I am almost home. Though still virtually unsettled, I’ve begun thinking about you and about having, while away, committed to seeing you. I imagine you in your neighborhood and feel closer to you, though I, in actuality, am no nearer. As I become more familiar with myself in my own surroundings I begin to feel more intimate with you. I feel like we are participating in the implicit mutuality of a shared union – a circumstance that is at once immediate and barren. I begin to grasp the salience of this moment . . . . manipulating it as if it were an estranged appendage – attempt to formulate a concept of proximity – to grasp the vagueness of separation. I grasp you as if I were there . . . . pulling myself home – as if I were here and knew you intimately – grasping as if my unification with you allows me to claim space – as if seeing you permits the sensation immanent in place. As if . . . .
As if all that I experienced and imagined would coalesce within this one grasping effort . . . . as if these two miniscule, eviscerated words – as if – can summon the wholeness, even wholesomeness of this connectivity . .. . the appropriateness of this . . . . as if.
The flow of my words begin to fumble awkwardly as I try to maneuver them . . . . attempting to elicit an essential communication – inadequately manipulating each stroke to invoke the expression this contact entails. Commencing slowly and attentively – and with a caution – the sense that the assumption – as if – as if connection – contact, connectivity, seeing you, is in any way more real than my imagining – my imaging from there . . . . or anywhere . . . . else . . . . as if I had ever gone – or given any effort toward departure.
This then is my self-conscious attempt to conjure a portrayal – loaded if necessary – to encircle, entrap, inter the slippery sense of a missing presence (the protrait that embodies the unwanted, undesirable, unavoidable intrusion into the landscape of my concentration) – to get hold of the vaguely recognizable image which means you: visual emitters, descriptors, inventory of aesthetic and corporeal expressions that mark the imperceptible extremity of a connecting thread – the immeasurability of a gap – the fulfilling of a space between (whether there or here) – though I was always, of course, have always been nowhere . . . . but here.
Well . . . . please forgive the repetition. I begin again to draw each image of you – as if from a camera clicking – evoking you with whom I have desired to make contact – eager to submerge myself in the warmth of a familiar, even one merely intimate moment . . . . as if my really being here, nearer than I was previously – of course not really closer – but attempting to image this thing – the physicality of an empty distance (my imagination does not seem to be able to depict relative proximity . . . . except to offer the ambiguous murkiness which veils your persona) – as if my acknowledgement of our immediacy would involuntarily shape the physical manifestation of a tender touch.
Still slow and effortful, I labor over the tenuous quality inherent in assumptions about the vital nature of contact – that is . . . . me to you, us to them, we to they . . . . the assumption that seeing begets identity . . . . that potential for an ecstatic episode may arise from the congealing of this incalculable, unseeable (much less recognizable) cosmos between us . . . . almost a vacuum (as you may identify) from my uncertain point of view. The you I addressed, whom I fabricated a desire to seek, the suddenly nebulous and vague you whose absence differentiates me, the you with whom I have unilaterally mandated a contact . . . .
On my journey, recognizing the slippery hold on my familiar framework, I observed stimulating activities within the melange of an eccentric world. I visited a landscape intoxicated by the scent of a mind-numbing perfume . . . . a waft of insentience wrought by frenzied hands. I witnessed pathos, indignities, congenial bedfellows, that is – those naive and ambiguous types whose ventures into conspiracy become mired in benign visions – my skin searing in the vast sands of a nomadic venture. All this, all of it was underscored by home, getting home, and manifested within the knotted frame which image always included a vision of you . . . . your face in the bizarre haunts, you in transit, you always . . . . you within the context of a familiar form – you who make the familiar, create familiar, who would never even exist without a memorable encounter.
It is just about now that I begin to recognize you, envisioning you, as I am about to come home . . . . not quite home – not yet . . . . but approaching. Commencing to find myself within this gargantuan rupture – catching on – suddenly glimpsing that you are merely a contrivance – an egoic invention shaped simply to facilitate my meandering visions – that your face . . . . face full . . . . faceless, unique yet mired in the vista of a thousand faces – you who activate me – who facilitate my absence . . . . my arrival – your face becomes transparent, wafting into the face of another you. Beauty becomes a faceless endeavor . . . . as if the idea of beauty, simply, may warm an empty room – as if your aura – any aura – nameless and imageless – brings cream to a bitter cup.
There is so many you. I believed seeing you would entail a minimal moment, that I could simply conjure you and my modest habitat would be fortified. I never considered a multiple you, an enumeration of all the yous; never imagined the complication that having to sort you out, faceless in a sea of faces, would mire me in a draining distraction, a fallen feeling.
In order to see you, to compel you from the crowd, I must erase you – extract you from the framework which confines my gaze, release you to an unfilled pedestal – allow you to roll off – accept that seeing you is to not see – that seeing . . . . and not seeing – you are synonymous.
I go through this exercise – the vigorous revelation – the waste of a nomadic seed, the evocation of you, the longing to see – the resurrection of a facial panorama – the draining moment . . . . approaching – the nebulous you – the vague you – the sought you, the missing you – the waning, dissipating gaze – the lost you, the forgotten you – through the exertion of this numbing exercise . . . . to drain – to image and destroy . . . . and recreate the absent you – to see you . . . . when I get home.