the siren call of the question mark

"Just as the shape of natural objects like rainbows, snowflakes, crystals and blossoming flowers derives from the symmetrical way that quarks arrange themselves in the atom- a remnant of the universe's lost state of perfect symmetry- so he is convinced that the unhappy state of affairs regarding love can be traces right back to the subatomic. If you read up on strings, you will learn that there are two different types, closed and open-ended. The closed strings are O-shaped loops that float about like angels, insouciant of spacetime's demands and playing no part in our reality. It is the open-ended strings, the forlorn, incomplete U-shaped strings, whose desperate ends cling to the sticky stuff of the universe; it is they that become reality's building blocks, its particles, its exchanges of energy, the teeming producers of all that complication. Our universe, one could almost say, is actually built out of loneliness; and that foundational loneliness persists upwards to haunt every one of its residents."*

I think I owe the Internet an explanation about my absence, but it would be so trite I don't think I could actually bring myself to write it out. I did go to Texas, I am in Europe now, and I guess I could talk about the late nights at work couldn't I? What's the point. Spring stretched out for me like a neglected lawn, punctuated only by reading some fantasy books, which I won't get into here but I think it had the effect of a big pile of sand for my head (i.e. I'm the proverbial ostrich). I think I had sort of given up, accepted the loneliness but also the fact that I couldn't be of any use helping anyone else with their hurts and wants. Although, on a night recently I helped Adrien clean the blood off his hands and face, sat him down with a fizzy water and told him to tell me all about it. So cuts and scraps I can handle, but the big existential problems I'd put on the back burner, at least until after my Great Rambling Adventure in Europe.

"Becoming someone new, I could correct the errors of my past. At first I was optimistic: I could pull it off. But in the end, no matter where I went, I could never change. Over and over again I made the same mistake, hurt other people and hurt myself into the bargain. Just after I turned twenty, this thought hit me: Maybe I've lost the chance to ever be a decent human being. The mistakes I'd committed- maybe they were part of my very make-up, an inescapable part of my being."**

I read that on the train from Berlin to Prague and it articulated exactly how I felt around the end of May. I felt happy to see my friends, happy to jump into the springs, even happy to wake up with a hangover. Yet I felt like I'd given up on trying to actually be happy. I thought if I just kept my head up, tried not to get involved with anyone, and worked hard, that I'd end up on the other side of my self-loathing.

Of course, thankfully, the world isn't that simple. I ended up kissing someone I've wanted to kiss for a long time, and the rug not only got pulled out from under my feet but suddenly pop songs on the radio started making sense too. I've never felt so utterly insane for someone. But, this isn't a blog about happiness, or musings on romance, so suffice to say that while something rather fundamental in my life up to this point has changed, the big questions remain.

I've spent my time here walking around, endlessly, climbing everything I see, and drinking an incredible amount of coffee. People keep asking me what I'm up to, why I'm here, alone, etc. I feel somewhat sheepish answering, "oh you know, just looking around." I did read One Hundred Years of Solitude again, which still makes me cry, and am rounding book 5 now that I've reached Budapest (I've picked up whatever I could get my hands on at used book stores, which has been surprisingly fruitful). In Vitezslav Nezval's book Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, which I read in Prague, he dedicated the book to, "those who, like myself, gladly pause at times over the secrets of certain old courtyards, vaults, summer houses and those mental loops which gyrate around the mysterious." So I walk a few kilometers (cultural note!) and then stop to stare at the view or a statue or just to smoke a cigarette in silence. I wrote Ryan and told him how I felt like a big key was in my head winding everything up the right way, like all the little gears are tuned correctly now, and when I come home I'll be lighter, clearer, dare I say it, happier. Maybe it's enough just to have my eyes open, and to have some time to think.

There's a true feedback story about exactly everything I've just written called don't give up on nihilism, and goddamn, I can't wait to get home to Gainesville to listen to it.

*Paul Murray, Skippy Dies, pg. 300
**Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun, pg. 42