This is a piece of non-fiction I wrote about two weeks ago. Being non-fiction, it is less polished, and tends to ramble a bit. But I think it's relatively similiar to the new story I am posting, and certainly has its merits. So, to those few of you still reading, I hope you enjoy this, and I hope it is a stimulating read.

******

I suppose I’m in one of those overwhelmed moods. I find myself in them often. I guess overwhelmed is the appropriate word for how I feel, but really, it doesn’t do it justice. I’m elated and melancholy and excited and apprehensive all in one. I feel ready for a long drive, a journey to somewhere unexpected where new, and unforeseen, people are waiting, where I will live and exist inside of events that I never thought I’d live within. I don’t know if that makes sense. Let me elaborate: I feel ready to go somewhere far off and exotic. I feel as if I should be leaving for something, as if I am on the threshold of a new emotion, one I have not felt.

Yet at the same time, I feel like doing nothing more than finding someone old, someone familiar, and lying beside them. Part of me wants to drive through town, until I can corral someone from my past into a cup of coffee and a cigarette and good, long, reminiscence about how our life, and our home, was before and never will be again, at least not quite in the same way. I want to mourn the people I’ve lost - and there are many - and find some way to get back to them. Or at least, find a way to get back to them the way they were when I loved them and they loved me. This is a blanket statement - there is not one specific person I have in mind (for I’ve loved many people and seen my relationship with them irrevocably changed, be it by my actions, or theirs, and sometimes just by the simple movement of time). Anyone would do. I just want to find someone, anyone, that I have loved and, if only for the duration of a cigarette, exist with them the way I once did, before our entire friendship became a thing of memory, and long phone calls, and occasional stilted instant message conversations.

What is eating at me, or overwhelming me, is our inability to exist, singularly, within the present tense. It is virtually impossible to live, fully and completely, within a single moment. There are always outside forces tugging at us: memories, worries, expectations. We are wondering what the other person is thinking, or even more likely, we are wondering what exactly we are thinking. We are trying to relate it to something in our past, or trying like hell to appreciate where we are, knowing that at a later date we will want to remember how we feel within this moment.

The moment I am talking about, of course, is hard to describe. It’s something we all know: that feeling of possibility for the future, but also of knowing someone - even if just for that specific second in all of universal time - completely. It is a feeling of being in the company of one person, and not hoping to be anywhere but in their company. This is not necessarily a romantic sensation, and in fact should not be just be romantic in nature. It’s a universal emotion: it is so strong, I think, because it is this great sense of commonality, of shared purpose and destiny - and not in the contrived way that sports teams, or military units try to formulate, in the real way that two people (or even a small group of people) feel after a drink or two as they share a cigarette on a balcony overlooking an endless ocean and a bracingly clear night sky. It’s that feeling of standing at the edge of something - perhaps the universe - with another human being, and knowing what exactly it is to be human through them: impermanent, frail, destined to die and be forgotten, but also full of grace, of intellect, and love.

I think this is what I’m trying to get at. That I yearn for this commonality, and know that I’ve recently found it, and want it again. But also, I want that long trip. I want to face the unknown and the unexpected. They say we are creatures of habit, and perhaps many of us are, but I think I thrive best when faced with something new, and uncertain, and possibly vast in it intentions. Of course, there are limits to this: I face this uncertainty and newness well only if I have a safe haven to return to (usually a woman), only if I have someone to reassure me of my inherent rightness in my quest for experience and meaning; only if I have someone to reassure me of my basic decency, even if I might err from time to time.

What I am after, I think, is a moment of clarity, of my mind being clear and my body feeling light, perhaps even absent. What I want, right now, is to exist within some moment - any moment - much like the world exists beneath a clear cumulous sky: without worry, or concern, or awareness. I want to simply be. I want the future to be unknown and full of possibility, but not of any essential concern. I want my past to temporarily disperse, the way it will many centuries from now when I am gone, and any people I may have touched are gone, and my whole life will be as if it never happened, a tree falling in the middle of a forest. I want to live solely and completely within…within what? I suppose that’s the question.

Maybe this is a weird wish, to exist without history or future. It is, I must admit, in a way like death. But sometimes that is the best way to measure our life, to put it in stark contrast with the vast nothingness of non existence. And by simply being, by being a conglomeration of matter within some moment, next to some person (constructed of almost identical matter) beneath a constructed sky, standing on solid, constructed earth - well, I think that is the farthest thing from death, now that I write more.

But why am I overwhelmed? Because I can’t place accurately what I am feeling. None of this - none of what is written above - is entirely true. It’s words, constructed (and I won’t even delve into the question of whether things really are constructed, or whether they just happen to fall into existence by some grace of life). What I am feeling is ineffable, out of the reach of language, and perhaps human knowledge.

And this, this unreachable, is one of the scariest things in the world to someone who wishes to be a writer - but also one of the most exhilarating, and legitimate things in the world. I thrive on feeling things, experiencing life, and finding a way to put that into something concrete and lasting (which memory is neither of). I write in an effort to discern what the world means to me; I write from a desire for clarity and meaning and understanding. I write to understand myself, and those I love. I write as a way of searching. But when I have no hopes of finding anything, as right now? Well, that’s a predicament, but a beautiful one.

And I think it points to one of the major flaws of being human. We want meaning. Hell, we need meaning, and reasons. We live our lives from the belief, and expectation, that if we live it the right way - love the right people, make the right decisions, believe the right beliefs - then at some point, usually the end, we will be rewarded with an answer, a meaning, a truth. It’s why some of us go to church. It’s why others of us write. It’s why some of us listen to music, and some of us follow sports teams. Church and writing promise, or try to promise, big answers; music and sports can actually give us smaller answers. Although, honestly, I don’t know what the answer for music is: it’s about feeling, the ineffable, more than any other art. Sports, though, is a better form of religion: you set your beliefs (a team), perform the rituals (watch, cheer), and at the end of each year, have a tangible way of measuring your belief against another’s (someone wins).

But I’m getting side tracked. We need answers. We yearn for them, seek them, live for them. In essence, this search for meaning, and for reason, is what our lives boil down to, more than anything.

This makes living within something - yourself, a moment, a lifetime - vastly more difficult. We can never simply be, because that is not how life works. We have pasts - successes, failures, hurts, wants. And we have what lies ahead of us - unknown hurts and loves, eventually an all encompassing nothing. We have our expectations for the way things should be, for the way they should feel. Above all, we have this necessity to attach things with purpose and meaning. We have a desperate need for things to make themselves clear, but also for those things, once clarified, to contain a concrete, attainable answer and meaning. And life, in its infinite beauty, resists. It refuses to give us what it is we’re after.

But isn’t this a good thing? Isn’t the lack of a bigger meaning (which still might exist; I’m not an expert) a good thing? Shouldn’t it allow us to live freely without expectation? Shouldn’t it allow us to appreciate the shear wonder of existence, in all its baffling, meaningless complexities? A sense of wonder, I think, is essential to having a good life. And there is no easier way to feel wonder than to look skywards and ponder our meaning, or lack there of.

I’ve lost my way again. Which often happens in times like this (though, really, I’ve never felt quite like I feel right now). Because, despite my best efforts to simply be, to exist in a vacuum, I cannot. I am burdened with the same fears, hopes, loves, desires, regrets as almost every human who lives, has lived, or will live. And, above all, I am mired in the same quest for clarity, and meaning, and the transcendence that those things provide.

What I desire now is simple, but also not (if that makes sense). I desire, above all, to find myself in one of those rare moments where life doesn’t have to make sense, or have a meaning. Be this with a lover, a friend, a dog, myself - I don’t care. I want to be in one of those moments where the world lies before you, in all its incomprehensibility, and is nothing but full of beauty, and grace, and that right there is your meaning. These moments are unexpected (and won’t happen if you expect them). They’re that sunset seen over the mountain ridge when it’s been raining all day, or the kiss shared with a girl you know you’ll never have in the permanent sense of the word. They’re sitting on a statue, or overlooking a city that means more than just a name to you, with a girl you desperately pine for (and always will). They’re in a shared loss, a shared silence, with an old friend before parting, or in the girl you meet on a plane, unfurl your life to, and then never see again. They’re in hearing the voice of an old lover, and having all the anger, and loss, and sorrow dissipate for just that moment, replaced by the kind of love that once was more real than anything you’d felt. (replaced by a knowledge that what you shared wasn’t in vain, and was, in fact, real in its own way).

I fear I delve into cliché here. And sometimes, that happens. My feeling has mostly passed. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel quite this way again. Above all, there is one thing I want. I want to walk with a girl through olde city. I’d settle for coffee with another, or a catch with my dad. But above all, I want to walk with this girl. And it is consoling to know that, tomorrow, I will be able to walk with her. Of course, this feeling will have passed by tomorrow (sleep has a remarkable way of wiping our emotional and mental slates clean), and who knows what exactly I will feel or want tomorrow.