The boys of summer
One thing I can always say is I am completely consistent in how I deal with people and especially the boys. When I was younger I used to spend a lot more time professing love for people who had been blind-sided by my psychotic meanderings, and blabbering about nothing that really made any sense given the lack of history. We Libras are basically very in love with the idea of being in love, but there’s not much more to it than that. And although I can say I have really only shared reciprocal love with one person in my life, the plausibility of having that feel right, everything is fabulous kind of person gets depressing when you think about it. Not because it is a complete fallacy but because it is such a rarity given the sheer population of people. I mean, I am not some cold-hearted person who cannot fathom the responsibility of such a thing, but it’s existence in my life has been so rare that I can do nothing more than just wonder. I enjoy the firework passion of that perfect fit, but the thing about it is that it’s always just an impression garnished with good background music or a burning sparkle in the eye. Music has always been my little diary of sorts, because I file away music fit for times when I was needing it; it always parallels those nights days and mornings when the smells sunk deep in the brain and the promise of something greater than this seemed like a definite possibility.
Oh, existential light, what the fuck are you doing to my brain? It seems that more and more people are taking the leap into marriage, roped in by some imaginary consistent belief that your other will never change beyond the grasp of your feeling. I have gone back and forth over this idea my entire life, and that article in the Post about that woman getting all those guys married under 5 years to agree to a discreet affair made my stomach turn and twist but certainly was never a surprise. I keep getting from people, you just haven’t found it and bla bla bla bla bla. But I think we all have points when we find it, lose it, it finds us again, it loses us, and the chain goes on, and on, and on. It goes with the natural cycle of any relationship, be it between people or things or the earth in general. It is one of the most beautiful things about living, the ability to phase in and out, to appear, disappear, and reappear, or more pointedly, the ability to just be. I have said, as many people have said, I will be alone, and essentially, in the end, we all go out alone, much as we come in.
So before I give my ode to the boys of summer, there are a few new rules I have to live by to make it all worthwhile. Number one, no tv. Number two, no cigarettes anymore, and three, my free time will be spent creating, pondering, painting, writing.
I found this little thing I wrote a few years back at that wedding I was at in the notebook I wrote to my friend Meagan about how I recognized the change in her responses, and reactions to life. It doesn’t include all of the names: Khaled, Scott, Brian, Brandon, Mike, Tom, Matt, and the list goes on and on and on of all the people who have influenced my life just by existing, but it is a pretty little ditty in honor of the joy it has been to even just know people for the short amount of time that I have. My entry wasn’t about dissing the existence of these people, because I firmly believe that each and every person I have come into contact with has changed me, even in the most abstract sense. A phrase, a look on the face, a curl of the lips, a story; my memory has a very definite place in my time, and I have never forgotten any of you for what you have brought. A minute of joy, a snicker or two, and tears, the inevitable when your heart breaks and shatters to the ground.
So here it is:
Sometime in 2002, in reference to 2000.
My dreams have been filtered through beating, layering upon deja vu experiences.
I remember walking down Bowery with Jeff one summer when I became overwhelmed with the sensations of panic. Like I was running, yet unmoving, my physiology responding to a kink. A word re-uttered, or perhaps a car door opening. The same faces mirrored or re-mirrored a thousand times. In and out, the movement unequal to my charmed and panicked self. I seized my arms, wishing, picturing. I often thought of throwing myself into traffic. Much in the same way that a car becomes an obvious vehicle for death, I wanted to cartwheel out, get struck, thrown. Feel something other than the growing spite. My rage boiled over inside, curling up into pictures. Pictures never framed, moments never captured because of the incredulous nature of their existence. I loved him in the way that ends up flattening you. Reciprocal mis-efforts shaken and screaming, my blood beating louder. My arrow I shot and it hit me back. I hated him more and more as time went on. He used to get into fights, fists flailing at absolute strangers. I think my disgust for his just being overflowed and became my mantra. The music we made sounded like sex to my own prejudiced ears. Every day I wandered out of the studio to get him, us coffee. Food, and the rest needed to be censored since it was so long ago now.
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Might seem morbid to most, but the ability to feel anything so soon after my own heart broke itself so literally was one of the best gifts ever.
