It's such a strange contradiction of emotions. I feel desperately lonely, but at the same time, the idea of being surrounded by people is extremely unappealing to me. Lately I have been very grateful for the good company of one or two dear friends. I feel my mental state is too fragile to deal with crowds and drunks and traffic and loud awful music. I don't know what is happening to me and I don't know how to work it out except by writing about it, which seems to at least help sort my thoughts out a little. I'm having difficulty speaking things out loud to people but the written word seems to be the way to go.
The last few days I've found myself wanting fiercely to communicate with a dear old friend of mine who I hear from infrequently and get to see even less. I've known him since I was 17 and he's in the army now, stationed somewhere out in the country in New York, and he's shipping off to Afghanistan sometime later this year. Luckily he says he will come visit me before that time. It breaks my heart to have friends in the army - not only are they gone for long periods of time during which I miss them intensely, I also worry fervently about them while they're overseas and am horribly, horribly afraid for them. I'm not sure how realistic of a concern this is (as I've never been in the army) but I just can't seem to shake it.
This is Sean. I took this photo three years ago at some place called Santiago Oaks, in southern California. Sean was always my favorite hiking buddy. I could call him up at 3 in the morning and tell him I'd pick him up at 10 a.m. to go hiking, and he'd always be ready and often times wouldn't even ask where we were going. We spent the better portion of about two years together exploring the hills and canyons of California. We'd spend hours in the parks we visited until it was too dark to see. One time we got ourselves locked behind a private gate way out in some remote canyon and we couldn't get out; the sheriff had to come and unlock the gate for us. another time Sean refused to go down a trail I pointed out in Vasquez Rocks because "it looks like prime mountain lion country" though it was no different than where we'd already been wandering. We'd smoke way too much pot and get lost and laugh our asses off and we'd always go eat greasy Mexican food for dinner afterward. In the photo above, we were coming down a hill and the trail led us through this big field of beautiful golden wheat. I think we sat down to smoke a joint or something and it was so quiet there, all you could hear was the wind sighing through the wheat, making the most beautiful sound, almost like the ocean. He stuck this in his mouth and, even though we weren't romantically involved, it tickled me so much that I had to suppress the urge to give him a big ol kiss. To this day it's one of my favorite pictures of him.
Another of my favorites - here we had gone to Oak Canyon, which I think may have been the place that we got locked in. (I have distinct memories of these places and am going off of the labels I gave the photos when I saved them, but I couldn't tell you exactly where any of them are anymore.) This day I remember we saw a lake way off in the distance and set off for it, but the terrain moved from extremely dry, prickly grass (above) to unbelievably slippery, oozy mud and both were extremely difficult to walk on. I think I had just started taking geology classes and was chattering to Sean all about it, picking up rocks and shells and handing them to him or stuffing them in my pockets.
This is how I remember him - long-haired, bearded, dressed to the nines in his tattered clothes. Words cannot describe how much I miss him. When I was back in California last year, we got to visit a couple of times. We made a stop by his mom's house to pick something up, and we went into his old room and it was exactly as it was when I was dating him in high school. Isn't it strange to stumble upon something that you completely forgot existed and see that it hasn't changed at all? The same photos are up, the same paintings and poems that we wrote on the walls together some late night are still there. The last time I saw him before that, a year earlier, it was the end of December and we went to the beach at night. We sat on the shore drinking beer and Sean stood up and declared, "I'm going in." He took off all of his clothes and dove into the freezing cold water, then walked right back out and lit up a cigarette like it was no big deal.as I was writing this I realized we used to be friends on MySpace - ha! - and to my surprise his profile is still up, and nearly all of the photos there are ones that I took on our adventures. I'm kind of half-crying, half-laughing as I write this. I feel like I'm being over-dramatic, writing about him as if he were dead, but sometimes you miss someone so much that it hits you in the chest like a ton of bricks and suddenly you can't bear to be away from that person any longer. I'm not really sure how to wrap this up now so I'm just going to post some more pictures!
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| O'Neill Park, 2008 |
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| Oak Canyon, 2009 |
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| Calico Mines, 2008 |
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| Las Vegas, 2008 |
