last summer, i was driving on interstate 35 in kansas. it was an overcast day, with perfect threatening clouds ready to burst. i had the windows down; it was the perfect temperature outside, just cold enough to make you feel real without making you feel uncomfortable. i was listening to the song i am listening to now, "disintegration" by the cure. it's an incredibly sad song.
at that moment, i was completely content. i can't think of another moment in my life when i've felt as little pressure. i wasn't immediately capable of improving anyone else's life, and so i didn't feel compelled to do so. i don't remember what i was thinking about, but i was thinking about it for me. it was one of those selfish pleasures that are so important to everyday functioning.
i mention it now, in what is a relatively sanguine moment, to try to explain why one day i may withdraw from the world. the paradox of social interaction is that the presence of another person (or group of people) always skews the situation, changes you, because there is this demand to do what's right in the context of the here and now. and if there were a person for whom that's not the case, you wouldn't really be interacting with them at all.
i don't mean to say that it will happen soon. but i get the idea so often that i can't imagine that it won't be the reason for the last time you hear from me. it's true that perhaps this feeling of pressure is something psychological that one day will be recognized as a syndrome, but i think it's just the truth. i feel it especially, of course, when i'm with people i don't see very often, not because i'm less comfortable around them but because i know that whatever impression i make will last a long time. there's simply no way i can get the kind of happiness that i had that day in kansas around other people.
maybe i'll be proven wrong; maybe i'll find someone who miraculously i feel no pressure around but who isn't vanilla. the paradox of conditional unconditional love, more or less. but the trend lines don't point that way; the trend lines point towards me relying on the kansas happiness more and more as i grow older, because that shouldn't change, while everything else degrades due to a growing sense of urgency, a decreasing set of options, a decaying mental acuity, and whatever else.
i want to stress that i'm not doing anything due to these predictions of gloom and doom. i'm not pessimistic about the future, not at all; i'm just trying to analyze the things objectively (which is why i write this now, at a time when i'm not at all affected in an emotional way, the song which has now ended aside.) if the gloom and doom actually happens, it is what will trigger the withdrawal (whether via running away, becoming a hermit, or suicide -- these are all equivalent from your point of view, or at least i fervently believe that they should be.)
i will tell you right now that if i see an attractive job, or maybe even an attractive girl, when i'm driving up to vancouver, you may never hear from me again.