Well I went to another formal dance, my first this year actually, and at the expense of not being in a group photo and not seeing the police come bust the dance, I wrote this little story:
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It begins again.
I said that life followed itself in cycles. Perpetual cycling of the same ideals, the same behaviors common to human nature will always lead to the same result. I said those words a year ago, and here I stand a year later, saying the exact same words. The ground has been blanketed with leaves, frozen over, drenched and baked and just like the seasons life will repeat itself in endless cycles despite our insistence at the beginning of a new cycle that the new cycle will somehow be different.
What a lie. To attempt to break free of the cycle is to attempt to change human nature, something that fundamentally will never change. At least that seems true for me. What is my fault; why can I not break free of the same cycle?
Is it my own personality? Is that to fault? I'm too nice but too cynical, too spiteful to those who have not caught on to the vaguest of clues. Thus my friends come and go, like people walking through an art gallery. I'm the painting. People look at me for a while then move on to the other paintings. Maybe I'll catch somebody's attention some day; so much that she will walk forward, glance at the placard describing the painting that is me, and study and appreciate me and then write about me for her research paper.
At the very least, it's not horribly hot and humid this year. And this year I seem to know more friends, as if the ebb and flow of my social life has reached a crest. The cool breeze flows over my hair as I balance between talking to my friends who are sitting around me, my friend from high school text messaging me, and writing this confession.
I forgot the point of writing these confessions. In my incessant wandering over the past year I have often questioned the purpose of my living. I mean, as I listen to my friends around me talk about their summer plans and comparing their summer internships with each other it really makes me wonder: what is the purpose of our lives. We work to the breaking point just to beat the curve, we reach out to the faintest connections in order to find a worthwhile way to spend our summer only in order to come back to this campus in order to restart the cycle. An endless cycle of work that will repeat itself, exhausting every slight variation but still remaining fundamentally the same exhausting trudge towards our death. About death: I said this to one special person a few years ago. Death itself is not a concept that I am afraid of, it is rather the thought of dying, the painfulness associated with the concept that can strike fear into my thoughts. As long as I keep living each day, I have to make the most of each day. I have to learn how to appreciate each day for the tiny special moments...
'Don't be so dark,' my friend tells me. If I just say it is who I am, would I be resigning myself to conformity, accepting the negative aspects of my natures, this condemning myself to repeat my cursed cycle, the cycle that will always begin and end with myself being alone?
Anyways at this point I feel like I'm rambling in circles. The bus isn't halfway to the venue, but the shrills and screams of the people around me suggests that I was not the only one who drank beforehand...
So we get to the venue and I immediately join the beeline of guys heading to the washroom. The most glorious moment of the night ensued. Following which, since none of my friends had arrived yet I found a quiet corner somewhere, found a functioning elevator, and rode it to the top floor. Now, overlooking Michigan Avenue, Millennium Park and gazing out toward the lake, I fix my eyes on a lone ship floating in the sea, its lights the only shining thing past Lake Shore Drive.
The venue itself is classy: draped in red velvet and the stairs and columns lined with fake gold. The theme for this year's iteration of the dance is the Great Gatsby. Funny, the title brings back memories to high school, when I was a recent transfer student who had yet to find a friend group. I wondered, was I going to be alone for the next three years? And now, in the present, I have friends, but I purposefully distanced myself to the soothing rhythms of the music on the dance floor and found the highest place possible that overlooked the most desolate part of downtown. Why is it, that even when surrounded by people, I feel the urge to be alone? Perhaps it is true that we are most lonely when surrounded by the largest number of people.
I seriously do not know why I even still go to dances if I feel so self conscious about them. Perhaps it's some overflowing of my subconscious desires onto a piece of paper; that's what may motivate me to still attend these events: that motivation being more arcane and less related to the event itself. It's odd: associating a placebo-like effect with something as lewd as a dance. I don't really know what am I saying. Perhaps my logic is being spun around in circles. Maybe I'm being illogical. A breakdown of logic in the population: what would that result in? Would it result in our destruction or would it free us from the shackles and conventions bound to us by the institutions we so revere?
Anywho it's reached the point in the night where my exhaustion has left a pounding sensation in my head and my ears are ringing from the dance floor ten floors below. I wonder if I should even return at this point. I mean, what's the point of participating? Yesterday I said in my diary entry that being with friends superseded the setting. Yesterday was a lot different from today. Plus I know at least one friend will never look back at me again. But really, I should ignore that sordid parting, right? After all, isn't that friend just part of the ebb and flow of life, the end of the high point of my latest annual cycle? Maybe next year, this will all happen again with a new set of people, and maybe we can awkwardly dance the night away again.
It's really strange: I should be happy, surrounded by friends, but something is amiss. An incongruity as strange as the broken windows on each floor of this building. I wonder what it will take for me to break my curse. Perhaps my curse itself is a self fulfilling superstition brought upon by myself. In the end, I can be the only one who changes, but since I've stated earlier and accepted the fact that my fundamental nature will never change, I will never break free of the curse. Maybe I should be more assertive in addressing the world. Rather than accepting my fate I should question the world, rage at the world, hate it for all it's intrinsic unfairness towards my kind. Maybe that's better than curling up in a ball in the smallest corner of my room and praying for a miracle to come. Miracles don't come spontaneously anyways. They are brought on by a grand change in character. My character is about done in this sordid play. A new day, another character will surface in this world, one that occupies my body but will be able to transcend whatever I could have accomplished. I mean, no matter how much we envy others, and others envy us for our strengths, deep inside we all have a fatal weakness.
When I go down again, I will again put on a mask, a mask that assumes my happiness in this situation, for this cycle of my life is almost done, and a new cycle full of hope shall begin.
I said that life followed itself in cycles. Perpetual cycling of the same ideals, the same behaviors common to human nature will always lead to the same result. I said those words a year ago, and here I stand a year later, saying the exact same words. The ground has been blanketed with leaves, frozen over, drenched and baked and just like the seasons life will repeat itself in endless cycles despite our insistence at the beginning of a new cycle that the new cycle will somehow be different.
What a lie. To attempt to break free of the cycle is to attempt to change human nature, something that fundamentally will never change. At least that seems true for me. What is my fault; why can I not break free of the same cycle?
Is it my own personality? Is that to fault? I'm too nice but too cynical, too spiteful to those who have not caught on to the vaguest of clues. Thus my friends come and go, like people walking through an art gallery. I'm the painting. People look at me for a while then move on to the other paintings. Maybe I'll catch somebody's attention some day; so much that she will walk forward, glance at the placard describing the painting that is me, and study and appreciate me and then write about me for her research paper.
At the very least, it's not horribly hot and humid this year. And this year I seem to know more friends, as if the ebb and flow of my social life has reached a crest. The cool breeze flows over my hair as I balance between talking to my friends who are sitting around me, my friend from high school text messaging me, and writing this confession.
I forgot the point of writing these confessions. In my incessant wandering over the past year I have often questioned the purpose of my living. I mean, as I listen to my friends around me talk about their summer plans and comparing their summer internships with each other it really makes me wonder: what is the purpose of our lives. We work to the breaking point just to beat the curve, we reach out to the faintest connections in order to find a worthwhile way to spend our summer only in order to come back to this campus in order to restart the cycle. An endless cycle of work that will repeat itself, exhausting every slight variation but still remaining fundamentally the same exhausting trudge towards our death. About death: I said this to one special person a few years ago. Death itself is not a concept that I am afraid of, it is rather the thought of dying, the painfulness associated with the concept that can strike fear into my thoughts. As long as I keep living each day, I have to make the most of each day. I have to learn how to appreciate each day for the tiny special moments...
'Don't be so dark,' my friend tells me. If I just say it is who I am, would I be resigning myself to conformity, accepting the negative aspects of my natures, this condemning myself to repeat my cursed cycle, the cycle that will always begin and end with myself being alone?
Anyways at this point I feel like I'm rambling in circles. The bus isn't halfway to the venue, but the shrills and screams of the people around me suggests that I was not the only one who drank beforehand...
So we get to the venue and I immediately join the beeline of guys heading to the washroom. The most glorious moment of the night ensued. Following which, since none of my friends had arrived yet I found a quiet corner somewhere, found a functioning elevator, and rode it to the top floor. Now, overlooking Michigan Avenue, Millennium Park and gazing out toward the lake, I fix my eyes on a lone ship floating in the sea, its lights the only shining thing past Lake Shore Drive.
The venue itself is classy: draped in red velvet and the stairs and columns lined with fake gold. The theme for this year's iteration of the dance is the Great Gatsby. Funny, the title brings back memories to high school, when I was a recent transfer student who had yet to find a friend group. I wondered, was I going to be alone for the next three years? And now, in the present, I have friends, but I purposefully distanced myself to the soothing rhythms of the music on the dance floor and found the highest place possible that overlooked the most desolate part of downtown. Why is it, that even when surrounded by people, I feel the urge to be alone? Perhaps it is true that we are most lonely when surrounded by the largest number of people.
I seriously do not know why I even still go to dances if I feel so self conscious about them. Perhaps it's some overflowing of my subconscious desires onto a piece of paper; that's what may motivate me to still attend these events: that motivation being more arcane and less related to the event itself. It's odd: associating a placebo-like effect with something as lewd as a dance. I don't really know what am I saying. Perhaps my logic is being spun around in circles. Maybe I'm being illogical. A breakdown of logic in the population: what would that result in? Would it result in our destruction or would it free us from the shackles and conventions bound to us by the institutions we so revere?
Anywho it's reached the point in the night where my exhaustion has left a pounding sensation in my head and my ears are ringing from the dance floor ten floors below. I wonder if I should even return at this point. I mean, what's the point of participating? Yesterday I said in my diary entry that being with friends superseded the setting. Yesterday was a lot different from today. Plus I know at least one friend will never look back at me again. But really, I should ignore that sordid parting, right? After all, isn't that friend just part of the ebb and flow of life, the end of the high point of my latest annual cycle? Maybe next year, this will all happen again with a new set of people, and maybe we can awkwardly dance the night away again.
It's really strange: I should be happy, surrounded by friends, but something is amiss. An incongruity as strange as the broken windows on each floor of this building. I wonder what it will take for me to break my curse. Perhaps my curse itself is a self fulfilling superstition brought upon by myself. In the end, I can be the only one who changes, but since I've stated earlier and accepted the fact that my fundamental nature will never change, I will never break free of the curse. Maybe I should be more assertive in addressing the world. Rather than accepting my fate I should question the world, rage at the world, hate it for all it's intrinsic unfairness towards my kind. Maybe that's better than curling up in a ball in the smallest corner of my room and praying for a miracle to come. Miracles don't come spontaneously anyways. They are brought on by a grand change in character. My character is about done in this sordid play. A new day, another character will surface in this world, one that occupies my body but will be able to transcend whatever I could have accomplished. I mean, no matter how much we envy others, and others envy us for our strengths, deep inside we all have a fatal weakness.
When I go down again, I will again put on a mask, a mask that assumes my happiness in this situation, for this cycle of my life is almost done, and a new cycle full of hope shall begin.
