Socializing for me…
It’s the sense that I am trying keep up with a train by foot
The people are on the train and I want to talk, I want to relax (“just relax, yo, okay? it’s fine! chill!”), want to have fun, but I can’t quite find a time or place to put my foot on the ledge and pull myself up and in.
The progression is that as a youngster I could see this clearly and realized that, logically, it’s not worth fighting.
But people become lonely. I tried to run fast enough in order to pull myself onto the train. I actually did it. It turns out I’m not all that incapable of it. Some people runners on the ground around me are much worse. Actually, some of them can’t even run. Some people don’t even realize there is a loud train and what trains do and are. But I do and can, and so…I learned how to run really fast when a train is accelerating, and then I jumped on.
Then you realize that once you get on the train, things are different. The other people have never had to be runners. Their shoes aren’t covered in dirt. Actually some of them don’t wear shoes at all — they don’t even know what shoes are or why you would need them. They see you have certain muscles here and there — your legs are defined, your arms are muscular from all that trial-and-error from lifting. Theirs aren’t. They are relaxed. They sense something is “off” about you, tighter, more controlled or intense, but they don’t know what it is. There are all of these topics, memories, histories, and games they remember and talk about that happened when you were off the train). Sometimes you can stay on the train, but other times you get jolted off — as if you’re lighter or less attentive, or something is wrong to where you are the one who keeps accidentally falling off the damn train.
You don’t know, sometimes, whether to stay on the train and wait for something to change, or to jump off the train again so you can just be alone and have some space to think. Hey, maybe you’ll even find a runner who you can run with! But then you see that the runners are kind of tired too, just like you are, and they’re scared, and most of them haven’t really thought to make a train for runners (they don’t know how a train is built, nor do they have resources to) or to just sit on the ground and hang out. Sometimes you can't find other runners who are like you. You run for miles and miles, days, months, but you don't run into any. You might run into some on the train but they hide, too, so you can't always tell.
Sometimes I jump off the train. I just get tired and actually bored trying to keep up with folks on the train. Other times I stay on the train and I learn everything I need to in order to pretend not to be a runner. I’m sharp enough up here in the ‘ole brain; once I figure out the information I’m trying to find, I find it, and I use it. So I don’t do anything too incriminating, but it feels like pretending. I don’t want to pretend, I just want a train to be on so I can relax, and I want to laugh with people.
Some people say, “Hey, you didn’t spend enough time on the train! And you’re all wound up tight from all that running! Just wait,you’ll be a train person in no time.” I think they’re probably right, logically speaking, but there is this cosmic resistance that I continue to feel. I guess it’s just not all that comfortable to be bored or feel detached and I don’t always want to be patient. I don’t want to feel anxious or weird or like a fraud. But I’m going to push through all of those feelings until I get tired again because I can’t think of anything more pressing to me now than finding one train that I don’t fall off of, or that I am interested in sitting inside of, or that I can catch, or finding just a few runners I think I can trust.
It’s not always that I feel sad; usually I feel strong, though its mixed with darkness. But I do always feel at least a quiver of loneliness. Sometimes the loneliness is all-consuming. Other times I'm proud of being like this. Mostly I’m dissatisfied with the train system and I imagine that I would prefer hot air balloons or some other kind of way of connecting, something lighter, less resistant, something I could grab onto, something fun, something that is less likely to run me over and smash my bones than a train, something quieter, something I can catch without losing my breath or having complicated mental strategies. Often I stop running and I think about where I could find another automobile, like a jet-pack or a hot air balloon, but when I ask people on the train they don't even know what I'm talking about. They actually don't even know they are on a train. All they have ever known is what it's like to be inside the train. Not outside.
And so my journey continues. But it's not easy. I don't like trains all that much...
18 Dec 2014, 4:31 pm
