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Burn it Down
Mar. 1st, 2004 02:27 pmLong night… begun well enough, and not ended badly, which is (I suppose) all I can ask for at present. Zig zagged up and down, and up and down the mountain with Thomas. Up the first time for lack of anywhere else to go, down the first time to seek out this big green spear of light that neither of us recognized down below, up again (once more) for lack of anywhere to go, down to hunt for French friends or some other kind of potatoey food. The green spike ended up being some kind of fixture on the new University library (which he is, of course, infinitely more familiar with than I). Likely, it was lit up some time over the weekend. Nothing particularly spectacular happened when we got there. I was hoping there would be aliens, or terrorists, or some kind of interdimensional rift…
We did not, however, go –inside- the library. Maybe that’s why we missed out on all the action.
It was strange to drive around the south side of town where I used to live. Looking down from the flank of that mountain, out across the sweep of shuddering lights, I felt very powerfully that I was initiating a closure with this city-… This city that has raised me, this city that I love. I know, probably within this very journal, that I have cursed this place in which I live for myriad reasons. It has been, however, a mother to me… and like my own mother, I love and hate it; it alternately oppresses and uplifts me. And I could say, to my passenger and with some finality that I knew he understood (and understood the sundry reasons for) that I would be ‘leaving this place soon’. He said, there would be other lights. And I said it wouldn’t be the same. And he agreed, confirming that it’s never the same. And I said it wouldn’t be the same when I came back for it, either. But this is the way things work, here. My childhoods fade backward into time and darkness, and this present that so sooths and enrages me is only a still, brittle frame, that I must soon enough abandon.
I’ve realized that, the less I sleep, the less lucid I am about the world at large… and that’s likely the reason I’ve been avoiding it so much. Spending the weekend –getting- a reasonable amount of rest made me realize how easy it was to understand the world, when one is rested, and how little of it was computing in the back of my mind beforehand. Made me realize the depth and bredth of the sadness I am feeling, for uprooting this life that I had worked very hard for. I had so much invested in this, financially, emotionally, that it seems such a shame to go and shift it all around now. And it hurts. But, I can’t… I can’t recant. I can’t take this back. I do not doubt, either… which is perhaps more horrifying.
There is much here I cannot leave behind… my brother, my sister, this place… and still, I’m drawn away, pulled to an uncertain fate. And… I burn here. To a cinder. Maybe when winter passes I’ll be able to search out a moments peace among the flowering forest, like I was once so prone to do… but I fear for it a great deal. I fear, a great deal.
What happened to the spirit, with all its endless strength? Did they swallow her up, and put me in her place?
We did not, however, go –inside- the library. Maybe that’s why we missed out on all the action.
It was strange to drive around the south side of town where I used to live. Looking down from the flank of that mountain, out across the sweep of shuddering lights, I felt very powerfully that I was initiating a closure with this city-… This city that has raised me, this city that I love. I know, probably within this very journal, that I have cursed this place in which I live for myriad reasons. It has been, however, a mother to me… and like my own mother, I love and hate it; it alternately oppresses and uplifts me. And I could say, to my passenger and with some finality that I knew he understood (and understood the sundry reasons for) that I would be ‘leaving this place soon’. He said, there would be other lights. And I said it wouldn’t be the same. And he agreed, confirming that it’s never the same. And I said it wouldn’t be the same when I came back for it, either. But this is the way things work, here. My childhoods fade backward into time and darkness, and this present that so sooths and enrages me is only a still, brittle frame, that I must soon enough abandon.
I’ve realized that, the less I sleep, the less lucid I am about the world at large… and that’s likely the reason I’ve been avoiding it so much. Spending the weekend –getting- a reasonable amount of rest made me realize how easy it was to understand the world, when one is rested, and how little of it was computing in the back of my mind beforehand. Made me realize the depth and bredth of the sadness I am feeling, for uprooting this life that I had worked very hard for. I had so much invested in this, financially, emotionally, that it seems such a shame to go and shift it all around now. And it hurts. But, I can’t… I can’t recant. I can’t take this back. I do not doubt, either… which is perhaps more horrifying.
There is much here I cannot leave behind… my brother, my sister, this place… and still, I’m drawn away, pulled to an uncertain fate. And… I burn here. To a cinder. Maybe when winter passes I’ll be able to search out a moments peace among the flowering forest, like I was once so prone to do… but I fear for it a great deal. I fear, a great deal.
What happened to the spirit, with all its endless strength? Did they swallow her up, and put me in her place?