(A Tent On A Boat: 2)

originally posted on june 25, 2019

Hi, Mr. Blue-light.

I've tried to write a second letter to you many, many times, but it never came together. I tried writing you one in April, but no time. And in May, but I couldn't find the energy. Kept falling asleep. And now we're already in June. Time flies, doesn't it? I'm out of school already — junior year's over!

Well, what can I tell you? Regular school things, I guess. I finished my AP exams. I got my GPA back. I'm excited to be home and to have this break, even if it's not really a break. A break is being stationary. Immobile. And Mr. Blue-light, trust me when I say that I am on the move, every day. I cannot remember the last time I've gotten up in the morning and could confidently say that I had nothing, not one thing, to do.

Yeah, anyway. Enough with the boring stuff. Last time I wrote to you, I just remember being super tired. And now, as opposite as it can be, I'm wide awake. And it gets even weirder, because it's literally two-o-seven in the morning, and I need to be somewhere sort of early tomorrow. Doesn't matter, though. I get to write. And it's to you, too, which is even better, I'd say. So tomorrow can wait.

Are there ever times when you feel like you lose control, a little bit, Mr. Blue-light? Like, usually, you take command of your own life. You own it. You tell your life what you want, and you get exactly what you ask for. Well, maybe, it doesn't work like that sometimes. Maybe your life takes command of you. It controls you. Like you're just carrying out the motions of someone else, being asked to live your life rather than living it yourself. Know what I mean? I feel like this theory may apply to me right now. It's just all been moving a little slowly, you know. I woke up a couple mornings ago and was shocked — in the most literal sense of the word — that I was where I was. I was in Thailand, but for some reason, I woke up thinking I was in, I don't know where — but definitely not Thailand. It was like I fell asleep somewhere across the globe and got transported to a bed in a petite villa on a tropical island. I mean, maybe it's just really vivid dreaming. That's the more logical explanation. But my money's on the fact that my life is driving me now. Sorry. I know I'm not making sense.

Anyway, that's a pretty cynical way of looking at things. Life hasn't been that bad. Actually, life has been pretty sweet. I met up with some old friends, and I also hung out with some new ones. I did a few things. Like I said, I was in Thailand for a while — Koh Samui. Italy, too, with a group from my school. Got to see a lot of art. Grand, historical pieces. Lived like Elio. Felt like Aeneas. I remember making a list titled "Beautiful moments" halfway through Italy. Never felt compelled to do something like that before. But Italy demanded it. You know how we dream about living an extraordinary life? Or at least living an extraordinary moment? Maybe it's just because we fail to notice how extraordinary our lives already are.

That's a lot of talk about me. How are you, Mr. Blue-light? Excited about where you're headed? Nervous, I bet, too. Write to me. At least send over a postcard. You're not dead, are you? Please tell me you're not dead.

Moving on. Assuming you're not dead, Mr. Blue-light, answer me this:

When will you expire? And become a different version of you?

Don't give me a BS answer like "always." Snakes don't shed their skin every minute. No. Tell me. How often do you think you are reborn? When you can definitively say that you are no longer the person you were x amount of time ago, that you are a new person? Is it every time you brush your teeth? Every time you cry? Every time you make a mistake? Every time you sweat, or pick your nose, or kiss your mother goodnight? Or is it every time you stay up too late, writing an extended journal entry to yourself, taking inventory of your thoughts and feelings, in a miserably sleep-deprived and lonely state?

My answer? I think that people expire at their extremes. Either at the heights of their happiness or the pits of their sorrow. You set a new normal, a new standard for yourself every time you hit a maximum or minimum, and then everything afterward in your life is measured relative to that. Like, for example, you cry about being heartbroken with your best friend outside some coffee store, cry for twenty whole minutes, eyes puffy, body weak and shaking, and then everything that happens after that moment is just, at most, an eh. Every emotion afterward is measured relative to that moment outside the coffee store.

That's a little depressing, if you think about it, Mr. Blue-light. The fact that I'm not going to see you again. By you, I mean This Version Of You. I'll still see your body and your face, whenever we next meet. But I won't see you — the you I know, have known, have fresh in my memory. Like I've established, we all change. Even if I do meet you somewhere down the line, you'll be all different, all grown, all aloof, all forgetful, all new. I don't blame you; I probably will be, too. That's just how people are. You know what I think? When someone leaves, it's a sign that someone else — not necessarily someone better, but someone wiser — will soon arrive.

So. It doesn't do well to dwell on shedded skins, on expired hollows of ourselves. We forget to live if we do that.

If I'm being dead honest — and for some reason, I hate to say this — I've been thinking about you a lot less, Mr. Blue-light. And so I was surprised when I saw you in my dreams last night. And the night before.

Ok, this is so fascinating. I remember writing something down about these dreams, like five or six words, in my Notes app this morning, right when I got up. And they don't seem to be on my phone. I'm checking now, and I really can't find it. That's a little offsetting, for sure. But anyway, I remember the dream fairly well.

We're at a hotel lobby, and we're not alone. It's packed full of people, people we both know. The ceiling is very low in some parts and very high in other parts. You're standing, like, ten meters away from me. The walls are orange, but not too orange — like maybe the orange you get if you mixed orange juice with some milk. You don't notice me. I notice you.

Cut to next scene. We're on a boat. Not a big boat. A ferry. Like the Star Ferry, but more clean, and no windows. Like an airplane cabin with all blinds drawn shut. We're on the second deck. Seems like an hourlong ferry. And for some reason, we're sitting inside a tent in this boat. Constraining, green tent. There are people, loads of people, outside the tent. Just us two inside here. You're laughing and saying something unintelligible. Glasses. Bamboo sticks, propping up the tent. The floor itself is undulating, sort of like the waves this boat is currently traversing. Two minutes. Two minutes is all we have here. And then the dream cuts to black.

I get it, none of that made any sense. Still, that's the best way I can recall it. Sorry. I don't mean to talk about my dreams to you every single time I write. It's boring, I know. But, like I mentioned before, you, of all people, would understand the simple, fragile significance of this little boy's dreams. You would know why those dreams — why everything I've said here in this letter, really — is important.

Stay in touch. Be well, and be safe. And a reminder to send me a letter or postcard or something. Bye-bye, Mr. Blue-light.

DN