We carry each other

My friend posted this, and for some strange reason I couldn't reply on the blog directly, so I'm going to do it here. He wrote:

"
I have dreamed a dream, but now that dream is gone from me.
.
..
...

That is really all that need be said, but I suppose for lack of anything else to do in this hotel room, I'll pontificate. Briefly.

The matrix it turns out was right about everything as the quote above would seem to indicate. Also matrices are bad as is clearly indicated by a) the movies and b) mo-mor-puggers.

Sigh, I feel so damn emo right now. I really don't want to turn this into a rant. I do want to shape my feelings into arguments, mold my convictions into unwavering logic that would solve all the problems before me, and convert the non-believers to my manifest conclusions ( also possibly converting them into radioactive vapor).

Maybe I just deal poorly with change. I had this naive theory that we would all live together at some point. This theory is clearly flawed in its assumptions that this would be plausible. I don't know.

Coherence. I crave the ability to extract from my imagination the wisp of an idea and brand it into form. A form like prose. This would be most useful. If only I was an artist.
"

My reply:

Funny, you sound like someone I know...but I would reply with the words of a great friend of mine:

"You just gotta belieeeeeeeeeve."

I think I've been down this same road you seem to be describing far, far too often, and it doesn't really even go anywhere. As much as I want to be able to get a grip on my life, to really decide how I'm going to approach every day based on my convictions, it seems the harder you try to hold on to anything, the more easily it slips by. Again, as you told me, our best hope seems to be in possibility - allowing for it and embracing it. And even though the greatest challenge might be relinquishing the desire for this control, or even the desire for any of this to MEAN anything, ultimately I think we'll be happier when we can finally let go...

I had that dream too, and just as you do I feel it slipping away, but it's not the end of the story. I think we still have a greater dream that the world and all the convoluted shifts in circumstance can't take from us, and that is to keep our eyes open and see what there is to take from this life. Our greatest triumph is yet to come, and it'll take more than this to stop us. Paul isn't leaving us, not in the really important ways, and I don't think he'll ever lose what it is that ties him to us. I can't say what exactly that is, but I think it's there, and I think it'll hold us together even when we don't know how things are going to work out. It's part of who we are, and the people we have made ourselves and each other into.

I had a funny thought yesterday as I was carrying the piano keyboard back to my dorm. It was all boxed up in cardboard and tape, and as I was carrying it on my shoulder, it felt to me like I was a pallbearer carrying a casket. I tried to shake off the thought, but it makes a weird kind of sense. We're always carrying our life, and in turn our death, around with us. We are the keepers of our life story, and we carry it with us everywhere, and so too do we carry our friends with us. After all, they're a part of our lives too. As I said before, we've made each other this way, and just like how we are never without our home, so too are we never without each other. Even when we're alone, we all carry each other. It is the reason for our strength, and there is no greater honor.

In dreams, we remember how to fly

I've mentioned this before, but at various times during and certainly after my return to New York, this last summer has felt truly dreamlike, and while this was merely an interesting sensation at the time, the more I dwell on it the more I am troubled by it. When I returned to school, I immediately sought out a comfortable niche for myself, and while I think I've already taken great strides to make my experience this year far superior to last year's debacle, already I see the signs of habituation and comfort taking their toll on the ambition I had at summer's end. During the final days of August I was genuinely restless, chomping at the bit to get back to work and take what I saw to be the next step for my life. I felt like I was on the verge of something, and while some of the perspective that these last months have afforded me remains and has contributed to the growth I've undergone, I feel slightly disappointed by the anti-climactic nature of my return. Once again, I find it hard to see where I'm going, and although I've been much more active at school and in the city, and feel as if I'm getting more use out of the opportunities afforded to me by simply being in such an amazing city, even this more exciting lifestyle feels as if it has become routine. I used to write this blog daily, and now I'm having trouble scraping enough cognition together to write a blurb a week. I feel disconnected from this summer, remember it as if it was lived by someone else, but I remain amazed by everything I experienced over such a short amount of time. I suppose returning to the same place and similar activities after vacation would likely have this effect, and I'm not sure exactly what else I was expecting to happen, but I hope I never forget how I felt at the end of my time back home.

I suppose this kind of growth is slow.

On the lighter side, everyone go here:
http://tighroslin.com/

Hope everyone is well. I'd really like to hear what everyone's up to these days.

Paul, hope you're feeling better after last night. Remember that feeling and have mercy on me. :)