Lately it seems like a whole bunch of my friends and acquaintances have caught the writing bug. About half of them are composing wedding vows, while the other half are labouring over break-up emails. I don't want to regale you with twenty-something angst, because there's little less edifying, but I have to tell you I have been extrapolating mightily from this simple observation.
We are, I think, dividing into two categories: those who wish to consolidate their realities, and those who want to reconstruct their realities piece by piece. I suspect I fall within a subset of the latter category: those still adjusting to their realities (which might be called a protracted adolescence), and I am still in good company here too. What I am sensing is a widening gulf—no loss of any warmth or closeness, but nonetheless diverging perspectives and outlooks, and futures—between the two.
Like you I have crashed on the waves of enough minor social diasporas to know I will survive another, but I don't think I've ever felt that I might be surveying a distant shore from the crest of one. Usually it is so drawn out you don't realise until months or years later. I hope I am wrong of course; presumably I lack faith, perhaps I am too fascinated by the process, possibly by observing I am inventing, in fact in all probability I am, as they say, projecting.
Joseph | 21 Nov 2004
Topographic view
The qualifier
Two weeks with the apple and the lone star (illustrated).
Sorry, comments are not available on this post.