Bleeding Fiction

I travel a lot less now than I used to, but in English that still translates to a fair bit of time on the road. The more complex travelling gets - especially in the holiday season, when travelling means checking in five minutes after your flight was due to leave, rushing through security and then dashing breathless down the concourse to reach the gate in time - the more I think that love is simple. I think love is as simple as someone waiting for you at the airport when your flight lands.

I had to take a shuttle bus home.

It was a good trip, all in all, though I couldn't help but feel... small... while I was away. School is part of that; the more time that goes on with me in school and unemployed, the more my relationships to people - my parents in particular, but most other people, too - shift back into the college frame of reference I thought I'd given up a few years ago. It's probably because I have the same lack of control over my ultimate fate now as I did then; I'm living in a microcosm of reality, cut off from what I view as the real world. It's not something that makes me happy.

To put it succinctly: The parents of a 27 year old guy should not reasonably expect that he'll call them to let him know his plane landed safely, nor should they reasonably expect that he'll go away on vacation with them. The guy should have his own money and schedule with which to go on vacation. He should have his own people to vacation with and should have other people to see that he landed safely. Which I guess touches on more than just school, but what can you do?

The other part of feeling small was that I told the same two stories over and over again while I was away; the story of my failing Japanese and trying to switch programs and the story of my failed relationship with Natalie. Leaving aside the little things, the day-to-day trials of a life lived, these are the only stories I had to tell. I feel bad about that; like I haven't done my part to keep my life fictional. Maybe I should take up decathalon sky-diving.

At least people responded well to my stories. I got wishes of luck on the former and mostly disbelieving laugher and teasing on the later; I guess dating a 19 year old wasn't as innocuous as I thought it would be. Which, it was pointed out to me as I was still struggling to understand what happened there, might be exactly the point. Tony East of Camp Winakuee told me Natalie's still young enough to be reading Cosmo and listening to the advice therein. Gailie Gail guessed that, due to our respective ages, Natalie and I were just looking for different things out of a relationship. I didn't really get it; I mean, I'm not looking for much more than a relationship that isn't screwed up.

It took Miriam to put it a way that made sense to me: at 19 years old a lot of people don't want to meet someone who's perfect for them. A lot of people, in fact, run away if they find that person. While most of my friends seem to thumb their noses at these "lot of people," I've seen what Miriam's talking about often enough not to discount it. This sounds more like the whinge of "why do girls always date jerks" than I'm strictly comfortable with; I've never liked that particular canard, and I can't remember a time when I seriously believed it. Still, it's broader in application and makes a bit more sense. So, in my mind at least, order triumphs over chaos.

What else can I say? Christmas and Chanukah are unimportant to me on a religious level and, related to things I discussed above (in paragraph 4), awkward for me on a present-receiving level. New Year's lost its luster when I began staying up until midnight as a matter of course and its placement in the middle of winter hardly makes anything seem new. Seeing friends is always good, except when I don't, as was the case with Doug, owing entirely to the fact that I'm a fuck up and can't wake up when I'm supposed to.

Classes start tomorrow, and I'm on the wait list for everything I want to take. Somehow, this seems perfectly fitting.