pixelated.me

Preface: This blog has gone through quite a few cycles of birth and rebirth. its purpose changed time and time again. From frustrated attempt at dealing with the challenges of love in my early twenties, to venting the heartache of that love coming to a end, to a sandbox for me to explore myself as a writer. In that time i've had a few readers who read my writing for whatever reasons. And although a review of a sci-fi show seems an odd choice for this final post in some ways it makes sense. This show was once something i shared with the girl i loved in 2004 when i started this blog and in coming to an end it is in some small way the very last "shared" thing to end from that time in my life. A very odd parallel that didn't occur to me until i actually started writing this. In a way i hope she someday gets a chance to see this final episode of the show we started watching together.

Now my thoughts on the show and the finale.

I'm not sure what i can add to what's been written and being written about BattleStar Galactica as a whole, and The series finale. It comes at a time of profound change for television and most other mediums. Newspapers are shutting down, CD's are woefully obsolete and TV shows that depend on things like Nielsen ratings or ad dollares are eeking by on business model that's slowly going obselete. Everyone is scrambling to find solutions. Meanwhile i do what i always do. Consume, Read, Watch, Listen to the things that move me, affect me, make me laugh, cry, or think in whichever way is quickest and most convenient. So i've downloaded every episode for the past year of BSG and the second they hit blu-ray i'll but the whole box set of them.

But i'm writing now not because i feel the need to drone on about new media vs. old media but because i know in my heart that the talent behind a show like BSG must and should be allowed to do what they do best. This show isn't merely entertaining but a beautiful representation of that uniquely human urge to create art. The word is loaded with cliche but art is the most wonderful abstract manifestation of humanities greatest trait. So although i still cringe at the idea of something so transient as a television show being called art, BSG is nothing less than a symphony. It has taken me through a 5 year journey and in bringing me to a finish line i find myself thinking about god, spirituality, and the tiny choices that make us who we are.

I imagine someone listening to Beethoven's Ninth for the first time must have had a similar experience.

might as well, write something.
shit if i do then i can pretend some part of the last hour of useless and slightly self destructive reminiscing was in some way constructive

add 1 part: thinking about ex, seeing her myspace, and wondering what the fuck if anything is left, yet again, reused thought, recycled, shat it out and ate it once again, and it still taste like shite.

add 2 parts: my ex-gfs sister is staying in my flat and has been for a week. She's lovely, and not at all like her sister, which is to say i feel i can relate to her. but goddamn if it isn't a challenge not to thing about the ex, the lack of contact, friendship, failed attempts at friendship, and wonder yet again if it isn't a shame that after 5 years all thats left is a little bit more than nothing and a friendship with her sister.

add 1 cup of: after 7 days, the diplomatically vague topic of P. the ex, came up with the sister in conversation. bits and pieces really, of who she is, seen through the eyes of a younger sister that doesn't always relate to her, nothing really of much use. the sort of half conjectured observations that serve only to highlight how estranged the once loved can become.

blunt: i hate that i give a shit. But now in the presence of a, house guest, reminder it saddens me that there isn't anything between us, it scares me to think that having loved so intensely and so blindly it or rather i left so little room for anything else, But hey man a bad break up is a bad break up, you get over it but it doesn't quite motivate you to invite the person for tea, or send an email every few months to catch up. There's always that lack of trust.

More than anything, i wish one of us had had the balls to end it sooner, before it got ugly, before the cheating, before the blog reading, before my faux attempt at post break up friendship because i thought she needed me, before she confided in me that she had a [removed at the her request as a courtesy], her process, finding herself through her darker side, i wish i'd known to walk away, COLD, because i think maybe today i'd have that occasional email to say hello, and it would be ok, as she seems to be okay now, except i wouldn't have born witness to her destroying the person i loved before discovering who she was.

maybe thats why i can't reach out or send the email i've been writing to her in my head all week.
maybe it all boils down to i haven't figured out how to forgive her for tearing to bits the version of her that i loved so utterly.

We had these very silly and very personal nicknames for each other, i was peep and she was peo, and really it was just the personas for two lifetimes of unexpressed childhood playfulness and wonder that we discovered we could indulge in with each other, One day, of the many shared with her, i playfully "threatened" to do something, lick her eye i think, and she squirmed and said "no, don't do that, it's the instant death of peo spot" i laughed at the thought, thinking that the playful childish side of her was in some naive way eternal, in the same way i though we were.

For months, and months during the course of the first year after we split, i kept thinking, "instant death of peo." over and over again, Aware of how ridiculous it sounded but also of how precisely it expressed my utter disgust and heartbreak. could it be that even now, somehow i haven't forgiven her for the "not so instant death of peo" and with it peep, some bit of my ability to love naively.

I'm not sure how to end this post. there's still somethings i can't quite bring myself to write.

Got home more.

More than i did when i left new york for mexico.

More than when i spent 11 days in new york in March purging my belongings.

I got home a little more this time around.

some of it has to do with closing doors.

but more so it's about realizing what the corridors i've got in front of me are.

I can see the burdens on the horizon.

If i knew what to look for i'm sure i could smell them.

It's growing up time.

putting it off has been fun and necessary.

my mother's bipolar. It's a subtle bitch of a condition. It masquerades as stubborn pride or indignation but ends with her sobbing in self pity in the corner of her room. It starts with some round about logic about how everything you've agreed upon for the past 3 or 4 days has really been wrong. It begins with what sounds like a suggested alternate course of action.

Mother: have you considered that if you don't do what we've agreed upon because secretly i resent you for not being able to give me exactly what i want and feel i deserve because once i was very wealthy and beautiful and coveted and now i'm not, that it might actually work out better.

Son: well i can't do that. cause i can't afford to.

Mother: well how come your father has a nice house and a nice car and...

Son: well because he's a different person than you.

Mother: it's not fair.

Son: no it's not

Mother: well now i don't want anything. I'd rather not having anything than accept what you can give which isn't what i deserve.

"i've been driving WV cars since i was 16, why should i stop now!"(actual quote)

and it deteriorates from there.

But i have come to one conclusion. She's stable for 4 days. it's the 5th day that sends her off on one of her bipolar induced rages of self pity and anger.

My original return flight home was yesterday Wednesday at 8:50pm. It was perfect. i would have left right at her stability peek. But i had to delay my departure and now i've overstayed my welcome. Her brain is fighting back against my subtle attempts to placate her. to comfort her and control the mental tangents that lead her down dark roads of regret.

But in the end she resents me. she resents that i've accepted my fathers help and secretly and not so secretly at times just wants me to suffer her mistakes with her. to tell my dad to fuck off and shove his money and go hate him from a distance with my mother and my younger brother who did take my mom up on her strategy for all the good it's done anyone.

My father probably was a bit of a dick. I know him enough to accept that half what my mom has accused him of is probably true.

But sometimes. as i myself have recently discovered, you need to let go of the anger or it will just tie you to the person you're hating.

my mom's been tied to my dad through hate for more than a decade.

enough mom.

enough.

love.

i really believe it can only exist when two equally fucked up people come to understand both sides of pain.

breaking hearts and having yours broken.

that pain. that scaring permanence of loosing love that I'd started feeling was as constant as consciousness is the only thing jaring enough to have made me finally figure out who i am. (apologies for switching to first person but it was necessary)

So i stopped looking for damsels to rescue. or beautiful fucked up girls, broken girls, wounded girls who i could wrap in my sense of centeredness*

i want awareness of humanity. our condition is flawed. we slam into wisdom like jumpers leaping off tall erections and crashing into concrete.

I'm still learning. realizing how reluctant i've been to forgive, how much the loathing simmered and settled into a substrata that helped me force a distance between me and that one person i once loved so utterly. But i have to let go of that hate. It's no longer serving any real purpose, except ironically to tie me to her.

in hate as i was in love.

enough now.

enough.

I'm in Houston. unpacking the boxes upon boxes that are the artifacts of a life lived in New York City. Boxes which up until two weeks ago had spent a year and half at a storage location in Harlem.

When we start coming across some decidedly feminine products. some empty facial cream tins, some decorative jars to hold bathroom supplies and other misc. She asks me what i'm doing with these things and i say "the were probably ______'s (my ex)" "She lived in my place for a few months after we broke up while she looked for a new flat. "Que bien la tenia, todavia vivio en tu depa?" (She had it nice, she actually lived in your flat?" She then asked how could it have ended if she had it so good, something which reminds me that in my mom's generation all a man really needed to do was take care of his girl and that's it. No messy emotional baggage to deal with, at least not on the surface. I say something about it being complicated and then in something that struck me as suprisingly naive for a woman as bitter as she is she said "But she seemed so in love with you when i saw her at your graduation."

"Yes" i say

"She was" i say

"We were" i say

but it had nothing to do with it.

and it didn't.