i_am_not_rowbes Rowbes This is an option given to me when I log on to my email. Just in case it's not me obviously, but it always catches my attention. I AM NOT ROWBES. What if I wasn't? Would someone else have to be Rowbes in my place? Or would Rowbes just not exist? Of course, technically I AM NOT ROWBES, as it is not my given name. However, I have been Rowbes so long that most people including my boss and my dad, don't call me anything else. Maybe I don't know who I am, as if anyone really does. Who is Rowbes? What is Rowbes? Why is Rowbes? If I were someone else, would I get more done? Would I be happier? Or less happy? Who are any of us? We all have so much in common, but we don't understand each other, because we don't understand ourselves. I feel like this has all been said before. I long more than anything for an original thought. Something no one else has thought of. Something of my own. But there is very little originality left in the world, and I wouldn't know how to find it anyways. I thought I had an original thought once. It just hit me like a bolt of lightning. It dawned on me like the first light on a new world. Something so profound, and yet so brilliantly simple. I felt my original thought was going to shake the earth to its core and change the way people viewed their very existence... However, I have poor short-term memory, and I can never find a pen, so... ...oh well. Couldn't have been very important then. I'm approaching that age where people expect you to have accomplished something for all your suffering. When people think you ought to have a career, so you can find a home and start a family. I don't really know what to say about that. I'm just a guy who can't figure out who he is. Being creative and unmotivated is like being handcuffed to a bench in Disneyland. My stupid little dreams may be destined to go unanswered because of my own chemically self-damning nervous system. Nervous system. What a great name for that. It works on two levels. My mind aches. My system is too nervous, and I don't know who I am. Time to sleep now. Maybe I'll dream some more doomed dreams... is me? 030722 ... p2 worry not for i am not rowbes and not being rowbes isn't all it's cracked up to be 030722 ... Rowbes She wants to know why. Oh, Christ... She wants to know why I don't seem to care about anything anybody says. She wants to know why I lie about being hungry or comfortable or content. She wants to know why I don't have friends anymore, or why I never know what I want. She wants to know why I don't want to talk about it. She wants to know why I put everything off until I forget altogether. She wants to know why I can't think straight. She wants to know why I am not Rowbes anymore. So do I. was here 030728 ... Notrowbes Rowbes is tired of being afraid. Rowbes is sick of feeling incomplete. Let there be a new person. Notrowbes. Notrowbes doesn't stay up all night at the computer. Notrowbes doesn't avoid conversations with people he likes, or cringe when the phone rings. Notrowbes doesn't convince himself he doesn't have feelings. Notrowbes doesn't sit and dream about tomorrow while the sun is barely rising on today. And Notrowbes doesn't prefer to be alone to sit and worry about being alone. Notrowbes doesn't think so damn much. I_am_notrowbes was here. 030812 ... Rowbes My boss said this to me. My boss sat me down to have a talk about what I wanted, and how I wanted to get there. My boss wants me to figure out how to be happy. "You are not Rowbes lately" Tell me about it. I had no idea how much it was affecting my work. Everyone wants to know why I am not Rowbes. But Rowbes doesn't know. And Notrowbes doesn't care. What can either one of them do about it anyway? Even Brian is worried. We decided I needed someone to blame. Someone who was already dead, and had no effect on me. So I decided to blame all my troubles on Agnes Moorehead. DAMN YOU, AGNES MOOREHEAD!! DAMN YOU!!!!!! It didn't make me feel any better. I tried anger again. Anger is impossible. Am I such a wet napkin that I can't even get angry even for awhile? Even pretend to be angry? *(Rowbes would like to apologize to the estate of Agnes Moorehead) sucks 030910 ... oldephebe ..and he chained himself to the masthead of this great ship, amidst the hurly burly and tempestuous ocean, heaving waves at this match box of tinder wood, held fast by the diminishing horizons of his once hopeful life, ablaze with potential..yea i totally get what you are saying..dream weaver forever stuck in his sepulchral state, to be as frightened and empty as he was at 18, unsteady upon the heaving rolling ground, like a newly whelped fold taking his first halting steps, to always feel that well beyond those years when the sun shone so brightly upon him, such potential, every one said it, what talent, to weild words, and the baton, and conjure notes out of the open air, as if he were born to it, to feel truly alive, the quintessence of St. Elmo's fire only when he stands or sits in the circle of living light.. a life seemingly called unto to so many things, he could barely find the space, the air, the focus to choose..the stage his respite and refuge, to be out of that circle of light is to be inexpressably alone, so unfinished, and so cold, a frigidity that is felt in the deep dark labyrinthine passages beneath spirit and bone is there a connection between your revelations and my solipstic insistance to be read, to be thread through with something i can cling to? who knows.. gone is that sense of inert power so much untapped Keeper of the Wind send me something to stir me i could turn back and repent for all the years lain fallow turn back to what? repent to whom? would it be like rudely stirring the day with profanation? if i turned would i see her tender eyes shining brightly mother..may i, should i? dare i disturb the slumber of so many years? exiled so far, so long from the fraternity of so taciturn, so unwelcoming busom a family like a forboding city sparkling in the distance, only reflected off of ice turned inward unto itself O that i should crumple back into the warm mast of leaves and weeds and hay to bristle against that acute autumnal twinge, playing my soul like like a violin, each breath imbued with the frieght of so many memories, and there, look! there is where I built my dreamspires and look! there is where i fell and now when i am among them there is exuded this sense of quiet irretrievable decay, not the olfactory indice of rotting flesh but the inescapable, almost palpable sense of someone irevocably fallen no mere hint at it's hue no ephebic requests to be painted another shade other than blue yeah you are not rowbes but i am as ever who i always pretended not to be and all these sundry little tempests of rhetoric, tepid showers of self-indulgennce - all these elucidations of agony..tiresome..shouldn't i just make a concession to the culture and pull up a log at the bar? these threads that tie me ..aren't they as gossamer as the slender thread of a spiders web? can't i just slice at the air and sever the cord, and be unmoored once more?...you would think so right? oh my my i've gone garrulous again ... 030910 ... User24 things change all the time (time changes all the things) 030910 ... oldephebe yeah and time seems only not to touch me child of a faded Age, i stare into the mirror after eternities of absence from myself, stare into these brown eyes huddled in furrows of shadow, loss and the Dark exuded out of them how does one takes Times teeth out of their being, make the stagnant miles an ally ... to what..cut me off and cut me out..whatever wisdom hopes to bequeath, the path of tears have left crenellated indentation upon the featureless plane of my face (well not really featureles, more like features of a face bled out into this opaque field of resignation and apathy..) later.. ... 030910 ... oldephebe there's gotta be a way to extricate mr. melancholy from the dynamics of the Dark unconscious - nah c'est impossible! Can any of us explain the machinations of the uber mind - in it's dizzying computational processes. I'm thinking that there's this intimate geometrical relationship (in me, in the dynamic unconscious) between all things existential, all things figurative and symbolic, these cues can be instataneuously aroused, and reverberate at the slightest provocation. Hence all of my tangential tirades. I'd like to be able to unravel it all - robes words really set me off on a trek into the undiscovered country (cognitively speaking) the skewed solipsism of Me. U-24 also whet my appetite for greater clarity. I cannot be absolved for being absent from my life, but perhaps if i cann being to recognize those representational flash-points that set me off on a maudlin and invariably byzantine excursion through idiosyncratic bathos. Okay so impulse, and reflex, and icons and representations and talismanic touchstones - how does one rewire the old sub-conscious, shirk off the robes of constant repentance and flagellation? I have an idea. For me it's combination of disciplined conditioning and the inculcation of inspired teachings. Words, I feel are imbued with transcendance, just in the utterance of them I invoke their power, and ah yes belief is the spark that impels me embrace these concepts. Okay..not so sure why I put this here.. ... 030911 ... oldephebe impels me to embrace Ya harrggh!! ... 030911 ... Rowbes I am a little better now. Helps to vent now and then. is me 030911 ... Rowbes I forgot to thank you for your words. Thank you, oldephebe Thank you, user 24 Thank you, oldephebe Thank you, oldephebe I read it all again. It makes beautiful sense and glorious nonsense all at the same time. As I continue struggling for a sense of self, I find I know less and less where to look for it. I wish I could find it here. I sit watching my words and your words and imagine them all reflecting onto my face forming a cerulean mask of truth and lies and the stuff between. I could continue asking 'who' like some demented owl calling mindlessly into the night, but there are so many things to be done. Maybe Rowbes doesn't need to be here for me to do them. was here 030927 ... oldephebe Yo' man you're most welcome..cerulean mask..nice..rowbes is unique in all the universes 040116 ... monee oh how i did and do relate to some of this. 041212 what's it to you? who go blather from