the inner critic that constantly says, "You shouldn't do that." or "You can't do that." and tust myself again.
So, I am going change up this blog a little bit and I am going to start writing it from the perspective of someone covering the Occupy movement, or more specifically (or I guess more generally) what freedom in America means and if it is being compromised, what the imprisonment of Bradley Manning and Julian Assange mean in regards to freedom and the American dream and a whole lot of other things. I will probably bring my personal life into it here and there as well. Sure, they are kind of big topics with a lot of baggage, but I'm going to try to tackle them the best I can.
I'm not sure where this journey is going to bring me, but whether I wanted it to or not, it found me today...
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