The diploma arrives at my parents' house...

I hate moving. I hated moving my sister around two or three times a year when she went to college on the other side of the state. Driving west and up was my favorite part. I've always been a sucker for watching the world pass by in parallax. Moving meant lots of yelling and heavy lifting. Hard work with nothing to show. A big waste of time. But this isn't really anything new, no one likes moving.

Sifting through the rubble of a year (thank god that's all) is an imposing task, but I'm glad I can't pay someone else to do it for me. So much can fall by the wayside in the small space of a year. While filling up a bag with everything I thought would be important and other detritus that just seems to have missed earlier sacks I found an envelope bearing a few footprints from my desk chair. Inside was a card from my Grandmother, recently spirited away to the great unknown on the pirate ship Cancer, bestowed upon me on the advent of my graduation from Art School. Inside it reads in a shaky hand, still retaining some elegance,

In homage to the new
graduate
PETER

Much Love,
Janice

The front of the card bears the image of a painting from 15th century Turkey, a miniature entitled "Offering gifts to the Sultan Selim II." Twenty-three men with identical faces and scraggly bears in multicolored robes and ridiculous tall hats are paying their homage to a thoroughly bored Sultan. I was never close to Janice. Old people have always made me uncomfortable. Even before my first experience with death, I associated the wrinkled and grey with the end of life, with senility, incontinence, and crabbiness. Maybe I just found their wealth of experience too imposing. Whatever the case may be, I regret not learning more about my forbears. It has taken me far too long to taste just a little bit of the richness of their experience. The tastes I can still manage now can't compare to what I could have found out if I had been curious from the beginning.

Apparently my family dynamic is a strange one. I love my family, but I just can't make myself take much of an interest in them. Caring and intimacy are separate. We are a humanistic bunch, I suppose. Respect is in good supply, respect for differing feelings and points of view, and a respect for privacy. I think that is partly Janice's fault. I only use blaming words because I am coming to terms with my own problems with interpersonal relations. I lack curiosity. Personalities attract me, but I always fail to make a connection on much more than a cordial level. It takes a lot for me to actually become involved in another person's life. Of course this is also a product of bullying and alienation in primary school. Those times are a long story of disappointment.

Something killed my curiosity. I've felt like my brain was missing something for a while now, and maybe that's it. Without desire, there is less room for disappointment, and a need to know - to experience - is a big catalyst. It's almost like my intellect has been neutered. There's a project. Grow a new curiosity gland, maybe near the hypothalamus. I think a part of that needs to be keeping this blog updated at least once a week.

Here goes...