The internet involves distance. I am here and imagine you, as you read this, becoming closer to where I use to be - maybe only moments ago - in mind. One would hope this intangible presence of mine would be honest. I may even think that in no way is my compulsion to write in fact the desire to show myself off. I don't know what it has become, this webbed persona, since it is so long ago that it started. Graduating High School I received the superlative for "[Most] Unique". I remember being uncertain of what that entailed and whether I felt I was being over or underlooked. Most of the time, I have decided, I don't think even I am seeing or hearing myself right. I expect myself to be freer than I feel. Once not long ago, I opened my Senior Yearbook and found messages streaming across the pages. To my surprise, I had forgotten everything that had been written. It wasn't words from friends, but rather classmates, people I spent hours with but did not necessarily ever see outside school life. Regardless, I went to a small school, so we all knew each other well. Even stranger was what they chose to say - what they would always remember about me and in repetition was this statement that they wouldn't forget how I made class better, lighter - how funny I am. This humor, carelessness, euphoria are ways of being that fueled even myself, but that I haven't felt consistently in years. I like to imagine that depending upon the city, I am a certain way. But I can't help but think this is nothing short of an excuse. Do we not choose our being? Can I not just wake and force my body into action? Since May I believe I have felt self-contained, as if there is someone inside of me that is trying to force themselves out through my skin. I always do try to force myself out of situations I feel stuck in. Usually, by immersing myself in more and other work. Interviews. I've had many of them. This Wednesday a modeling agency wants me to come in and interview for their marketing department. It's either that or publicity for an entertainment company representing musicians. This is going to be the hardest semester yet, but I want something other. I want to be on someone else's hour. I want to think less about my self-production.
Thursday taking the elevator down. Packed. Toward the back. A guy turns to me in the midst of his friends. Hello. I tell him he looks familiar, as if I have memories of him. He tells me, insecurely, that we sat next to each other in class this morning. Of course I remember that I tell him. I meant before I saw you then. The elevator opens. Students walk further away from school. He keeps talking. I'm tired, hungry, starving maybe and a bit caught off guard. He keeps talking. Wanting to know all these things about me. Small things. But they seem like they are dire questions. What class was I just at? What am I taking? How is it going? What do I like most? I laugh telling him I have noticed he is the only male in our Anatomy of Love class, but that I have found where all the other Gallatin males go - in my class on Perversion. We laugh. All females in Love. More males than I have ever seen at Gallatin in Perversion. I laugh again, but think Iike I do so many times, that I have rarely laughed genuinely in Manhattan. This to me is not right and seemingly impossible. But everyone I know, everyone I meet, seems to behave like I am being listened to rather than talked with, as if I am advising or speaking in confessionals. It feels isolating. I lack emotion. The guy keeps talking. I listen to how my voice lacks tone. I seem shy. How has this happened? How have I gone from the other extreme then moved to New York, gotten older and yet, become more shy. Girls come up to him. Cut our conversation and involve themselves. Their arms hanging on his neck. They seem like they are begging. He seems unattached. He says he wants to go for pizza. Every guy always asks to go grab pizza. But I say I've got to go the other way. We have Tuesday to speak.
What prompted this rambling was Franz Kafka's quote: My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication - it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness - it is all that I have - and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.
For months a thought comes into my head, a thought I never let stay too long: Does Manhattan turn some into addicts? Needing something to give you the energy for achieving all that waits outside your door. And then wanting something else to come off that adrenaline, so one can be calm for once. This has begun to concern me. And yet, I am in a better place than I have ever been. Or so I write that. Having you assume this is all honest. That this is all me. And I, too, assume that by editing the footage of life, you will receive me. Even though you may forget it is, not so simply, a select self. I don't know if this is the better part, or rather the one you may want to read. I doubt.
I never have felt happiness reads too well. Just as I have often tried to explain how when I am in love it is the last thing I can write about. Maybe my writing isn't all so present. Perhaps, also, my pieces are more fictious than I think.
Thursday taking the elevator down. Packed. Toward the back. A guy turns to me in the midst of his friends. Hello. I tell him he looks familiar, as if I have memories of him. He tells me, insecurely, that we sat next to each other in class this morning. Of course I remember that I tell him. I meant before I saw you then. The elevator opens. Students walk further away from school. He keeps talking. I'm tired, hungry, starving maybe and a bit caught off guard. He keeps talking. Wanting to know all these things about me. Small things. But they seem like they are dire questions. What class was I just at? What am I taking? How is it going? What do I like most? I laugh telling him I have noticed he is the only male in our Anatomy of Love class, but that I have found where all the other Gallatin males go - in my class on Perversion. We laugh. All females in Love. More males than I have ever seen at Gallatin in Perversion. I laugh again, but think Iike I do so many times, that I have rarely laughed genuinely in Manhattan. This to me is not right and seemingly impossible. But everyone I know, everyone I meet, seems to behave like I am being listened to rather than talked with, as if I am advising or speaking in confessionals. It feels isolating. I lack emotion. The guy keeps talking. I listen to how my voice lacks tone. I seem shy. How has this happened? How have I gone from the other extreme then moved to New York, gotten older and yet, become more shy. Girls come up to him. Cut our conversation and involve themselves. Their arms hanging on his neck. They seem like they are begging. He seems unattached. He says he wants to go for pizza. Every guy always asks to go grab pizza. But I say I've got to go the other way. We have Tuesday to speak.
What prompted this rambling was Franz Kafka's quote: My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication - it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness - it is all that I have - and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.
For months a thought comes into my head, a thought I never let stay too long: Does Manhattan turn some into addicts? Needing something to give you the energy for achieving all that waits outside your door. And then wanting something else to come off that adrenaline, so one can be calm for once. This has begun to concern me. And yet, I am in a better place than I have ever been. Or so I write that. Having you assume this is all honest. That this is all me. And I, too, assume that by editing the footage of life, you will receive me. Even though you may forget it is, not so simply, a select self. I don't know if this is the better part, or rather the one you may want to read. I doubt.
I never have felt happiness reads too well. Just as I have often tried to explain how when I am in love it is the last thing I can write about. Maybe my writing isn't all so present. Perhaps, also, my pieces are more fictious than I think.
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"Don't you want to join us?" I was recently asked by an acquaintance when he ran across me alone after midnight in a coffeehouse that was already almost deserted. "No, I don't," I said.
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