Monday, August 30, 2010

Vacation Part Two

  Have you ever gone a long time without eating a certain food? Like an apple, and when you bite into that fruit after what feels like forever the flesh is less crisp, less tart than you remember and instantly you are filled with an insatiable craving for the memory of that apple before because when you realize that your memory was simply an airbrushed version you desperately want to go back to that time where somehow everything seemed simpler. 

  All of this is a lame attempt at an artsy analogy to explain the second lesson I learned on my vacation. 
I learned that abstaining leads to dreaming and craving and that our dreams never match up to the real thing. very rarely the flesh exceeds expectation but mostly we are left with a profound sense of disappointment and a collection of past memories which suddenly seem so much simpler. But there is a comfort in this.

  On my vacation I went to visit an old friend someone who I have always been very connected to it had been a few years since we had seen each other since then I had come out, recovered from anorexia and in general grown up. He had grown a few more inches bringing him far over his old height of 6'1 along with handling some big issues which aren't mine to discuss. He was my kindergarten husband and for those brief years when we lived nearby we were like siblings.We had seen each other sporadically in the few years since he had left and there had always been a KAPOW! connection. This year we lost that. Sure we had fun and it was lovely to see him but things were different.
When I left I didn't instantly miss him again and more than anything I wanted to have that perfect friend back in my life.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. I've learned that saying is truer than one can ever imagine. But like I said before there is a comfort in this. In realizing that we have built someone into more than they are reminds us of limits and of humanity it's when we lose and mourn the loss of a larger than life figure that we see them for who they really are which is an ever changing,flawed,beautiful human being who maybe isn't the same person but then again neither are we.
So maybe these two new people can keep building their lives together.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Vacation Part One

It's been eighteen nights since I slept in my own bed. I've often imagined my future starving artist life in a dingy apartment sleeping on a futon or something. This vacation taught me that if I have to I will be sleeping on the street under a tarp but god damn it I will be sleeping on a good mattress with a feather pillow top.
If I have nothing I have a good nights sleep.
I'm going to do a few vacation posts so I can chronologically go through the various lessons I learned and the first one was that we need to remember how complex people are. When we spend our days surrounded by the same people we develop quick generalizations of them. So and so always cries or someone else just never stops singing. And sometimes these things are true. But nobody is a character in a film or television show. The complex idiosyncrasies that help to make up who we are can not be explained by a quick flashback scene or written off as comic relief. 
Someone won't stop making noise because they feel like they're never heard. Someone always cries because they can't stop their brain from over analysing things and their world really does come crashing down every five seconds.  
It's when we go beyond these two dimensional cardboard cut outs that we see people for who they really are and not the simplified version that we use to get through our day to day.
Because in the end it's easier for us to be right, to skim the surface , to be cool and detached and thoughtless. 
It's only when we dig a little deeper that we realize the people who we thought we were closest with are the ones that we really need to spend more time getting to know.