You know the sort of thing. It's saturday night, you are supposed to go meet some friends catch some instantly forgettable movie, grab a bite of some indigestible pre-masticated junk food and head to someone's home (usually not mine - "too small, too messy, fridge always empty") and you talk. There may even be some music playing on the background. Loud enough that you are aware of it. But too low for you to follow any potential interesting lyrics you might want to *investigate* later, or any potential inane ones that you could mock on the stop just to prevent the flow of conversation from stopping every now and then.
Amitié Oblige, of course, so you listen and try to be a part of it, and even fill gaps with light banter or pseudo-sophisticated knowledge of this, that and the other. Inevitably the same moment will come to you: "Why am I here with these friends? What does 'friend' mean?"
Congratulations. You have just realized (yet again) that not a single one of you is *saying* anything. There are words involved, to be sure. But much like the music they are background noise. So you decide you are not a social animal after all, the night ends, and in the small hours you make it home and hit the sack (alone again, of course).
It strikes you, then. Maybe I am not anti-social. Maybe there is someone out there who would not think it *quirky* of me to want to discuss current affairs, the expanding universe(and what will happen when it contracts? Collapse, annihilation, Big Bang all over?), the poetry of Sandy Denny or Leonard Cohen or Paul Celan or Walt Whitman. And not be drunk while juggling all these topics, because they are not "topics" to you: they are part of the fabric of Things That Make You Feel Alive. And you would like to share some of them, even make some of them (gods forgive me) more approachable. And you would like to try to speak out when people start telling racist or homophobic jokes because some things can be fun in some context, but it seems the context here is always "This one's for you, P.". Thank you, my friends. I endured (parts of it I even liked) your talk about raising your children, I sat through your dirty jokes and add a few of my own, I tried not to point the error of your ways in going by every word the Popes (present and past) has ever said. You might all be right or have a point or an agenda. You might.
But I have known most of you since we were kids. With hindsight there was always mostly cruelty in X, kindness in Y and apathy in Z. Should I have expected change here? Evolved? No, you have merely changed subjects and traded your clothes for grown-up ones. But you are all still playing at Life. Me? I am much worse than you. I like to pretend that I am Living it. Below full potential, on a low burner, the candle not burning much at either end, the light not flooding your days with stupendous new revelations or experiences. But Living, none the less. Trying.
Trying to resist the will to go into dreamless sleep forever. Because my dreams show me how I used to look at the endless... possibilities? Vistas? With hope, eagerness, excitement, energy.
You drain me. Your small talk, your background noise, your lives so reduced in scale. You had dreams, too. Some of you. Yet here we all are. Am I so different? Perhaps not. Perhaps only painfully aware of those possibilities. Maybe you got the hang of it after all. Of living. Think small, live small, go by the book, be conventional and conservative. And which passing year a little less open minded. A little less capable of exhilaration or Love. Lonelier as your families grow, then grow up and depart. A little more embittered. Against Beauty, Youth, Art, Relationships, anything that doesn't fit the mold. You made up your mind about life early on. The time to make up your mind about Life is Never(there but for *the* one word almost went a quote...). Just Live it. Try to. I would help you, I would be there. But I am finding the attempt somewhat harder than I had thought. By myself - or something that passes for not by myself to the outer world. They don't seem to know we are all alone most of the time. But there are moments that we can weave together into experiences we will remember with joy for all our lives.
Aren't there?
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