7th Thought

Hello--

I'm trying to think about multiple things simultaneously but can't really do it because right now I'm ruled by the sad passion of envy; not even the sad passion of envy, there's another emotion in there, regret, maybe? Resentment mixed in? Fear, apprehension at the future? All of those are sad passions. I'm thinking about someone I used to know in college who I desperately wanted to be friends with, but couldn't for a variety of reasons, even though the door was open temporarily -- I just dropped the ball and then didn't want to appear desperate by stooping to pick it up again, and my striving to not pick it up again was perceptible, no, obvious, which I didn't realize at the time, but I see now with the hindsight of several years. It's painful for me to talk about this. Even though I'm clinging to my copy of The Ethics like an inflatable dingy in the cold swells, it feels flimsy, full of air, and the water is multitudinous and regret and pain turns the seas incarnadine. That makes me think about another moment but with a different person from high school, a memory having to do with Hamlet, and it's hard for me to read that play now without thinking about that moment, or that person, or how I was shockingly cruel to them and humiliated them because I was angry, and now how that person is friends with so many people I want to be friends with, and I can't be friends with those people because the person I humiliated is friends with them, and I would have to reconfront that memory over and over and over, even though we live far apart and at this point I only know them through some apps on my phone. Whatever they decide to post. I wish I had the fortitude to talk about what I'm talking about more directly, and I know I apologize too much, but this I should apologize for, here, not being direct; I can't look things like this in the eyes because they're too raw, too stark, too... what's the word I'm searching for? They make my own failures and shortcomings and flaws as a person too apparent, too obvious. There's nothing for me to hide behind and I need something to conceal myself with. And yes, sure, you'll stop thinking about what others think of you when you realize how seldom they do, and they think of me seldom, and while I want to be friends with all the people I'm vaguely alluding to in this paragraph, I don't want them to think of me because they'll think of me as they knew me and know me and not how I want to be thought of. I would reopen the pain for both of us. Most of this (all of this?) is protective on my side; as in, this is the elaborate justification/rationalization I've cooked up to avoid confronting all this, and large parts of this (all of this?) are probably wrong. That's fine. I'll accept that. Pain hurts worse than pleasure feels good, one of deus sive natura's cruel little funnies. And the free man thinks least of death. And this is a kind of death, a sort of death. So I don't think about it and direct myself elsewhere. This is avoidance, yes. But what they never tell you about avoidance is that it works, and they never give you a reason against avoidance other than "but you just can't avoid, okay, you just can't," which isn't a reason, it's a plea. And I cannot fucking stand neediness and desperation because by nature I am a needy, desperate person, and I don't like being around things or people who remind me too much of myself.

This hurts to even allude to, because typing this out describes not the thing itself, the things I'm thinking about themselves, that is, but points to its direction, gestures at its contours, and while you, the reader, don't know the things I'm talking about, I do, and pointing to them, gesturing to them, serve to make them more real. Forming a clear and distinct idea of them is difficult because I have to interact with them. I know, I shouldn't talk about myself too much. But no matter what you point at, you're the one doing the pointing.

I started writing this at around 8:30PM and hit on something too real while writing it and fled to the Internet to distract myself. It's now 10:11PM. Right now I feel lost, adrift, out-of-joint with the world. I know this doesn't reflect reality but things just feel intolerable. I want connection and I cannot stand connection. Womp womp. This all sounds ambiently suicidal or something, but trust that I don't mean it in the "belt around my neck this time I'm really gonna do it" way, that's not at all what I'm talking about, more just feeling wounded and defeated and sad about it. There was so much I wanted to do today and I pissed the time away into screens instead, blasting Twitter into my face, trying to understand this AI paper or that article about AI. What am I doing with my life? What am I doing with myself?

But none of this is interesting to read. Not for you, not for me, and I'd prefer not to talk about it, and prefer not to let the sad passions take root and strengthen and gain weight, shape, depth, breadth. I'm too close to them right now to be objective about them, even if this state of mind/cast of mood allows me to be more objective about things that I can't be objective about when in a happier or more joyous state. If that makes sense. And now it's 10:30PM, and the sad passions came over me again, and I ran to the internet again to distract myself. And now I'm back. Hopefully I can redirect myself to stay for longer this time. I really should just keep a tab open that's a short story I've bookmarked to read later; I even have the folder all ready to go on my bookmarks toolbar, titled "stories to read" (creative lol) and it's filled with short stories in litmags that I haven't read yet. Unfortunately this requires focus and I'm not particularly good at making myself focus on something, which, well, this should be obvious by now. And again, more time has passed, it's 11:27PM, I lost more time to staring into the internet for nothing, for no reason.

An image; lying flat on your back in the bottom of a grave in the woods, looking up at the shifting, green light. Two men holding shovels crouch over the lip, one in a white t-shirt, the other in a black t-shirt. "Shit, I knew that guy," says the guy in the black t-shirt. "He was funny all the time." The guy in the white t-shirt frowns and says "He wasn't that funny. Mostly just kinda sad to watch." The guy in the black t-shirt shrugs and says "it was funny if you thought about it." The guy in the white t-shirt says "did he?" and the black t-shirt says "did he what?" and the white t-shirt says "think about it." The black t-shirt looks up at the green and squints in the light, thinking. "I don't think so," he says. "I was more talking about us." The guy in the white t-shirt shrugs and throws a shovelful of dirt onto you. The black t-shirt stands and stretches and does the same. They do this until there's just cool soil and muffled wind and then no light and no soil and no wind.

Anyway. Three people just crossed the parking lot outside my window, wearing heavy jackets and thick pants even though it's 78 degrees out right now. They pass under the streetlight and their skin looks silver. One turns back twisting his head to say something to the lagging third, whose face is condensing in the watery vapor blue light from her phone, and when he turns the streetlight opens the gap between his jacket and his shirt and there's the little yellow of a design's corner coming on his shoulder, and the woman on her phone laughs, short and sharp into her phone, and then she puts it in her pocket and her face slips back into shadow, and then they walk out of the streetlight's radius and they're shaped dark forms again, and then they pass behind my bedroom wall and vanish. I imagine that they're coming out of a party. There's a light on on the third floor hallway apartment, and because their blinds are open I can see into the room -- not much, the top plane of the bed, picture frames on the walls, part of a mirror, the entire room in a soft, watermelon-colored washed-out light from what has to be a floor lamp in the corner, but I'm postulating the floor lamp. Nobody's in the room now but I've seen people there before on warm Friday nights like this one with the window cracked. Laughing with each other, smiling, arms pinwheeling and bodies leaning back when someone cracks a good joke, passing around a joint and taking turns to stoop in front of the cracked window to loose gritty smoke into the air. God, the air is so thick this time of year, humid, almost gelatinous, even at night. When they have parties or get-togethers they turn on the ceiling fan and when I watch them through the gap in my blinds that I make with my fingers I can see the edges of their hair lift and jostle in the fan's rotor-wash. The room's empty now but I can still see them there if I squint and force all the neurons to fire at once and then they're there again, and the three people walking, and her sharp, white laugh.