an interesting post I read....
I was perusing the Rants & Raves section in the South Bay area of Craig's List, and I found this little jewel....
Oh yeah, since it is Craig's List after all, it won't be up for much longer than a few days... so here is the text in it's whole:
Best friend and our fort - 34 (santa cruz)
Reply to: anon-76343771@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-05-31, 9:34PM PDT
Last time I saw you you were in my dreams. This is where I find you. We lay belly down on a sun-warmed deck our goose-bumped bodies shivering from a lazy swim in the quarry. We were trespassing. That day we did not have to say much of anything although we could talk about nearly everything under the sun if we chose. I was feeling a deep aloneness which was not an aloneness because it was a melancholy which you understood. The kind that comes from growing up in a place where the ground is always shifting beneath your feet. In which you believe the acquisition of love lies in puzzling out some obscure riddle whose answer is known to everyone but you. In which you begin to question everything about your self. Blaming it on anything. The way you look, hold yourself, the quality of your voice. Believing the answer is to be found in contorting yourself into some uncomfortable pose. Does love come when you're like this? Like this? A precarious kind of existence in which parental love and attention are parceled out on a wim and infrequently. The kind in which you learn time and time again that everyone leaves so you shouldn't linger long in the shadow of another.
You know that feeling and so you are okay with my quiet. There is no mistaking this quiet for boring or boredom because you know me well enough to know that behind the misleading stillness of my small, neat lips my thoughts are leaping, following the logic of precariously balanced boulders down a stream that won't ever end. Here too I am chasing birds inside my mind to see where they sleep at night. The darting yellow ones that weave embroidery thread through the sky, the sorrowful leaden ones that seem like they will never be able to escape the gravity of amassed sorrows from a world mourning its loss of center. Miraculously they all leave the ground and miraculously their flight must end somewhere in dreams.
You know what is behind my silence because it is behind your silence.
Once, my dream friend, we did not speak for three weeks straight.
When our lips finally moved again, they spoke of things big and small and were not afraid to ask for small kindnesses.
We finally make visible that which we have been afraid to conjure up. We judge but without any real malice. As only as some clinical, mythical anthropologist might judge.
Look there. We giggle. There at the academics with their closed circuit of spiteful humor. Privileged and priggish. Tightly wound in institutionally spun coats of irony and indifference. Concealing springloaded hearts and surprising longing.
And there, you hipsters always looking behind you, around you. Never quite comfortable in your own skin. You don costumes that are meant to conceal and detract but your pants are always on the verge of falling off. Right there in the infinite space between your studded belt and your soft young skin is the infinite universe of your naked need. We, my friend and I, can see your underwear.
And we look in vain for the underwear of others. Bubble-blowing dreamers and drummers. The Jungian wet dreams or horrifying anti-matter to those SUV driven consumers terrified to catch a glimpse of their own shadows in the stoned, dirt-tanned faces of naughty naughty citizens who won't play by the rules.
In all of humanity we see ourselves and are simultaneously icked-out and seduced. We long to belong to them all. The anarcho-hippies, the hobohemians, the sweet-skinned, sun-licked students, the smooth have-it-allers, the thick-glassed intellectuals, the seductive small town rock stars, the grafitti artists who paint with a middle finger dipped in the waste from a greedy needy country spun out of control. We see right through you to the need in your core. We see right through you. We can laugh at the silly fig leaves you try to hide behind that barely cover your part flopping parts. We can see your parts because we know them all too well my dream friend and I.
But that doesn't stop us from wanting to join your club.
Its okay now cause we don't need a membership. Here in this dreamland we have created our own fort of blankets and tables. We hide here when we need to. We vacillate between plotting to save the world from its own venom and recognizing that we're the crazy ones. The blight.
In future world of eugenics, who should go and who should be left to breed a perfect race? The world needs us all. We define each other.
And when we leave the fort we dance in high heels and old dresses of shattered silk. We play scrabble. We write manifestos and and un-authorized biographies of each other. We travel to Cuba and learn to Salsa a little but dream of tangoing. We cry at the cruelty of others and rejoice in the unpredictability of a godless world. We are afraid of death and long for it. We dive naked into icy bodies of water and come up gasping. Or we lay still for days at a time because there is acceptance here. We embarrass each other sometimes with our social awkwardness and at other times astound each other with our public charm. We are this and that and this and that and the other all at once.
And it is okay if you want me to clarify that thing I said. No I didn't mean it that way. I know it hurt you to think that's what I meant.
I am still here.
I still accept you.
Friend I love you where are you?
I have gathered the tables and the pillows and the tea and the bourbon. You can bring the blankets and the pens and paper. We'll start by drawing each other. The beautiful parts. We'll fill paper up over time. This bit and that until everything is beautiful again. This is how I see you. You are beautiful.
My missed connection: A best friend
* no -- it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
* yes -- ok to transmit this posting into outer space
76343771
Oh yeah, since it is Craig's List after all, it won't be up for much longer than a few days... so here is the text in it's whole:
Best friend and our fort - 34 (santa cruz)
Reply to: anon-76343771@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-05-31, 9:34PM PDT
Last time I saw you you were in my dreams. This is where I find you. We lay belly down on a sun-warmed deck our goose-bumped bodies shivering from a lazy swim in the quarry. We were trespassing. That day we did not have to say much of anything although we could talk about nearly everything under the sun if we chose. I was feeling a deep aloneness which was not an aloneness because it was a melancholy which you understood. The kind that comes from growing up in a place where the ground is always shifting beneath your feet. In which you believe the acquisition of love lies in puzzling out some obscure riddle whose answer is known to everyone but you. In which you begin to question everything about your self. Blaming it on anything. The way you look, hold yourself, the quality of your voice. Believing the answer is to be found in contorting yourself into some uncomfortable pose. Does love come when you're like this? Like this? A precarious kind of existence in which parental love and attention are parceled out on a wim and infrequently. The kind in which you learn time and time again that everyone leaves so you shouldn't linger long in the shadow of another.
You know that feeling and so you are okay with my quiet. There is no mistaking this quiet for boring or boredom because you know me well enough to know that behind the misleading stillness of my small, neat lips my thoughts are leaping, following the logic of precariously balanced boulders down a stream that won't ever end. Here too I am chasing birds inside my mind to see where they sleep at night. The darting yellow ones that weave embroidery thread through the sky, the sorrowful leaden ones that seem like they will never be able to escape the gravity of amassed sorrows from a world mourning its loss of center. Miraculously they all leave the ground and miraculously their flight must end somewhere in dreams.
You know what is behind my silence because it is behind your silence.
Once, my dream friend, we did not speak for three weeks straight.
When our lips finally moved again, they spoke of things big and small and were not afraid to ask for small kindnesses.
We finally make visible that which we have been afraid to conjure up. We judge but without any real malice. As only as some clinical, mythical anthropologist might judge.
Look there. We giggle. There at the academics with their closed circuit of spiteful humor. Privileged and priggish. Tightly wound in institutionally spun coats of irony and indifference. Concealing springloaded hearts and surprising longing.
And there, you hipsters always looking behind you, around you. Never quite comfortable in your own skin. You don costumes that are meant to conceal and detract but your pants are always on the verge of falling off. Right there in the infinite space between your studded belt and your soft young skin is the infinite universe of your naked need. We, my friend and I, can see your underwear.
And we look in vain for the underwear of others. Bubble-blowing dreamers and drummers. The Jungian wet dreams or horrifying anti-matter to those SUV driven consumers terrified to catch a glimpse of their own shadows in the stoned, dirt-tanned faces of naughty naughty citizens who won't play by the rules.
In all of humanity we see ourselves and are simultaneously icked-out and seduced. We long to belong to them all. The anarcho-hippies, the hobohemians, the sweet-skinned, sun-licked students, the smooth have-it-allers, the thick-glassed intellectuals, the seductive small town rock stars, the grafitti artists who paint with a middle finger dipped in the waste from a greedy needy country spun out of control. We see right through you to the need in your core. We see right through you. We can laugh at the silly fig leaves you try to hide behind that barely cover your part flopping parts. We can see your parts because we know them all too well my dream friend and I.
But that doesn't stop us from wanting to join your club.
Its okay now cause we don't need a membership. Here in this dreamland we have created our own fort of blankets and tables. We hide here when we need to. We vacillate between plotting to save the world from its own venom and recognizing that we're the crazy ones. The blight.
In future world of eugenics, who should go and who should be left to breed a perfect race? The world needs us all. We define each other.
And when we leave the fort we dance in high heels and old dresses of shattered silk. We play scrabble. We write manifestos and and un-authorized biographies of each other. We travel to Cuba and learn to Salsa a little but dream of tangoing. We cry at the cruelty of others and rejoice in the unpredictability of a godless world. We are afraid of death and long for it. We dive naked into icy bodies of water and come up gasping. Or we lay still for days at a time because there is acceptance here. We embarrass each other sometimes with our social awkwardness and at other times astound each other with our public charm. We are this and that and this and that and the other all at once.
And it is okay if you want me to clarify that thing I said. No I didn't mean it that way. I know it hurt you to think that's what I meant.
I am still here.
I still accept you.
Friend I love you where are you?
I have gathered the tables and the pillows and the tea and the bourbon. You can bring the blankets and the pens and paper. We'll start by drawing each other. The beautiful parts. We'll fill paper up over time. This bit and that until everything is beautiful again. This is how I see you. You are beautiful.
My missed connection: A best friend
* no -- it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
* yes -- ok to transmit this posting into outer space
76343771