It takes one to know one

I have always gravitated toward the less than desirable when it came to friendships. The bungled and botched. The expendable masses. That’s what Nietzsche called them. The people your mother warned you about.

For some unknown-to-me-reason, I was always more comfortable hanging out with the crazies. Only to me, they weren’t. To me, they were the ones who lived all their moments in unadulterated passion. The others were just going through the motions. We were the ones who were on the fringe because we chose to be there. Sometimes we’d look back at all the others, thanking our good fortune.

Even though I fought it growing into adulthood, I’ve always looked back at my youth with a heartthrob for the ones I left behind. The gypsies who took my favor when I was in Cisterna; the witches who looked-up with a nod as if in recognition, as I walked the streets of Salem; the wild-ones who cried when I left Terracina; and the struggling writer who waited for me in San Felice, even when he knew I would not return.

All these were the ones I was cautioned against -

‘the low lives’, they were judged to be -

all these are the ones I am -

it just is what it just is.

Live your life unfettered by what others believe.
Release the ‘slave mentality’ attached to ‘judgment’ -
and just be.
Rise to your own greatness.