Category: Writings

I feel disconnected.

I feel disconnected from my family.
I feel disconnected because it’s hard for me to talk to them. Because the deep stuff I probably should and probably need to talk to them about scares me. Because it doesn’t feel natural, because it feels awkward. Because I don’t know why I can’t start doing it.

I feel disconnected from my home town.
I feel disconnected because it’s so far away. Because nothing and everything about it is the same as I left it. Because some people told me I should leave, even though they later changed their minds. Because I was hurt so badly there. Because it’s so much a part of me, and still, I can never go back. Because there is no place else gives me the solitude and openness I once knew.

I feel disconnected from my people.
I feel disconnected because no one here talks they way they did. Because  nobody thinks the way they did. Because none of the earthy, familiar smells exist for me now; the spruce boughs, the simmering tea, the musty canvas, the thick warm hide. Because no one looks at me with pride the way they once did. Because I still dream in their language.

I feel disconnected from my God.
I feel disconnected because I worry too much. Because if I don’t fix it myself, I feel like a failure. Because nothing around me is quiet, nothing lets me hear that still, small voice. Because my dreams are no longer alive. Because I drifted away. Because I don’t know how to get back.

I feel disconnected from the people around me.
I feel disconnected because they don’t understand who I am and where I come from. Because I don’t understand where they come from, or why they are the way they are. Because they’re far too busy to care. Because most people won’t even read this. Because fewer people will do anything once they do. Because people don’t think to listen deeply. Because listening like that doesn’t matter to them like it does to me.

I feel disconnected from my art.
I feel disconnected because it no longer feels like something I am inside of. Because when I create something beautiful and meaningful, I don’t have time to sit and wonder at the gift I’ve been given. Because I don’t sit and just muse any longer.

I feel disconnected from myself.
I feel disconnected because when I am doing something. Anything. It feels like I am on autopilot. Because I can’t remember normal things that most people can remember. Because things get switched around in my brain, and yet it still feels like fact. Because I complain aloud how people can do certain things, then realize I myself am doing those things. Because my own history is blurred, mixed, tangled; not a solid line like it should be. Because I can’t figure out if I have always been like this, or if this is something new.

But what does it mean to be disconnected? Does it means that you are solitary, alone, an intrepid nomad? Does it mean you get to figure out things and reinvent them as you see fit? Is it bad to be disconnected?

I don’t really know. But feeling like you should be connected?

Hurts.

I am a Perfect Cube.
I am all of Uranus’ moons.
I am Cobalt. But I’m not Cobain.
I own no white lighter, there’s no club I’m in.
(RIP Brian, Jimi, Janis & Jim)

I am the Hebrew alphabet,
Written in the books of the New Testament.
I am Old too, but split and multiplied.
I fix the Constitution of America,
Light up the land-lines in South Africa.
I’m the great Canyon Expressway,
From Fort Wayne to Miami, Florida.

I am a cowboy cigarette.
I am a prisoner of Château d’If.
I am lawns for croquet.
A Cracker Jack peanut.
I am Salinger’s death, and his missing chapter.
I am Napoleon, as a Commander.
I am a hurricane’s pressure and temp.
I am a bat, and can comically detect.

I’m the Reagan of radio.
And the length of the LHC.
I am Crispus Attucks,
But during the revolution
I’m the escape from ASCII.
I am the rotation of the sun.

I am 27.

This might seem strange, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a grasp on the concept of my own age.
I understand age as an abstract idea, like what point people typically start thinking about certain things in life, at what point certain body functions begin to deteriorate.
But when it comes to understanding how old I am physically and how I think about the world, I don’t really get it. In one sense or another, I’ve always felt that I haven’t followed any of the prevailing attitudes of what other people my age have.

And it could be entirely cultural. It could be that I don’t feel my age simply because I can’t fully identify with anyone around me and say “oh, I am just like them”.
But there seems to be this expectation that I should relate to others based on how close we are in age.

I’ve always beleived that you’re only as old as you feel you are, and so I’ve tried to live that. I remember being little and learning the meaning behind Louis Armstrongs “Young at Heart”, and realizing that staying young was attainable if you could think that way.

Many of the grown-ups I knew as a kid were kinda boring. When I was little, I was pretty articulate, and would often talk to grown-ups and ask them about their lives. I remember asking a teacher at a dinner party why he didn’t smile more often. He told me he didn’t know.
I just know that I don’t want to be that.