So what can I say? All I can come up with some obvious metaphors and broken words.
Last night just before dawn, I was standing with three acquaintances on the bridge in Young America. When I first looked at the river below me, the light hit it in this way that made it look like mollasses. As if the flowing river had congealed.
And then I blinked and the image changed, the river moving fast. Faster. Talking with people-- strangers I've known forever or for a day--about learning to regain the dead, about the aesthetics of breaking glass, about the physics of falling. This was seriously one of my favorite moments I can remember lately, and I thank those who shared it with me.
So I have a lot to say. It is all broken words and tired phrases, ended phases.
I made a point to learn a whole story. I made a point to be the better person. I made a point to take all sides and to take none at all.
This is a tall order for someone who has a short patience with objectivity. I forgot that even the blank piece of paper can become a crumpled piece of scrap, too.
In India there is an epic family saga, tragic and forever. They are the old stories, the ones that everybody knows, the ones that are heard time and time again. It is bad luck in India to have the complete text of this story in the house. I now know the logic behind this superstition. We all have the tragic tales. The family sagas. You know the whole story and all it does is fall apart. You tell the whole story and you go crazy.
I spent a long time catching up with Alycia. There is a lot to catch up on. A lot. On both sides (are there only two?). She made an interesting comment. She is turning 21 in a couple days. I am turning 22 in July. She said, You think this would all just end. You go through the awkwardness of adolescence. You figure out who you are. And now this... And it got me to thinking. In your teenage years you figure out who you are. Who you want to be. And now that you think you know, there is that giant problem of all these other identities that are newly formed or recently revealed. And now is the time when you wake up and realize that who you are doesn't mean anything unless you figure out how to fit it with everyone else's. What's a puzzle piece when it doesn't connect, when it doesn't complete the picture?
So what can I say? It's all cliché and cataclismic hyperbole.
It's histrionics, hysterics, rages, and rambles. I'm trying to decide whether I'm enabling landslides or disabling time bombs. I'm trying to decide if should I do anything.