The unavoidably solipsistic entry

A while back, I was walking down a familiar street, returning home after a day of studying or shopping or drinking wine or some excellently enterprising combination of the three, when I stopped by a lawn next to the Fitzgerald Building (or at least I think that was it). I was struck by a hammer of remembrance, a little wooden ridged mallet to tenderize my high-strung brain. This was the lawn! The lawn where I lay down with the closest thing to a "partner" (in that modern genderless mode) I ever had during an outing early in December. As I recall, we were resting from wandering the downtown or some such thing. I got to thinking. How long ago was that? Coming up on two years. How had I forgotten it? It was a pleasant and minimally awkward experience, one that I should have retained even after the "non-acrimonious", unofficial, perfectly ambiguous event resembling a break-up that I had no right to be angry over. Maybe it had something to do with the few months of ambiguous, formless, angry impotence over this non-"relationship"-ending non-event. But, as I said, it was a pleasant memory. We lay on the grass for some reason and talked about something for a few minutes and attracted brief glances from a few passers-by. And I felt contented, like I had finally accomplished something useful, above and beyond just talk. So why didn't I hold onto that? I do now.

The next time I mouth off at bullshit social mores, I should make sure I've seen the practical neccessity of such prescriptions. My next relationship will not be held in quotes, nor will it be modified by adjectives and dreams for freedom and openness, as if I know better than almost everyone else. I don't; I never did. There will be plenty of room for ambiguity and irony and delicious playfulness within the box constructed from the standard mish-mash of "romantic" scripts and schemas. And a solid box can contain a lot more than one with gaping holes punched in it, even if these holes look like pretty dragons and goats and pigs and stars and fractals.

Stolen Quote: "the entire point of slogans like "support our troops" is that they don't mean anything. No person would go against the troops. These slogans are there to distract attention from the substantial question: "do you support our policy?" That's the question you're not allowed to talk about."