so here it is, the whole smorgasbord:
before coming here i was a misanthorpic little shit with more ego and chin than any individual should have. what could i say, new york leaves its mark. i dismissed everyone as inferior and put so much importance on intellect that i could've passed over a crowd with the most fascinating characteristics by merely judging the way they can talk about Socratic forms. what a pissant, yeah? what a fucking disenchanted savant. anyway, coming here made me realize that it's not the world i'm dissatisfied with, it's not the society and people i've become disillusioned to, it's a gaping emptiness that i realized inside of me. it's like what nietzsche wrote, yeah? gaze long enough into the abyss and it gazes straight back into you. i was so fixated by this beautiful blankness that the abyss convinced me into thinking it was right and all, truthfully zen -- beyond me truth, you know? sublime by burke's standards. so when i came here i shunned everybody, talked to no one, and quite simply blocked everyone out.
time passes and i realize that this is no way to experience life. you can't expect to have waldenesque experience in a city like seoul and with all the proximity of dormitory. i'll spare the proverbial social creatures skit because that's too blase. (even if i don't have much dignity, i like to think that i have style.) i didn't realize this myself though, so i'm writing this for those who, essentially, saved me from a path to self-destruction, a road to perdition, if you will. so thank you, thank you, and thank you again for salvaging what was left of a inimical, sardonic existence. like in dostoyevsky's WHITE NIGHT, it's like i've been an underground man for such a long time once i began to bear witness to what i construe as real friendships, i've suddenly realized that we're all meant for one another. the movements of the heart in response to sights of sickness, famine, and poverty mean something. when i feel lightheaded just by talking to someone, that means something.
so to those i've met here, i found that your characters are beautiful and it was by the grace of luck alone that our paths have crossed. even though we go our separate ways, i truly believe that we can never really leave one another. we're something of amalgamations: we meld into one another; we stretch, compress, tear, and mold together into infinitely fuller, more holistic aggregates. we will never again have what we had here together, but instead of grieving over this, i construe it rapturously. as you and i become farther apart, we will undoubtedly become further apart, as well. we will drift so far apart that we'll have just a legacy of a friendship once contained to the everyday. what of it? what i'm trying to say, i imagine, is that the true trial begins now. our final days together, these gloriously counted hours - how will they be spent? and after these instances, how will you remember us? we go through any given week meeting, interacting, and colliding with and into a whole lot of unfamiliar faces, but which do you remember and why?
constant vigilance, continuous questioning, and an unfaltering dexterity is what a lasting friendship demands. self-righteous, i know, but, my darlings, i shall do this very exercise to keep you all in my soul. so a few days beyond this posting, whether those whom i write this for read this or not, we bid our tearful adieus and take flight into our historic normalities. i leave with you a bit of myself, and i take with me a bit of it you. we trudge into our murky futures and i am excited to see what it holds for me, you, and us.
SHAL.
17.XII.2007
