Learn From It

I'm reading a novel:

“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” (Stephen Chbosky)

It was lent to me by JP, who thought I might like it. I like when people think I might like things. There's that kind of “little intrusion” (this is where I wish I knew french: I always thought petit mort was a grand and fussy and silly and completely accurate way of describing an orgasm) that people surprise you with sometimes. The casual acquaintance who intrudes only enough to let you know they'd never intrude but that they wanted you to know they were there if you needed anything. The friend who stands within yourself who cannot intrude because you've invited him in but who nonetheless takes a chance on getting in further by asking new questions, covering a new topic, offering up a new dimension to themselves.

The book is written by a man from Pittsburgh, my first adopted hometown. I went to college at Carnegie Mellon University, which is geographically, literally across a short bridge from University of Pittsburgh, all in the Oakland section of town.

Pittsburgh often intrudes; so does Shavertown, PA, for that matter (my biological hometown). This happens more and more lately. Perhaps it's a step-function of age, or a natural consequence of adversity, or from the very large number of books I've read in such a short time. Or it's the index cards I carry around with me everywhere: some stuffed in my back pocket, in jacket pockets. In my backpack. On the end-table.

Homecomings, of a sort, which make me think of Homecomings of that sort: the real kind. The kind that you'd go back to CMU for, or to Dallas Area High School for.

The kind I used to imagine returning to myself, when I'd look at the few older “kids” who'd be around for the Homecoming Game. I was the escort of one of my oldest and dearest friends, Toni, for the Homecoming Court my senior year. No one knew I was gay, of course (and thank goddess that relatively fewer kids won't ever have to say “I wasn't out, of course”!), but I was the president of our class, sat on a vast number of cross-functional committees and panels, was well-respected by my teachers and by administrators—and even by the 'snakes' and 'hoods' in the class (in large part thanks to the “indefinite detention” I'd received towards the end of my junior year).

So yeah, the past intrudes as well. But only enough to dot the map between then and here, only intruding enough to say “remember me! I was on your path, too!”

It's a pleasant feeling, like the hum and thrum of body parts after sex, like random breezings of “San Francisco air conditioning” at this time of year, like hearing Sam's voice in the morning separate from everything else because I haven't quite opened my eyes, haven't quite awakened.

There may not have been only the one path from then to here—although given the more extreme places and events along my particular path, I am hard-pressed to imagine another route—but it's the path I took and it's indelible.

I am on Caltrain right now; the novel I mentioned is the reason for the writing, the reason for the gentle tug of memory, the piezo-electric snick of pattern gentled squeezed into place. On the train, I sit facing the City. I always do this. Going to Cupertino or heading back Home, I always sit facing Home, otherwise I get a bit motion-sick. Not the kind you get from moving backwards in the morning or even moving forwards at night, or the kind some get when reading in a moving car. It's more about focus. It's more about measuring distance to understand that which is not subject to the scorn of distance or the chill of Apart. Love of him. Love of City. Love of Family. Love of Self. Love of Life and all its self-made diversity, complexity and wonder.

But I digress.

I am a creature of habit. On the train I read. It's what I do. And yet today I write, for the same reason I always write: because the words are there and permit nothing to continue until they go from here (head) to there (paper/iBook).

Habits can be measured only when you're not performing for them. Otherwise, they're just what you're doing.

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