death walnuts
Whenever I’m between jobs, I return to my dad’s house in southern California. At first, I was pulled back, but now I return out of habit, or perhaps out of laziness. In a way, I’ve come to loathe this place. Once it was all I knew, and I loved it. What it’s still here, I have grown, while it has ossified and degenerated. The things I loved, the things that were most meaningful have died, disassociated, or fallen into disrepair. It’s hard to love a place that rots from the inside. When I’m here, I know I’m dying.
When I was living in Whiskeytown, I had purpose. It was a lonely life, but wholesome; like being a hermit in an untainted wilderness. It had a freedom that someplace like Walnut can no longer have.
When I visited my sister in SF, I could walk into great parks, that were sadly being overrun by invasive monsters, and there was vague threat from vagrants living in the bushes, but it had a hopeful feel. Things could be good there. I could walk out my door and go to the beach, or hang out at a variety of coffee shops, or walk through a multitude of parks, and have 95% positive interaction with the world.
In walnut, positive interaction is the minority. The world is of noise and dirt and excess and decay; decay of place, and a seeming decay of culture. My house was broken into while I was gone, for the second time in 5 years. I lost nothing but my faith in mankind. The world is darker here, more isolated, and without ways to escape. Here, there’s nowhere for me to go, nothing for me to do. I have no purpose, therefore I am dead, again.
I have few strong friendships left with anyone, anywhere, and none are left in southern CA. when I’m elsewhere, this is ok, because I’m new, and unsettled; I may be lonely, but understandably so. Here, my good friendships have ended, or moved away, becoming intangible; I have quasifriends: acquaintances whom I share common purposes with, but whom I don’t associate with outside that common thread. Many I’d like to call friends, but I don’t know how to make it so. I spend so much time by myself, that I don’t know how to interact except through common purposes. I need to be busy, or I will be asleep, dead. I interact through activity: I like to make things, or help with other’s needs, I like playing games of all sorts; I need something to distract myself partly from the people I’m with, or I will never feel comfortable around them: I need an excuse to interact.
I don’t understand why I’m like this, or how other people can be anything other than like this, but I realize that there’s more out there than what I am… I just can’t get to it. If I’m in a situation without purpose to interact through, I’m restless, and want to leave just to be doing SOMETHING.