the ties that bind
yes, there will be a lot of posts today. I'm feeling a certain clarity that I haven't had for a while, so I think I'll write. I just came back from the gym and was suddenly struck that I know so many more people there than I did a few weeks ago. I seem to be quite popular with the guys in a rather pally way. I've never been good at making female friends. I feel threatened by other women. One of the guys I know has an identical twin and today I mistook him for his brother. I was so confused. I've been given the nickname "detroit" by a group of three black bball players from NW Christian college who lift at the SRC regularly for. They were once having a conversation about how stupid it is to see people try and act like "gangstas" in the NWest and I couldn't help but interject. I grew up in Michigan, not really metro Detroit, but I had a lot of experience with at least feeling like gangs were around. Before I moved, Justin and Alex were always going on and on about how there were so many drive-bys in Bellevue by the mall and when I did move, I found out this was total bull. I pictured a veritable massacre and only found a few pacific-islanders who THOUGHT they were tough and that it was "cool" to look like gang members. There really aren't gangs around here, or in Bellevue... at least, not ones that matter. This irony struck me when I first moved here, so I told these guys (who were laughing about it) that I felt the same way. We're pretty much been friends since then... they're all really nice. :) Next week, Justin and I will be having dinner, wine, and jacuzzing with Andrea and Cole again (our grown-up friends). I guess we did make a good impression on them, after all. ^^

I was thinking about all this while running, especially the interconnectedness of people. I saw myself as a great tree with leaves above and roots branching out below. I think when we meet, we entertwine. When we part, we either let the connection linger, not caring whether it lives or dies (and either is possible), we nurture it, or we try to disentangle a living connection and rip each other apart. The first two are natural, the second is not. You cannot disentangle a living connection without insipring death. You can only let time and the flow of nature determine whether it lives or dies. Much against our wills, sometimes strong twinings live even after we part, and that "knot" is something that causes us as much pain as joy. We cannot nurture it and we wish it only to pass peacefully but we cannot force death on that which is determined to live.

Actually, the way I saw all this in my mind was rather more like a great network of lines of energy and nodes which are the essence of being. When we connect with someone, we direct a line of our energy into their node and our energy mingles with their energy both inside of us and through the line which connects us. I think, generally, the connection has to be mutually accepted or the line can't be nurtured at will die. Where we meet is neither the color of one node nor the other, but a mingling of both. When we part, with acquiescence, the lines fade or they linger, lessened. I think that under certain strange circumstances, there can be a one-way connection or an interaction so strong that even after an attempt to force the line closed (painfully), it remains as strong as ever. When it does close, it leaves a wound in each node that is an emptiness of essence, a bruise that is the place still coloured by the other person, that is both you and them.

I've left too many people behind. I have a lot of bruises. I have a few lines I nurture, many more that have died, and some... that persist. I know what it feels like to give too much of yourself and then force close a connection that won't die. Like a razorblade, like giving your soul a charley horse. And then you want that part of yourself back, the part that you gave, the excess. You want it back to fill the hole where it left. But you can't ask for it back because it is no longer yours, it is another color, it is equally of another essence. And to ask for a return would be to ask for a gift that most people cannot give, a gift that would empart more tha is bargained for.

I ritualized giving an excess of energy once. I said "here, take of this, it is mine. you will always remember." There's so much given in even normal interaction that actually forcibly making a gift of my essence was a dangerous thing to do. I never realized it unti after. Until I spend a few months poking the bruise and realizing that there was a chunk of myself that I hadn't missed because it had been shared, and now was completely gone. The problem is mutuality. When a going away is mutual, the line shears in the middle. When one node gives more than the other and the *other* tries to cut the connection, the giving node suffers a deficit. When something is given as a gift, it is shared until the line is sheared and then it is gone. There is no giving back, you only keep what the other side has given in return. Or sometimes you can hack and hack at a line, fail to kill it, feel the void, and still be haunted. That feeling can kiss my ass. I think you know what I'm talking about, Blake.

Reference note for Confessional post: confusion

After working out and experiencing varying degrees of synethesia, I went to the showers. The same two people were there that've been there the last few days; a morbidly skinny anorexic woman (middle aged) and a strange, mottled-skinned asian girl. The asian girl was looking down at the tile, watching the water flow into the drain and the spray was plastering her hair to her neck. I couldn't help but think how much the short hairs on the back of her neck, straightened by the force of the shower, looked like a bar code. How wonderful this world can be... how wonderful, strange, and sad.




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