The Long Grey Night of the Soul
Wherein our narrator 'fesses up.
Finally.
There have not, for several months, been many
entries in this blog. Really, only one, a humorous little ditty that I wrote
basically to keep myself focused and out of an all-too-real panic attack due to
an unforeseen caffeine overdose.
Why,
you may well ask.
And so you
might.
And this entry I've tossed over
time and time again, but I've never written it. Never knew if I wanted to write
it.
Only it started coming out of me.
In the oddest ways.
I dreamt of writing
a novel, "Half the World," thinly disguised autobiography, about a man who
travels across half the world to flee himself, his actions, his broken
heart.
And toyed with the idea. And
sent myself a little note the other day, a bit to close to the core of the
matter:
Subject:
Theorem
You can reinvent yourself only up
to the limit of what you’re willing to leave
behind.
***
And
so it goes. Because it's sitting right out there on the surface, right there,
right out in the open.
I am
unhappy.
And I am not unhappy because of
where I am in the world. Sydney is wonderful - though it is mid-Winter, and
that's less enjoyable than I might have it, it doesn't really suck at all - and
my work is interesting, if somewhat
draining.
But it isn't enough. And it
isn't going to ever be enough. Because now I've thought about it enough, and I
know it's not enough. It's not the moment of resignation. It's the moment of
revelation.
I'm heartbroken because
I'm still in
love. And I haven't stopped being in love, not
for a moment. Not ever.
On the 4th of
July last year, on a rooftop in Santa Monica, after an afternoon of drinking and
a little light pot smoking, one of my friends, perceptive in that
witchy-sort-of-hit-the-nail-on-the-head-by-accident sort of way, said, "I bet
you go crazy and break their hearts." Or words to that
effect.
And it's true. And I couldn't
answer her then, because i couldn't answer
myself.
How can you look back on the one
moment in your life which fucked everything up, and see it, and see yourself
doing it, over and over again, and only understand that it was stupidity and
rage and brokenness which brought you to
it?
I may be a romantic, but I'm not a
sentimental sort, nor am I terrifically nostalgic. Things happen, and I move
on.
But somehow, I'm not able to move
beyond this. The wound is still there. And it's still as fresh as the day it
happened. And it's time I owned up to
it.
Because whatever I was looking for
here - most likely, a replacement, something to staunch the bleeding from the
wound - is the one thing I'll never find.
Because I don't want to find
it.
I don't want to turn the clock back.
Well, not much. I don't want the past to be undone. Well, not
much.
What I want is the only man I've
ever really loved. I want him back. Desperately. Even if he is 13,000 km
away. Because distance doesn't
matter.
And I have felt this wound, from
time to time, when thinking about what I am doing here, and why I am here, and
how long I'll be here, and whatever made me come here. Certainty, mostly. I
needed space, and money, and time to
think.
Well, I've had plenty of each of
those. More than enough, really.
And
today the other shoe drops, as my mail client choked on a 4 MB
enclosure:
Hi
Mark-
I hope Australia is
treating you well. How is the new program, have you
got
things whipped into shape. I love
getting the Yeschaton emails, which
at
least paints the picture that you
are doing well.
Me? I've been
great. I love the time that school is allowing me,
and
evidently the time to make work is
paying off. I had my first piece in
a
museum over the summer (a sound piece
in the Musee d'art Modern de la
ville
de Paris) and I'll be putting
another up in LACMA in November. So that
is
all going really well. Now I'm
beginning to think about getting a real
job
and start experimenting with prefab
architecture so I can really afford
a
home in LA...but that's a different
story....
Right now I'm working
on an experimental radio station project.
The
schematic for the idea is attached,
as well as the preliminary press
release
from the space. Check it
out.
I've been trying to organize
a series of science features of scientists
and
artists presenting their work- and
I kept thinking of you- and
specifically
becoming transhuman.
Would you be interested in producing a radio show?
It
would be new or old, massive of
small. Let me know what you
think.
Xoxo
Jeff
***
And
god that pain is so fresh. It makes me double over inside. I want to call him
and ask him how he's doing, all the time subtly fishing around, wondering if
he's got a boyfriend. I want to know that he's free again, so I can get on my
knees and beg and plead and sweep him off his feet again. I want to know that
there is still a place, somewhere, in his heart, for me. His heart, which I
broke so perfectly, so precisely, so completely, only because I wanted to break
my own.
There is no getting around this.
This is
this. The point of it all, the reason for being. And I know that now because
I've removed all of the other factors, of place, of stress, of time, reduced
myself to the basics of who and what I am. And this
remains.
This remains.
Posted: Wed - August 4, 2004 at 08:34 PM