The World I Love

In New York, now. Arrived a few hours ago. It's surprisingly fresh to be back on the East Coast. While I have more sentimental feelings for California, the NY/DC/PA triumvirate feel(s?) more like home. Tomorrow will mark my four year anniversary on the Right Coast. I love it so much here.

The trip is still going on, but I want to think of it as over, mainly for my own sanity. I spent under 45 minutes at home after my last final before traveling to NY, most of which was spent faux-cleaning and packing. Here's the itinerary:

December 18th: New York: finish final exam at 8:45pm in Philly and make it to Chinatown for the 10:00pm bus
December 19th - 23rd: San Francisco: 9am flight to San Francisco but seeing Jared at the airport and the rest of the CA crew later on makes the drag of traveling all better (that said, I am officially a fan of Virgin America's service. It was the best cross-country flight I've ever taken.)
December 23rd - 27th: Sacramento
December 27th - 29th: San Francisco
December 29th - January 1 or 2?: New York, then back to Philly

Traveling to 5 cities in about 15 days? Whew!

More thoughts as I try to unwind on Keith's couch:

- Listening to the new playlist that I made that I cannot turn off. Highlights: James Yuill - This Sweet Love; Louie Armstrong, Stardust; Shinichi Osawa, Last Days; Kim Hiorthøy, Alt Måste Bli Anorlunda; Papercuts - The World I Love; Mystery Jets - Half in Love with Elizabeth.

- Keith said that I should be living in the moment more often. He said this because I am writing reflections here instead of doing something akin to what he is currently doing, which is basically sorting clothes and pieces of paper. It's hard to sort though physical objects when I am sitting on another's couch and have not seen my home in two weeks. All that I have is my head.

- I thought that I would read more during this break so far, but I am much more interested in being generally more active. Law school is surprisingly passive and I need to let myself express my thoughts more rather than taking in another's.

- I am still trying to figure out to what extent writing this blog has to do with your reading my thoughts versus me having a casual outlet to write into the ether. I still don't know. For now, I am hoping that musings on my state of mind as well as my thoughts on art/music/movies/writings/current events are somewhat interesting to others. The only inside information that I have is regarding my own perspective, so this style will have to do for now.

Scenes from a Vault, Pt. 1: Smear (Feb 2006)

This is the beginning of a short story I started in February 2006 and have probably not touched since then (except the last paragraph, which I just wrote).  I am going to try to finish a respectable draft in the coming weeks.

Smear

This is what you get when you mess with us.

I.

“Hold my calls for the next hour, Alicia.”

“But what if he calls, Senator Augustine?”

“I don’t imagine him calling, but if he does just tell him that I have nothing to say that he wants to know.” It’s touching that she thinks that the President—that anyone—has anything left to say to me or want from me, except my head.

Before I close the door to my office, I consider something; I turn back to my loyal secretary of eight years.

“Actually, Alicia, there’s really nothing left for you to do here. How about you take the rest of the day off. I am sure Leo would be elated if you picked him up from school.”

“Are you sure, sir?”

“I am.”

“Okay. Senator Augustine?”

“Yes?” For the first time during the conversation I look directly at Alicia and notice that her glasses are foggy. Her lips are quivering.

“I am very sorry that this all happened.”

“I know. Me, too.” I muster a half-smile, faintly patting her shoulder, hoping to relate my appreciation for her kindness. She is probably the only person left in this city who truly feels sorry.

Once in my office, I close my door and take a long and deep breath. Then, I grip my jaw with my right hand. I massage the wall against which I lean; the wall that was supposed to keep me safe. I move my head from left to right, taking inventory of the world that had become so commonplace, yet, in its sudden fleetingness, so spectacular: photographs with various world leaders, mementos I had collected from my diplomatic travels, the mahogany desk cluttered with bills on which I will never have the chance to vote, a framed poster from my first successful campaign in 2016.

In my weakest moments, I imagined this happening, but no amount psychological conditioning could prepare me for what I was now going through. I had unknowingly reached my zenith, and now it was time to atone for my sins.

After slowly removing my jacket and placing it on the rack, I fall into my chair, my eyes closed in a futile attempt to force myself to wake from this dream. I open my eyes and glance at the television that I must have left on before I left for the Senate chambers this morning. CNN is showing footage from the morning Session, during which multiple Senators threatened impeachment if I did not agree to immediately resign.

The caption read: Michigan Senator with Dark Past Accused of Corruption and Adultery.

A montage of speeches from various Congressmen, many of whom I considered good friends, flashed on the screen, providing the media with soundbites such as “How dare you, Senator Augustine, think that you could keep a veil over the American People,” “You are the kind of lowlife that gives this institution a bad name,” “If Senator Augustine is the type of man who the Democratic Party wants to support, then maybe we need to reconsider the leadership in Congress and the White House,” and, my favorite, “How long did you think that you could continue this charade before you were figured out?” This was followed by a shot of the Minority Speaker Wharton shaking hands and discussing the events with other Republican Congressmen, all of whom were coyly smiling behind their hollow condemnations. 

It was only when they cut to Sofia's press conference that she had given earlier in the week, the one in which she expounded on our past romance, my history with drugs, my secret bank accounts, and our rekindled affair, that I was forced to turn off the television.

II.

Sofia and I became acquainted under serendipitous circumstances. It was New Years Eve, 1999: the end of the world, or the beginning of a new era, depending on whose opinion you solicited. After hastily leaving my job at Endnote, a local record store, I picked up my good friend Walt and his girlfriend Amber, fellow burnouts just trying to make it through high school. It was already ten o’clock when I finally drove my 1988 Honda Civic away from the comfort of suburban Clarksville into the rural country just outside of metropolitan **.

“Dude,” Walt shouted from the passenger seat, “we are really cutting it close.”

“Hey,” I snapped, “I warned you yesterday that I got off at nine. You could’ve been ready sooner.”

“I had to get the pills. It wasn’t exactly easy to find a dealer who was home.”

“Why didn’t we just, like, plan to buy some at the party?” Amber, always late with her suggestions, whined, “I mean, Jake and Snowball are going to be there, right? We could have just scored pills from them.” I could picture her in the backseat, glaring past the windshield at the empty road that lay ahead, her blond hair with neon red streaks covering her pierced face.
“I don’t know about you but I am not going to take a pill from some skank dealer.” Walt, always a man of high taste, took out a pack of Camel Lights from his pocket, staring at it inquisitively before taking out a cigarette, “I want to ring in the year 2000 on pure MDMA, not some cheap mix of speed and aspirin.”

“Hell yeah,” I nodded my head, smiling, losing them to my own thoughts. “Once we get to the party everything will be cool.”

We sped ahead into the darkness, surrounded by farmland; rows of pastures were visible only by the faint moonlight. As the car pierced through the natural serenity, we were all hoping that the chemicals in our pockets would help us recreate that same sense of perfection inside of our corrupted selves.

I had once felt guilt for having to resort to these chemicals to feel at peace with the world, but quickly began considering it just compensation for having to grow up lacking the privileges many others around me viewed as rights. For each pang of anxiety I felt for knowing there was no such thing as unconditional love to save me from chance; for each moment of despair from living inside a vacuum where my emotional needs were unfulfilled; for each time I thought I should hear “yes” when all that I heard was “no,” I felt greater reinforcement that I had a right to seek fulfillment by any means necessary. In retrospect, it’s laughable how easily the love I craved in childhood transferred to the destructive euphoria I consumed in adolescence and finally to the money and power I willed in adulthood. Now, sitting in my dim office, I see that what I thought I was a place away from which I ran was instead my perpetuate shadow that would remain until I could find the way out of the cave; I needed real sunlight to truly exorcize this darkness.

III.

(I'll try to keep you updated on my progress)

Hypothetical Self, Hypothetical Blog

A manifesto is in order, both for your benefit and for mine. 

I am sitting in Dragonfly in Sacramento, awaiting the bbq albacore that is what always brings me back to this place.  (Note: I am publishing this the next day from SF.)  Plus, the interior is pretty nice, given the city’s typical bland ambiance.   (The waitress, a well kempt twenty-something suburbanite, is pretty cute.  As much as I like urban arty girls, the sheltered preppy style is attractive as well.)

I just had a mock interview.  It was constructive, although many of the criticisms are leaving me rather contemplative about how I present myself to people.  Many of the negatives that I have had to face over the past six months concern communication: communicating to women how I feel, what I want from them, and how I feel about them; communicating to firms that if they hire me I will go to war with them with as much ferocity as any other young associate; communicating through exams to tell professors that I understand what they’ve spent all fall explaining.

Something is getting lost in the translation.

(photocredit)

In the last few years, and especially in the past sixteen months, I have been exploring facets of my character that have been left dormant / unrealized for a long time (always?).  In many ways, I am actualizing self-perceptions that I have felt but have not been able to exercise in reality.  For this reason, I sometimes seem akin to a child making those first awkward steps.  The area in which this awkwardness becomes most apparent (to me, at least) is in exercising my will to get what I want.  Brute force.  It's rather silly to admit, but I finally feel the confidence to really begin striving towards what I need to be romantically and psychologically fulfilled.  The problem with this is that as much as I can be aware of my desire and my determination to satiate, I still need to learn how to properly communicate it to others around me.  My humanity is as perfectly crooked as anyone's, it only needs to be correctly stated and understood.

Clearly, I like expressing myself.  My hope is that the blog can be cathartic for me and hopefully be entertaining for you, dear reader.  An ulterior hope is that your reading this can contextualize me to you better (or differently?) than I can in my actions or direct words.  Be you a close friend, love interest, acquaintance, or anonymous voyeur, I hope that with these writings I we can meet somewhere in the middle of our mutual feelings and expressions to find commonality, understanding.  This is important to me right now because I have felt rather adrift in my communication lately, and I want this forum to help right the ship.  Through this blog, maybe A will recognize why liking Secretary is not perverted, B will learn why I need feel deep connections to women I sleep with, C will understand how Benjamin Button could leave me cheated by its false association to Fitzgerald and yet remain somewhat moved by it’s message, and D will contextualize what love and affection really means.  And maybe I will learn that these idiosyncrasies require no explanation.

Lately, I have correctly expressed so many things to myself, but incorrectly to others.  I want to reach mutual understanding, for all of us to really get a grasp for what one another mean.   I want this to be a forum for filling in the blanks; it might serve as an implicit request for forgiveness and understanding, on both personal and superficial levels.

It will probably take some time for me to develop a good voice through this medium, so bear with me on that.  As always, I am open to suggestions, on expression and in general life.  (Ahem: encouragement and suggestions would help me move along this process much faster.)

So, yeah, expect these general and specific subjects to come up soon and/or often: love, hate, playing the hero versus being the villain, friends, school, film, art, how idleness feels after going through a killer semester, politics, corporate law, basketball, identity, and me.

I will also try to share my inspirations with you as much as is possible for me and tolerable for you.

Here is an inspiration:

Here is another:

The Ghost - James Yuill

And another:



(I don’t know what the copyright laws are for sharing music online, but I will try to include music and clips that I like.)

For tomorrow: a critique on the Curious Case(s) of Benjamin Button.

See you later.

P.S. Thanks, Ryan, for suggesting that I do this. Last night’s conversation was your surrogate girlfriendness at it’s best.