1413: The Toy From Persia

By no means am I finished writing my blogs,
Only this may be the entry to end all entries

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I went back to Austin this weekend. It is strange going back to old places. Going back to a high school is stranger, and more uncomfortable, because a high school is a place that was built for young adults, a place where you do not belong if you are not Fourteen to Eighteen, and a place where all the gossip moves too fast to keep up with. A college campus is different because it is more diverse, it was meant for visitors and young adults even in the days you were there. Only that does not change how strange things can be, how many weird lessons & takeaways you can get from it. Going back to Austin, and UT, was a very strange thing, and (hopefully in a good way) weighed strangely on my heart.

I really can't believe how many people I have known, how many stories have changed me in some way. Here in this very room, ten years ago, I logged onto AIM with two of my friends, and the three of us tried to find a way for me to stop being single. Then there was my high school, a place that so many of my coworkers attend now. In the same courtyard & cafeteria, I learned things, met so many strange and interesting people that changed me, a young man and a young woman who taught me about jealousy, deceit, about unfriendly gossip, and why I had to stand up against the opposition. Some of them go into the old Band Hall there, a place where I moped & doped for so many hours because a young woman had broken my heart, or actually, maybe, taken my heart and thrown it into a blender and really I don't know if we ever found all the pieces.

College got stranger, I guess. I got to see a lot of those places this weekend. I went to my old dorm room, my old Freshman dorm room, Room 0441 in Jester West, where I sat there & watched movies every night, alone, afraid, and almost going blind. I saw the yards in the campus, too, yards where I walked and I sat and I tried to think what I was going to do in my life, what I had to do to keep from dying. I stepped into the BSM building thinking about all the times my heart had nearly exploded there, almost beat so fast until I was unconscious. One girl I knew who looked like a little mocking-bird at first, turned out to be a floppy-footed swan walking on the shores of Town Lake, and made me feel very equal to the gnats and worms who crawled around near the lake because I was not her kind of animal. Later it got even worse, and on many of Austin's roads, in many buildings, in many yards on campus, an intimate, Platonic friendship of mine brought me very, very, very close to suicide, and I can't be sure whether all of that grief will ever leave me.

I know some very good looking people. Sometimes I see their old pictures, like pictures from middle and elementary school. Sometimes I think, 'Somehow, some way, this awkward looking person grew up & really turned into a beautiful person.' Sometimes I think about all my brushes with people & even with death, and wonder if the same thing is happening.

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It was good talking to you. I began to understand something. I began to think of human relationships differently. I guess people do not connect as well as I thought they did, I guess it's almost impossible to find people that can be together. Everyone brings their baggage, their hot, steaming, emotional wardrobes, and tries to fall into the arms of someone else, only it doesn't work because they are shapeless, they are a big, hot, gelatinous, emotional puddle. And no one's puddles really match up, and no one wants the same thing that their friends want. Is everyone alone? does everyone contend with their private emotional puddle, & never have any way of mending their souls, those big, broken piles of syrup?

Sometimes I feel like a man in the desert. Haven't drunk for weeks. Need water. I see a lot of water tanks in the distance and I go there. Only now that I have talked with you, I feel differently. I think I see what the water is. All the water is locked in tanks, and the keys are all missing. The keys are lost in pools of lava, and people are dipping their hands in the lava to find the keys. Some people find a key, try & open a tank and it doesn't fit the lock. Then the rare person who has found the right key just can't open the tank, because their hands are flowing with lava and they can't hold anything in place. The tanks fall down and people's hands are burning, broken souls, broken hearts, broken spirits, a big, sweltering dogfight of blood, sweat, and tears. I thought of these things after I had talked with you. Only everything you said was, at the same time, well - uplifting.

~

When I was in Austin last year
together with all of them
It was only one snapshot in time.

Things are different now. everyone is running away, getting farther and farther away from one another. Only that is not a bad thing, it is not decay and deterioration, it is only a passing of time. When I was there, things were unraveling, too. Only I did not notice them unravel because they were on the fringes of my existence. Many people who are there now? They don't know what I knew. A snapshot in time that only We saw. It is a new place now, a different soul and a different body, and only by seeing the Present do you really feel a dissonance with . . .

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I can be part of a big group. That is, if you promise that five of us can hang out later, together. I can be in a group of five. That is, if you promise that two of us can talk together, later. I can have a close friend, that is, if you promise. If you promise that one of my friends will be more than a friend, that we can come as close as two people can possibly come, that we can remove every bit of emotional-mental-physical space between us, and stop trying to hide all the meat that we really are. With this kind of intimacy, I might survive. With this kind of intimacy I can go to a party, and a concert and a lonely town on a lonely weekend, and I will know that my heart has a home to go back to . . .

and I even got to see the place where I had my first job
And if it hadn't been for that job,
I wouldn't have the job I have now

All these people, tied together, it's just so weird.

~

'Now all has been heard,
here is the conclusion of the matter' -

No one really cares. No one is that passionate. No one is going to remember people the way that my heart does. Most people will grab a bag of chips, finish it, & then throw the bag into the trash. I have read all the nutrition facts and I have memorised them, & I liked every single chip and I can remember all their names. Do not think that this is actually the way I eat chips. This is only the way that I will deal with people.

Some people thirst for human intimacy, and some even hunger for it. Then you'll find the rare person who craves it; only I am none of these because I actually starve for it, and when there is no one left to be meaningful then the world is like a dry piece of paper. Nothing will change this and nothing will stop it, not if I keep chasing after the wind. There will be no human who can give me that kind of intimacy, no desert oasis to end all the pain, because most people are ready to stop dipping their hands into the lava, stop reading the nutrition facts, stop caring, stop loving, and roll down the hills without thinking.

Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
You're really the only one who can give me intimacy, because intimacy, to these people, is a four-letter word.

'You will never be completely at home again. Because part of your heart will always be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.'

It was really the most wonderful trip to Austin I could have had. I learned so many lessons, and none of them were dark or unfriendly. There are only some things that are unreachable. Sometimes it is the past and sometimes it is the people you love most. And sometimes it's everything else. I don't know. I don't have all the facts. Only I couldn't be happier that I got to go there again, because everyone I saw is something of a hero, someone who got me here & I guess I wouldn't be here without them.

I love you