At Every Occasion

Spring. I wish I could, just for once, not feel ambivalent about something: people, things. Seasons. If I could wholeheartedly embrace just one of them. Winter is glorious, but exhausting by its end. Summer is pleasant, but dreary and rather stagnant. I think I'm pretty down with fall, actually; so many promises, and most of them have yet to be broken.

Spring, though; it's certainly invigorating to feel the cold melt away, to wear sneakers and sit around on grass, to wear t-shirts and feel the wind against my bare forearms. On the other hand, spring has traditionally been the end; of school, of eras. Especially back in high school; I knew so many people in the years above me that every time the end of the year came around it meant a round of them was going to graduate. End of an era. For them, but also for me.

It hasn't been this way since college began. I didn't know that many people in JHU class of 2005 (Elizabeth and Irun are gone, but I never knew them that well, and Miguel and Josh, whom I do know well, are still here) and even fewer in the class of 2006, but 2007's got almost all of my closest friends: Sterling, Diamond, John, Lindsay, Joanna, Sarah, Janani, Zach, Dan, Vijay, and that's not even all of them. By the fall, the only people who will remain from that list will be Diamond, Sarah, and Janani. Sarah's moving out, too, since Joanna will be gone; so much for Woodcliffe. We played soccer again today; just when it was coming back, too.

I can't imagine living in Baltimore without being able to, on a Friday night, call up either John or Sterling and saying, fuck, I'm bored, what're we going to do? Are we going to sit around in John's room, drink beer, and listen to obscure remixes? Are we going to hang out at Sterling's place and make electronic noise until we fry our brains? Are we going to go to Taxlo, despite my protests?

Goddamn it, what am I going to do? Patrice and Maura's people will probably continue to be too busy and enraptured by life to have time for me. I talk with Annie a lot, but can't remember the last time I saw her (probably it was the week before spring break). She's always busy, and I guess I'm more of a distant emotional support for her anyway. I don't think I could hang out with Sid's crew; they always hung a little too loose for me. Everything I've ever done with those kids felt more like whiling away the time instead of, "yeah, we did that shit together, alright." I like it when there's a little intensity, whether in the personalities of the individual people, or in the shared experiences. At least Jessica will be back, and hopefully Thom will visit once in a while. I never see Stephanie or Garrett anymore. The other kids I knew from freshman year are just too fucking weird nowadays. The shit we get ourselves into...

Don't know what it is about this place--but I'm beginning to fear that the city is wearing us down, in some way. The demands of this place force us to pour everything we've got into our own personal journeys; and where those journeys should bring people of like mind together, here they just seem to tear us apart. Everyone's fighting their own war, as is common to the human condition, but here, we can't seem to consolidate our efforts in an attempt to make life a little more bearable. Isolation is the necessary result; we think that by turning all our energies inward we can dispel this isolation, and the cycle continues. Is there an undercurrent here which not only suggests, but promotes self-obsession, solitude, and indifference?

Janani came over late last night, and I made us both hot chocolate. We talked about things; first we had a long debate about curing AIDs, and whether the civilized world had an obligation to aid those who refuse to be civilized (one can guess my stance on that topic), then more average gossip, then sharing concern that nobody here seems really attached to anyone else. We talked about how it was hard to get attached when you just expected everyone to suddenly turn around, abandon you to pursue their own personal happiness at any moment. Maybe they'll run off with boyfriends or girlfriends. Maybe they'll get jobs, move away, and simply not write.

Who are the people we know now that we'll be sending letters to a decade down the line? Janani said she only counted 3, and I don't even know. I know how much is still out there for me to chase after, for me to do, but I also know that if this condition of everyone just blinking in and out of each other's lives without warning persists, I'll have to struggle just to drag myself forward, and may very well collapse before I get anywhere. Ambition or not, basic human necessities apply. Maybe I've just heard too much of this talk to really have faith in friendships.

We also talked about the priority of relationships in people's lives. "I would never put the person I was doing ahead of my friends," she said, and I immediately responded that I would never do anyone whom I didn't put ahead of my friends. (Of course, what do I know.) I can't imagine doing anything with the expectation that it will be short-term; why do something when one knows it'll end soon like it never happened? Still searching for that song that will last the rest of our lives, I suppose. But it's hard, when in my mind I've already concluded, through very rational (to me) arguments, that everyone will let me down if I gave them the chance, and that there's none of what I am looking for around here.

I keep saying Thom's an alternate universe interpretation of me, but sometimes I envy him and Jessica. In fact, I probably do envy them, categorically.

All I'm saying is, in a world which zealously encourages idiosyncrasy, ambition, and independence, I've found that idiosyncrasy, ambition, and independence have become, at least for me, no longer sufficient for happiness.

On a separate note:

Maria (上午 12:42:44): i worry about oyu
Maria (上午 12:42:45): a lot
Maria (上午 12:42:55): which is partly why i came to see you in baltimore
Maria (上午 12:42:58): you scared me so much
Maria (上午 12:43:16): because you were so so so so sad
Maria (上午 12:43:22): like the platonic ideal of sadness
Maria (上午 12:43:40): and i want you to be happy
Maria (上午 12:43:41): only happy

Expect letters when we're both old and wearing biomechanical, sentient dentures, Maria.