on
8/18/2001
ACT I: DISTRACTIONS
The song comes on the radio from some years past.
Assault One-- Sight. I look at the wood pile through my window, and the weeds growing beneath it.
Assault Two-- Thought. I think about Aria, and the hard hike up the mountain I've just left, and wonder what's to become of us, and me.
Assault Three-- Memory. I remember the solitary days as a kid in high school when this song first introduced itself.
Assault Four-- Posterity. I start counting my distractions, and try to remember their order, because there seems to be something worth sharing about all of this, until I remember that one can't both live a moment and document it.
Assault Five-- Study. I see the plank-topped trailer out in the field through my windshield, and wonder at its function and past.
Assault Six-- Science. Aria taught me that songs are all built up from a few basic chords, boiling their emotional range down to five or so different sensations.
Assault Seven-- Practicality. I should go inside. But I don't have to. I have no obligations.
Assault Eight-- Self-awareness. I become frustrated at my own inability to concentrate on what I most want to at this moment.
The radio station cuts off the song's last few seconds; I turn off the radio and exit the car.
Sight Thought
Memory
Posterity
Study
Science
Practicality
Self-awareness
ACT II: HIDING PLACES
I'm beginning to realize just how many of what I can only call "hiding places" I have.
Like hiding places in the real sense, they're hard to see. A person almost doesn't find one until it's stumbled upon. They're far looser than the simple words listed previously. They're vague feelings. Tiny images. They're a type of the things that decide "I will not do that." These, however, are the foolish, the stupid, the crude decisions of our subconscious; the wrong lessons our instincts have taken from life right alongside the natural process of learning. They're the goblins of our mind's forest, not the fairies.
I want to destroy those hiding places. I want none left. I want to feel the North, East, South and West Winds of my life. It's the same reason I founded this page, appropriately; I no longer want to hide.
So here I am, my life cut and spilling out on this page. Will I lose you? I don't care. I'd have to find you first; we'd have to find each other.
ACT III: EXILE
It's not the being without you, so much as the being cut off from you, that gives me trouble.
It's funny. The first reaction I had to all of this was none at all. I knew that life had calmed down, and I could finally get all that other stuff done I'd been meaning to do. Basically nothing at all. A few idle thoughts. Utter clarity. Then it subsided.
On writing last week's page, I felt like I'd been without you for a week, when it had barely been three days. Now I feel like it's been two weeks, even though it's only been one--an increase in magnitude of a full week (or, worse, a magnification by two) whenever I look back on your leaving and where we left things.
I thought it would be best not to contact you while you, and inevitably we consider this, though, and I intend to be a man of my word (with the exception of this one shameless cheat, my Space Toast Page).
The second major phase of mine, which seems to have finally passed by this evening, was an unexpected one: Horniness. Don't laugh; this was actually my second reaction. Never coupling with you again was a frightening enough thought that some part of me began panicking. I think of all the times when sex with you was only mediocre, and I can't imagine how I could have been so childish. Any time I mentally drew away from you, any time I was in a hurry, any time we went to one of our hiding places, or fell to distractions. How much closer can you be to another person than when having sex? I was the first person you ever made love to, Aria.
I want to hear you. I want to speak to you. I want to touch you and see you. There is nothing I want more than for you to call me and tell me you love me. You might be crying or laughing, or serious or foolish, or any of the other thousand Aria emotions we once understood, but you'd be you. And whether it's foolish or wise beyond my years to keep loving you after so much has happened, I do, and I will. Things will change, but we don't have to be alone.
These are my feelings.
Touch the Toast