A melancholy has set over my heart lately as my life slows to a lull. On every front I have reached an impasse: in my work serving, in my work repairing electronics, in my personal relationships, and in my prospects for success.
I wondered why for a minute, and realise that I feel unsatisfied because the others cannot take advantage of the full depth of me. And it’s not that they don’t understand me—to a great extent they do—it’s that their capacity to take advantage of more nuanced parts of me is not there. In the end, that limitation of theirs, not mine, comes into play and brings things to a close.
In this sense I feel very translucent—people can see me and know that I’m there, and whatever extent they can appreciate me they very much do—but there is much more to me that they cannot see, and I cannot do anything but try failingly to tell them. Like, I will say to people when need be, “I am honest, I have integrity. You can trust me, and you should trust me here.” They comprehend what I mean but they do not understand. Of course anybody will say they are honest. Of course people will want to be given trust. That means little to them. I don’t have the luxury of time and intimacy to prove that to them through actions, and since I am no one special, they don’t think much to give me a try. They don’t care enough to know who I am.
This translucency also shows in my proclivities, both recreationally and professionally. I am a skilled computer scientist, even creating my own programming language that allows people to communicate something about their programs no other language has the ability to express. Nobody in major companies or organisations really cares. The most they might say is, “that’s interesting”, but it simply doesn’t get enough bandwidth in their world that they would think of the implications it would have. They’re too preoccupied.
My tendencies for consumption and how I spend quality time also tend to have the same insane quality differential. I can’t get company that doesn’t want to do this or that. People want to date, or they want to get wasted. They want to dance to music, or else they just go home. It’s all so mechanised and inhuman and I don’t even understand why they bother since it won’t amount to a bigger heart. They’re so preoccupied!
In general, there are a lot of bigger & better things I want and need to be doing, but as of right now I don’t have the means and nobody wants to give those means to me so I can do it. I guess it’s partly me feeling how broke I am right now, and the holding pattern I’m stuck in until things change in September. Despite it all, I don’t see a path out of here without somebody else coming along and giving a damn too. You can think of me as incidental if you want, I’m sure I’m merely a vessel for a lot of the best things I share anyway. But why don’t you care? Don’t these works stand for themselves?
Until next time,
Άλέξανδερ Νιχολί