it's midnight, and i'm just getting started. (maybe i should move to new york.) i unplugged the phone today, about an hour after i plugged it back in from being unplugged since yesterday. <sigh>
where is this tedious place? what strands touch it from afar, anchor it within the (in)firmament, at once toying and discarding? and why do we stay... we, who can do anything, be anything, even reinvent reality; is this life perhaps a fun-house we chose, during some past enlightenment, to visit -- a dark and startling place intended for amusement only -- and have we perhaps forgotten this? taking life seriously leads to suicide. it really is all a joke -- and i don't mean that derogatorily. i'm serious. it's a comedy, a light farce, heavy with camp and desperately believable, and tempting, so very tempting to believe...
and where is faith? belief? the concreteness of knowing? should we just make it all up as we go along, like so many do? how much should we allow ourselves to lie? and we really only lie within ourselves; everything else is costume and pretense, even when we try our best, still then, the expression of our truth is incomplete. any representation of the other -- of what they think, say, or do, of who and what they appear to be -- is never as significant to us as who and what we are ourselves. besides, one could argue that no truth survives intact the transit across the interval between persons. we are only naked inside. the best we can hope is to discover our own nakedness, and perhaps to approach the nakedness of another. but we can never get all the way there.
along that vein, it occurs that i would like a chance to approach the nakedness of my abercrombie-attired neighbor, matt. he is young, short of stature, innocent of eye, fresh of face, italian of descent, and loose of boyfriend; my neighbor is gay (i hope?) like me. of course i am almost 20 years his senior, and somewhat reclusive (interpreted, i hope, as enchantingly mysterious). i am probably viewed by him as somewhat strange. he and i seem to be up all night, every night lately. he comes and goes til about 5 am which is when he sleeps, i think. on those rare occasions when our paths do cross, he gives me a look that might be saying, "gawd! you're so fucking desperate! will you get a life!" but i like to think his shy, expressionless glance is saying in breathy, whispering needfulness, "did he notice me? doesn't he want me? isn't he ever going to grab me and press me against the wall and hold me as i faint? well, isn't he!?!"
well, it is possible. remotely.
in the end it is all intellectual dishonesty, a game that i am drawn to no less nor more than anyone else, a game i would gladly play with matt, because we humans are a species that does very much love to lie. come matt, come lie with me.
