it feels strange to start these notes off on the following,
but life rarely finds you where you expect and under the terms you
find suitable. that is to say, "but you get what you get, and you don't
get (more) upset"
being lonely in a crowd of people. staring out into others faces in a haze.
simultaneously yearning for the lightest touch, word, interaction, reminder
that you are you and that you exist. feeling the like your heart and stomach
are trying to meet somewhere one foot our in front of you. feeling an amount
of pain which you both cannot admit to yourself is real. at the same time you
assume it is obvious. written on your face and hands and defeated arch in your
back. it most likely exudes out of you like a saturated solution in water, or like
bad gas you can't control. or maybe you are taking something out of the air around
you. whatever it is, inward, outward, or through some terminal dimension we can't
understand, most people do not say anything. they are polite. or oblivious. or both.
or uncertain i guess, i don't really know.
anyways, i write this as you -- but this is me. this is all me. this is me looking in,
then out, then in again, and then running to a bar to write down these thoughts over a beer.
because somehow that hurts less. this is me at unexpected moments, this is me ever day,
between stretches of bliss and or mania. not that i am diagnosed with anything.
i kinda refuse to engage in that. my therapist likens ssris to advil. i disagree. i digress.
i think about bridges. i go write whiny paragraphs in bars.
sometimes i talk to people like this. a lot of times i don't. i wonder if they can tell. i
tend to assume that they do. not that i think i'm laying it on thick or anything. maybe i
can stand to turn these stretched lips into some other less off-putting shape. what i am
inevitably struck by is that i always manage to pull away from the thing i probably need
most at that moment. i really don't know why. either i have a revulsion to the idea of
"just being" or maybe i honestly get bored (since it is ironically hard to be interested
in other people when you are down and lonely. it is enough effort thinking about myself).
sometimes i feel impolite dropping the weight down in front of them, getting too comfortable.
i tell myself that its probably a function of the encounter. "well, i just met this person on
the street", "eh were just talking at the gym", "eh they just gave me a compliment at the bar".
nothing's happening here, im going right back to it the second i turn the corner, finish my set,
pay my tab. but then i leave, and just want to hit myself on the head for not pushing more, for
getting what i want. but then again what the fuck do i want. really not sure.
what are my needs? what are our needs? what is loneliness? is it is not meeting our needs,
whatever they may be? that would at least explain why art and works are counters to the void.
doing things that (more or less) matter to the people around us, that make an impact. a hook
that gets stuck in someone else's head. voicing someone else's experience. moments of connection,
of mattering, the very fuel of our shared reality. and at the end of the day, our shared reality
is the thing that makes it matter which we live or die, right? but when i say that, it can't just
be the passively consumed artifacts which we tend to mean when we say 'art.' what i mean to signify
is the relationship we form to others at the moment of making. a harmony with a neighbor in the
park. the forming of a new relationship with a stranger. a fleeting encounter or shared howl with
another lurker on the street late at night. oases of emotion and meaning within a desert of modern
inter-relationships.
but this alone, cannot carry us. to live an emotional life that is consistently replenishing itself
along a highway of disconnected experience makes for good stories, but quite possibly a bad lives.
no, there are deeper ties which keep us moving with the resolve needed in order to encounter everyday
phenomena. love, friendship, family. these things orient us where independence, serendipity, and
happenstance eventually lead astray. i know it. now i need to find it again and remember it.