A Few Notes from My Reality

Today I went for a run, and I decided that instead of heading in the direction I normally head in, I’d go the opposite way and run it in the other direction. The spirit of adventure will always lead to discovery, and I discovered that the opposite direction to what I had been going was at least a third again more difficult than my traditional route. It is important to know that I live about halfway up what would probably be most appropriately described as a foothill, the first part of my run is always downhill, and it concludes with running uphill. Normally I head east first, turn to the north, make a left and head west, and finish it off with a southwardly sprint the last fifty or a hundred meters up to my apartment. It turns out that the “westward ho!” portion of my run—which is the longest uphill portion of my traditional run—is the shortest portion of what I think is about three 3k (let’s call it 1). So, today, I ran 1k downhill, then proceeded to run for almost 2k uphill. I learned something. I learned that sometimes, when you choose a different path, it might wind up being more difficult; however, you’ll never know unless you take it.
This has been something of a theme for my reality. I have a tendency to find paths and wander down them fully understanding that there is a possibility it might be more difficult, but, simultaneously, finding it very difficult to care. Shying away from difficulty has never been my style. My style, as a matter of fact, would probably be best characterized as somewhat reckless, but only to a point.


Today, I managed to get one quarter of the way through memorizing Pablo Neruda’s “Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair,” and all I keep thinking is that the more I dive into these poems and wrap my head around them, the deeper my understanding becomes. Only the other day did the realization that this work was doing more than it claimed to do cross the threshold of my mind. It is mapping the arc of a relationship. The first poem is like love at first sight: body of woman, white hills, white thighs, you look like a world lying in surrender. Over the course of the next nineteen poems, the passion transforms itself into something else, until, by the twentieth poem, when he knows it’s over, he writes: tonight I can write the saddest lines—all of which is followed (after the "official" ending of the relationship) by the "Song of Despair." Now, I am an English major by trade, and I probably should’ve picked that up long before this, but I had never actually sat down read them all through before. I used to just open it up to whatever I felt like and read it because they were all so beautiful, but now that I understand his project, I read it with new eyes.
The eventual failure of all romantic concepts of love is ever-present in the work, and that is the reason for despair. The other day, I was talking to my Korean co-teacher and she said that she married her husband fifteen years ago and it was great. They loved each other and it was incredible. Now, after fifteen years, two children, and the effects of time there is no love left. Those were her exact words: “there is no love left… only duty.” That is what becomes of love. It turns into habit and duty. It is my job to be with this person. Romance and passion will always, always fade. It is our lot to deal with this reality.


Habit has been an interesting topic of conversation lately. Tonight, during the course of teaching my adult students how to speak English, I gave them the topic: tell me three bad habits you have and three ways to change or stop them. I gave them mine to begin with: forgetfulness, going, and not listening to doctor’s directions. As to the first one, my methods for changing or stopping it were: practice (like my memorization of Neruda’s book), mnemonic devices, and playing memory games (which is a little like practice, but not quite AS focused). To stop going would be very difficult for me. I find myself every day, as I mentioned, wandering down new paths, but I gave them these three methods to attempt a change: watch more TV (I have what would best be described as a near-passionate-hatred for the thing because people get into the habit of watching too much of it and they have to be there for their shows or whatever… I don’t understand it), sleep more (I have a tendency to sleep for six to eight hours no matter what or when—even if I’ve had a heavy night of “socializing” the night before and all logic would point to sleeping forever… I’ll be up in six hours and doing work), and (as my student suggested) get married. As for listening to doctor’s advice: get married (the same student suggested it), almost die more frequently (that’d sort me out), and have children (for obvious reasons). What is really interesting to me is that when it was their turn, they could give me their bad habits, but they all said that it was impossible to break them. That was almost the saddest thing I’d ever heard. When a revolution of the mind and body is not possible, is there life? Or, are you just living out of habit? The thought actually terrified me: the life lived purely out of habit.


I recently committed Facebook suicide. For those who’ve been in a coma for the last 5 years, Facebook is an “online social networking utility” that allows you to stay connected to all your friends, all over the world, simply by joining and finding them. From personal experience, it is a pretty incredible thing. I have lived in some fairly out of the way places and done some fairly out-of-the-way things, and it was always nice to log in to Facebook and find my friends and see what they were up to. Through a friend I found out that I couldn’t quit Facebook (and their are political reasons that we won't go into right now). This always rubs me the wrong way—like when I was running an overnight crew for a big company and it seemed as if I couldn’t quit… until I did. Tell me I can’t do something, and I’m at least going to attempt to do it, right? It has more to do with the challenge than anything else.
Anyway, the fact that you can only “de-activate” your account (like pushing pause) but never quit the thing aside, there was also the curiosity that started to well up in me about what life would be like without Facebook. I have been on Facebook since my university days in 2004 when the thing was brand new. When I mentioned on my Facebook account that I was quitting, I got one response that said, “That’s just stupid. I don’t believe you.” Some people can’t imagine their world without Facebook. I CAN imagine it, and I wanted to see what life would be like without it. It’s been a week now, and I’ve noticed a serious lack of clutter in my email inbox (they send you notifications about almost anything unless you do the work of requesting them not to), about an hour of my day back every day, a day less cluttered with sifting through people's ridiculous "status updates," and a feeling of freedom that I think I had been missing. It’s too easy is the problem. Nobody wants to do the work that’s required for actually maintaining a friendship relationship. But if you’re up for it… send me an email: elijtaylor@gmail.com. Or, better yet, send me an actual address and I'll write you a letter.