...in the middle of the night

I went out walking again Sunday night…I know, I’m a dumbass. That’s besides the point. The only moments of the weekend I actually enjoy are the times I’m out wandering alone, reveling in my insignificance. It’s then that I can forget about the world around me and concentrate on my own existence in the world I've created. I like to watch my shadow blinking on and off with the passing streetlights. I like to feel the concrete railings of the bridges I cross until my fingers turn raw. I like to listen to mellow music and pinpoint the exact lyrics I prefer more than the inconsequential choruses…not because I can relate, or because they’re more profound, but simply because they stand out in my mind for reasons unbeknownst to me. I’ve been listening to David Garza’s Slave a lot lately. It’s not a particularly great song, but I’d like to think that out there somewhere is someone so fascinating that any man would give up free will for a life of voluntary servitude, simply for the opportunity to spend his life making up to her the individuality that makes her great, worthy of a slave. I’d like to meet such a person.

What’s happened to me? I’m becoming such a sap. Anywho. I went out to dinner with some other JETs Saturday night. Wasn’t particularly fun, but a nice change from isolation. Aside from becoming a sap, I’ve become a lightweight. When you only drink once a month, you pay in the mornings. I hope I didn’t do, or say, anything out of character, though I imagine I did. Kate, Gaer and I rode around town picking the rest of the gang up, a task which takes about an hour since we’re all so spread out over the prefecture. They made small talk, and I do mean small talk. I’m incapable of such and I fear that’s why I’ve been a virtual outcast of the group. But to what extent is small talk/bullshit really necessary? It’s unimportant, uninteresting, could come from anyone’s mouth and mean just as little. I read a short story by Schickler this weekend from his latest compilation, which I like to think of as a contemporary Decameron, though not as dark and without the threat of plague. The main character carried out relationships in a manner completely backwards to social norms. He didn’t believe bullshitting made for interesting conversation, so he bypassed all that and went straight for intimacy. Once he became completely engrossed in the sheer dynamics of another individual he’d then initiate small talk, which at such a point was anything but small. I wish all relationships could be as interesting, and well played as in literature. Gaer likes to ask me questions because he says I never talk enough. So I answer. But he doesn’t know me any better simply because he knows where I went to school, what I majored in, how many siblings I have. Can’t we for once just skip all that? I don’t care where he went to school because I know so little about him. It’d be more entertaining if I knew all of him, before I knew the logistics of him. They call me an overachiever, which I don’t believe in. There isn’t, nor should there be, a standard or average for achievement. We accomplish what we choose. We are only as strong as our own self will, and maybe mine is greater than some, but that doe not imply that I’ve outdone anyone…or want to. They call me a recluse, and maybe I am, but they say so with disdain, prejudice. Well I don’t particularly like them either. People can be so disappointing, which is exactly why I prefer my solitary walks in darkness. Sometimes a moment feels so perfect and I want to drop to the ground, rest my head, and bask in that which you can’t find when you go out searching. But in those moments I’m usually too afraid to move, take a step in any direction, twitch a finger, for fear that all the variables will come crashing down around me, leaving me stranded in the middle of a quiet road, more alone than when I started and almost certainly more dejected for having lost the fleeting assumption of perfection.

Maybe I do need a social life.