an open space

FACING THE HARSH REALITY OF FULL-BLOWN FANTASY

Sometimes, I seem to have the same epiphanies over and over. Everything is a cycle of apprehending and forgetting, my thoughts only deep enough to last hardly past the morning, and I need to keep reminding myself who I am. Maybe I should be like Guy Pearce from Memento, where I tattoo every worthwhile musing on my arms, to help me remember everything I need to know. And I fall guilty with those James reprimanded in the early church, another fool who thinks they listen, but don't act on what they hear. Like those "who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, or what they look like." {Jm1:24}

Friday night I couldn't sleep so I sat in bed, putting the desk lamp on top of Alb's mini fridge, re-reading Neruda poems til' the early morning (my favorite poet, and I guess you can quote me on that, Phil Gray).

So often I am exasperated by my community. And when I look at the root of the problem, I see it lies only in myself. Neruda wrote a poem called Return to a City, about revisiting what once was home and the emotions and realizations it evoked, feeling like a stranger, like an outsider in his old streets. So much change has taken place in myself in the past two years, some from observation, most from experience. Where I feel like a stranger among familiar faces, where old relationships and values have changed. Seeing social injustice in developing countries, to the superficiality of my peers, my arms feel mercilessly pulled in all directions. And at times, I don't know quite where I fit, and everything I once had feels askew (As Sedaris wrote, humanity behaves often not how we want to, but how we're expected to). But we need to keep moving, nothing can be unlearned. It is dangerous to wander backwards, to once again fall into old habits. I've read this poem a dozen times, and realize, repeatedly, for me, this will never be home again.

Goodbye, streets soiled by time,
goodbye, goodbye, lost love.
I come back not to return;
no more do I wish to mislead myself.
It is dangerous to wander
backward, for all of a sudden
the past turns into a prison.
{Neruda | Excerpt from Return to a City}