12 January 2003 - 4:45 am
anticlimax and.

i think heartburn happens when you've slept too little. it's almost 5am. again. and i am sitting here in a bathrobe and fully clothed and blinking kind of stupidly at the end of "y tu mama tambien" which has just concluded.

matt left today. i say this every time he goes. it's like a conclusion, a finishing of a journey, a sort of exhalation and a settled-back look - "all right. here's what i learned. this is what happened. now i get back in the car, put it in drive, and press the gas pedal."

and so i'm sitting here in the wake of something. a grim sort of dawning, actually, and a pale-faced sun is rising. i think. there's a few things i have to do. it's like a shopping list. i should sleep, and eat, first of all, and do laundry. i feel like a giant steamer has just passed me by and i'm in the little dinghy in the waves, rocked back and forth, crazily, barely holding on, gripping the sides of the boat. electrified.

it's not that matt stirs things up, it's not that i'm swayed, it's not anything. it's that matt happens to be a friend. a close friend, someone who i trust very much. and i don't use the word "trust" lightly, nor the word "friend." in quotes. i have a lot of people that i know. i know many people. and they know me. and yes, some of them i would call friends. but that changes so often, it's so variable.

i am not in the habit of standing my ground. i and my opinions are mutable, my thoughts shift and my skies change colour from blue to red to bruise-black. i have been sitting here in a relative darkness for quite some time. i have been getting up and moving around and wading through silences and glances like searchbeams through a fog. "what are you thinking?" echoes in my head. repetitively, dimming. "what are you thinking?"

"nothing." "i don't know." "why do you always ask that?" all evasions, all little curt tucks of the head away from the question-asker, quick and subtle, hiding, burying beneath another layer, and it's like pulling a band-aid off so slowly, and feeling each individual hair being tugged as it happens ... so painful, so bloody painful, and yet you know when the old, slimy thing is gone, the only thing left will be a small pale scar of the incident.

i wrote a long "letter" and left it on my desktop. i wrote it in the dark yesterday and then, finishing in a rage of blind anger, saved it as "what i didn't tell anna or matt" and collapsed in the chair. i felt like smoking a cigarette. i felt like carving a latin phrase into my arm. i felt like downing the whole bottle of bayer, the whole tin of mints, every bottle of alcohol in the fridge, driving my car into a tree, sitting down turning on a movie, playing nintendo, stalking through the halls, calling up anna, calling up mark, calling up matt, calling up anyone, peter cait kira justin claudia, i could've written emails i could've read a book, eaten soup, taken a shower, jumped out the window

and while i considered, while i thought, a strange sort of unconsciousness fell over me. literally. tripped and fell over me. i woke up as the slice of light from the doorway widened and expanded like a living creature barging into the room. a familiar jingle of keys and the fresh smell that somehow always precedes casey when she enters a room. jason and amy and casey. "oh, sorry - did you want to sleep?"

i blinked. paused. looked at the giant beast of translucent yellow-orange light that had suddenly gained access to the room. despite garish, maimed features and dark, swirling eyes, it was smiling. i had the mark of the couch on my face, and my fist was balled around my fingers, clenching nothingness as though i held a knife, or a precious memento. "no," i said. "no, that's all right. i'm .. done with sleeping, for right now - no, come on in."

"all right." and the light flicked on and the fluorescence caused me to blink. perhaps all of our planets were in syzygy, perhaps all of our thoughts and motions and feelings were in sync, perhaps the cogs were jiving again. there was some quietude, but it was like the silence after rain. you can hear through the ferns and the trees and the muted birds. at one point i think i smiled.

casey and i eventually left for the 7-11. she helped me clean off my station wagon, even though i only had the little red ice-scraper and there was a good two-three inches covering the face and windows. i bought almost fifteen dollars worth of greasy, disgusting food, and consumed it all when we returned.

matt and mark and rachel came up eventually tonight, stayed for a little, and then they were leaving, too. i could see it happening - i in my sportcoat, backward-hat & glasses, traipsing like a true hobo down after them in their peacoats and suitcase and ephemera ... they passed out of the door. it couldn't have been more cinematic. timed so perfectly. matt stayed for a minute. "nothing changes, all right? nothing changes because i'm leaving."

"and i'll see you when i road-trip this summer."

"you'd better."

"you know i will. it's my dream."

sometimes i hate the word "hug" and the word "embrace" doesn't fit either. it was a synonymous puzzle-completion, one to the other, the same word used twice in a row on Microsoft Word and the grammar program underlining both usages in the little green squiggles. it was encapsulated emotion. "nothing changes."

"what i didn't say to anna or matt" was emailed to matt and then he just read it off the desktop. he tried to get mark to read it afterward, but mark declined. eventually i'll send it to anna. eventually. i'm left right now in a hazy sort of mood and i think half of it is the drug-like aftermath of "y tu mama tambien" but it's also because so many images are flooding my mind.

there is no completion, no logical ending to this segment - only continuance. amy and jill and i ate a breakfast-dinner in burnham lounge as we played an extended game of "starz" with actor-movie-actor-movie, etc, and came up here to watch "the breakfast club" which i fell asleep through. i woke up and looked at the ceiling.

you know what's funny?

i exhaled, jumped off of the bed, landed feet-first.

there is no way to conclude this entry because it's only going to continue. into tomorrow. and the next day. but for some reason i find myself reluctant to stop writing.

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