Faster & Faster & Further From Peace

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• January 3, 2016

I’ve always liked to go fast.  Run fast.  Bike fast.  Speeding in a boat.  Speeding in a car.  Down a snowy hill.  Dropping in on a wave.  Fast.  Fast.  Faster.

Back in the day, I was a track runner.  Sprints were not my thing, but I was dominant in long distance running.  Running track was not interesting to me (is it interesting to anyone, really?), I just joined because soccer wasn’t going on, and this was before I started drinking in my free time.

Once upon a time, I had a boundless amount of energy.  I know, it’s hard to fathom since I’m so low energy now… but yes, when I was younger, I’d jump out of bed, and I could run, literally, all day long and never slow down.  I was hyper as hell.  If I had Mountain Dew, forget it.  That shit was like crack for me.

Eventually, I’d quit track, simply because I found it boring, despite my track coach advising me that I’d almost surely have a scholarship in my future if I kept with it.  You might think me quitting track was a lack of foresight, but nay, I say, nay.  The decision was precisely one of foresight.  The thought of running track all through high school, and the dreaded winters, and then continuing in college was dire: I knew for a fact I wouldn’t want that.

I was undefeated in track.  Until I was defeated.  I lost one race.  I had a certain method.  Basically, I would place myself behind who ever was in first.  I would stay just behind them.  Making them sweat.  Then, when there was one (maybe two) lap(s) left, I would push my extra energy (because I never ran out), and ultimately win the race.  It was great.  I liked winning.  It was boring as hell for the spectators, however.  It wasn’t uncommon I would lap people.  Oh, man, did I find that hilarious.  Lapping people is the best.  There wasn’t time for gloating when you lapped someone, but trust me, I was gloating in that large head I hadn’t fully grown into yet.

The one time I lost was versus a black girl from Amittyville, who was probably a foot taller than me.  I was so cocky before the race, I still thought I was going to win.  I used my usual tactic, but I could not keep up with this girl.  I couldn’t believe how fast she could run.  I stayed at her heels for the first half of the race, and I was tired.   Really tired.  This is was almost unbelievable to me.  I was the energizer bunny.  I kept going and going and going.  And for the first time ever, I knew I wasn’t going to win the race, but as I fell behind, I said to myself, “you do not let this girl lap you.”  I ran as hard as I could, and I’m glad to say, I wasn’t lapped, but it took every thing in me to make sure that didn’t happen.  I didn’t want to know what it was liked being lapped.  That was a failure I never wanted to feel.

Fast forward through my adolescence, which I was happy to move through, even though I now wish I hadn’t rushed it so much.  I both wanted to be young forever, and wanted to be older to be independent and taken seriously.  My life is full of contradictions, even though I don’t believe in contradictions, which is a contradiction in itself.  Looking back, I think what I admired about people older than me was their confidence.  A young person’s confidence is untested, and blind, which is as much as a super power any young person can ever have.  An older person’s confidence was earned and tried, and for whatever reason that is the kind of confidence I was attracted to.  This is not to say I never had that youthful cockiness.  It’s the reason I went back in the ocean with my surfboard, after taking beating after beating.  It’s the reason I continued to do comedy, after taking beating after beating.  That cockiness is the same duechy voice in my head who gloated when I lapped someone.  It’s something I probably still have, and yet I lack enough of it, because if I’d had more, I’m certain I’d be more successful.  Confidence is powerful thing.  Alas, now I’m in-between those confidences: the blind youth and experienced wisdom.

“Relax” is a word I hate.  Coming from you or me.  Because I’m really bad at it.  And I know I would be a better person, better comic, and happier in general, if I just figured out how to relax more/better.  Running is relaxing.  Surfing is relaxing.  Performing is relaxing.  Fast is relaxing.  It’s midnight and I’m skateboarding in Astoria Park because that is me relaxing.  The faster I’m moving the more I’m in the moment.  Adrenaline, my addiction and first and only true love.  I really like skateboarding.  It’s good for me because it’s hard, and keeps me in shape during the colder months when I won’t surf.  You have to really trust yourself, and all the other bull shit in your life disappears when you’re going fast.  Going faster and faster, down a hill on my skateboard, my wheel hits a pot hole, and my body is thrown forward.  I manage to protect my face, and roll my body, so to only scrape my hands and elbows.  Faster and faster, and closer to pain.  Like the time I crashed my car speeding in the pouring rain.  Faster and faster, and closer to killing myself.  Or that time I went over the handle bars on my bike and fucked up my face.  Faster and faster, and closer to eating the pavement.  Faster, the little voice in me said, faster. 

I wish this wasn’t true, but I see myself as a failure.  Objectively, I know I’m not.  As logic would have it, I can examine my achievements, hurtles, and life choices, and if it were anyone but me, I would say, “that person is doing just fine.  And they’re ballsy, which I respect.”  Life is cruel when you have the wherewithal to recognize logic, but the inability to feel it.

One of my closest comedy buddy’s and I were talking… He was feeling defeated in comedy, particularly in the last few months.  I could empathize.  Then, he said “you had an awesome 2015.”  That’s when I realized that if he had my year, I would feel the same way about him.  I’d say, “what are you crazy?  You’re doing great.”  But my own standards are impossible, and I’ve put all my dreams just out of reach, so I continue to strive, but I’m hurting in the process.  Where I should be grateful, I’m unsatisfied.  Because I’m impatient.  Because it’s not fast enough for me.

Success and failure are different for every one.  In show business, it’s an even stranger barometer because there are no promotions or raises, really.  And the only thing that’s actually certain, is that your future is uncertain.  I decided, for at least the next couple years, if I could afford my little studio, food, and continue to write and perform comedy and get better, I’m not a failure.  The apartment is huge here (It’s small.  Like really small.  But it’s importance is huge).  I love that apartment.  Home for a recluse is important.  Home for anyone is important, but for a recluse it may just be the most important thing a shut in could have.  There are fewer and fewer places I feel fully comfortable, and I need those places.  I’m a mollusk, and my apartment is my shell.  As I write these blogs, scribble half joke ideas, work on a book, and a screenplay, I wonder if any of these things will turn into a pearl… or if I’m not an oyster at all, just a clam.

Human nature craves purpose.  Destiny, if you will.  Even I bought into fables of my own fate: growing up with a funny family, my ridiculous drive and thirst for adrenaline, and how opportunities almost strangely carved how I would come to pursue a passion I found both enthralling and a little terrifying.  My life seems almost serendipitous, with a grim bitter after taste of immeasurable anxiety.  Truth is, I’m not fated for anything, let alone success (by your standards or mine).  Nor am I entitled to it.

I think, especially with the arts, it will usually come down to how much of a beating you can take.  There’s not a lot of things I believe in, but I do believe that hard work doesn’t necessarily mean you will be successful, but the harder you work, the more you’ll increase your chances.  Stand-up, in particular, is rejection, combined with more rejection, and it’s lonely.  While I thrive in solitude, even I have to admit how utterly lonesome I’ve felt, especially in the last year.  This has less to do with actually being alone, and more do to with how disconnected I feel to people, and how I continue to drift further away.  I’m a broken person.  What’s worse is I do it to myself.  If figurative scars were visible, most wouldn’t find me attractive.  Some, would find me at my most attractive (sick fucks).

Last year, I’d been obsessed with delusion, confidence, and peace.  All seem to be linked.  All seem to be connected to happiness.  Sometimes I think I’m not delusional enough to have the confidence to find peace.  Other times I believe I’m perhaps all too delusional, with ever changing cyclical confidence, which makes it impossible to find peace unless I’m moving… but not just moving, moving fast.  Delusion, I suppose, is something that should be worried about by those who never worry about it.  Confidence is a fickle bitch who comes and goes as she pleases, sometimes helping me accomplish what I once deemed impossible, and sometimes abandoning me when I most need her.  Peace is like the person I have feelings for, but they don’t notice.  And, if only, I made a little bit more of an effort,  I would learn that it’s not so far out of my reach.

Because as the alarms and sirens blaze in my mind, as I nurse my bleeding internal scars, listening to gears in my head cranking out ideas and anxieties, I find living at it’s absolute purest when I’m going fast.  Faster and faster and closer to death, is the price paid for a moment of life.