A Visit From Old Friends

There is something beautiful about feeling displaced. The senses of fear and exhilaration, of being free to be whoever you want and just wanting to be whoever it is that people will like, they war within me, pushing and pulling me, stretching me taut, and in the discomfort I find a place of null value, a place of stillness.

I am in the living room of the largest house I have ever been in, owned by a man I have just met in order to interview with him for a job that I don’t know whether or not I got. All around me are question marks, shaped like couches and lamps and end tables and one in the shape of a decorative vase the size of a particularly tall midget, but question marks nevertheless. I am waiting for the others to come downstairs, and in the stillness I am still. As I purge my being of being active, there is a momentary void, and the space invites some long lost friends.

As my muscles relax and my mind clears, I shake hands with Random Observation, give a hug to Musing, maybe a peck on the cheek for Introspection. These are my oldest of friends, and I have missed them. Their quiet voices and gentle demeanor clash with my new crowd, the loud and assertive likes of Entertainment, Productivity, and the particularly pushy What Comes Next. I thought I would be a better person with my new friends, thought that they would spur me towards a happier and more meaningful existence. They haven’t.

So I sit here in my high backed chair like King David before Samuel, wishing I could take a few things back. I missed my old friends, but typical of true friends, the only condemnation came from myself. Eventually I got over myself and started thinking, about the size of the house, about how much I already respected its owner, about how my interview went and about how I would move the piano four inches to the left in order to center it in the arc of light from the recessed light. I thought about how I wish I could play piano like House, all sad and profound like, and I thought about Jamie, not because she is sad or profound, but because I’m always thinking about her. It’s embarrassing. Thankfully Sappiness fits in better with the old crowd than the new one.

I listened to the silence, filled myself with the emptiness, and tried as hard as I could to become a part of the stillness. I thought about a Winnie the Pooh quote that I couldn’t remember, but that seemed fitting, so it was all good. I missed this. I would never be able to do this in Beibei, I was too comfortable. There is always so much nothingness to do, but the bad kind, the kind of nothingness that makes you think it is somethingness. I was like this all the time in high school, but back then I carried the displacement with me, all angsty and misunderstood and all, and I don’t think that’s good either. But this, this is good. I listened to the silence, filled myself with the emptiness, and tried as hard as I could to become a part of the stillness.

Then they came downstairs, and I left my silence in order to eat Moroccan food, drink beer, and to lose at pool. But it’s OK. Stillness is transitory. The only time that it isn’t is when you’re dead. I wonder if there will be stillness in heaven? I hope so.

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Later on I went to find that Winnie the Pooh quote. “Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering.” I like Winnie the Pooh. There is something humbly profound about him, and I admire that. He is deep, but not like the Grand Canyon, because that is scary. He’s more deep like a mother’s love, or James Earl Jones’ voice. I want to be deep like that. But I don’t want my name to be Winnie.