Untitled.
3 June 1998
![[ ]](http://mbpix.mushroom.net/19980603y.png)
okay. i have to just speak. to pour stuff out. i'm feeling so caught up in everything and so silent and i just need to scream even if it's only bits into the ether. it's not even that i have anything to say. i just need to open up and let it all out. maybe it's the music. i've been listening to the golden palominos all day. since i got up. and most of yesterday too. and this morning, driving into work, i was hoping there'd be mail from erin, and there was, and i read it, and it took me forever to respond. i couldn't get words out. and now i just want to talk and talk and talk and i have nothing to say.
before i started listening to the golden palominos this morning, i heard that semisonic song on the radio. the overplayed one, closing time. and it got me thinking. that "every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end" bit. i was thinking, i don't really have endings to my beginnings. things just sort of start and spiral around out of control and then either kinda fade but never really go away entirely (which is i guess what the song is about kinda, 'cause we've always got our memories, for what they're worth) or, and this is a good deal more common in my case, they just never go away at all, from the very beginnings, new thought patterns are set up, basically just electrical impulses that travel from neuron to neuron, the kind of thing that gets set up during an acid trip and you flash back to, or, if you read robert anton wilson or tim leary or such, the kinda thing that gets set up by major events in yr life like yr first sexual experience, but, it's so much more than just those major events. my whole life is one big acid flashback, or at least, it would be if that didn't sound so damn stupid.
okay. lets look at it from another angle. it's now been over five years (five years!) since allison and i somewhat officially broke up for the last time. and yet. and yet, i'm still as hung up on her, or at the very least on an entity of my own creation that bears her name, and for all intents and purposes overlaps the character whom she plays in my reality tunnel, as i was then. as i was a year before then, in china, half a world away, looking for something familiar to hold onto. as i was two years ago, the last time i saw her. it's been two years, two whole years, 730 or so days, since the last time i saw her. and yet.
the song implies, or really doesn't, but i'm inferring, that i can't embark on any new beginnings until that one, which started stirring more than six years ago, comes to a sufficient close. but, that's where things are different now than they have been. when i left nmh, i had no desire to go back any time soon. there was too much there that i just couldn't deal with. at umass, i had a crush on this chick named shannon, and i thought, rather naively in hindsight, that i was over allison. or, at least enough over her that she wasn't always there as the poem goes. and so, i went back to nmh. i met sonali. a beginning, which came from, i presumed, the end of the allison beginnings. things didn't work out with sonali, i met megan online, things didn't work out with megan, the allison beginnings spiraled back at me.
half a year later, one and a half years post breakup, i went back to nmh and spent some time with her. this is one of my happier memories of her. i'm sitting in east hall lounge, twirling some nifty stones (hers, from a felt pouch) in my hand, she is half napping, her head on my knee. later, i think it was later, she asks "do you think about me?" and i respond months later, in a prose poem i'll post on the net, but never share directly with her. months, years, later i see her again. she lights up my reality and leaves a shadow when she goes to find her new boyfriend. and later still, two years ago now, i saw her for the last time. we hug goodbye, i drive off into the sunset. i only hear from her once more, in email. she's terse. she says goodbye. she says have a nice life.
since then i've been in texas, i talked to a girl in a coffee shop. "you look familiar, have i seen you around?" she asks me. i would have liked to get to know her. "i'm only visiting" i say. i've been in california where i felt more alone than i had in years. i've fallen in love with complete strangers at they might be giants shows, a girl named jen? in palo alto, another girl in northampton. there was a girl at an opera in hartford, don something, a comedy, she was in the balcony, section c, front row i think, curly brown hair, skinny fingers. and yet. and yet allison is still there. "im [my] dreams, / drinking coffee, / watching movies, / just there. always."
but, you say, i haven't gotten to know any of these people. allison is lingering and keeping the new beginnings from starting. maybe. i don't know. i had a response to that, but by the simple fact that i'm not using it, it's proving the point that it was meant to refute. or at least lending it some more credence.
when asked, quite bluntly, by someone if my short/medium term goals included finding a wife, i responded that no, i'm a terrible romantic at heart, but i've been single so long that i've really gotten used to it. and really, i think i have. but then when i decide i have to let out whatever's going on inside, i come up with lots of stuff about relationships. i think part of it just stems from being lonely. i only have three friends who live within 100 miles. george, who i see every week or two. erin, who i can't seem to make plans with, which i'm sure says something about something. and bret, who i think i would hang out with more if it didn't mess up my metabolism, sleep cycles, etc, every time i did so. i wanna see sonali. i wanna see alex. i wanna see john. ernie. beth and kevin. the other beth. judie. it's been years since i saw most of them. all of them. and of course i have a hard time getting any of them to keep up a regular email correspondence. but of course, they don't spend their lives in front of these cursed machines for a living.
and so where has this got me? does any of this make sense? is it at all important? probably not. i just felt like talking.
before i started listening to the golden palominos this morning, i heard that semisonic song on the radio. the overplayed one, closing time. and it got me thinking. that "every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end" bit. i was thinking, i don't really have endings to my beginnings. things just sort of start and spiral around out of control and then either kinda fade but never really go away entirely (which is i guess what the song is about kinda, 'cause we've always got our memories, for what they're worth) or, and this is a good deal more common in my case, they just never go away at all, from the very beginnings, new thought patterns are set up, basically just electrical impulses that travel from neuron to neuron, the kind of thing that gets set up during an acid trip and you flash back to, or, if you read robert anton wilson or tim leary or such, the kinda thing that gets set up by major events in yr life like yr first sexual experience, but, it's so much more than just those major events. my whole life is one big acid flashback, or at least, it would be if that didn't sound so damn stupid.
okay. lets look at it from another angle. it's now been over five years (five years!) since allison and i somewhat officially broke up for the last time. and yet. and yet, i'm still as hung up on her, or at the very least on an entity of my own creation that bears her name, and for all intents and purposes overlaps the character whom she plays in my reality tunnel, as i was then. as i was a year before then, in china, half a world away, looking for something familiar to hold onto. as i was two years ago, the last time i saw her. it's been two years, two whole years, 730 or so days, since the last time i saw her. and yet.
the song implies, or really doesn't, but i'm inferring, that i can't embark on any new beginnings until that one, which started stirring more than six years ago, comes to a sufficient close. but, that's where things are different now than they have been. when i left nmh, i had no desire to go back any time soon. there was too much there that i just couldn't deal with. at umass, i had a crush on this chick named shannon, and i thought, rather naively in hindsight, that i was over allison. or, at least enough over her that she wasn't always there as the poem goes. and so, i went back to nmh. i met sonali. a beginning, which came from, i presumed, the end of the allison beginnings. things didn't work out with sonali, i met megan online, things didn't work out with megan, the allison beginnings spiraled back at me.
half a year later, one and a half years post breakup, i went back to nmh and spent some time with her. this is one of my happier memories of her. i'm sitting in east hall lounge, twirling some nifty stones (hers, from a felt pouch) in my hand, she is half napping, her head on my knee. later, i think it was later, she asks "do you think about me?" and i respond months later, in a prose poem i'll post on the net, but never share directly with her. months, years, later i see her again. she lights up my reality and leaves a shadow when she goes to find her new boyfriend. and later still, two years ago now, i saw her for the last time. we hug goodbye, i drive off into the sunset. i only hear from her once more, in email. she's terse. she says goodbye. she says have a nice life.
since then i've been in texas, i talked to a girl in a coffee shop. "you look familiar, have i seen you around?" she asks me. i would have liked to get to know her. "i'm only visiting" i say. i've been in california where i felt more alone than i had in years. i've fallen in love with complete strangers at they might be giants shows, a girl named jen? in palo alto, another girl in northampton. there was a girl at an opera in hartford, don something, a comedy, she was in the balcony, section c, front row i think, curly brown hair, skinny fingers. and yet. and yet allison is still there. "im [my] dreams, / drinking coffee, / watching movies, / just there. always."
but, you say, i haven't gotten to know any of these people. allison is lingering and keeping the new beginnings from starting. maybe. i don't know. i had a response to that, but by the simple fact that i'm not using it, it's proving the point that it was meant to refute. or at least lending it some more credence.
when asked, quite bluntly, by someone if my short/medium term goals included finding a wife, i responded that no, i'm a terrible romantic at heart, but i've been single so long that i've really gotten used to it. and really, i think i have. but then when i decide i have to let out whatever's going on inside, i come up with lots of stuff about relationships. i think part of it just stems from being lonely. i only have three friends who live within 100 miles. george, who i see every week or two. erin, who i can't seem to make plans with, which i'm sure says something about something. and bret, who i think i would hang out with more if it didn't mess up my metabolism, sleep cycles, etc, every time i did so. i wanna see sonali. i wanna see alex. i wanna see john. ernie. beth and kevin. the other beth. judie. it's been years since i saw most of them. all of them. and of course i have a hard time getting any of them to keep up a regular email correspondence. but of course, they don't spend their lives in front of these cursed machines for a living.
and so where has this got me? does any of this make sense? is it at all important? probably not. i just felt like talking.