as queer as a clockwork orange

“Those three words
Are said too much
They’re not enough”
- Chasing Cars Snow Patrol 

 Is it possible to love someone after you’ve met them for only a few hours? It tortures me that I can’t understand what it is exactly that I feel about you. Your elusive presence tortures me. You’re not physically far away and yet we are separated by barriers of unshared experiences. It seems as if we weren’t meant to meet each other but I wish I could twist fate and place you in front of me. Chance encounters. They complicate our lives so.

Chance. I feel like I just ordered myself to jump a cliff hoping that I won’t result in a bloody mess. I’m taking a chance and if it all works out, I would be absolutely exhilarated. But then, I will never be able to share anything with the people I love and I will never be able to utter those three words. The three words that will never be enough to justify the infinitesimally expansive space they occupy in my heart. And it absolutely wrenches my heart and guts when they look at me knowing that I’ll be a part of their lives for another few years when that idea is potentially an absolute impossibility.

And I’ll never see you again. Snapshot.

After the last song of the worship service at the Journey, the ruffling of coats and small talk echoed within the walls of the church. The mass of people started shifting out but as the doors opened everyone stopped. A white scene of snow falling silently on a snow-coated pavement was breath-taking. It was the first time the snow fell so beautifully this winter.

“You know what I think? That people’s memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn’t matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned…Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there’s no distinction – they’re all just fuel.” – Korogi from After Dark by Haruki Murakami

So that’s what life is reduced to. We are mere engines running on fuel. I am running on fuel. Everyday presents the threat of running out of fuel, awaiting the day we become a reactionary creature. Emotionless. Doing what we’re supposed to do.

I feel as if these days of relative happiness are coming to an end and I don’t want them to. I don’t want them to become my fuel. Because when it’s used up and gone, it’s gone. The distinction between important memories and useless ones is greater than we think.

“If you leave, I will seriously cry.”

Mamma Mia is playing on the TV. The faces of my friends flicker and fade to the brightness of the screen. I have only known them for half a year and yet feel unusually close to them. I silently watch them as they blankly submerge themselves in the illumination of the TV and the precarious warmth of friendship. Each one of them is carrying the burden of individual pasts that I will never fully know, and fading memories that keep them alive, that makes them want to die, that makes them love more than anything. For now, the present is a video in real time: a dark room filled with young students hoping and wishing for the future. Living. Breathing. But a few seconds later, a year from now, a decade from now, it will be nothing but an ephemeral snapshot of our lives. I conjure up all the memories that we have created: all the awkward conversations, all the retarded jokes, all the unconditional love. And I fold them up one by one and place them carefully into a dark corner of my mind exposed to the dust of forgotten history.

How long will it take for our names to no longer bear any meaning. How long will it be before all our faces abandon the snapshots carefully preserved in the drawers of our memory?

When I learned about the St. Louis half-marathon a month ago, I aspired to run it. I knew I had the physical ability to run it. But after a few months of stressed out pigging sessions, the muscle I acquired over the summer atrophied in direct proportion to the amount of junk I ate over time. Now I am literally physically unable to run more than half an hour. My will power slipped from under me as I stupidly watched it go. Can someone please help kidnap my determination and bring it back to me?

Just as my running has degraded so has my writing. I feel as if everything I put on paper has the potential of becoming horrendously boring, unwitty, unentertaining, cliche, etc. How is one supposed to deal with episodes of self-incompetence? I can’t run and I can no longer write a 500 word essay in less than an hour. It’s not supposed to be that hard. Help? In the form of chocolate? But that’s not really helping?

Because I am so sick of writing, I guess I will share my to-do list (not resolutions because the future is still a black hole)

New Year to-do list

1. I need to go to chocolate rehab. I’m a chocolate abuser.
2. Get my fat out in the sun and run.
3. Eat less junk. Or just eat less.
4. Write less junk. Or just write more.
5. Flood my phobia of cameras.
6. Carry out self-fulfilling prophecy to extinguish my hatred of math. I love calc. I love calc. I love calc. I don’t suck at math. I don’t suck at math. I don’t suck at math.
7. Bike competitively. It looks fun.
8. Cook something. Like shrimp scampi pasta. Yum.
9. Bake/make something. Like cheesecake. Or chocolate truffles. Or chocolate espresso cookies. Or chocolate chip cookies. Yum squared.
10. Verbally torture the people who do not realize they are illogical when they say “Happy New Years” Sorry to break it to you but there is only one new year. And this new year is 2009.

Happy New Year