Keeping in touch sucks. I suppose it's a necessary evil, but I do not enjoy it very much at all. Today I called up Evie Nelson, talked to her on the phone. Evie will be reading this, and I don't want her to get confused: she is one of my favorite people. Many of the people reading this are some of my favorite people. People I want to keep in touch with, in a certain way. I want to know what they're up to, where their head is at.

But, more than that, I wish I was with them. Right now, I am living my life in limbo. In a perfect world, that is not the case. I am with these people who I sincerely enjoy, and we are doing things and having adventures, having shared stimuli to talk about. Without the constant stream of shared stimuli, conversations become dull and vague, trading in Jungian universal experiences and pronouns. (or movies and tv and news and music and shit... fun but feels shallow) Right now, I wish I was traipsing around California, living some kind of greatest hits reel of someone else's life, talking with her old friends and ex-friends, arbitrarily deciding that some of them suck and telling them so, because these aren't people I'll see again. I'll get yelled at later for it, but what the fuck, fun times, these are the memories that we share.

Or instead of California, it's Portland, or Alaska, or... Not Chichester, obviously, but I suppose I could hang out on other people's college campuses for short bursts of time when the school year starts. In theory. This is not actually going to happen.

Of course, if some one visited me in Olympia I might feel awkward about the convergence of lives new and old. I'm aware that this is true for other people's lives as well, so maybe adventures in someone else's life that is seperate from my own is not what I want. Maybe the different circles of friends should stay home and only the geography would remain. I'd show kids from Olympia around Philadelphia, showing them places to eat and how cheap CDs are if you know the right places. If kids from high school went to Olympia, I would obviously have nothing to show them. But still...

I lamented yesterday that it's fucked up that work is pretty much all I have in the way of a social life. But, in a way, going to work/school, or living near people just might be the ideal in terms of interaction. Something constant. Trading off reading material, knowing the same people and having inside jokes, because you sure as hell can't make new inside jokes over phone lines. Friendship over phone lines, or via the postal service, feels like homework. It's rewarding homework, but still, homework.

Also: thinking about the people I know, and am friends with... The more shared experiences I have with them, the bigger the space they occupy in my brain. The easier my thoughts run in their directions. Complex neuropathway maps of associations. There are people who I think about when I think of high school, when I think of college, when I listen to music, when I think about movies. Keeping in touch segments them off into little compartments, file cabinets full of information about people, "where are they now?" pieces of trivia.

And even if I met up with these people, shared a lunch or something and a conversation, even that isn't optimal because the conversation is about "keeping in touch," the telling of old stories (not of shared nostalgia, although sometimes that occurs as well) rather than the creation of new events.

Basically, I crave adventure, and it's easiest to get excited about people I'll be spending time with in the future. (Alex and Loren: I've got an idea for a movie! Maybe you don't want to be involved, which is cool. But you'll be around when I try to get other people involved! It'll be sweet! Also, maybe adventures in rockbanding? Loren on bass, Alex on laptop, fun times playing shows in downtown Olympia? Goddamn, that'd be rad! Let's fucking rock that action!) Which sucks, as there are many people who I won't be spending time with in the future who I would love to be excited about because they're fucking cool, and I care about them.