To my dear, my faun

I was walking past that building the other day, the one by the weak fire. I feel old saying this, even though I’m not that old, but it reminds me of the good old days. I guess that phrase has always been weird for me. When you're young, you always think of your older others compared to your younger you. Then you realize you're the old self you never saw, though you still feel like you're a little child. You saw them and they always seemed so together. Like they’ll always be older than you. The problem is that everybody feels that way. No one is ready to be old and everyone still feels young.

Anyways, that’s not too important. I wanted to talk about that strange feeling when you start something you know will be life changing. It’s weird; it feels like the thing that I expect to be life changing is amazing, but it never actually changes my life. Maybe it’s because I expect it to be. Maybe it’s because I know it’ll change so many other people’s lives and I have this contrarian defect and want to be pretentiously, emptily, superficially different. Maybe because it’s not actually life changing and people just think it’s really perfect through their stock image, burnt filtered, Iphone photos. I don’t know, that last part was mean. I’m just saying some things that are really good aren’t life changing if they’re not personal. 

Anyways, what I’m saying is the things that always end up life changing are never the things you expect them to be. They’re always the ones that have that mist of mystery before you see through the fog. A strange light hanging in a room of darkness, the sharpie drawing on a white piece of blank paper, a climatic poster of characters and impossible odds, a beautiful person who's together and all that you meet through a party, the campfire. I loved the aura before I knew what they were, and what I learned was half what I expected and half surprising. And then it happens. I go through the motions, I live with them through the fullest with no expectations that it’ll be life changing. Then, I’m me. Change my life, my self. It’s always the things you never expect, the ones you’re vulnerable to, which allows it to be personal. Then I’m changed, then I’m me again. It feels brilliant. Then it’s over. There’ll be surreal moments a few days after that where the cheers and happiness remain. They’ll keep the fire burning and happy and productive and beautiful. Then, and only then, the long goodbye. The moments of nostalgia and romanticization deep through. Wasn’t the fire a raging orange, and even blue at one point?

You realize you’re changed. You realize it’s personal. You didn’t expect it to be a great moment, so you didn’t give it your all, which is exactly why it was. It was the heat of the closeness of the sun on your skin that day. Giving something your all because you expect it to be life changing isn’t realistic. Giving something parts of your self, your real self, and slowly adding it up until the parts make a whole and the experience is you and the experience itself is sincere. The pieces of firewood for the campfire. You realize it. Everything was beautiful. 

I now know, though the time has passed. It’s not a fading memory, it’s a burning one, like the song. I need to stop sitting in a memory on fire. But I am, because the smoke enters my lungs and I just can't get up. It’s suffocatingly shiny, surreal and realistic, an undead alive. And then I’m here again. I’m here, but I’ve made it better. I can trust myself. There's a fire inside the extremely extravagant and decorated fireplace now. Those memories help me run, the fires are fuel, not just fog. I’ll be better then.

Now, the building I was talking about. It has this brilliant, grandiose, gigantic projector video, which I’m so glad we have so normally now here. I saw it and it played something. I didn’t quite recognize it at first. But beautiful familiarity didn’t bring a flood, it brought kerosene and matchsticks. Fired up myself again. I remembered how it was then. It played the part, the classic part you knew. I laughed to myself because "you" was just "me" again. And even though it was just me there, I said to myself, “This part always kills me still.”