the contrast of decay

well, i spent last night at the bars with some friends. mostly i spent the night talking to my old friend diane curtis. our connections to one another is an interesting thing. when i was younger, 16 or 17 years old, i would spend many evenings at an all night coffee shop aptly named "round the clock." i wasnt the only one. in addition to the friends i would come with there were numbers of other groups. kids from different schools, or older kids that were out of school.

it worked out okay for me. i would stay up all night long drinking coffee, reading, talking with random people, certainly being arrogant and annoying. and in the morning i would either not go to school or go there and just sleep through my classes. my parents were very lax and i was never admonished for this night life. its true i felt i was better than other people. even though i slept through many of my classes i was able to pass them all and even manage good grades in some of them. at one point i was put in honors english but the teacher thought me flippant and brash and sent me back to the regular class. i did good in that one, somewhere i still have the stories that i wrote for my creative writing classes. probably not so good now, but at the time they worked. probably, if i wouldve applied myself more, i would be smart by now.

but this isnt what i am even talking about! in my nights at this coffee shop i met many people, my personality stood out almost as much as my hair. there were a group of people, mostly ladies, that came from other places that also hung out there and people that i went with, mostly guys, allowed nature to run its course and we ended up becoming friends with each other.

within this new group of people existed diane curtis. we are almost exactly the same age other than that we were about as opposite as two people could be. she was logical and reserved. i was random and daring. how the two of us became and remained friends over these years is still beyond me. of these groups of people squashed together, i still talk to two of the guys that i would come with and just one of these ladies that we met.

during those formative years we spent a fair amount of time together, i met her parents and we became friends. even though she shopped at the gap and i wore the same tattered shirt every single day. i think we offered each other a good perspective on different ways to live. when i left in 1999 we stayed in touch, she was friends with my family and they would also keep up with one another. when i came back in 2001 we fell back into a friendship. we worked with some dumb band, she as the manager and me as the sound technician (i was never very good at it, but in later days when i was doing radio work this previous experience came in handy).

and in the year and a half that i spent back in indiana we became pretty good friends. when my wits end had been reached and i felt about ready to burst in the capsizing region of rusted dreams i found a way out. that way out was a one way ticket to portland, or. leaving again wasnt as sad as it should of been, but that could have been because of the barrier i had built between myself and the people that cared about me. a barrier of empty beer cans and liquor bottles.

before i left she gave me a parting gift that i still have and will never forget. it is one of the nicest most thoughtful gifts i have ever received. it was a simple little photo album filled with pictures of our past together and stories of our unlikely friendship. she had things going back to before we had even met each other when she and her friends would simply talk about the wierd guys that hung out at the coffee shop every night, before she even knew my name. and the photos worked all the way up to the parties that we were having as i was preparing to leave.

diane, now

and then i left to a wonderful world in portland. i was there for a couple of months and, to my surprise, diane wanted to come visit me. i hadnt been there long, but i had been through some interesting things since i moved there. its funny, all throughout this trip and on this blog i have been writing about my memories and past but i havent yet elucidated on my arrival and first few months in portland. i will have to get to that sometime...

so she came to visit. and i was confused about her intentions, like a dumb guy i assumed that she wanted to be with me. that her desire to visit me burnt from some long felt love that she had for me and as she saw her chances slipping away she was making a last grasp dying effort. i couldnt have been more left of center. and my mistake was admitting to her that i knew why she had come and that i wasnt interested in a sexual relationship. that led to a bit of a strained relationship for a bit - mostly because i was embarrassed by my arrogance/ignorance.

but, although i felt like a bad person for awhile, it was a good thing for me to learn. the lesson was that i am an idiot and although i oftentimes think i know everything and am more perceptive than anyone around me that simply is not true. that the people around me will be honest with their feelings and i need to believe them and their intentions, instead of reading into things in such a way that validates my ego trust the world that exists around me to unfold properly. basically, to be less of an idiot.

shortly after she left portland i decided to destroy everything that had propped me up for the majority of my life and start anew. my method for achieving this was to disappear from all of my friends and family. to this end, i stopped writing in my journal at the time, drafted a letter that elaborated my feelings toward the world at the time and sent it to everyone. i knew and cared about. this included my mother and father, my brother and sister, diane, alex and a few other friends that i was still keeping up with. and, although embarassing, since the letter still exists i will repost it here for general laughter:

"Life has never really attracted me. Or, maybe at one time it did and now it doesn’t because I've wiped a few layers of shit off of my eyes. And I begin to actually see. This isn’t something that just happened out of nowhere. It has been cultivating inside me for years and I've just never really understood how to process it. Attempts have been made to inject myself into society and flourish with it, the two of us growing and learning, changing together. I have finally realized that is not possible right now. The attempts have been shut-down and sometimes I feel lesser

me, now.

because of what I put myself through. I don’t like to give up on things. With what I am doing now, it doesn’t feel like giving up...more like growing up and above this world of lies that constantly tries to pull me back into it. I feel very good about what I am doing, this symbolic death. Societal death. These attachments (...) that draw me into this hell are being left behind. I no longer connect with that which I leave, and these things unconsciously hold me back...I've let them, but no longer. Thanks for understanding (if you do, but if you did then these words probably wouldn’t reach you...whatever). Peace.Love. "

that was written on february 20th 2003. and after sending out that letter i went ahead and dropped out of society. i destroyed my license, got rid of my cell phone, emptied my bank account, and whatever else i could do to remove myself from the system and make it hard to locate me. (in 2005 i had to work to reclaim my identity...that was a very hard thing to do. all i had was a non authentic looking birth certificate, mail, and a library card. that isnt enough things to even get a bank account.) this lasted for about nine months. but in that nine months, i immersed myself in the protest movement. i fell in with the portland indymedia collective, went to a number of protests and started becoming an organizer for these things. and i was pretty good at it. at least i think i was, i was diligent and restless and those were necessary qualities to possess when fighting a battle that you will most often lose.

so i grew up and became my own person. it was late november 2003 when i talked to my parents again. i had recently met emily, i had helped organize and carry out a successful protest against the ftaa in miami, and i was elated. i had also just smoked pot for the first time in years (thanks carlos), everything was going well and i just felt it was time. i borrowed a cell phone and called my dad. i think they were happy to hear from me.

in the years that have proceeded i learned about what my family and friends went through while i was exploring the new world i wanted to be a part of being free and traveling. my mom had thought i joined a cult and seriously contemplated sending my brother to oregon to look for me. my stepmom would call diane and ask her whether or not she had heard anything from me, i think my dad told me he thought about hiring a private detective. and no one understood why i had done what i did. honestly, i didnt really understand it so much either at the time, i was mostly just working off of soemthing i read in a book.

after my experiences i had a different outlook on where i came from and the people i came up with. i still felt better than them (i wont get to it in this post, but i no longer feel than i am better than people, i have been humbled since my younger days and have a much more even outlook on life) and i am sure i gloated way too much about my experiences. anyway, diane stuck with me throughout all of these things. all of the times i would disregard her, or treat her poorly, or insult her intentions, she stayed even and allowed me some grace to get over whatever i was working with.

and that is a quality of great friendship, something that is pretty rare and i surely appreciate. so, last night we got to hang out together again. (in this post i am omitting the second time i broke off communication with diane...some other time.) and it was real nice. she was interested to hear more about my dates with vaughnda because she could tell it was making me very happy. it was nice to tell her the things that i was feeling and the experiences i had shared with vaughnda and then get her perspective on them. as i said, her perspective is much different from mine.

and i wanted to know more about her relationship with her man. they have been together for 6 years, and i dont know much about their union. i want to know. also, i wanted to hear about sweet things that long time couples do for and with one another to keep a relationship interesting. having come out of a long term relationship that waned in excitement and interest toward to the end, i was interested to hear some tips and tricks from the other side. also, i like getting diane to talk about these things because she is a pretty reserved person. (many of the things she told me last night i had to swear not to write in my blog...)

she and i talked through her drinking an entire bottle of wine. and by the end of the night i got her to sing a song to me. her choice was "eternal flame" by the bangles, and she did a good job. she and i probably wont see one another for awhile, but i will always be happy with the knowledge that she exists out there, a true friend that will be there through any time, distance, or situation. those kinds of things are good.