This Post Has No Title: Just Thoughts and an Underbelly

I just returned from the shore with my mother. I went kayaking for the first time, in the back bay—watched a beautiful sunset and drifted through the reeds with not a care in the world. And I went fishing and caught a nineteen inch flounder, who I will eat tonight with a little lemon and butter. I console myself about having to kill the flounder with the thought that I've saved the lives of dozens of other fish by taking this menace from the sea. Those guys have sharp teeth, and they are none too gentle. And we caught a big black rat snake, who seemed generally okay with having been caught, manhandled, and then released back into a nice swamp.

While at the shore, I started my entry to the Johnny Theremin project. I'll post it here later when I get a chance (no time for it now, because mom needs the computer for business in a few minutes).

I also got about a fifth of the way into The Chess Garden at the shore. It's fantastic. Easily one of the best books I've read in a long time.

Sigh. I go back to Chicago on Tuesday, and I'm of mixed feelings about that. One thing I've realized in my week and a half out here in Philly is that I'm a different person in Chicago than I am here. And I don't know if it's the people I know, or the fact that I'm on vacation right now and have no responsibilities to anyone or anything, or what, but it remains that in Chicago, I'm much more closed, much more pedantic. I feel very cut off there, from my past, from who I have been, from the guy I knew in the Wayback Machine, who was open to any thought, any idea, any new people. And I feel very alone there. Even in crowds of people, I feel very alone, like I'm constantly struggling to connect and sometimes I do in some way, but never in the way that I want. Not entirely. Not the free me. Here, I have my past, I have the people who have loved me since before they knew me, just because I was theirs. Here I'm not constantly struggling to make myself heard, or constantly having to give up being heard in abject disgust. Here, if I say something, it isn't contradicted outright, but the idea is explored, questioned, thought about, discussed. Even if it turns out I was completely mistaken.

I'm of mixed feelings about going back—as opposed to just bad feelings—because I also know that I have friends back in Chicago. Some amazingly good friends. And I have a life there, and a job, and fortunes of sorts. I just wish there was someone there who I connected with fully. I wish I had an old friendship there, a person who could remember the real version of me. I remember him, now, but I'm afraid of losing that memory, or worse, that I'll remember him and nobody will believe he's really me.

So I write my fear here. To take away its power. And to remind me that it's a ridiculous fear. Back to relaxing. Enough of my fears.

I'll post Johnny Theremin later tonight or tomorrow.