at home.

I am sitting in my old bedroom. I am laying on Mindy's couch. It's 2:30 in the morning and I am waiting for my friend to pick me up so we can journey back to the land of the lost. It would be a lie if I said I felt apathetic to life right now. I feel quite the contrary actually. So much has happened in the last week, while at the same time, not much has changed.

When I wrote earlier about synchronizations (here), I was contextualizing what had happened to me last Tuesday. I met a new friend Tuesday night. However, on my way to the meeting, I saw Mindy and her friend Eli walking towards me as I got off the train. It was one of those 'what if i saw Mindy today' instances that actually happened to come true. We walked towards each other for approximately 20 feet, but she didn't see me. To me, it seemed as if we were looking directly at one another. However she must have been looking right through me. As we approached one another (honestly, we were 3 feet away from each other), I stopped and said hello, but Mindy and Eli kept walking by. I felt like a specter in her life. I felt like I had dreamed our entire encounter. I felt like a ghost haunting my old lover.

But I was on my way to meet my new friend, so I didn't let this instance of my old life deter this new beginning I was about to embark upon. The discourse shared was exciting. I felt like new horizons were waiting ahead of us. We shared thoughts and histories which flowed delightfully. My old neighborhood opened up new possibilities and attachments to thoughts and emotions. I was moving on, and I was happy to do so, or so I thought.

Alexia called around 12:30 AM, right after I said goodbye to my new friend. She informed me that our mutual friend had passed away that night. What a contrast to the happy emotions I was feeling. The news hit me like a punch in the stomach. It was hard to ingest. At first, all I could say was the word "fuck". All I could think was that there should have been someone out there looking out for her, someone to take care of her. That's what friends are for, right? Why wasn't I that person? Why wasn't someone there to save her? But in all reality, demons don't wait for friends to call. Our past haunts us like the specter in which I had felt like earlier when I saw Mindy. Our memories are tainted with human emotions the minute we establish them as thought. We can not escape our memories. At very best, we can cover them up with drugs and denial. But the past will always be there waiting for us in the shadows of our heart.

And so, why you may ask, am I here at my ex-lover's apartment (my old apartment)? I'm here because I had nowhere else to go. It's wet outside, and the ground smells like human stink. I can not escape my past nor could I resist embracing it. It's very hard to humble one's self. But a rich man knows no embarrassment. Mindy is asleep in the other room, and I am awake, contemplating who I am and what I am doing with my life. Why survive? Why not let life win this ever constant battle? Can the self be more powerful than nature? I think Nietzsche would argue that the self is nature, and nothing more, though nothing less. That with this great honor comes great power, if one can accept the responsibility of power. But are we not slaves to the divinity that created us? Won't we all end up dead like my beautiful friend, like my beautiful marriage, like the beauty that we love to destroy? I do not have any answers to these questions. All I know is that I am sitting in a dark room, waiting to be picked up, because I feel obligated, and rightfully so, to attend my friend's memorial service. She was an angel, lost like so many that came before her. It's almost serendipitous that she died is Los Angeles. I think, that is the hill I'd like to sit upon before I lay my head to rest. But until then, I have other demons to battle on many other hills. And for right now, I will lay my head back down on this couch, a couch which would be meaningless to anyone else besides me and my memories, and wonder what Mindy is dreaming about in the room next to me. Or maybe, I think I'll save myself the energy and not give that demon the pleasure of winning this battle. I will bow out to instead contemplate the more important things in life, things that actually might progress me further into my abysmal self. Yes, escape can be a healthy thing sometimes. So sometimes we all need to run away from our self by running into our self. For better or for worse, we have to wander into the our cerebral depths to understand just how vastly haunted our secret self can be.