I think what is such a drag to me is meeting good people and then having to leave. That's life, you say. Not everyone you meet is forever, you remind me. But wouldn’t it be so nice to have around an accumulation of everyone you have learned things from, everyone who has made you belly laugh, everyone who has offered you a fresher perspective than you were able to see yourself?
Eva and I sat beside the dunes of Maspalomas in Las Canarias, a culture-packed little island just 93 miles from the coast of Africa this past weekend. We opted for Mexican food in place of traditional island food. Oops. Over a subpar margarita and some nachos, she and I talked about relationships. I lamented that sometimes it gets exhausting wishing on something good to continue, even when it is just isn’t in the cards. That I find myself fighting this urge to relight the wicks of these relationships of people I have met that were too brief to fully quench me.
The fun part about meeting so many people is, well, enjoying them. Playing a character in a story that we both share. Feeling comfortable with a former stranger so quickly. Learning more about what you like and how you respond to things. But I can’t help but mourn a little when it is over… and maybe that makes me just a tad bit insatiable.
Eva reminded me that we are all just an accumulation of all the people we have spent time with, so no one is really too far gone. This is indubitably my case, considering I give these people free accommodation in my mind for what feels like eons after a goodbye. Maybe I’m still a shadow of a thought in their minds. The latter is of less importance. But even still, sometimes I wish they still existed in flesh.
The twisted part about it all is that the more dates you go on, the more interpersonal time you spend with different people, the quantity of the exposure doesn’t dilute each experience.
Not one new moment of embarrassment makes its precursing moments any less cringey. Not one new moment of passion makes any one of the forerunners any less spirited.
So every memory of every interaction grows on top of one another, like an amoeba. One part of a cell dividing itself again and again, and each new cell grows just as big as it started. Relentlessly, it grows.
Binary fission sounds like a pretty rancid way to explain tender memories.
I think on good days these stories structure themselves as a beautiful little neighborhood for the brain, one with outstanding urban planning I should add.
A neighborhood with crosswalks and bike paths where neurons should be. Colorful parks linked from cortex to cortex. A neighborhood filled with local cafes that pepper the street, with green spaces and vegetation at every corner. And each little memory functions well here, living beside the other, coexisting amidst expansion. They respect one anothers spaces and host tasteful garden parties. They even leave treats on the porch for the mailmen.
The other week I went on a date with this English guy who bore a silly name. We walked across the grafittied bridge in a similar cadence, our ears still ringing from standing front row at the live music we tasted while in the city. He turned to me in stride and asked me plainly what I liked to do.
I laughed thinking about how simple the question was. How simple my answer would be.
It would be cool if I could confess to rock climbing, creating a new business, investing in some philanthropic venture for the greater good.
In my head I played out a response;
“I like music, I like to travel, I like to write.”
I audibly giggled at the utter plainness of what I had prepared to say. He looked confused as to why I had only responded with laughter. I think that maybe the exchange just seemed so profoundly ordinary that it made me even bashful to share.
Maybe I became coy about the next step: risking oversharing parts of myself that could overwhelm him.
Or worse, diminishing these parts of myself and then seem incredibly boring.
I suppose there is always risk in expression.
I know that my interests themselves aren’t simple. I just marvel at the contrast of it all. That you can discover something that is new and excites you, but there lies a threshold of words that you can string together to express it all. You can experience something so surreal, meet someone so remarkable, and feel something so intensely, but there will always be the risk of it being presented so starkly plain and simple.
I find it is nearly never the contrary, which would be hyperbolizing the hell out of something so conventional. I find it is never squeezing the mediocrity from what was and funneling it into into a more promising vision of what could have been. Instead I yearn not to fall short of expression. And thank god for this.
I don’t like to imagine that I extract too much from anything that sincerely was just plain and simple. It isn't so bland in my book, you see.
I think about whether I will cross paths again with these people who helped me write these stories. Sometimes I pray upon their reentry and other times I let go. I look up at my bedroom ceiling, muddled with feelings and void of any words.
Must prayer include words?, I think to myself.
I’m really not so sure at all.
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