Wednesday, December 31, 2003
Holidays. The one time of the year you catch up with all your relatives and friends you haven’t seen in a year and realize how different you are. How different you’ve become.
Holidays take a different meaning in different cities in this country. In certain cities, like New York or Miami, the cities are dead around Christmas. The town is full of transients who all go home for the holidays, to be with their families and visit old hometown friends. Cities like St. Louis are the cities to which they return. In St. Louis, the Christmas season is a booming one for nightlife as a result. Everyone comes back to the hometown and the bars are at full capacity everywhere. It can be fun, annoying, and sometimes quite troubling.
I spent the past Saturday evening with my old buddy Derek. Derek and I have had an interesting relationship. There has been true angst, and there has been true love. We were once lively adversaries in the debate game, and we now find ourselves proud compatriots, firm in our beliefs together. We fought together and played together. We were in the same place for a long time.
It all started, really, a little more than a year ago. I had returned from a failed attempt to find an agreeable live in Mexico, and he had just returned from a failed attempt at college. We came to live in the same house with another friend. Derek had no idea what to do with his life, and no idea what he wanted from it. I was the same. All we knew is that we were alike, and we wanted to find others out there like us. We read great books and discussed. We studied politics and spent countless days debating and working on a true political philosophy, on how to re-write the constitution of the country.
We had a great time just laying back and getting high, reveling in how great Radiohead was. Life without a job was great for a while, for both of us. But we had to grow up at some point.
I made a decision to move on with my adult life. I wanted to make some real money and travel the world. I had to work hard to get at that. And I’ve been doing that, more or less. I’m making real progress.
Derek went back to school to finish his degree this past fall. He did graduate. Now he’s back to indecision as to his life. It appears he may head to Korea to teach English, the preferred destination for disaffected college graduates. He still is working on a book, on developing his writing career, but that has come to quite a halt. That’s where he stands now. Undecided.
Nonetheless, when he came back to St. Louis for the holiday season we naturally got together to visit and catch up and have the same good old time as always. We smoked a little to lighten our moods and hopped in my car down to the old haunt of CBGB’s for a beer and perhaps a game of bar-shuffleboard.
We got down there, but conversation was at a lull. I tried to talk about my business, but he doesn’t fully understand the desires and whatnot involved, nor does he really care. He spoke a bit about his activities from this past fall. I heard stories about writing a paper coming down from acid. I was interested, but I couldn’t really discuss the matter. I’ve never done acid. I’ve wanted to try in the past, but I never have. Probably never will. I’ve moved on and forward, so they say, and they would say that acid would be a backward step for a forward mover. Who the fuck knows anyway? The bottom line here is that we had lost so many commonalities simply in the fact that we were in different places in our life.
It really pained me. Sitting in absolute silence over a beer wasn’t that great. It simply inspired memories of the good old times to pop back in your head. Often times, in conversations like these, people find that all they can discuss are the good old memories. I think that’s sad, if you have to resort to that, and so does Derek. We still think alike, but all our like-thinking did for us here was lead to silence. If all you’ve in common is the past, what does that say about the future?
And so we go. Derek and I are still very much alike; we’re simply in different places. I wish it weren’t so. I wish so much to have the things I used to. I miss the email conversations while we’re apart, getting high and debating nonsense, and drinking over great, delving conversations. I know that we could come back to the same place at a later date, but that doesn’t excuse the sadness now. I can’t sympathize with him nor he with I.
Will we ever come back to the same place? Who knows? But I sure as hell hope so. The heart can easily be overburdened with sadness, and the loss of a friend through difference in life choice is certainly one of those weights. I don’t think this is something that can be fought through, either; it’s just the way of the world, and we have to accept it. I won’t stop hoping, though.
Holidays bring this pain. Most of our lives we seek escape from reality – through movies, drugs, music or vacation. How ironic is it that when the holidays arrive, escape is impossible?
Holidays take a different meaning in different cities in this country. In certain cities, like New York or Miami, the cities are dead around Christmas. The town is full of transients who all go home for the holidays, to be with their families and visit old hometown friends. Cities like St. Louis are the cities to which they return. In St. Louis, the Christmas season is a booming one for nightlife as a result. Everyone comes back to the hometown and the bars are at full capacity everywhere. It can be fun, annoying, and sometimes quite troubling.
I spent the past Saturday evening with my old buddy Derek. Derek and I have had an interesting relationship. There has been true angst, and there has been true love. We were once lively adversaries in the debate game, and we now find ourselves proud compatriots, firm in our beliefs together. We fought together and played together. We were in the same place for a long time.
It all started, really, a little more than a year ago. I had returned from a failed attempt to find an agreeable live in Mexico, and he had just returned from a failed attempt at college. We came to live in the same house with another friend. Derek had no idea what to do with his life, and no idea what he wanted from it. I was the same. All we knew is that we were alike, and we wanted to find others out there like us. We read great books and discussed. We studied politics and spent countless days debating and working on a true political philosophy, on how to re-write the constitution of the country.
We had a great time just laying back and getting high, reveling in how great Radiohead was. Life without a job was great for a while, for both of us. But we had to grow up at some point.
I made a decision to move on with my adult life. I wanted to make some real money and travel the world. I had to work hard to get at that. And I’ve been doing that, more or less. I’m making real progress.
Derek went back to school to finish his degree this past fall. He did graduate. Now he’s back to indecision as to his life. It appears he may head to Korea to teach English, the preferred destination for disaffected college graduates. He still is working on a book, on developing his writing career, but that has come to quite a halt. That’s where he stands now. Undecided.
Nonetheless, when he came back to St. Louis for the holiday season we naturally got together to visit and catch up and have the same good old time as always. We smoked a little to lighten our moods and hopped in my car down to the old haunt of CBGB’s for a beer and perhaps a game of bar-shuffleboard.
We got down there, but conversation was at a lull. I tried to talk about my business, but he doesn’t fully understand the desires and whatnot involved, nor does he really care. He spoke a bit about his activities from this past fall. I heard stories about writing a paper coming down from acid. I was interested, but I couldn’t really discuss the matter. I’ve never done acid. I’ve wanted to try in the past, but I never have. Probably never will. I’ve moved on and forward, so they say, and they would say that acid would be a backward step for a forward mover. Who the fuck knows anyway? The bottom line here is that we had lost so many commonalities simply in the fact that we were in different places in our life.
It really pained me. Sitting in absolute silence over a beer wasn’t that great. It simply inspired memories of the good old times to pop back in your head. Often times, in conversations like these, people find that all they can discuss are the good old memories. I think that’s sad, if you have to resort to that, and so does Derek. We still think alike, but all our like-thinking did for us here was lead to silence. If all you’ve in common is the past, what does that say about the future?
And so we go. Derek and I are still very much alike; we’re simply in different places. I wish it weren’t so. I wish so much to have the things I used to. I miss the email conversations while we’re apart, getting high and debating nonsense, and drinking over great, delving conversations. I know that we could come back to the same place at a later date, but that doesn’t excuse the sadness now. I can’t sympathize with him nor he with I.
Will we ever come back to the same place? Who knows? But I sure as hell hope so. The heart can easily be overburdened with sadness, and the loss of a friend through difference in life choice is certainly one of those weights. I don’t think this is something that can be fought through, either; it’s just the way of the world, and we have to accept it. I won’t stop hoping, though.
Holidays bring this pain. Most of our lives we seek escape from reality – through movies, drugs, music or vacation. How ironic is it that when the holidays arrive, escape is impossible?
