i'm going east but first let me go west

"At that moment," Iran said, "when I had the TV sound off, I was in a 382 mood; I had just dialed it. So although I heard the emptiness intellectually, I didn't feel it. My first reaction consisted of being grateful that we could afford a Penfield mood organ. But then I realised how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life, not just in this building but everywhere, and not reacting - do you see? I guess you don't. But that used to be considered a sign of mental illness; they called it 'absence of appropriate affect.' So I left the TV sound off and I sat down at my mood organ and I experimented. And I finally found a setting for despair." 

----


It's been so long since I felt the way I used to.

I think it's because I haven't had time to process everything that has happened to me.

Graduation, leaving behind a city again. Submerged, phagocytosed into a new job, a new life. It's just too much, and I haven't expressed any of it. Haven't told anyone - really told anyone how I feel. Just kept it all inside and carried on. And now like a clogged toilet, it's all too much and it's just overflowing and causing a big stinky mess.

There's a cost to be incurred with these things, an emotional debt that needs to be settled. My account has been overdrawn.

Sometimes when I go home, I find artifacts. Anachronisms - a high school era pencil box tucked away in a cabinet somewhere - and I'm instantly transported into the past. I get a faint whiff of that year's lunacy, and the sense of familiarity is so intense and abrupt that it's novel and therefore briefly intoxicating. I could spend a whole week trawling through old notebooks and toys, a whole year even. Last summer I spent an evening flicking through an old photo album with my mom. Leafing through years of happiness and impermanence.

I want to go back.

Thinking about it, I've probably always wanted to go back. It's like a perpetual itch I can't seem to scratch. It's not that I want to live in the past forever -- just a week maybe. When I go home, I want it to be the same as before. I don't want the new shopping malls. I don't want to hear about the news, my cousin's baby, who's dating who. I mean sure, I do - but most of all what I want is a chance to miss what I've missed - to touch base - to catch up on some reading, some thinking, some feeling. I want to be who I'm going to be, sure, but first let me be who I was again.