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twitter_birdi'm hosting a party in about three hours and instead of cooking i'm trying to work through feelings.
if i had told high school me that in eleven years time i would be hosting a party for friends that i had known and loved for nearly all of that time high school me would not have believed it. here is a sad story with a happy ending: in fifth grade i drew a picture of several people sitting on a couch watching tv together, accompanied by a dog and a cat. the reason this is sad is that this couch-sitting incident had never happened. it was what i wanted to happen. the people on the couch were all friends, and they were watching tv because that is what i imagined friends did together, and maybe they had a dog and a cat too, because animals make everything better, more complete. i drew the couch sitting picture because reality had not seen fit for such an incident to occur on its own. i drew the picture because i had no one to couch-sit with me.
i forgot about this picture until spring break of my freshman year of college, 2007. i was watching tv on the basement couch with my future roommate and two dude friends and our family poodle who had wandered downstairs because maybe he was looking for some new legs to hump. and that's when i realized that this strange and sad picture which occupied an entire page of a wire-bound sketchbook, and which was drawn on the back of some school assignment i've long since forgotten about, was at last an illustration of reality. (i still didn't have a cat.)
there's a lot of things i still can't believe. that i'm almost thirty years old and married. that i'm six months away from a medical degree. that i have friends to hang out with and write letters to. that i'm a published writer. that day by day the old life of being lonely is receding.
i can't believe this stuff because i am becoming that person who can start sentences with, "when i was a kid..." and "when i was in college..." the same way my parents did when i was a kid who never truly believed them. i don't think i really believed that my parents had childhoods anymore than i believed that my teachers didn't really live at school all day. time is a concept that has to be lived to be understood, and by the time you understand it, it's too late. time is like that dream you had last night that carried you to an alien world daubed with colors too bright for names and when you try to explain everything you saw and did your partner in conversation can only bob their head without comment. time is a dream unique to everyone. a dream they must experience for themselves.
i don't know if what i'm saying make sense to you, but it does to me, and that's the best i can hope for. but because time is so weird, time is also funny. here is a happy story with a happy ending: when i was in third grade, my homeroom teacher suddenly started telling us about how when she was in college she and her friends had a grapefruit that they believed was magic. during exam periods they would make offerings to the grapefruit and dance around the grapefruit so that the grapefruit might bless them with good fortune.
now if you recall i was the kid who believed that adults (especially teachers) didn't really have childhoods or friends or really any sort of fun, so i took in this story with skepticism, if not outright disbelief. what kind of person believed in a magic grapefruit, anyway?
i forgot about this story until i danced around on a table top with my two study partners in intro psych, just before finals, using a cell-phone ringtone as music. i forgot about this story until my lady friends and i put a condom on a nightlight and dubbed it "condom lamp" and kept it like an obedient pet in the hallway of our suite. i forgot about this story until my male friend made terrible biscuits and spent the rest of the year asking us if we wanted biscuits and offered to us send biscuits through the mail. i forgot about this story until i realized that my friends and I acknowledge characters named "poop-ghost" and "reproachful-face" and accept that this shared hallucination makes the world better.
i will forgot and remember this story forever because time is a glorious recurring dream that grows richer with each passing year and that there is no reason to jettison the old to make room for the new. the old and new will intermingle for all time and continue to inform and enlighten each other.
i'm hosting a party in about two hours and instead of cooking i'm trying to work through feelings. maybe it's time to dance around a grapefruit.
happy 2018 for those who bothered to read this. and happy 2018 to the rest of you.
if i had told high school me that in eleven years time i would be hosting a party for friends that i had known and loved for nearly all of that time high school me would not have believed it. here is a sad story with a happy ending: in fifth grade i drew a picture of several people sitting on a couch watching tv together, accompanied by a dog and a cat. the reason this is sad is that this couch-sitting incident had never happened. it was what i wanted to happen. the people on the couch were all friends, and they were watching tv because that is what i imagined friends did together, and maybe they had a dog and a cat too, because animals make everything better, more complete. i drew the couch sitting picture because reality had not seen fit for such an incident to occur on its own. i drew the picture because i had no one to couch-sit with me.
i forgot about this picture until spring break of my freshman year of college, 2007. i was watching tv on the basement couch with my future roommate and two dude friends and our family poodle who had wandered downstairs because maybe he was looking for some new legs to hump. and that's when i realized that this strange and sad picture which occupied an entire page of a wire-bound sketchbook, and which was drawn on the back of some school assignment i've long since forgotten about, was at last an illustration of reality. (i still didn't have a cat.)
there's a lot of things i still can't believe. that i'm almost thirty years old and married. that i'm six months away from a medical degree. that i have friends to hang out with and write letters to. that i'm a published writer. that day by day the old life of being lonely is receding.
i can't believe this stuff because i am becoming that person who can start sentences with, "when i was a kid..." and "when i was in college..." the same way my parents did when i was a kid who never truly believed them. i don't think i really believed that my parents had childhoods anymore than i believed that my teachers didn't really live at school all day. time is a concept that has to be lived to be understood, and by the time you understand it, it's too late. time is like that dream you had last night that carried you to an alien world daubed with colors too bright for names and when you try to explain everything you saw and did your partner in conversation can only bob their head without comment. time is a dream unique to everyone. a dream they must experience for themselves.
i don't know if what i'm saying make sense to you, but it does to me, and that's the best i can hope for. but because time is so weird, time is also funny. here is a happy story with a happy ending: when i was in third grade, my homeroom teacher suddenly started telling us about how when she was in college she and her friends had a grapefruit that they believed was magic. during exam periods they would make offerings to the grapefruit and dance around the grapefruit so that the grapefruit might bless them with good fortune.
now if you recall i was the kid who believed that adults (especially teachers) didn't really have childhoods or friends or really any sort of fun, so i took in this story with skepticism, if not outright disbelief. what kind of person believed in a magic grapefruit, anyway?
i forgot about this story until i danced around on a table top with my two study partners in intro psych, just before finals, using a cell-phone ringtone as music. i forgot about this story until my lady friends and i put a condom on a nightlight and dubbed it "condom lamp" and kept it like an obedient pet in the hallway of our suite. i forgot about this story until my male friend made terrible biscuits and spent the rest of the year asking us if we wanted biscuits and offered to us send biscuits through the mail. i forgot about this story until i realized that my friends and I acknowledge characters named "poop-ghost" and "reproachful-face" and accept that this shared hallucination makes the world better.
i will forgot and remember this story forever because time is a glorious recurring dream that grows richer with each passing year and that there is no reason to jettison the old to make room for the new. the old and new will intermingle for all time and continue to inform and enlighten each other.
i'm hosting a party in about two hours and instead of cooking i'm trying to work through feelings. maybe it's time to dance around a grapefruit.
happy 2018 for those who bothered to read this. and happy 2018 to the rest of you.
