I Am Away

          Every other summer I play golf once or twice. I know a lot of people who enjoy the game and they catch up with me bi-annually and drag me out into the nature to hit a small spheroid with a stick, then get in a ramshackle cart and go look fr it. In my case it's not to difficult because I never hit it very far. But there's beer and I shouldn't tell you this but you can talk me into a lot of things if the company is good, the scenery is nice and there's beer.

          The first time I played golf it took me about 15 shots to get my ball to the green. And I'm standing there with the guys I'm playing with and one of them says "You're away."

          Away means your ball is farthest away from the pin (imagine that) and you put first.

          Away.

          Isn't it funny how sometimes different occupations have beautiful and inexplicable jargon for common tasks? As if poets had at one time been forced to perform those tasks and in their boredom decided to jazz things up a bit by renaming everything. They'll take my poet card from me for admitting this but I can't think f a single example right now, but maybe you can. Anyway, maybe early on in the evolution of golf they dragged a hungover, cranky poet onto the course (with the promise of nice scenery, good company and beer) and as he was daydreaming at the 12th green one of his buddies said "Where are you?"

          And he replied: "I'm away."

          This is going to be long and it's not going to make any sense but just keep in mind the word "away."

          I have Schizoid Personality Disorder. You don't know what that is because it's not a sexy disorder and no one researches it because there's no drug or cure, and no one talks about it because by its very nature the people with the disorder don't speak out. A long clinical definition would leave you as bored as the disorder itself, but it means I'm away. Part of me is submerged. I don't respond to social conventions, positive or negative reinforcement, take pleasure from social interactions, and have no need to interact with others and doing so causes me anxiety. The easiest way to explain it is by referring you to the character from Star Trek: The Next Generation: Commander Data. Except he doesn't have it, he actually has the opposite: a desire to know and experience what it is like to have human emotions, and interact with others on an emotional level.

          Life becomes a constant effort to TRANSLATE yourself into a persona that is acceptable to others who never even gave it a single thought  that there might be anyone in the world who doesn't do so naturally. It's like your computer doesn't have the correct operating system it's like you don't speak the language it's like they dropped you on an alien planet except it's your home and you don't LOOK any different from others s they don't expect you to act any different.

          Ok, you get it, but it's my first time admitting it so I wanted to be clear. And the researchers and mental health professionals could care less because there's no cure and the drug companies can't create a pill for it and people with the disorder just avoid you and don't break stuff and don't kill people. Silence is deadly. I've found in life if you don't cause a ruckus nothing ever changes. Do you know anybody with Schizoid Personality Disorder? Have you ever seen a public service announcement?

          More, later, I wanted to talk about loss. My Space "jumped the shark" last year (2007) according to one blog comment I recently read. And it seems true. People are using it less and less. More Facebook, Twitter, whatever. It's like a party an hour past it's peak. And now forever there will most likely be no social networking site that has a corner o n the market. This makes me sad. Why? Because My Space has been really, really good to me. I treasure the people I've met here. And oddly enough I've been able to extend the relationship into "real life" in a lot of cases. In a lot of ther cases those relationships have proved to be illusory or fleeting, but some of you are never going to be able to get away from me.

          So, I have a sadness that My Space is a dying party. That coalitions and tribes and consortiums and sects that have formed will fade and not be remembered. That if you want to continue partying you have to go somewhere else and start all ver.

          I'm old.I don't want to start all over. I remember a time not to distant being able to gather 125 disparate personalities that probably never in many cases met eacho ther into a room to watch zombie movies and have a good time, for a time. To me that is something I could never have been a part of without My Space (and a bar to hold an event like that in. And the Davis brothers creating the event and all kinds of people wanting to be there). But that's the point. For me, there is no natural tendency to meet and associate with others. That happened in some degree because those people were reachable through My Space. I realize events like that happen every night and people gather naturally and through word of mouth and just because they want to be together.

          But not in my life, and when they do I'm rarely invited.

          Loss. In life you lose things. What have you lost that you can never replace or forget? I worked for over a decade in bars and I lamented every time the scene changed, every time either I or others went away. There were great crews and great times and they weren't lasting. And people died. And you wanted to keep in touch but it never happened that way. Hundreds and hundreds of people moving into and out of the "frame," then disappearing.

          Aside from the people you lose other things. Objects. Artifacts. Last summer while I was homeless I wandered downtown ando one day I realized a silver object my mother had created for me and had made by a blacksmith was gone. That's not replacable. Every time you move you lose something. The books, the letters, the things that are small but not too small to be missed. There were times I couldn't predict when I would have to leave a place and had to leave things behind. Things that mattered. Things that made me, me. I had original movie posters from Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead my first girlfriend had framed for me. They were the first things to go in and the last things to go out every time I moved. Until the time I found a door barred against me by a landlord who had every right to want me to disappear from the face of the planet.

          It's not money or time that will ever be able to replace those objects.

          You lose and you learn to accept a certain amount of loss. But not the important  things. Not the real stuff. I could have been allowed to keep that without disturbing the balance of the universe.

          Maybe not the people either this time.

          Tell me something you've lost that never could be replaced? Tell me the thing you never would be able to replace if you lost it.

          It's a bewildering disorder I have and one that confuses others. Translations are needed. Me to you you to me as if we were different species. I'll keep trying if you let me keep trying. I want to be with you. I want to be part of the scene. I want  to be human.


Away Message

I am away
From my desk
Right now
I am away
From the gravity
Of lover's
Embrace
I am away
From the vessel
Right now in
A geosynchronous orbit
Around the lost moon
Of Jupiter
So leave me
A message
Because I
Am away.
  

          So, if I'm not always answering go ahead and leave a message.  Pin It