Sunday, June 28, 2009

Ruminate, deviate, palpitate, eliminate?

I know that it’s all simply homesickness, this longing for the place or times when the grass is or was (or perhaps just seemed) greener (or perhaps it's that there was grass? And not just sand?). Melancholy and loneliness are so easy to find here, living in the conditions that so easily foster missing and reminiscing. After all, here more than any other time or place I’ve experienced on Earth I am made aware on a more regular basis of the concept that it is just me and my mind, (strangely it seems these can occasionally separate into two independent beings) and that one can be a powerful one to distract.

There is a helluva lot of time here to think. To think, rethink, analyze, and reanalyze, to decide, to waver, to ruminate and to dwell. Occasionally home and all that we’ve left there can become a shining beacon of a heaven which we yearn to visit not because we want to actually be there right now but because all that’s there manages to represent an escape from our own minds. B even text me recently that at least when we get home we won’t have as much time to THINK. I’ve found I can while away hours and better parts of days fantasizing about home and the people I’ve left back there, writing and rereading letters and when it’s available searching the internet for the pictures and stories of those I love and miss. I think as with anything it can often represent an escape from what’s in front of us, of what’s here. It can definitely become an obsession. As with every fixation, though at first memories can be pleasant I find they can soon become longing, building up and toppling the house of cards in which I sometimes live. When I’m for some other reason vulnerable this reminiscence can become a big problem that can seductively lead me down a road to depression. So I’ve found I’ve had to force myself to try to forget some of you on occasion, to put you out of my mind for times in order to go about my day.

Because the reality is that I’m here, you all are not, what once was will never be completely as it was again, and although that’s ok, and even good, it’s hard to swallow. It can be hard to let go. To let you go, to let me go, to let everything that was live in the place it should be, the past. Certainly this is the order events of every day of every life, living the particular choice I’ve made just happens to offer a unique vantage point from which to view the progression of time and space. That and of course all the damn thinking.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand the point of all this thinking and remembering, and having fallen short of reaching that lofty goal I’ve settled for attempting to describe it. These next two entries are about some of what this crazy brain of mine gets up to.


Post Script: The time right around reaching the year mark was pretty tough for me and most of these particular rantings were written during that time. I’ve been waiting until I was a bit more in the clear to actually post them, so as not to make anybody panic. But this darkness has been a part of my experience and in the interest of being honest to my experience, I’m including it. Read on.

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