After being extremely tired at work, I left work and went to FloMo to have dinner with the old mafia crew. Dinner was so much fun, and we were appropriately obnoxious despite Patrick's efforts to calm us down. We then adjourned to the Loro lounge and played Clue with Doug's new rules--basically, it's Clue + Assassins, and you can assassinate another player in the game if you end up in the same room with both them and a weapon. They were fun rules, and I love any form of assassins/stabbing in the face in any game whatsoever (in fact, my family should try it with Rail Baron next Christmas), but none of us were particularly good at it. We then played a couple of games of mafia that were entertaining (and very quick...with six people playing, we only had one mafia each game, and both times we figured it out during the first day without the mafia ever getting to make a kill). Then we split off and I took Joanna and Can back to Lag, and then I came home.
I don't know, though...I don't think the mafia group is good for me. I know that half of you read this on a regular basis, so please don't take this as an insult to any one of you, and don't change your behavior in any way. I'm trying to make a larger point, starting with the fact that the mafia group, more than any other, can whip itself up into a frenzy pretty quickly, and then insane and insanely fun times are had by all. That was exactly the case tonight--we started fast, got ridiculous, I ended up with a cucumber halfway down my shirt, and we topped it off with Clue and Mafia. Fun, fun, fun, and I enjoyed every second of it. But then I have to come home, and it all comes crashing down, and it all feels like some cruel illusion that I can live for an hour or two and yet am forced to give up. I had almost reached the point where I had decided there was nothing left for me in California (which is obviously an exaggeration, since I would really miss Claude, and my old school friends), but hanging out with people I hadn't hung out with all summer (and for much longer than that, actually, given dramariffic occurrences over the past year) has renewed my longing for what I once had. And it's not just the mafia kids; seeing Ritu and Renee, and Julie, and Tommy and Ariel, and all the other people that I've seen and intend to see again soon, makes me realize that the ties that bind me here are still strong.
The problem is that those ties are strong, and they provide me with several hours of insane merriment every week, but then I come home and it's snap back to reality--I'm not *doing* anything with my life and all this supposed potential that I have, and I'm basically hiding under the covers and hoping that life will pass me by and leave me alone so that I can get back to wasting it. I'm avoiding all decisions about the future, and the thought of deciding something and changing my current situation leaves me both physically ill and slightly weepy.
Over the summer, I had settled into some sort of equilibrium; I guess living with Walter, who is very steady, will do that. Now I have the highs back, which are like an evil drug, since the highs are amazing and fun and wonderful and I want them all the time, but when I'm deprived of them I immediately crash into a very hard, sudden, unforgiving low (local minima, as Adit would call it). But really, all my life I've been choosing between another bout of euphoria/sadness and a more calm, rational, sedate manner...and I inevitably choose the euphoria/sadness. I chose calmness once and got completely worked and not calm at all, so I guess I'll stick with euphoria/sadness, even though the sadness can be so awful. But the euphoria is great.
So, mafia kids, thank you for inducing such tremendous highs. Every time I see all of you (except when we're reaching the part of the cycle where we're about to start hating each other again) is a complete joy. But I'm sad now, and I need to find some resolve to figure out something about the future and make it happen. The sadness stems from the fact that nothing lasts forever. I'm picturing Gollum in 'Return of the King' tossing the lembas bread over the cliff, and that's the gesture I always think of when I think of things passing, for some reason. It's like, that completely languid, yet malicious, gesture, causing chaos and destroying hope. Yes, things do get better (Sam saves Frodo, the good guys eventually win), but there are those moments sometimes when things just pass away and don't come back. And I feel like me deciding to leave here is like tossing away the lembas bread--my friends here are my lifeline, my security, my hope, but I *know* that if something doesn't change my life will be a waste. And that's a very scary thought--to know that I have to choose between continued awesomeness with my friends and some accomplishment that could better serve the world. That sounds very martyrish (and also arrogant)...but I know that if I stay here, I probably won't do anything, because I'll be too busy seeking the highs and nursing the lows.
Clearly I'm nursing a low now, and tomorrow it will all be better. And then the cycle will start anew when I have an opium lounge club meeting with Shedletsky and Tammy. Until then, it's time for sleep...
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