(no subject)
i spent yesterday afternoon unironically tailgating a jimmy buffet concert down in the sports complex parking lots. i've never seen so much free food/beer in my life, or so many middle-aged drunk people in hideous clothes. i had a sudden vision of myself at 53, wearing a hawaiian shirt and lei, with a cheeseburger hat and a parrothead license plate sticking out of my grass skirt. going gray and wasted with my high school pals. how have i been missing out on these events for so many years?
the last week has been really wonderful. old friends, new friends, cute boys giving me their digits and walking me two miles late at night so i won't be alone. drinking beers on rooftops and watching airplanes descend overhead without a single twinge of envy. sitting on a stoop with a new friend and trying to explain to him the loneliness of meeting amazing new people every day, the kinds of people who could be your best friends if only they would stay another day, but who instead are gone by morning no matter how tightly you hold on to that last hug. the loneliness of lying awake in a two dollar hotel room in a dusty ghost town, counting the hours until you'll be on a boat headed back toward some semblance of familiarity. the loneliness that ultimately drove me back home. how can i make him understand? he asks all the right questions but also all the hard questions, the questions i've spent the last month trying to avoid. then there are myspace messages from a guy i met once or twice, years ago, who has just come back as well, who seems to understand, who writes himself of how "it can get terribly lonely when you stand alone, staring upon the commemoration of massacre."
i'm in a good place right now, a really good place, and i think i'm ready to be alone again, to read my journal again, to open up those books of war and genocide again, to stop creating distractions for myself and confront the reality of what i've seen and what i've learned, to keep my promise to myself never to forget. one night while camping in mongolia i realized, suddenly, that guilt is simply not constructive, but that inspiration and awe can be. and so there it is. the guilt of the last nine months has not dissolved (do i need to explain the overwhelming guilt that comes of being a tourist in war-torn and impoverished countries, of, say, being an american tourist in the most heavily bombed country in the history of warfare thanks to the US government?) but i want more than anything to put that behind me and allow the positive and beautiful things i saw, people i met, and stories i heard to motivate what i make of my life over the next few months/years. allowing myself to think about it again and write about it again is a start.
the last week has been really wonderful. old friends, new friends, cute boys giving me their digits and walking me two miles late at night so i won't be alone. drinking beers on rooftops and watching airplanes descend overhead without a single twinge of envy. sitting on a stoop with a new friend and trying to explain to him the loneliness of meeting amazing new people every day, the kinds of people who could be your best friends if only they would stay another day, but who instead are gone by morning no matter how tightly you hold on to that last hug. the loneliness of lying awake in a two dollar hotel room in a dusty ghost town, counting the hours until you'll be on a boat headed back toward some semblance of familiarity. the loneliness that ultimately drove me back home. how can i make him understand? he asks all the right questions but also all the hard questions, the questions i've spent the last month trying to avoid. then there are myspace messages from a guy i met once or twice, years ago, who has just come back as well, who seems to understand, who writes himself of how "it can get terribly lonely when you stand alone, staring upon the commemoration of massacre."
i'm in a good place right now, a really good place, and i think i'm ready to be alone again, to read my journal again, to open up those books of war and genocide again, to stop creating distractions for myself and confront the reality of what i've seen and what i've learned, to keep my promise to myself never to forget. one night while camping in mongolia i realized, suddenly, that guilt is simply not constructive, but that inspiration and awe can be. and so there it is. the guilt of the last nine months has not dissolved (do i need to explain the overwhelming guilt that comes of being a tourist in war-torn and impoverished countries, of, say, being an american tourist in the most heavily bombed country in the history of warfare thanks to the US government?) but i want more than anything to put that behind me and allow the positive and beautiful things i saw, people i met, and stories i heard to motivate what i make of my life over the next few months/years. allowing myself to think about it again and write about it again is a start.