Hi Everyone,
Happy Monday! Reading has always been my thing. I can’t remember when I haven’t had something to read. In fact, I begin to panic a bit when I don’t. I am serious. I really panic. This is why.
When I was growing up, my upbringing was well, complicated. For the time, it was very unusual. Now it is the norm. In many ways I can relate to a lot of people. In many ways I can’t. Either way, reading has always been with me. Reading has always protecting me, educated me and that kept me out of trouble.
Books have always been my first choice. I’ve always loved the feel of a book. Even though I never really had any money for them, I always had one. As girls my age were flipping through magazines and talking about guys they wanted to hang out with, I read books. If one of those guys, who I was always in the presence of, saw me reading a book, he’d ask me about it and hand me another one. Some of them even made suggestions of books I should read, encouraged me to keep reading or both. Reading books separated me from the other girls my age. People treated me differently in a good way.
Between the ages of 15-16, I started reading memoirs and biographies about the musicians I listened to. No One Gets Out of Here Alive, about The Doors, Papa John: A Music Legend’s Shattering Journey Through Sex, Drugs, And Rock and Roll, by John Phillips, are two that taught me the most. I was all about the music. I was so not about the drugs! If anything those two books kept me on the straight and narrow. Those books kept me out of trouble. They kept me off of drugs! I read other books from or about other musicians and people who did and in most cases died from drug overdoses. I read a lot. And the more I read, the more I learned that drugs were not for me. Books also taught me about people.
Learning how people behave in their moments of desperation are lessons that I couldn’t learn in school. And let’s face it, when people want and/or need drugs to fill the emptiness in their lives, they will do any and everything to get them. I took whatever I learned from reading and observed the people around me. Theory coupled with practical life experiences from a variety of people of different generations was the best education I could have ever had. It still is. Not only did I question some of their decisions, they taught me that everyone has a “drug”, a need, a want that they too are desperate to fill. And they will do any and everything to fill it. “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” is a great saying.
We could all learn from books. Last week I read, High on Arrival, by Mackenzie Phillips. It’s a sad book. I thought of is as a sequel to her father’s book that I mentioned above. The lies, the pain, the betrayal of her actions and the actions of others cost her more than the drugs she paid for, lied for, scammed for. One thing that Mackenzie mentions several times is the cost of her lost opportunities. Career wise she blew it and she admits it. She admits a lot of things. But the one thing I don’t remember her admitting to is that feeding a, “drug,” a need, an unfulfilled want is a fulltime job that involves generations of broken people with broken, shattered and selfish souls. Think about that. I am serious.
Here is a link to song that John Phillips wrote about Mackenzie Phillips his daughter. It is called, She’s Just 14. Listen to the lyrics because they say a lot about of the life of Mackenzie and her father’s observations of her life. Please note this YouTube video shows a lot bottoms. She’s Just 14, is said to have been a lost song,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlZOW_agsVo
Here is a link to the video Monday Monday, by The Mama’s & The Papa’s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h81Ojd3d2rY,
Here is a link to the lyrics of Monday Monday,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aBnkcTOZcQ
Happy Monday everyone! It’s the beginning of the week and we all know what that means. Monday is the day we start things that are meant to bring us closer to our goals, the people we want, need to be. Monday is the day when we start to fill the one or more voids in our lives. Good luck. On a side note LUCK means,
L abour
U nder
C orrect
K nowledge
Here are some other links that relate to this blog,
http://arebelsrant.com/want-to-change-a-habit/
http://arebelsrant.com/you-cant-really-change-that/
http://arebelsrant.com/the-other-benefits-of-reading-2/
Thank you for reading, A. Rebel’s Rant! ;D
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