31 May 2002 (Friday)
inching toward solstice
I watched the sun come up in my apartment this morning. I wandered through its three rooms all night like a restless ghost, switching lights on and off at random, moving boxes and papers and scraps of plastic wrapping as though to some slow chaotic choreography. But in the end all was in order, all the bits and pieces folded into their proper configurations. I felt vaguely like a ribosome.
We all have our unique lessons to learn. Some of us need to learn to let go; others, to hold on. For some the curriculum now is solitude, a spotlight on what can't be hidden from the mirror; for others, companionship, its myriad tricks and nuances. Any question about the human heart is ultimately unanswerable, because each of us has his own signature pattern, her own High Council of memory and history. If even the present cannot be measured, how can one claim the power of prediction?
End half-assed attempt at eloquence. I'm in that funny sleep-deprived state, where my body's saying "uhh, did we really just stay up all night?" And the outpour of comments on the previous post (both online and off) has left me blinking, both in appreciation and confusion. I don't know, folks. I don't know. But I am listening.
posted by enjelani @ 03:35 PM PST [ link ]
30 May 2002 (Thursday)
flotsam
I'm going to have a hefty cell phone bill this month. Ava and I had a roommates' talk last night, only this time across several thousand miles instead of up and down the bunk bed.
- For the longest time, I couldn't understand why exes can't stay friends afterwards. If you still fundamentally liked and respected the person, of course. I mean, it seemed so silly. Just because you dated, you can't have a good conversation anymore? Why does everything have to be so complicated and irrational?
- Well...relationships are intimate things. Otherwise there wouldn't be a point in getting involved in them, right? You see the most vulnerable, secret parts of a person, and he sees the same in you...after that things can never quite be the same. You can't be "just friends." You've witnessed something that very few people in the world get to see about someone, and that leaves its mark on you. You know? It leaves a scar.
Zach is currently recovering from his trip back home to Colorado, trying to make peace with the fact that he isn't living there. I used to encourage him to make plans to move, even as I was terrified of being separated from him, of him choosing love for landscape over love for me. But we broke up over half a year ago, and though we've been following each other's lives through these online journals, it'd be a stretch to call our current state a friendship. So why this twinge of hurt, even now? What's left to be scared of losing?
Nothing. It's the ghost; it's the scar. The memory of the hold he once had on me.
posted by enjelani @ 02:23 PM PST [ link ]
29 May 2002 (Wednesday)
this month in harper's
Some magazines I would gladly pay $100/year for a subscription. A few excerpts from June's issue of Harper's Magazine:
>> more...
posted by enjelani @ 09:02 PM PST [ link ]
some assembly required
All is chaos and candlelight tonight.
You know what it is? Those of us who have it all sometimes wonder whether we deserve it. It's not that we're spoiled brats who don't realize what we've got; we're not ungrateful, just a little guilty.
posted by enjelani @ 12:54 AM PST [ link ]
27 May 2002 (Monday)
the space-time continuum
Sleep, work, social life, hobbies, romance, and a reasonably clean house: mix and match, limit 2 per customer. Three days and it's still the shortest of weekends.
Had an unexpected heart-to-heart with an old friend last night, huddling in fleece sweatshirts out on a balcony. Robert's a devout Presbyterian, married nine months now, to a wife with whom his deepest connection is their religious faith. They've got a nice new townhouse that looks out on a little park in the suburbs. He wants to be a company man like people did in the old days, loyal to a single firm for twenty years or more.
And me? A month after Robert's wedding I left one man to be with another, engendering a bit of real-life drama worthy of a soap opera. I've had a number of interesting substance-induced experiences in the past year. I alternate between tricking myself into liking my day job and actively resenting it, while the so-called hobby, the dream job, becomes reality almost faster than I can keep up. I am years away from a down payment on a house.
Yet we still connected. We have profound respect for one another, and so listened with curiosity instead of judgment to each others' stories. Sure, I blinked a few times when he mentioned how he and his then-girlfriend both found counselors to keep them "in check," to make sure they "stayed on the right path for the relationship" while they were dating. And he nodded very slowly as I explained that I'm giving up a scholarship to music school, in favor of playing in coffeehouses halfway across the country. As different as we are, we're both after similar things: love in our own fashion, success on our own terms, the meaning of life in our own words. We've known each other since we were twelve, and neither of us has changed much, not at the core. What made us friends then is still there.
I've been warned that the older I get, the more I will need the friends who knew me when I was young. I stand warned. I've gotta get better at answering email.
posted by enjelani @ 09:10 PM PST [ link ]