2 years.
In the same place, computer lab at school. Killing time while thoughts of the future run in circles around my head like a toy train, box after box after box, cars chasing each other in an unending loop. So here I find myself, escaping from the pointless meandering of conversation, its inability to give any answers or to provide the same cathartic release.
Two cities, on separate sides of the country. San Diego, New York. Two coasts, two worlds apart. The two thousand eight hundred miles seems small compared to the months apart. Bad connections, time differences, life differences... miles unable to measure the emotional distance that exists, ripping and tearing with every beat.
No good answer. Job prospects running slim, far and few positions here, but great there. But friends, family, my life, here. My heart there. Warmth here, cold there, space here, none there, culture there, people there, ocean here... here, there, here, there...
Yeats,
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;"

And these overwhelm my own issues, my own fears and feelings. Struggling with a self that is held in casual dissonance, two songs playing at the same time, juggling identities, feelings, actions, attitudes, never able to let either go, the rogue, the womanizer, the rebel, the student, the boyfriend, the fiancé, the future husband and father... I look into the mirror and don't know who I see in front of me. Minute by minute, as both flash and flicker back and forth behind reflective sunglasses. I am torn. My life is torn. There is no reconciliation, just the sacrifice of one misery for another. I cannot embrace half of myself, half of my life.

The only joy left is in the moment, ignoring the future forks. But even that is tempered by the fear of falling two deeply into the moment, forgetting the consequences of smiles and small talk.
No forgetting. No letting go. No embracing anything. Tomorrow holds no joy. Today holds none either. Every moment is clouded with shadow and anxiety.

Right below my bellybutton, somewhere deep in my center is the worm of life, throbbing and aching, whispering in its serpentine tongue my own silent desires in my ear. I see beauty everywhere, and it makes the twisted form of me, inside me, throb and hiss till I feel it might burst out, exploding, erupting... la petite mort...
Coiling and uncoiling deep inside me, the serpent never sleeps...

Id and Superego circling and circling...

Binaries, choices, deconstructed into each other, built back up, then razed again. And again. And again...

Love and amore. Irreconcilable. The soul mate of my friendship or the love of my life. A career in misery, or a struggle in paradise. Together or apart, I fear I may never be whole. And the same fear, of myself, of the stirring serpent within, its shadow haunting them both.

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"