"I Try To Wear A Wicked Grin."

A Letter to a Friend. The above friend, specifically.

I remember the last time you were here the three of us walked down Key Highway on the wrong side of the road. The stone sidewalk was small and not even really a sidewalk. One of us always had to step out into the street and I tried to stay on that skinny stretch of stones, slipping every once in a while. We moved swiftly and you spoke eagerly. I like that memory. It's much like a movie. It reminds me of Jules and Jim in a way. Or perhaps Band of Outsiders. Sometimes things are so distinct in my recollection of them that they exists with the same weight as something I saw expressed in a film. I guess that makes perfect sense though. The best movies make you feel like they aren't movies. But, I find it intriguing that the majority of my memories of you fit in this category in my subconscious where brief but lovely things linger and repeat. When I was driving into Death Valley with Julian so many summers ago, the road twisted in sharp circles. The car got hotter and hotter and at one point we were overlooking this deep gorge. It was a bit frightening because there were no barriers and it was just barely a road. But, as we turned the corner to overlook the gorge I looked out the window and the most beautiful bird flew up out of the depths beneath me. It was framed so perfectly within the confines of the window from which I viewed it. It was the most perfectly photographic I've ever seen. And I remember it like a moving photograph much like I remember interactions with you. They live in the same place. I guess that's how a lot of people remember their youth. As brief, bright passing images.

Each day I arise from sleep searching my brain for all the dreams I lost overnight. I am left with vague feelings and inside my groggy skull there lives someone so different than the person I know I will inevitably wake up to become. All the moments of my day add up and linger behind me and now, as a result of this blog-keeping, I remain in constant search of things to say. I see people in the same way I used to, as characters, as bubbling, bobbing presences whom I may grab ahold of and make them words. People are far more real once they're words. Once they can be described steadily and distinctly and put down on the page. I've been reading people's blogs, my friend Andre's and WaiterRant, to be specific and they exist so fully there, on the glowing screen. People are what they do to such a degree that I try not to think about what I spend the majority of my time doing, which is serving rich people dinner.

You speak of the things that you cultivate, the reflections and shadows you push yourself through and I know your search is honest and genuine. You speak of justifying your life to yourself and I understand you so wholly and so completely that I feel your sentences reverberate in my chest. I often think about these words which pass between us and I think of other letters between people which have been studied and published. Your words shine so brightly through the monotony of employment. They're always new and telling. I can't wait until Rob's songs will reflect again, anew. I've only heard them too much. I am waiting for a new one.

I've been involved in an endlessly absurd argument about subjectivity, yet again, as I always
am. This argument hurled at me through clenched teeth, "Art is whatever you think it is." Yes, well life is whatever you think it is too but that doesn't mean that there isn't an objective reality happening around you. Your ability to perceive that reality and your ability to understand that art, like everything, functions within a specific structure, that structure having been created by history, context, society and personal subjectivity. You can dream that you have a completely unique experience, that whatever you want to believe is true, but art is making your subjective experience visible to others through a medium and that medium exists within certain frames of reference. And there are only so many possible experiences any one person can have.

Yes, my dear Geoff, all of what you say is true. Men's minds fool them often but it is completely possible to be aware of the way in which your mind is fooling you. If you write what you think and think about what you feel, you won't have anything to hide from. It is only the days during which you don't express something honest to yourself that your mind can fool you. That's why I've been writing these long days into short experiences. I can only know that I've lived if I make words out of the things I've seen.