2002-06-19 :: 1:58 a.m.

communications and ruminations

Soundtrack: DJ Shadow, The Private Press

Dude, Explorer, Windows 95, don't fucking crash on me. I lost my beginning... let's try that again.

I got my big old Amazon package today, and yet again some blade they use during packing damaged some of the merchandise. The beautiful cover of Jimmy Corrigan has a smooth slice through the binding area, just as the box for my copy of Xen Cuts was cut when I bought it over a year ago. I didn't do anything about the box set, though it remains unopened (who's anal?). This is ridiculous, though. I'm complaining tomorrow. At least the rest of the shipment wasn't screwed up beyond a little smooshing of How To Solve It -- it's a paperback, and Amazon is mail-order, but there's something about much-awaited new books arriving pre-dinged that is really frustrating.

The Great Cleaning began in relative earnest today as I prepare to move my stuff out of my parents' and to my own place (weird, weird, weird to write that). I just sorted through and somewhat pared down my overstuffed mail drawer. The letters and notes in there took me back to all sorts of strange times. I could see how I evolved, sort of, but some pieces of me seemed like they hadn't changed much at all and were well-formed even at fifteen.

I found the notes from CTY friends particularly striking in terms of the intensity, passion, boredom-induced restlessness that they all generally exhibit. I loved CTY. Most of my CTY friendships now are not so intense or closely tended to, and many have tapered off. There are letters I meant to answer but never did. One in particular stands out, from a girl who quoted "Rocket" to me (I think I had yet to discover the genius and purity that is Siamese Dream at the time). She wrote "I miss you" several times at random points throughout the letter. I stared at her name, her return address. Who was this? Sadly, I couldn't even call up a face to go with the name. It doesn't really matter since she's across the country (or was, at the time), but my ability to be totally oblivious never ceases to amaze me. Some of the letters are from unrequited crushes of my own, long-expired relationships, or long-expired "relationships." I sometimes wonder how those people remember me, or if they even do. And I wonder how these people who wanted to stay in touch with me remember me, if they even do. It is usually reassuring in some way to be remembered, but if I am remembered in the light I imagine I may be after reading some of these long forgotten missives -- and realizing I was often the one to fall out of touch -- then perhaps it isn't so reassuring after all.

We like to keep certain people in our life because they are living metaphors for the times we have spent with them. I see it happen with ex's all the time until a nuclear meltdown occurs between them. I wonder if part of the reason the intensity of most of my CTY friendships fizzled out is because there is only so long you can replay a few three-week camp sessions and have it be the basis for interacting. To not find oneself in this sad state of affairs, the friend in question has to be kept in the proverbial loop, requiring all sorts of tiring todayidid communiques (or, God help us, Diaryland entries and mass emails), polls for opinions, and the like. And perhaps the other end of the metaphorical spectrum, the unhappy reminders of the low points of being a teenager, the misery and boredom and loneliness (despite all of the talking and writing), are less welcome now with the advent of somewhat stronger opinions, a more clear sense of self, the [partial] clearing of the hormonal cloud. (Look at all those qualifers.) What I care about has also changed, but it's surprisingly hard to describe just what those changes are. I don't think it's that I care about fewer things, or that the quantity of things I care about decreased while the breadth of each individual care increased, or that I resigned myself to not caring because I know that answers are probably never coming for the big questions. It's obvious, though, that the daily concerns that come with joining the working world leave a lot less time for the ruminating of yesteryear, and therefore less time for the communications surrounding those ruminations.

It may be a faulty perception or overgeneralization on my part, but it seems we don't feel a need to hash out our lives when we are happy as much as we do when we are unhappy. The past few months have been very good to me, full of really wonderful events and happy moments of all kinds. I would want to write about them, sort of, but never really got around to it, falling back time and again on the excuse that I was busy "living in the moment." Maybe I was. Maybe journaling about it would have ruined the streak. When I catch up with people now, finally, and I take a moment to listen to myself, I hear the deluge of good news spilling forth. A job, an apartment, a girl, honors. "It sounds like you have everything together," said my former boss last night. And he's right; I'm at one of those rare points when everything is going well. I know that once the job kicks in all sorts of rough patches will come up, but for now, it's a good place to be. When things are good, you know they are good, there's no need to get any help from anyone.

My need for contact and communication was unbelievable, looking back. No one needs like a teenager (except perhaps a baby, and I have some very young cards sent to my grandparents to remind me of that period as well). Streams of emails and long distance phone calls were the norm, it's what I had time for. But somehow, now, I don't -- not to the extreme I once did, at least. Or if I do, I don't have the conscious desire to make it happen. Or if I do, the feeling isn't mutual, or mutual enough. Strange that letters signed earnestly with a "lots of love" or "love always" closing seem foreign, that, for example, Yuki and I could have been so close that I felt okay with crying on her shoulder at the Last CTY Dance Ever, and now I barely know what's going on with her, we hug weakly when we see each other (about once a year, and usually because she was visiting someone else at my college). I'm much closer to her best friend Sarah (the usual visitee), simply because she went to my school, and Yuki went to school hours away in a city I've never even visited. But can geography be the only culprit?

It's not just me. There used to be a mailing list for a bunch of truly rabid CTYers, a really tight circle of friends (I was a guest of sorts, because I was decent friends with a few of them). In high school and early college the list jammed my inbox regularly, the traffic was quite high. Now it is the rare occasion that anything comes through, and it's usually an address change, or a half-hearted "remember when?" -- nothing that really gets the silent majority writing again. One of the list members, Christine, went to college with me. She and I had Number Theory together back in the day during our last year of camp. We once hung out at a TMBG concert early in our college careers, but by the time junior and senior year rolled around, little more was exchanged between us beyond a nod, if that. It's not as if we were ever very close friends, but it still feels a bit odd.

It's amazing what reading these old letters does, how quickly I can move back to that time, if only for a moment. I feel the missed opportunities. I wonder what might have happened if I'd sent one more note their way, or if they had worked harder at staying in touch when I fell off the wagon. (I'm being a bit hard on myself here, it does take two, after all.) I imagine the unanswered letter writers still wondering why I was too cool to write when they run through their lists of What Ifs? late at night, the way I sometimes do when the sky is black enough to see the stars clearly despite suburban light pollution, or when the sun goes down and hazy colors rise briefly over the roof of my home parents' while I walk up the driveway. Suddenly I'm rearing to call them all up, look them up on Google, drop a quick line to the return address and find out if they're still even there. How was high school, college? What's next in life? With you be anywhere near me now? Sorry I didn't write all those years, sorry you didn't write, sorry, sorry, so good to... etc.

Where would go from there, though? There are some CTY friends and high school friends (and even earlier friends) that I am still happily in touch with. Seeing transitions over time in notes from those I have maintained good contact with was also really interesting. I wonder what it is about me and them that allowed us to undergo various transitions and still want to meet up on the other side. With respect to those that faded off, what could we ever say to each other to renew our eroded bond, especially if there wasn't much there beyond people-metaphordom and good intentions? I know that many people are afraid to contact forgotten friends for fear of being totally forgotten (or simply unwanted). But in this case, I just don't know what we'd say after an initial conversation. We're several transitions away. We've got new things, new people, now, relationships that promise potential rather than history. In each social setting I've had, even online, there are really only a few people I end up maintaining significant contact with; the others, no matter how many, no matter how close we once seemed, grow more and more distant. But how that happens, well, I guess that's why this is all such an uncertain mess. I wish I could nail it down better than that.

I know it won't be long before the letters get buried again in some folder in my new digs. They're more organized now, these bits of mail, but I'm only moving further away from who I was when I opened them, and so too are the writers running from who they were when they licked the envelopes shut years ago. Sadder than the lost potential in the past would be tending to it at the expense of the immense newness of my immediate future. There will be a lot more of these reactions to mementos of the past as I go on -- today's progress was small, at best -- and probably no better resolution. It's been a while since I've really felt the urge to write anything of considerable length here; at least with uncertain ends I still have enjoyable means.