Melancholy
05 October, 2003 :: 1:45 p.m.
Fall is finally here and it looks like it might stay for more than 9 or 10 days like last year. Sweet...I can finally enjoy where we live because we're outside of town a bit and there are lots of trees and country road to go walking down. Maybe I'll finally get my camera out again and use it for more than a couple of quick snapshots...nice cool days, changing leaves, and long walks with a melancholy cd in the chamber sounds really good right now.
I've been feeling more and more like Rob again the last few weeks...no real closeness to family and, perhaps worse, no web of friends. I've been watching other people more lately and noticing the webs their lives have woven. I see people that are fairly regular nighttime shoppers who've been coming in for the last few years...and then suddenly I'll see them with someone else I recognize as a regular shopper or see a couple of groups of people bump into each other and everyone knows everyone. And I realize they all have these intricate webs of relationships; and I realize I have nothing like that.
I have a friend here and another scattered over there...their friends usually aren't my friends--maybe occasionally it works out, but not often. I've known Chuck for...almost 20 years, wow...and I've actually been friends with approximately one other person he was friends with--and that was 5th grade. Which isn't to say that I haven't really liked some of his friends and had good times with them, I just tend not to make good friends through other friends...at best a few people that I could have a short conversation with now and then if our paths crossed. There are a few exceptions here and there, it just amazes me how often I don't really get to know friends of friends at all or very little.
I think the closest I've been to being in a group of friends who all got along was the days of hanging out in Antrim with Russ, Mike and Bill...we all got along, all played video games, watched movies, bullshitted, got drunk, played cards ...and now none of us see each other or talk on a regular basis. Damn, those were some great days...but time is ever tumbling forward and things like that exist nowhere but the mind...at least not the same good times with those particular friends. Ah well...what good is life without bittersweet memories?
I just don't like the feeling off disconnectedness lately...no intricate web...I'm down this line and if it snaps, I'm fucked...I've got a series of those random strands people walk into passing through a doorway and when someone severs one, I just keep moving looking for another spot to make a strand whereas with a richly woven web, if one or two strands get severed, you can keep on going and barely notice...and you may even find your way back to the broken strands and find that section easy to repair. I'd love to repair sections of the webbing, but by the time I realize they are breaking, it's already too late apparently. So I get cut free and drift on the little whisps of webbing I've still got and wait to see where I land. I should have had a few cups of coffee and a shot of the brisk afternoon before trying to write this...shite.