Attachment

I don't remember much from my first CTY experience some 5 years ago, but I do recall the director's opening words: that the friends you made there would be among the closest you would ever have.

And just like nearly every other CTYer, after the three week session, I found myself agreeing with him. Post-CTY depression was a very real thing for me; it was painful to accept that I would never see the overwhelming majority of those people ever again - people who had, by far, been the closest friends I'd ever known.

But then I went to CTY again next summer, and the summer after that, and the summer after that. And before long, I found myself questioning the nature of these friendships.

The first three or so days of every summer program, people are all trying to grab a foothold in this new society that they've suddenly found themselves in. For some, that means finding people similar to friends back home. For others, it means laboring to establish a new identity (or refining a previous identity) that allows them to try on a new persona and its accompanying social characteristics and obligations.

It doesn't matter which path you take out of social irrelevance and obsolescence. You are going to get attached. You need that foothold, and you'll grow to depend on it. Then it abruptly disappears. You pass in your room keys, you sign those t-shirts, and sooner or later, you start to miss it. You feel like a part of you has left, and you're right.

Yet this time around, I noticed that I hadn't really gotten attached at all. I didn't feel one way or the other about all these people that I would never see again. I wasn't sad, or happy, or confused. I was nothing.

My heart tells me I should be concerned.

Is it that I've forgotten how to get attached? Have I regressed to the fatalist long-term thoughts that my entire senior year was trying to remove?

Or is it that I'm afraid?

Nothing is ever a goodbye

you fell off of my address bar today.
that little gray downward arrow that I had so often pressed, only to click on your name
now bequeaths me twelve other addresses to twelve other parts of the world.

i've now seen more of what lies beyond
and it is exactly what i hoped it would be.
different, yet still familiar in all the important ways.

i don't miss you anymore.
to tell you the truth, i simply can't.
for how can i miss something that is all around me?

i saw you three weeks ago
for a week straight, specifically.
you were at work again, as usual.

a different face, a different hair style
but all the same motions and candied words
the things that i've since learned to examine more closely.

you said that you don't believe in goodbyes
that, if destiny wishes it to be so, no parting is ever permanent.
there are no goodbye's, you said. only see you later's.

but as true as your words are, you said them with the wrong reason in mind.
it isn't because destiny always brings together those who are meant to be
that nothing is ever a goodbye.

it's because you will find those same people elsewhere
in equally cute outfits, with equally beautiful faces, and just as wonderful personalities
that goodbyes don't exist.

See you later.

My goal

My goal is to be important enough for people to hate me.

"That crazy banana guy"

As far as I remember, no one has ever asked me this, but for the sake of argument, I'll lie and pretend someone did. So:

"Ryan, why do you act so crazy?"
Well you see, young grasshopper, I act so crazy because.....

Because...

....well, because I'm not. 

I make retarded faces in photos not because I'm some crazy fool or a fun-loving bro. No, I make myself look stupid because I'm an insecure bastard. Pretending I'm at one of the extremes (in my case, by being crazy) is simply a way for me to avoid judgment of my normal self.

So I put on this mask of being extremely crazy.


In some ways, the first week of AID was actually an experiment for me to see how difficult it would be to put on a new mask and still be convincing. I wanted to see how far I could get with putting on a show of being a class clown and a fairly relaxed guy that doesn't worry about things. I wanted to try to redefine myself, now that I was in a new environment.

Well, if the comments I received on the last two days of training are any indication, I guess I did a pretty good job.

Andrew brings up an important point, though; suppose I were alone in a room, with no one to watch or listen to me. If the Bee Gees or whatever started playing, I'm pretty sure I would still sing along with my inane falsetto and contort my face like it went through a smoothie blender. And if the banana song came along, I definitely would start bobbing my head around and doing the motions.

So maybe the mask is already a part of me. Maybe every time I put on a different persona, I'm not actually pretending to be someone I'm not, but merely changing which layer of my personality is on the surface.

A bit dishonest, but it's infinitely more interesting that way.

Stage IV

Hair like snow. Further treatment cancelled.

A close friend is a stranger

Immersed in yet another new environment, I have inevitably begun to think about my definition of a "close friend" yet again.

A year ago, I considered a close friend to be someone that I could open up to. But I've since trashed that definition.

Because in all honesty, philosophizing is one of the easiest ways to stroke your ego. Give me the opportunity, and I'll throw some of the most retarded metaphorical cockroach shit at you and make myself sound good while doing it. Put me on a platform an inch above the ground, and I'll preach to you as if I was a mile in the sky.

"Someone I can open up to" is total bull, because as I've noticed from my own behavior and the people I've met, you can open up to whoever the hell you want, and no one will think twice about it.

At least for me, I have yet to stop and stare quizzically at anyone who's opened up to me as if I were thinking "why the hell are you talking to me about this." Of course I haven't. Those kinds of conversations are a guilty pleasure for all of us. We're so infatuated with philosophical conversations because at any age, it's comforting to know that we're not alone with our existentialist crises, however idiotic they are.

So a person that I can "really talk to" (as an acquaintance of mine puts it) is no longer good enough.

-------------------------------

Around a month ago, I read a post that said "the reason we care about how people view us over the internet is because they have no social obligation to lie to us." It is from this exact post that Leon chose his definition of a stranger.

Interestingly enough, though, I'm starting to see those exact same words as my definition of a close friend: someone that I don't feel a need to lie to. With that degree of comfort and understanding, I no longer feel that apprehension for approval. I can be however goddam honest I want, and he/she will be okay with it.

And as I've seen within the last year, it's these people that I find myself coming back to.

So in that sense, strangers and friends are one and the same. Total anonymity and total intimacy, it turns out, share quite a bit in common.

Iron molds

Summer camps have always felt like continuations of the school year to me. Not so much in the actual activities or work that I do (hell, I just spent the last week being a crazy idiot), but the people that I see.

We all went to the night market the other day, and apart from the ~1000 NT dollars Leon and I threw into this one ping-pong game (the adorable prizes are shown below), the only thing I'll care enough to remember a year from now is the phallic-pineapple cake store.

We are victorious.

Aaaand here's the pineapple pastry gone wrong.

Turns out this store is a franchise.

"A piece of Gayke"

It occurred to me that at some point in time, someone out there had to ask somebody else to make those iron molds. Must have been a funny conversation.

Then again, we're all from a mold of some sort, aren't we?

There's the strange guy in your English class who does all right in school, but makes retarded noises and sings for no reason as if he was 4 years old (I'm one of these). Then there's the girl who can't resist putting her hands on some male at all times. There's the guy who is so down-to-earth that you look up to him. And there's the huge dude whose intimidating appearance belies his soft personality. I've seen these archetypes at school. And now I've seen them at AID.

I can take every person that I met last week, and connect them to people that I know back in California.

"If you are one in a million, there are 7000 people just like you."