Vacant Community Blues

One friend found an actor's community. Another friend of mine found an artists' community. I have a softball community and it is wearing thin on me. It seems to bring out my lower order instincts. I find myself back on the high school ballfield being confronted with those old teenaged boogiemen. Except now the wits are a little quicker and the jokes are a little staler.

I came back from a barbecue in Brooklyn tonight and there I was back in Neverland. But not the kind of Neverland where everything feels fresh and colourful and playful. Rather this was a Neverland of cigarettes, Budweiser beer cans, and everyone hiding behind a common face that just ends up looking like every other face. I'm too much of an individual for that. I've come too far to get rid of my own mask to get dragged back down there for any reason. For love, for lust, to forget or to remember, I don't want to go back living on those kinds of connections.

I am thinking about taking a trip this summer. I want to get out of the city. I tell myself that maybe that will help me kick these blues. Take a little vacation, maybe to some exotic place in Asia, maybe to some romantic place in Europe. But I know that without a community to commune with that all these experiences won't end up being more than intoxicating vapors.

It certainly is easy to blame others for why I don't have the kind of community I want. The truth is that I have a hard time sharing the most real parts of me with others, so how could I expect others to relate to and trust me in the way that I want them to? Today at the barbecue, I didn't let myself out. I could say that I don't trust others to respond with respect, and maybe that is so, but it's also true that I don't trust myself enough to carry that particular gravitas that won't relapse back into talking nonsense in a numbing zone of comfort. I tell myself, "Time to bring it," again and again.

I've come to think that most anger comes from a place of repression. When there's something inside screaming to come out, it finally shakes up the nerves and causes the hairs to stand on end. It comes from a repressed spirit, from an unradiating soul. Maybe I will take a trip this summer. I'm open to suggestions