On the subject of speaking and not speaking

There is someone who I haven’t spoken to in a very long time. Lets call this person ‘Iggy.’ I don’t speak to Iggy. I won’t speak to Iggy. But despite it all, I really really really want to speak with Iggy. Badly.

I’m not going to. I know simply too many thing about Iggy, and too many things about how that conversation would proceed to allow any such conversation to occurr.

I haven’t had cause to go near a gas station these nine months now. But today I cut across a 7-11 and the smells of gasoline, the hot sun and traffic, gravel and blacktop, all of it combined to force such strong sensory memory that I swear I must’ve experienced a mild form of vertigo. Al of it reminded me of summers in Chicago, when Iggy and I would stop at the gas station before road trips to six flags, road trips to upstate New York. The taste of Chicago. The hot stuff air of a car that’s been sitting in the summer sun all day. And then I felt something rather close to despair as I recalled my most recent experiences of a place and of people that had heretofore been my favorite places and people.

And suddenly I am drained of all desire to do any sort of meaningful work today, like it all just got siphoned off. I don’t want to ready anymore about split ergativity within the generative framework. I don’t want to strive to improve myself mentally. I don’t even want to work on LeakyCon.

I want to bolster my self esteem with material possessions. I want to go to a bookstore. I havent been to a real bookstore in ages. And I want to be able to buy an actual book without worrying about how to pay my bills this summer. I want to own more than one pair of jeans, and I want them to actually fit. These are small things, no? I want to fill my aching void of loneliness with the knowlege that I at least do not look like a graduate-school monster that comes out only at the dead of night to stalk and eat your babies and dissertations.

Okay, tad dramatic.

Still, I feel something rather desolate.