I think about this, mostly because all my minutes here are spent quietly (and secretly) pining, missing, and generally trying to fill time with busyness so that I can't droop down to levels of melancholy or self-pity. There's nothing to be melancholic about.
This is true. But loneliness is like a whining, needy baby. Instead I go to work.
So then I got to thinking about time. How it is a fabric, like outer space (is it?), and how for each person, time runs differently, even though we're all on the same exact cloak. How 2 years seems like not too long of a time to be in NY in school, but for every minute that I ardently feel the lack of e. in my life, those 2 years are interminable.
And how by the end of those 2 years, we would have been in a relationship three years, and how that seems like a long time, the majority of that time was spent in snatches--maybe physical contact a handful of times a year. Small parcels of moments over the phone, text, and Words with Friends (aka Scrabble) on the iPhone. From 2009 - 2010, my sheet of time is very thin.
Sometimes, I can fall deeply in love with a person in a matter of days. How in the multitude of hours that the days allow, I can so intensely spend them with another person and feel like I've know them for years. It's a brilliant and shining feeling, and I live for this--more than I live for food or good writing. I live for feelings, and this is one root.
Time/space is tricky. Of course we recollect (reduce) our memories of different points of our life in a matter of mere minutes. But when you think about it, none of us live intensely every second, even though I try to. I think that's why I'm ambitious. There's so much I want to do/become/see, that I don't want to have any idle time. I want to feel, and constantly experience until I can no longer do so.
But instead, our years, our childhoods, adolescence, adulthood is littered instead with waiting for laundry, public transportation, love, rain to stop, Spring to come, food to arrive, traffic to clear--time spent rinsing, washing, deciding, and all the miscellaneous routines of contemporary life. Time spent waiting for the denouement, the climax.
In between, we are taught to keep ourselves amused. I play Scrabble. We read, play games, watch _______. I wish I never had to wait for events, for all the great things in my life. And because events happen so less often, it is no wonder that we reduce past years into a 3 minute summary of notable moments.
This is partly it. The other part is that memories fade. Daily routine becomes brain dust. The lovely notes he sends to me at 4 am, or midday on one of his days off--all of this, I'll forget.
It's hard to cling onto the memories whose root is no longer there. For me, at least. Because I am constantly rinsing. Running in place.
But you know, the summation of all of this is the plot of our lives. All the mundane, everyday. How we grow minute increment by increment. How it's just one continuous journey, even when we're sleeping or standing still.
I wish I could stop time and stand still until all the great things in my life are in the same place as me. I don't want to wash, wait, or rinse. I also don't want to miss, pine, and cry.
But the cloak refreshes itself, dusts it sheet, straightens up, and we cannot help but lose all these bits and pieces of our years.
Is that what space is made up then? A different kind of dust. My brain memory dust. Like the part where I ardently wish he were sleeping next to me during the summer New York thunderstorm. How I'd kiss the place behind his ears and his neck every time thunder would boomingly clap. How I'd wearily kiss him, over and over until I slip into sleep.
Moments with him like that--time disappears. We're naked, the cloak is not there--and it comes back to us, so much further away.
There is no wasting of time. I have no desire to have events here, on my own. I spent it rinsing. I fear that if I do not spend it rinsing, I'll forget him even more. I'll forget San Francisco, the only place in my life where I've felt comfortable and didn't want to leave (even for one of my greatest dreams). I'm terrible at loss.
I love the cloak, and despise it. But it's neutral. It neither has feelings, nor cares.
Lose something every day, she said.
I do. I lose the dust I cannot keep a hold of. I lose the present opportunities, I lose the time I do not spend in SF, and the time I am not spending in New York. I told you I'm in limbo. I'm terrible at transitions.
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But what I can talk about, is work. Of course I can talk about work. It is the single event in my life right now. I'm busy, nearly working every day, and already I think maybe this is not something I should be doing.
I know that I desperately wanted a job working in a restaurant, but I don't really enjoy hostessing. I don't really like having to deal with people who are pissy about waiting for a table. I wish I could be closer to describing the food, or talking about how a certain dish is to die for. I loved working at MSF.
I definitely do not have that feeling here. It's not the restaurant, though. The managers are very nice, and the staff that has introduced themselves to me also seem really great.
At first, I thought I like the girl training me, but as it turns out, I think I slowly hate her more and more. I feel petty for feeling this, but I don't like it when people are standoffish and condescending to me. The other girl who helped train me was super nice.
I feel bad, but it's true. She makes me feel bad about myself, and when that happens, I tend to mess up even more, thus cycling the mistakes I make at work. It sucks.
I hate that she doesn't trust me, or that she won't tell me how to do something (something that I need to know how to do), and that she'll snap at me all the time. It's like everything I do, like even trying to learn is a negative thing. It's futile, so I am extremely quiet, polite, overly-friendly, demure, and nice. Since I secretly want to push her down a small stoop of stairs (I'm petty), I instead kill her with as much kindness as possible.
It's a minor complaint. And harmless. She's neither mean nor spiteful. It's just her personality.
Mindy was here, but she left this morning for a week in the Caribbean. I'm lonely all over again, but I try not to think about it.
I lost my iPhone case that I sewed again, and so I'll have to make another one. This saddens me for no particular reason.
Do I wither away if I don't touch or am touched by the one thing I love? I'm not even talking about sex. I just want that electricity, that comfortable temperature between two people who love each other and are sitting on the bus together.
The hand on my lower back, or in my hand beneath the restaurant table.
I feel like everything is dust. I have nothing in my arms, and I am nothing.
I know that I desperately wanted a job working in a restaurant, but I don't really enjoy hostessing. I don't really like having to deal with people who are pissy about waiting for a table. I wish I could be closer to describing the food, or talking about how a certain dish is to die for. I loved working at MSF.
I definitely do not have that feeling here. It's not the restaurant, though. The managers are very nice, and the staff that has introduced themselves to me also seem really great.
At first, I thought I like the girl training me, but as it turns out, I think I slowly hate her more and more. I feel petty for feeling this, but I don't like it when people are standoffish and condescending to me. The other girl who helped train me was super nice.
I feel bad, but it's true. She makes me feel bad about myself, and when that happens, I tend to mess up even more, thus cycling the mistakes I make at work. It sucks.
I hate that she doesn't trust me, or that she won't tell me how to do something (something that I need to know how to do), and that she'll snap at me all the time. It's like everything I do, like even trying to learn is a negative thing. It's futile, so I am extremely quiet, polite, overly-friendly, demure, and nice. Since I secretly want to push her down a small stoop of stairs (I'm petty), I instead kill her with as much kindness as possible.
It's a minor complaint. And harmless. She's neither mean nor spiteful. It's just her personality.
Mindy was here, but she left this morning for a week in the Caribbean. I'm lonely all over again, but I try not to think about it.
I lost my iPhone case that I sewed again, and so I'll have to make another one. This saddens me for no particular reason.
Do I wither away if I don't touch or am touched by the one thing I love? I'm not even talking about sex. I just want that electricity, that comfortable temperature between two people who love each other and are sitting on the bus together.
The hand on my lower back, or in my hand beneath the restaurant table.
I feel like everything is dust. I have nothing in my arms, and I am nothing.
