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 Post subject: A letter of love
PostPosted: Fri Oct 07, 2005 11:12 pm 
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I wish I could be writing to you from some monastery with everyone on vacation. Not because it would signify some commitment or vocation on my part, though one may expect as much, but because it would provide the quiet and ease that I need to be introspective and clear. I’m talking quiet as death, as Kafka would say it. This way, there may not be many distractions and I could imagine you right there next to me and I could begin into some kind of trance-speech, passionately, with you watching on intently, and with your eyes fixed and listening, the way they used to be.

But of course, this is the way we began: I would speak to you with intention, with design most of the time, with some sort of end in mind. I needed to keep you close by keeping you far enough away. This way, I would remain a mystery, the enigma that I needed to be, to you and to the world. You would not see me for what I am. I got into the habit, once we became closer by some natural affection and liking to each other, of making you a part of my own play, a pawn in my game. I wanted the game to be real. When we would dance, I would hope that you would think I was good for some reason, because then, at least, it would advance the mystery and the strangeness. It would advance the idea, my idea. It would advance the tension between you and I, and between me and my self. It would still go on as a dream. Staying up or waking up to kiss at 3 am didn’t hurt matters much in this department either. The more surreal life was, the better. It was all a fantasy to be sure, and I know how deep the dream went when I hold them up to the desperate ashes that remain today.

These are nothing more but the leftovers from some big flame-roast. Some wild charade it all was. It is like seeing the confetti in the deserted streets the day after the New Year’s Eve festival parade orgy—NYC style. And everyone has gone home, and you are left there in the wind, confetti in your face. What a big let-down. What a big blown out of proportion orgasm, the whole thing. A sharp reminder.

I was able to do certain things in and around you because I was no longer living in the consciousness of what was most real. I can’t ever articulate the pain and despair and regret that comes over me sometimes when I really can remember certain things. When I can see the faces all lit up the night before, before all the confetti has settled in the street, dead and wilted. In a way, it is like we never even met. And yet, you saw me there, everyday, in every moment, alive and breathing hard, thinking, wondering, doubting, believing, feeling, wishing, hoping, lying, trusting. Trust. Trust is how I suggested we began and you took my word for it. But I never trusted you.

I never put my faith in you because I was never there. I was there, but under a mask. I was living in some kinda sick dream. Some kinda twisted movie plot on the horizon of uncertainty, the need for love and attention, for truth. I didn’t expect to find these things with you, but, in a way, I did. And that’s where the pain comes from. It comes from finding something to put faith in, and throwing it away. I was certain of a bet, but didn’t throw the money down. I kept you safe, at a distance. I kept you in your shell when you were screaming for me to let you out.

You wanted to live a normal life, and I wanted to be a weirdo. Well, we both got what we wanted in the end. God answers prayers, I’m sure of that. But the freedom to chose one’s path is harrowing to me. It’s an awfully difficult fate to fulfill, at least it seems that way now. Like being the only one alive and trying not to submit to the loneliness. Even as I write this now, as much as it feels slightly better to let this shit run out of me and drain from me like some disease or virus, I cannot be as honest as I want to be. I can’t find that intimacy in thought and spirit with you to let it rip. To simply lay it all out there. To tell you everything you need to know. And really, it’s pointless. My pride and hurt won’t allow us to be friends ever again.

What a lie that whole idea is. To continue living as if my play was never put on. I was in the lead role. I was the star. And director. And you didn’t even know we were acting. You didn’t know what kind of warped dancing was going on. I’m nothing but a cardboard cut-out to you now. In my mind, that is what I am to you. Don’t argue with it, please. The last thing I want to do right now is run from the facts and take refuge in another farce. I don’t know how I’m going to explain this one, if that day comes.

Why did I spend time this way? What was I hoping for, and how could I spew words about truth and trust when the entire thing was built upon presumption and image, the entire thing not centered around faith and openness, but shadows and mist? I was some kinda man from the darkness to you. Some stark figure. Some dude who you were supposed to fall in love with.

My lack of trust goes deeper. You often were faced with a changing persona. One day, the mask was that of joy and exuberance, of drunken splendor and vigor, of satisfaction in the small things. But the very next day, you might be met with a man who would tear the world apart with his mind in under an hour if you let him have the floor. I would rip it all down so long as I was the only one standing. I would hope to leave you clinging too, just like a leaf dangling from a limb. One of my heavy gusts would end you, but I spared you, and I knew it, I left you to dangle and wonder, so long as I was at the center and I was who I wanted to be. Forget all about who I truly was, and about trusting me in that. You simply never saw me. You saw vague lines, silhouettes, shadows, and speckles, remnants, footprints. But that is all. You never even got close. I didn’t believe in you. I had no faith, and without faith, in something, how can one act? Well, I’ll tell you: One can act by acting, by pretending, by constantly taking refuge in the newness and of going with the flow of chaos in the mind in order not to face the impossibility of his own disbelief. That was my philosophy. ‘It’s a weekend in March? Oh well, let us then let her wonder for some long time about what we will be doing and when we will meet up before I pencil her in. Let us allow the play to continue on. She’s the audience, after all, and the story must end somehow.’

There were several moments in the last year, or since we met, that I thought life was essentially meaningless. I mean it. I literally thought that the entire thing was one big cosmic joke, and I was one of the only ones who recognized this. There were also times when I thought just the opposite. That every moment was ordained by God, that every moment was like the only moment in time, like it was eternity in time, as if angels were hovering over the moment with such anticipation and interest. That life could have that much meaning and impact. I feel like I’ve been to both ends of the earth, or the universe. It’s all the same. I’ve seen what people can see. Today, I heard someone say of another man that “he has lived a full life at the age of thirty.” Now, aside from the fact that I don’t know what a “full life” is, I thought for a moment that maybe I lived the full life too. I had love and I had death, I had hope and I had despair, faith and doubt, and a lot of Mondays Tuesdays Wednesdays Thursdays Fridays Saturdays and Sundays in between. A lot of conversations and cups of coffee and books and papers and articles and chicken tenders and songs and showers and shaves and laughs and waffles and ice cream and drinks and smokes and thoughts and encounters with experiences that I would say are anything but ordinary simply because, on the surface they are ordinary, and this is everything but ordinary because if our lives have meaning and time is indeed something created and progressing and something of God, then there is nothing ever ordinary—ever.

This is one thing I am certain of. I think I know what it’s worth. I just don’t know how to live. Literally. Jobs, family, the Super Bowl, children, old age, turning 21, retirement. Do any of these do the most raw spirit of life and of the human being justice? If we are meant for eternity, then what do these things hold? How deep into the ocean do they go? I’ve often thought about being crazy, about crazy people, about what it would mean to be crazy, and how much is assumed in even suggesting such a thing. I’ve thought about how knowledge is so open, at least in our subjective selves, and how anything can be justified or explained from a certain perspective. All of these rub up against me daily, probably, like a tooth out of line. They mock me. And I mock them. I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into with all of this, all of this questioning and searching, all this truth-blabber. I had no idea that I would stop believing in so much, and that I would let some one pass me by the way I did. Talk about time that matters. If I’m going to explain things from my own limited point of view, then I gave up on you, because I never started up with you. It wasn’t even puppy love. I’m a good pretender. I can act really well. I’ve often thought my true calling may be to perform, perhaps as a singer or an actor, because I can do it. I can put something on. I can drift in and out of moments like I walk through doorways. I can be a shy, charming, number-giving (with some confidence too, which is in itself, amazing, if you know me) departing college student, to the most vicious, brash, confrontational, mind-bending wretch you’ve ever seen. And I can mean it all, all the same. I can do it.

What I mean is that I can twist things to make them fit. I can slide the pain and doubt to the back of the car if I know I can make room for someone like you up front, at least for a time. I can escape away with someone, encounter another human being, and all that that means. I can ask for intimacy, true intimacy, (not beginning with sex or anything of that sort), but without returning it, the intimacy, that is. It’s not meant to shock people. If it is, it is only one, since there is only one in the audience. No one else would get it if it’s built around one central person or idea. I would look out the window and play games. I would look for Marie. But the sick part is that Marie is a very real and beautiful person. She is a mystery, to be sure, and I really know little about her, but even she was, for a time, just a game piece. So I would tell the truth about her, and express a genuine interest in her, but use it as a weapon against you. Did you ever sense that this was going on? I would hope so. It certainly was, and you are perceptive and not at all naive. I would tell the truth, but tell it with lies. It wasn’t that I wanted Marie in place of you, but rather that my unfinished intrigue in Marie would surface in the midst of my unfinished intrigue in you, and the two would force themselves out in strange forms as I would allow them.

But enough about all of that. It is all in the past, and if I was to be transported to that room overlooking that dining hall at this very moment, I would doubt very strongly that I ever spent time there, and significant time at that. It just would not occur to me with any kind of force. I know it. It would appear so distant, like looking at one’s baby pictures or an old year book. How much change occurred in such little time can only be measured by how far removed I feel from those days, coupled with how I still long for them to come back in some of my most excruciatingly present moments—present to my faults, to my desires, to my memories, to my actions, to my ideas, and to you. If anything, you represent today the pinnacle of the train wreck that comes with taking one’s self into withdrawal so much that one, ironically, comes out wishing so bad to be emerged in everything that there is.

Lately, I’ve been drinking again, and drinking well. Drinking as a sport, drinking with motivation and purpose, drinking to obtain a level, drinking to surpass that level, drinking to remember and drinking to forget. These are not new ideas. It’s probably why everyone drinks. There is emptiness in drinking, but lately, I’ve found that quite filling. And dancing. To go out lately, and drink real hard, and to dance. Again, it is all pretending. Am I a good dancer? The answer is that it doesn’t matter. When I dance, I don’t dance to explore the essence of dancing, I dance to explore the essence of possibility, the essence of time spent doing something where I can marvel at my lack of knowledge of what it all means and will mean. I marvel at time, simply. Its passing, its coming, its limit. I danced with some slinky, sly, deceptively smiling red-haired girl. I know nothing of her real self, but I have a feeling she’s got the issues that a lot of kids do today, growing up with parents she is not on par with, or maybe just one parent. At any rate, she is a girl out to make her self, to create something, to erase something maybe. And, just for a split moment, at a certain catch of her eye, as the light was just right and the beat of a certain song just struck, we both caught a hold of a certain look from the other that understood this passing of time, this uncertainty, and with nothing said, but simply grasped with strange fluxuations of the body—nothing sexual, but sensual by way of silent words—we decided not to say anything about it, but just let the song continue because neither of us wanted to visit the unpleasantries that come with facing up to this doubt, especially in the presence of another who doubts. So we will roll by anonymous forever to each other, but with sharing a simple fact that not many other people that we know of know. But, then again, it was just a dance, right?

I wish I knew what to say right now. It is Christmas Day, barely. It is about eight minutes from December the 26th of this year. There I go with the time thing again. I’m so conscious of it. But I am tired and weary and I will stop now. I’m sending this to you. I told you I would write you a letter. I didn’t know what it would be about. That does not matter to me, though. I got it out. I feel slightly more alive than when I started writing it. I’m going to put that poem in here too that I mentioned. I don’t know if you remember that conversation when I mentioned it. I do, which is a surprise because any time I’ve talked to you over the past two months I’ve been drinking pretty heavily. I am not drinking tonight, though. Tonight, actually, everything is silent. It would be false to drink tonight, it would be dishonest. It simply would not go with everything that did or did not occur today. It would betray the feeling that has come over this day and over my feeling in general lately. Oh, and if I find a leaf or a leftover piece of wrapping paper or some candy wrapper, I’m going to include that as well. Why? Because it exists.

Well, that is all. Christmas time is over. The day is done, and so am I.





Sweet screams…


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Oct 08, 2005 12:11 am 
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Spaceman
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Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 1:03 am
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try not to be so hard on yourself, 'not that guy'.

...interesting title, given the content.

_________________
Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear,
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer.
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Oct 08, 2005 12:16 am 
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Mike's Maniac
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Joined: Tue Oct 19, 2004 10:10 pm
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Location: Rio
wow. in spite of a more than slight feeling of intrusion... welcome to the human race. and enjoy the pain and pleasure of waking up. welcome to the strangest tribe.

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Alba gu bráth


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Oct 08, 2005 7:07 pm 
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Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2005 2:15 pm
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Yes. It is true, though. The closest I came to love.


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