Exit stage left
Thursday, November 30th, 2006My friend Jacques called me out on something that I’ve been hoping no one would notice – that I keep introducing characters and then never mentioning them again. There is a good reason for that, I swear. Basically, these characters – oh okay, people, if you must – keep exiting stage left. Ben disappeared without saying goodbye (which to be fair, he had told me he would do), Justin and I are “getting some distance” from each other, and Caroline has been busy playing house with Lee so I rarely see either of them anymore.
I’m back to spending most of my time alone and that suits me just fine. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and a lot of thinking and a lot of writing. In fact, I wrote so much (and so intensely) last weekend that I sprained my thumb. I’m not kidding. It’s still bandaged up. So don’t worry – I may be struggling into adulthood but I’ll obviously never stop being a ridiculous little girl.
It’s strange how much I’ve started to think of people as characters. It’s actually a little unsettling because I worked so hard in my mid-20s to become ’empathetic’ and think of other people’s feelings and so forth. Basically, to understand that people have their own subjective reality and experiences. Then I had a long, miserable seven years. And now I’m coming back to seeing other people as existing only to be a part of my experience…and simultaneously I’m feeling much happier and more settled. I’ll spare you the long version but I think this has something to do with where we believe reality is being generated – outside of ourselves or inside ourselves. And by extension, who has the absolute power of creation: Self or Other.
Anyway, that’s why it doesn’t particularly bother me that people keep exiting stage left. It’s not like they’re carrying on with some experience that excludes me, since once they leave my line of sight they no longer exist. Right? Seriously, I’m either becoming an incredibly independent person or a sociopath. Only time will tell.
Either way, I think Nong Khai – the bizarrely cloistered, otherworldly atmosphere of this place – is encouraging these deep adjustments. I recently read this quote that sounded like it very well could have been written about this town:
“But I’ve been through it myself, and the plain fact is this: finding ourselves here with so much more time on our hands than we ever had in our lives, we get desperate. In a big city, if we’re bored, we simply look around for some diversion, and there are plenty of them. But here, there’s no alleviation or the possibility of it. We must either go under completely or decide to swim.”
(From “Diary of a Drug Fiend” by Aleister Crowley)
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