HOME | DD

Description
I have been thinking -- There are plenty of ways in which to lose yourself.
In a thought, or in a dream. In the patterns in the clouds.
In an act of self-destruction.

Cities, in particular, prove particularly great places to lose yourself in.
It seems entirely possible to disappear into a city effortlessly, with nobody knowing the difference. Cities at night are like this: you can hear puddles stirring restlessly, you can see the constellations made by lights left on in high-rise office buildings, you can look around you and realize this: you have disappeared. The concrete rises up around you, schisming space, and it is you at the center of the labyrinth.

It's pretty sublime, really. Isn't it? I mean, there's always so much noise. I don't mean it that way. Not noise as in 'your neighbor has his stereo too loud'. Not noise as in 'there's a traffic jam and all of the cars are honking at each other'. Just… noise. Empty static. People. People looking at you. And most of all the noise of your own thoughts. Don't you hear it? Don't you get it, too?

It's nice to get away from that. It's nice to disappear.

Let me tell you a little thing: the other week I went home for the holidays and it depressed me.

I know what you're thinking. "But aren't you glad to be home for Thanksgiving? Weren't you glad to see your family?"

Yeah. I guess so. Sure.
But I didn't see them that much, really. Sure, I mean… they were around. I said hello when I came in the door, asked how things had been, sat around the television for the evening sports game, ate dry turkey and sipped water from wine glasses.

But for the most part, when I could, I spent most of my time in my room. Sometimes I'd pace aimlessly, frantically, back and forth. Once I walked into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and stood in the cold water until I forgot about temperature and could feel the pulse of warm red in my veins.

After awhile it became too much.
I started running out of ways to lose myself.
'Home' -- that home at least, the place that I no longer call home, truthfully, but calling it 'home' seems to be what people want, the norm, the only acceptable way of really describing that place where you spent your formative fuck-up years, the place where your flesh and blood family reside. --
is a place of endless rows of houses, of concrete sidewalks and well tended lawns.
A labyrinth of a different sort.

After all, labyrinths can be beautiful places. Meditative spirals, contemplative passageways, serene emptiness.. labyrinths can be places where the only thing that exists is that which is right in front of you -- that wall, that turn…
But labyrinths can also be places to hold you captive. Labyrinths can have no exits. Their surfaces can be overgrown, covered in impenetrable ivy. They can leave you beating at the walls, slashing at them, knowing that no matter which turn you take you will always end up back at the same exact place.

'Home' -- that home, at least, the one I was supposedly returning to, was the latter of the two kinds. And with no city to lose myself in, all I could do was bang at the walls.

I wasn't comfortable with my own thoughts.
With nothing to escape to, and no place to lose myself, they were all I had. I couldn't suffocate them away. I couldn't lose them in constellations of high-rise light.

The noises, inevitably, came again.
That symphony wherein every violin screeches, in search of a note
that it can not reach.

It went on for four days, you know.
Being alone with my own thoughts.
I knew where I was in geography and space, and yet I couldn't help but feel completely apart from it.

It's a different kind of losing.
Like labyrinths, there are two kinds.

You can lose yourself positively. It can be a good thing. Again, serene. You can detach from everything and just float, let everything pass over and beyond you, find delight in something as simple as the sound as wind. You lose yourself, but you find the world.

But negatively you can also lose track of yourself, and everything around you.
When geography dissolves it can be a dangerous thing. When the ground slips out from beneath you, when you lose track of that…

It's not a good thing.

So I was glad to get back to the city. I was glad to get back to the tangibly intangible, to footholds amidst the void, to losing myself, but not losing track of myself. I smiled when I saw the first high-rise constellations come into view again. I floated.

I couldn't be alone in the void. Sometimes when I'm staring at the stars, the actual constellations, I am struck with a vision: I like to imagine that each star is a tiny hole, a pinprick in space, and, if I were to concentrate hard enough, I could pull it open and step inside, find a place to hide.

I take bits and pieces of myself and scatter them like ashes. This is an act of protection.
This thought goes in the upper left drawer. This one in that tall elm tree. This one, at the place where we first met. This one, in the reflections in a tiny glass of rum, or in a window on a moving train.

It is through losing myself, piece by piece, that I save myself.

Description
I have been thinking -- There are plenty of ways in which to lose yourself.
In a thought, or in a dream. In the patterns in the clouds.
In an act of self-destruction.

Cities, in particular, prove particularly great places to lose yourself in.
It seems entirely possible to disappear into a city effortlessly, with nobody knowing the difference. Cities at night are like this: you can hear puddles stirring restlessly, you can see the constellations made by lights left on in high-rise office buildings, you can look around you and realize this: you have disappeared. The concrete rises up around you, schisming space, and it is you at the center of the labyrinth.

It's pretty sublime, really. Isn't it? I mean, there's always so much noise. I don't mean it that way. Not noise as in 'your neighbor has his stereo too loud'. Not noise as in 'there's a traffic jam and all of the cars are honking at each other'. Just… noise. Empty static. People. People looking at you. And most of all the noise of your own thoughts. Don't you hear it? Don't you get it, too?

It's nice to get away from that. It's nice to disappear.

Let me tell you a little thing: the other week I went home for the holidays and it depressed me.

I know what you're thinking. "But aren't you glad to be home for Thanksgiving? Weren't you glad to see your family?"

Yeah. I guess so. Sure.
But I didn't see them that much, really. Sure, I mean… they were around. I said hello when I came in the door, asked how things had been, sat around the television for the evening sports game, ate dry turkey and sipped water from wine glasses.

But for the most part, when I could, I spent most of my time in my room. Sometimes I'd pace aimlessly, frantically, back and forth. Once I walked into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and stood in the cold water until I forgot about temperature and could feel the pulse of warm red in my veins.

After awhile it became too much.
I started running out of ways to lose myself.
'Home' -- that home at least, the place that I no longer call home, truthfully, but calling it 'home' seems to be what people want, the norm, the only acceptable way of really describing that place where you spent your formative fuck-up years, the place where your flesh and blood family reside. --
is a place of endless rows of houses, of concrete sidewalks and well tended lawns.
A labyrinth of a different sort.

After all, labyrinths can be beautiful places. Meditative spirals, contemplative passageways, serene emptiness.. labyrinths can be places where the only thing that exists is that which is right in front of you -- that wall, that turn…
But labyrinths can also be places to hold you captive. Labyrinths can have no exits. Their surfaces can be overgrown, covered in impenetrable ivy. They can leave you beating at the walls, slashing at them, knowing that no matter which turn you take you will always end up back at the same exact place.

'Home' -- that home, at least, the one I was supposedly returning to, was the latter of the two kinds. And with no city to lose myself in, all I could do was bang at the walls.

I wasn't comfortable with my own thoughts.
With nothing to escape to, and no place to lose myself, they were all I had. I couldn't suffocate them away. I couldn't lose them in constellations of high-rise light.

The noises, inevitably, came again.
That symphony wherein every violin screeches, in search of a note
that it can not reach.

It went on for four days, you know.
Being alone with my own thoughts.
I knew where I was in geography and space, and yet I couldn't help but feel completely apart from it.

It's a different kind of losing.
Like labyrinths, there are two kinds.

You can lose yourself positively. It can be a good thing. Again, serene. You can detach from everything and just float, let everything pass over and beyond you, find delight in something as simple as the sound as wind. You lose yourself, but you find the world.

But negatively you can also lose track of yourself, and everything around you.
When geography dissolves it can be a dangerous thing. When the ground slips out from beneath you, when you lose track of that…

It's not a good thing.

So I was glad to get back to the city. I was glad to get back to the tangibly intangible, to footholds amidst the void, to losing myself, but not losing track of myself. I smiled when I saw the first high-rise constellations come into view again. I floated.

I couldn't be alone in the void. Sometimes when I'm staring at the stars, the actual constellations, I am struck with a vision: I like to imagine that each star is a tiny hole, a pinprick in space, and, if I were to concentrate hard enough, I could pull it open and step inside, find a place to hide.

I take bits and pieces of myself and scatter them like ashes. This is an act of protection.
This thought goes in the upper left drawer. This one in that tall elm tree. This one, at the place where we first met. This one, in the reflections in a tiny glass of rum, or in a window on a moving train.

It is through losing myself, piece by piece, that I save myself.