weekend fun

i sit on a couch looking out the window at olin's back parking lot. i'm here for the weekend. arrived last night. it is good to see people, and to be confused at where they're living, and to not be able to get in any buildings without someone else, and to play fuseball on a good table, and to just be here again. funny, it feels so familiar. different, yes, since many familiar faces are gone - replaced by new ones. but still familiar.

greeting people, talking with them, and mingling here, i realize that i'm not here anymore. not really. it's been long enough that i feel slightly out of place, disjointed, awkward. and some people of whom i saw a great deal while i was here i have not spoken to for months. it's like a severing, a chasm exists; two things drawn apart by the mere force of time. the only way to eliminate that gap is to fill it in by conversation, work, anything done together. so when communication is cut, a canyon grows. and now it is strange, stilted, almost like the way it was when i first met people. i say almost, because it's not quite. it's almost worse, because there's the memory of what it was, next to the obviousness that it isn't. not anymore. it's not like the opening of an old wound; it's like the scratching of a scab. that first scratch makes it itch like mad, and it takes tremendous resistance to ignore that itch and let it continue to heal. why is it that one of the primary lessons i learn when i visit olin is how complicated runs life? olin makes things crazy.

is it bad to be drawn to insanity like this?