continuation of mega post started 10/13...

ok so this morning (24 hours have passed since i started this mother of a post)i was on the T, dozing upright like a cow, having left the office a mere 8 hours earlier, and a beautiful song came on my ipod and i really wanted to sing it. i thought, what would happen if i just started singing...loudly. no one on this train knows me. theres a chance someone knows someone i know, boston being a small city, but if i sang my way to copley station and then stepped off the train my reputation as a non-crazy person would probably remain intact.

i guess this is part of what happens when i travel. my identity is called into question when theres no one around me who "knows" me. which is a sad statement about my sense of self- that it is predicated on others? many of my best friends go back to before i can remember being set on a blanket next to them. these people truly do know me as well as i know myself. but what self do they know? the one i show of course but are we all just reinforcing our childhood ideas of eachother? this is not a statement against my friends, if its being done to me then im doing it right back, im just as culpable, and at the end of the day i value my friendships over everything. everything. but maybe in my particular confused case, where i feel im truly not pointing in the right direction, like, i might be on a highway going the wrong way and the last exit for 50 miles is coming up on the right... maybe i need to pull over. sit in the car alone for a moment while everyone else hurtles by.

i guess this is travelling to me. (and i dont mean going on a vacation, i mean journeying, questing, moving around this blue and green marble without a defined itinerary)relative to the speed at which everyone else is moving towards their end-goals, its actually a kind of pulling over. and its frightening. it goes against our self-protective, species-perpetuating instincts to actively seek out companionship, a space, a routine, a life that makes sense and has "purpose."

am i getting anywhere? no. really, im not. but i can breathe somewhat better than i could yesterday...