Cause there’s somebody right next to you

[austin_dern]

``I fall in love too easily,'' said Rerun van Pelt wistfully about the Jill-in-the-Box. Which comes to mind as someone who was my best friend in the late 80s and early 90s is, it turns out, getting married in two months, and it's almost certain that I won't be there. I didn't even hear about it from him directly. We never really broke off our friendship; just he sort of became my brothers' friend and then we didn't make an effort to see one another when I was home anymore, and somewhere along the line a bond dissolved. Fun enough guy, reasonably bright if deficient in judgement to wacky-sitcom-neighbour levels, could do a great Judge Doom impersonation.

That awareness that someone who used to be key in my life has moved on, and is apparently doing fine -- and I wish him all the happiness he can get -- leaves me feeling what I think is a taste of the Empty Nest Syndrome. It's the sense that a loved one has left, and he's better for it, and while you're both content enough you notice you don't need one another anymore. It's a horrid mix of hope and desolation and I'm sure either French or German has the exact word for it. Somehow the discovery this morning that an old friend I don't see much anymore has gotten her own Livejournal just heightened the feeling. There was a time we'd talk (online) daily, and I've only chatted with her briefly for years now, and while I'm hopeful to see more of her I'm aware there's a lot of experience lost.

The answer, of course, is that I have to stop focusing on decade-old faded friendships and pay attention to the people who I know and love, or could love, now. They deserve my full attention and I'm trying. But I wonder what the wedding will be like. When I met his fianceé I had the impression she was a Buggaloo, but there's surely more to her than that.

Trivia: Ludwig Schlafi, 1814-1895, proved that there are six regular polytopes (polyhedrons in higher dimensions) for four-dimensional space. Source: Platonic and Archimedean Solids, Daud Sutton.

Currently Reading: Second Front Now 1943, Walter Scott Dunn Jr.

Comments

[blither.livejournal.com]

And just what is wrong with being a Buggaloo?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

She was a timorous Buggaloo. One time she took a look at the older of my little brothers and was so distressed by something in his appearance that she had to run out of the room and throw up. He's never inspired that reaction in anyone else.

Plus, my friend is really too old to still live in a jukebox in central New Jersey.

[blither.livejournal.com]

You must have a very DREAD brother! I am not surprised, somehow. Nerp.

Still, she sounds more like a wigglebutt than a Buggaloo. Your friend will regret it!

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

He's really not all that dread, although he is carrying on the sophomore communist-hippie-anarchist-vegan attitude far too long -- he's nipping tentatively at graduate school in labor relations or something like that -- and he is needlessly blunt around friends. (He learned he gets farther if he's courteous and polite to people with authority, at least to start with.)

I don't get what my friend sees in her, but then I'm not the one who needs to get it. They have been living together for a few years, so I suppose they've got a rough idea what marriage will be like, but my friend has got a track record of decisions he comes later to regret. Among the highlights are running away from New Jersey to California (he was stopped just 2,995 miles short of his goal), joining the Army to pay for college (he lost part of his tank), and dropping his car insurance so he could afford the lease on his brand-new car (you see where this is going). He also once quit a cushy civil service job tending reports of sidewalk cracks because he felt the dress code (shower, wear clean clothes) was too demanding.

I really hope this goes better.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Hello, Austin. I'm sorry I haven't been very good about responding to your email, but I do like to hear from you and I'm pleased to find your journal. I kind of know what you're talking about with the Empty Nest and all, except in my case the biggest bugbear is the suspicion that I'm getting old. This is, of course, silly, as I'm not quite 30, but I am having trouble coming to grips with the fact that I'm not a carefree youth anymore. I kind of bypassed the whole "ack, my friends are starting to get married thing" by being the first among my friends to get married. So that helped me stay in denial for a while.

I only keep in touch with one person from my previous grad school (very occasionally), and one person from my undergrad school (also very occasionally). I think about other folks and miss them, but there has been too much water under the bridge to hope that we'll see each other again. I'm not sure we'd have much in common. A friend from high school looked me up not long ago in hope of rekindling our friendship, and I must confess that I just found the whole thing awkward.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I haven't been very good about responding to your email, but I do like to hear from you and I'm pleased to find your journal.

Aw, thank you. It's nothing you need to apologize for, though. If I really tried to keep up with all the people I know I'd end up spending all my days in a Red Queen's Race of catch-up. Besides, I brought most of my isolation on myself by moving to Singapore and thus between 13 and 16 hours ahead of everyone. But it's hard not to avoid a little solipsism and see it as everyone else falling 13 to 16 hours away from me.

I think I've been lucky; most of the times I've encountered old friends from undergraduate life or before we've fallen back together just like old times after a couple awkward minutes to start. Either I'm good at making lifelong friendships or I'm chatty enough anyone can seem like an old friend after fifteen minutes.