Today was interesting. I picked the right day for this: AKG left a blanket which i believe once belonged to her brother or was hers from childhood, at my place in short beach and i still had it up until earlier. I had that, a hair tie, a newspaper article she reluctantly gave to me, and a flash drive with her website and a bunch of other files on it.
I tried texting her, to ask if i could give it back to her any other way besides just leaving it on her porch. but after 8 minutes i realized that wasn't going to work, and she wasn't going to write me back, and I would just have to leave it on her porch anyways. so i walked it all over, and sure enough, her father and brother were both moving her stuff out of the apartment she was living in around the corner.
I saw her father, in the house, and her brother in the truck. and i dropped the blanket with the newspaper on top of it onto the steps without setting foot on the property. i said to her father, "hi, you must be jonathan. these are yours." those were my exact words, and i left her blanket and everything else. And i didn't introduce myself, or tell him what my name was. Or ask him how things were going, or if i could see alexis. It was clear that I was just there to drop off stuff - and im sure that with the timing of it all, there was probably some question in his mind as to whether alexis asked me to bring the stuff over in the first place, which of course she didn't. because the timing was spot on.
what i loved about that experience is that i had heard him talk to her before on the phone. i had been witness to many very personal and intimate conversations he had with his daughter. as well as hearing her brother speak on the phone with her. these are two people whom i felt that i knew really well. but neither knew i existed.
well now they do. because otherwise why else would i have her blanket and her hair tie and everything else. so i found that to be a very interesting experience. it was intense: i mean, her father is jonathan edwards gage. he's a descendant of jonathan edwards. part of the reason why she thinks she's hot stuff or whatever. and that was my first and perhaps last interaction with him. but who cares.
there was nothing so poetic as leaving a blanket at his feet as he moved his daughter out of her apartment and his son watched from the moving van. i turned around and walked away without saying another word.
Saturday, June 17, 2017
Friday, June 2, 2017
Messy Humans
I’m not one for sentimental homages to the perfect life, and in my life I’ve never experienced the plot arch of a typical love story: that a woman appears in a man’s life out of nowhere, she professes her love for him, to which he responds by prioritizing her happiness above all else, maybe there’s some conflict in there, and they both end up happily ever after.
Well, everything up to the happily ever after part. My history is a quagmire of messy break-up’s and failed relationships. Love is a story we tell each other. It’s one we tell ourselves, and it’s one told by others - often quietly in the comfort of our own homes, out of the reach of strangers, recanted passionately in the stories we tell our friends and family about why the so-and-so’s just aren’t in our lives anymore. There’s a pat on the back, a ‘you’ll find the right person,’ and the offer of a distraction, like to read more books or practice some kind of exercise.
In terms of self-betterment, I’ve put those things aside as a waste of time. And it’s good that I’m writing you this rather than telling you in person, because surely you’d immediately try to convince me otherwise: reading and exercise are not a waste of time. I exercise my mind when I write, and I don’t do that enough. So it’s time to get back into it.
Now, at this stage, everything is screenplays, or internal dialogue. I’ve lived in the same city my entire life, and I can’t go anywhere without running into some ex-girlfriend or seeing my initials next to hers with a heart in the middle. The most difficult part of a break-up, psychologically, is the separation between two people who are technically the same individual: the woman you thought you knew when you met her, and the person whom you find her out to be. Or the guy who completely changed the day something happened, and afterwards he was never the same.
Those types of scenarios are common in people’s lives, and I would say that the rate of failed relationships to successful ones actually surpasses it in number by many fold, not just because of divorce but also due to all of the other relationships which don’t even make it to engagements. The graveyard of false promises, and lost hope, this field of names carved into stone.
Some people have almost a contempt for love. They want it to fail. They’d rather see something crash and burn into a flaming wreckage simply because it would be more entertaining. Their minds can’t contemplate the possibility of one more day of waking up and having oat meal by the window, sitting opposite him or her reading the paper, or nowadays flipping around on his or her cellphone, reading literally whatever. The concept that one day could lead to another along this endless stream of repetitive blunders, relieved only by a chance encounter of some sort.
Women are crazy. Men are crazy. People are crazy.
And there is this debate over what are facts, and what is truth, and it seems to continue no matter what people say, or how strong their opinions are. It could be that we’ll never know, but what makes it so much more difficult is just how challenging coming to a consensus can actually be, and to some extent that is the source of much failure in many relationships. Once someone puts their foot down and says “i’m not budging” it’s as though the force of continental drift takes over and slowly tears it all away. Rips it to shreds.
Song, please.
Well, everything up to the happily ever after part. My history is a quagmire of messy break-up’s and failed relationships. Love is a story we tell each other. It’s one we tell ourselves, and it’s one told by others - often quietly in the comfort of our own homes, out of the reach of strangers, recanted passionately in the stories we tell our friends and family about why the so-and-so’s just aren’t in our lives anymore. There’s a pat on the back, a ‘you’ll find the right person,’ and the offer of a distraction, like to read more books or practice some kind of exercise.
In terms of self-betterment, I’ve put those things aside as a waste of time. And it’s good that I’m writing you this rather than telling you in person, because surely you’d immediately try to convince me otherwise: reading and exercise are not a waste of time. I exercise my mind when I write, and I don’t do that enough. So it’s time to get back into it.
Now, at this stage, everything is screenplays, or internal dialogue. I’ve lived in the same city my entire life, and I can’t go anywhere without running into some ex-girlfriend or seeing my initials next to hers with a heart in the middle. The most difficult part of a break-up, psychologically, is the separation between two people who are technically the same individual: the woman you thought you knew when you met her, and the person whom you find her out to be. Or the guy who completely changed the day something happened, and afterwards he was never the same.
Those types of scenarios are common in people’s lives, and I would say that the rate of failed relationships to successful ones actually surpasses it in number by many fold, not just because of divorce but also due to all of the other relationships which don’t even make it to engagements. The graveyard of false promises, and lost hope, this field of names carved into stone.
Some people have almost a contempt for love. They want it to fail. They’d rather see something crash and burn into a flaming wreckage simply because it would be more entertaining. Their minds can’t contemplate the possibility of one more day of waking up and having oat meal by the window, sitting opposite him or her reading the paper, or nowadays flipping around on his or her cellphone, reading literally whatever. The concept that one day could lead to another along this endless stream of repetitive blunders, relieved only by a chance encounter of some sort.
Women are crazy. Men are crazy. People are crazy.
And there is this debate over what are facts, and what is truth, and it seems to continue no matter what people say, or how strong their opinions are. It could be that we’ll never know, but what makes it so much more difficult is just how challenging coming to a consensus can actually be, and to some extent that is the source of much failure in many relationships. Once someone puts their foot down and says “i’m not budging” it’s as though the force of continental drift takes over and slowly tears it all away. Rips it to shreds.
Song, please.
The Feeling of Being In Love
I always thought that couples who sat opposite one another at dinner were doing it all wrong. I felt that sitting alongside someone allowed both to have a clear view of what the other was seeing. And then it wouldn’t become this echo chamber where the only ones who exist in the world is each other. There must somehow exist this shared perspective in order for the world to exist.
As time wore me down, I faced the same threats; of emptiness and loneliness. I had almost given up on the idea of companionship. The very thought that I could find someone to coexist with, who would be there to listen to my day and make dinner with me, and that if we did something else it was expected but discussed – not from fear or ownership or possessiveness but purely out of respect. I had been wondering if that was possible.
I fell in love for the first time at the age of 18. I was in college at Suny Purchase, and I was taking the only art class I ever took in my entire life. It was a photography course, and I was learning how to take, print and develop standard 35 mm film. There was a girl in the class, and we got paired up on an assignment and it was then in the darkroom that I ever felt the warm touch of a loving soul. A couple weeks later we were making out on a trampoline I had assembled far into the woods of the college campus, and at that point I felt pretty sure that I was experiencing what I thought or was hoping could be the feeling of being in love.
I’ve heard it more times in my life than having heard anyone tell me “Ian, I’m in love with you.” I’ve never heard anyone say that to me in my entire life. What I have heard, on occasion, is something to the effect of “I love you, but I’m not in love with you,” and every time after months and months (sometimes years) of placing all of my trust and hope and energy into a relationhip, I find my self puzzled and perplexed as to what that means. And to some extent, why I keep hearing it from different females.
Maybe it’s because I want everything from the one that I’m with. I want more than what would be considered reasonable. And I give more than what would be considered normal. The influx of generosity and complete wide openness doesn’t always work in my favor.
I got lost on a winding road with hens and chickens and all kinds of ducks. It was the back entrance to the trolley museum, and I found myself out there trying to find myself on these dirt roads full of farm animals not too far away from my hometown. Those were decent years.
These were solitary, quiet, peaceful and placative years. It was time spent really beside myself in awe of the beauty of nature – and the solace of solitude. I spent all my afternoons hanging with the ghosts in the house, wondering when my friends would come and visit.
It happened that perhaps all of that time was worth it. But the minute I found someone to potentially share it with, it all was taken away. I guess the message was that it wasn’t mine to share. And I get that, in a way. And it was better that she knew right away that was the case, rather than to mislead her into thinking that I was in any way shape or form responsible for the place – even though I believe my actions had an impact on the outcome of the place.
Years later< I still wonder what it is that I’m looking for. There’s no way to deny it, I most certainly am. I don’t want to be alone, and the world at large seems to have the same attitude: what’s the point. As thoug the idea of finding true love is a meaningless quest or pursuit, and I don’t believe that one bit. I happen to think that we all have a place and a goal and reasons for us to be here. And I was missing that for a while.
Down the path of rail leading us quietly into the maze of repeat patterns that is New York City,at the other end of that tunnel is a little place that I call home. It’s not like anywhere else in the world, and I believe that as time goes on, it will become even more different from the rest of the world, to the point where it will not resemble any other city.
I was always hoping for something like this… I was hoping for a woman to change my perspective. Someon who I could take to this magical place that I called home, to introduce her to all of the people who mattered to me. And it’s unrealistic to believe in this because it’s just fantasy to believe that someone would want to drop everything they were doing just to absorb every aspect of your life, and who would always know exactly what to say. And if I hadn’t experienced this in small dosages, mostly at the beginning of great but doomed to fail attachments to previous former lovers, the same ones who would say to me, “Ian I love you, but I’m not in love with you.”
There were times when I felt that the stories that I found endearing about myself, which were often tales of loss, hopeless optimism and redemption, that the message would become clear: no matter how much crazy stuff would happen to me, and regardless of the madness that I would face, I would always figure out a way to make it all work - and that’s how I became who I am. There needed to be some level of acceptance on that level for anyone who really truly wanted to get to know me, simply because it was such a strong part of what defined me.
There were times in the past when I truly believed that everything would always work out and there were times when I was faced in situations which made me ersiously question that. And throughout many of these steps, money was certainly absent from the picture, both as a plot design and simply as a form of tension. That iw as there only to drive the plot along, at certain points, but never there to buy me a car or take me on a trip when I needed any of that; because, for years, I didn’t need anything extra.
I was happy to go about living the same existence nearly every day. I felt that in some way I would be exempt from aging if everything each day stayed exactly the same. My body wouldn’t notice that time was occurring. Of course we all know that this is not the case, and in the process there’s arguably more work to be done to fix up the place. That still doesn’t’ stop me from saying that I welcome I and would never discourage anyone sitting by him or herself on a Friday night to ditch the same old friends and go on an adventure; or go on a walk to a place you haven’t been, or take a look at something from a perspective that hasn’t been already made into a movie somehow.
I was under the belief I met her in real life, several times over. But it turns out I was only seeing her shine through different sides of people I was meeting. I wasn’t sure if this was good enough in terms of proof, because what I was looking for really amounted to a quest to find god; or some version of the perfect human being who could bring me eternal happiness who was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen in my life.
In that sense, a woman can be like a god to a man. And you really can’t help but thing there’s something of an almost worshipful quality to any truly deep and powerful romantic relationship. What makes us always wonder what the truth is, when the facts are so obvious and in our face? Why should we bring one another through these loud and impersonal arguments about nothing in particular.
To see traffic patterns in cars sand then convert it to video games has been quite a task, but well worth every bit of it. To have a place called home we could both go to, and to find that place in each other’s hearts; these were not things that I found to be impossible, because I could see that it happened fro others with loving partners whom they could trust with their lives and entrust with their secrets in hopes of trading those for happiness – I believed it was possible and not worth giving up on believing.
I could see these specific places, these little moments in time which only lasted an instant. There were nights spent lost in the freezing cold, wondering if I would ever make it home. And other times I found myself not sure where home really was. Told as a story, to most women it seemed dangerous and sketchy to know that I knew what it was like to be homeless. But to her, she’d find it to be a source of strength as it actually is, rather than a sign of my weakness.
As time wore me down, I faced the same threats; of emptiness and loneliness. I had almost given up on the idea of companionship. The very thought that I could find someone to coexist with, who would be there to listen to my day and make dinner with me, and that if we did something else it was expected but discussed – not from fear or ownership or possessiveness but purely out of respect. I had been wondering if that was possible.
I fell in love for the first time at the age of 18. I was in college at Suny Purchase, and I was taking the only art class I ever took in my entire life. It was a photography course, and I was learning how to take, print and develop standard 35 mm film. There was a girl in the class, and we got paired up on an assignment and it was then in the darkroom that I ever felt the warm touch of a loving soul. A couple weeks later we were making out on a trampoline I had assembled far into the woods of the college campus, and at that point I felt pretty sure that I was experiencing what I thought or was hoping could be the feeling of being in love.
I’ve heard it more times in my life than having heard anyone tell me “Ian, I’m in love with you.” I’ve never heard anyone say that to me in my entire life. What I have heard, on occasion, is something to the effect of “I love you, but I’m not in love with you,” and every time after months and months (sometimes years) of placing all of my trust and hope and energy into a relationhip, I find my self puzzled and perplexed as to what that means. And to some extent, why I keep hearing it from different females.
Maybe it’s because I want everything from the one that I’m with. I want more than what would be considered reasonable. And I give more than what would be considered normal. The influx of generosity and complete wide openness doesn’t always work in my favor.
I got lost on a winding road with hens and chickens and all kinds of ducks. It was the back entrance to the trolley museum, and I found myself out there trying to find myself on these dirt roads full of farm animals not too far away from my hometown. Those were decent years.
These were solitary, quiet, peaceful and placative years. It was time spent really beside myself in awe of the beauty of nature – and the solace of solitude. I spent all my afternoons hanging with the ghosts in the house, wondering when my friends would come and visit.
It happened that perhaps all of that time was worth it. But the minute I found someone to potentially share it with, it all was taken away. I guess the message was that it wasn’t mine to share. And I get that, in a way. And it was better that she knew right away that was the case, rather than to mislead her into thinking that I was in any way shape or form responsible for the place – even though I believe my actions had an impact on the outcome of the place.
Years later< I still wonder what it is that I’m looking for. There’s no way to deny it, I most certainly am. I don’t want to be alone, and the world at large seems to have the same attitude: what’s the point. As thoug the idea of finding true love is a meaningless quest or pursuit, and I don’t believe that one bit. I happen to think that we all have a place and a goal and reasons for us to be here. And I was missing that for a while.
Down the path of rail leading us quietly into the maze of repeat patterns that is New York City,at the other end of that tunnel is a little place that I call home. It’s not like anywhere else in the world, and I believe that as time goes on, it will become even more different from the rest of the world, to the point where it will not resemble any other city.
I was always hoping for something like this… I was hoping for a woman to change my perspective. Someon who I could take to this magical place that I called home, to introduce her to all of the people who mattered to me. And it’s unrealistic to believe in this because it’s just fantasy to believe that someone would want to drop everything they were doing just to absorb every aspect of your life, and who would always know exactly what to say. And if I hadn’t experienced this in small dosages, mostly at the beginning of great but doomed to fail attachments to previous former lovers, the same ones who would say to me, “Ian I love you, but I’m not in love with you.”
There were times when I felt that the stories that I found endearing about myself, which were often tales of loss, hopeless optimism and redemption, that the message would become clear: no matter how much crazy stuff would happen to me, and regardless of the madness that I would face, I would always figure out a way to make it all work - and that’s how I became who I am. There needed to be some level of acceptance on that level for anyone who really truly wanted to get to know me, simply because it was such a strong part of what defined me.
There were times in the past when I truly believed that everything would always work out and there were times when I was faced in situations which made me ersiously question that. And throughout many of these steps, money was certainly absent from the picture, both as a plot design and simply as a form of tension. That iw as there only to drive the plot along, at certain points, but never there to buy me a car or take me on a trip when I needed any of that; because, for years, I didn’t need anything extra.
I was happy to go about living the same existence nearly every day. I felt that in some way I would be exempt from aging if everything each day stayed exactly the same. My body wouldn’t notice that time was occurring. Of course we all know that this is not the case, and in the process there’s arguably more work to be done to fix up the place. That still doesn’t’ stop me from saying that I welcome I and would never discourage anyone sitting by him or herself on a Friday night to ditch the same old friends and go on an adventure; or go on a walk to a place you haven’t been, or take a look at something from a perspective that hasn’t been already made into a movie somehow.
I was under the belief I met her in real life, several times over. But it turns out I was only seeing her shine through different sides of people I was meeting. I wasn’t sure if this was good enough in terms of proof, because what I was looking for really amounted to a quest to find god; or some version of the perfect human being who could bring me eternal happiness who was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen in my life.
In that sense, a woman can be like a god to a man. And you really can’t help but thing there’s something of an almost worshipful quality to any truly deep and powerful romantic relationship. What makes us always wonder what the truth is, when the facts are so obvious and in our face? Why should we bring one another through these loud and impersonal arguments about nothing in particular.
To see traffic patterns in cars sand then convert it to video games has been quite a task, but well worth every bit of it. To have a place called home we could both go to, and to find that place in each other’s hearts; these were not things that I found to be impossible, because I could see that it happened fro others with loving partners whom they could trust with their lives and entrust with their secrets in hopes of trading those for happiness – I believed it was possible and not worth giving up on believing.
I could see these specific places, these little moments in time which only lasted an instant. There were nights spent lost in the freezing cold, wondering if I would ever make it home. And other times I found myself not sure where home really was. Told as a story, to most women it seemed dangerous and sketchy to know that I knew what it was like to be homeless. But to her, she’d find it to be a source of strength as it actually is, rather than a sign of my weakness.