Then as now we are surrounded by waste. How often do people eat off of porcelain anymore. Paper. Plastic. Cheap and irrelevant. And so is our communication. A swipe or a button gets rid of days worth of conversation with your closest friend... Traceless. Painless. There are so very few rituals anymore.
I've kept letters from those first 6 months with X. God but weren't we ridiculous. I remember glass eyed, how little scraps of paper became offerings. Sacrifices... to each other. It was something arcane, and X felt as well as I that whatever we had thought about the world had been wrong. That nothing before that other simpler minds had thought true, necessarily was. That this was true. And that should we forget... should we grow old or be forced back from one another... we would have these artifacts. We would have bits and pieces of the way that were and that those ruins would lead us back to our own Mesopotamia.
I have all of those things. And even in the fall out of it all I couldn't throw them out. Something about the way each piece of paper and little bit of stolen stationary.... notebook pages, there was a translucent smoke that slowly seeped out of them. It was the very smell of justice. Of wholesome and honest affection... I know you're judging me for these remembrances. And you're more than welcome. But mark me this one thing... I still won't throw those letters away.
I can't imagine a time in my life were I will not want to remember the grit and the sweat and the reckless self abandon that came with first love. How the presence of that person. How holding those simplest of gift in my hands even to this day makes me feel like I alone watched creation. Like I, a dark specter... know the secrets of life.
I hate this fickle devotion to speed in our culture. There's nothing wrong with sitting down and having a conversation with someone without checking your phone every eight seconds. We are intended to interface and build memories of real breathing flesh and blood.
I'm not the best at it for sure. Lets be honest, sometimes it's easier to play angry birds or pay attention to who's checking in where on foursquare than it is to deal with that annoyingly nasal consonance of our acquaintances. Brothers I understand apathy. But we are the ones who miss out. We don't get to see life as nature gave it to us... We're watching the special on a flatscreen as Oprah narrates.
This was made all to painfully clear to me on the way home from Alabama. I had been out of contact with nearly every one for a week and sort of missed sharing pictures and video. Why not? I mean I missed the emoticons and the comradeship of sorts. But our electronic personalities are oh so very different than our real ones. Our real breathing persons.
I was Texting:
Gary> So how was the trip? Did you have fun?
ME< It was super fun! I'm so relaxed! If I was any more relaxed I would shit myself!
Gary> Mmmm. Mature.
ME<Shut up. How's your week going?
Gary> It's ok. Hey. So. Have you heard anything from David?
ME<Which one... Skinny tweeker David? Fat Dave Who Smells Like A Bird Cage?
Gary> Skinny tweeker one... He used to work with me...
ME<Oh no... I mean I saw him around before Mexico. He looks aweful.
Gary> Yeah. I was... he's not...
ME< He's dead?
:Minutes Pass:
Gary>Yeah.
Me<OD?
Gary> Suicide. I think. The obituary wasn't all that specific. I didn't want to be the one to tell you... I thought you might have known already.
Me<It's not exactly un-expected.He kept wanting to hang out and stuff... I just didn't have the time. I told him he needed to go to rehab.
Gary>Yeah. Well...
Me<Hey can we talk later?
Gary>Yeah cool.
I fiddled with the phone for a moment thinking it over. David. Wow. I felt guilty. I hadn't done anything. I rationalized.
The I flicked back to the conversation thread... and slid my thumb left to right across the polished glass surface.
I clicked delete.
