Chrisonomicon

Sunday, July 29, 2001

The musty silence that builds after a few days of being gone welcomed me back as I opened the door to my home. Had I not closed the windows, the blinds, the vents, the house still would have accumulated the same stale, stagnant air. It wasn't unpleasant and easily fixable. A few fans in open doors and the house was instantly resuscitated.

Voices from the past and present ? no doubt the future as well ? lay waiting on my answering machine. Josh had called from New York to touch base. I jotted his number down on a paper napkin and skipped to the next. Yes, it's Jeff calling to say he misses me and is thinking of me and can't wait until I get back and...

I skip to the next message. Weekly logistics from various coworkers and life enhancement agencies, as I like to call them. Marketers in convenience, more appropriately. I fumble downstairs to my bedroom and check my email where more marketing awaits, and figure there will come a time when privacy will be the most valued commodity. The delete key on my keyboard is looking pretty worn.

I pass the evening blindly. The tasks I use to prepare for the week are ways of dividing my attention to reduce the amount of runabout in my head ? spirals of thought that lead nowhere but down. I question my stance with friends, with people, with myself. What do I want? It seemed so clear to me, not even six months ago. Now, I struggle with the very bases of my identity.

Uncertainty will always be a mainstay in my life. It will always be present. The few things that are absolute are few and far between and seem to have all occurred when I was under the age of ten. I long, in a way, for those days but dismiss that desire at the same time for I know those times bring a necessary ignorance. Uncertainty still remains regarding whether I'd rather choose blissful ignorance over the dry-heat desert of Truth.