Chapter 2: A Beautiful Place
nonetheless, he plays on. he thought the game would be good at quieting the mind, but it would seem it only puts a certain piece of it at ease.
instead of continuing to stress and lament in the present, he takes his energy to the past.
2009…
he was 17. he met her in the summer on her front porch. they talked into the night, totally new to each other, feeling limitless.
she was in sharpie-laden converse featuring her own poetic handwriting, he in a domo-kun t-shirt.
they claimed as many nights of this as they could - speaking over Aol instant messenger, having campfires, going on hikes, until eventually it was winter - and this was the ‘dawn of the scarf’. he had never owned a scarf, but she just made that seem like the obvious next thing to do.
eventually, they became a couple. they spent many days and nights in her sunny house until it was time for her to go to college.
she went off to ithaca - an ethereal place that had loomed nearby and always let off a special energy…it was a place where their relationship had bloomed, in a way. she was off to live there while studying.
this marked the beginning of the end - not momentously, not tragically, but in an iteratively bleak manner.
it sort of felt like her departure came at the worst time for his psyche. this girl he was still so baffled by - she seemed to radiate a special, unknown energy. she seemed to know about the world, about art, about just being and feeling.
his reaction, often unfortunately, was to revert to jealousy and brattiness - a glitchy reaction, not knowing how to behold this thing he was not. it was in the heat of this state of his that they separated. being whisked off to a magical place to ascend who she was as a person was a sure fire way to keep this glitchy mechanism at play in the most destructive of ways. it may seem backwards, but such is the mind of this proud, insecure 18 year old kid.
his visits were never easy to take in. suddenly, ithaca was a confusing, imposing world. suddenly, it was bigger than him, better than him - towering over him. it was no longer this humble, naturalistic place. it became her kingdom. it became the place he could never play within, never reckon with or understand…
…continuing to click away at Tetris, his mind stays adrift. ithaca, what a magical and confusing place, rife with both delight and pain.
he begins to envision a new ithaca. -his- ithaca, the one that he currently occupies. a sad, bleak, dark ithaca.
He imagines himself trudging through this theoretical place, dressed for the autumn, because it’s always fall in ithaca for some reason…
he imagines tending to a sapling. one he’s tended to for a decade, one he’s been trying to grow by using the infertile soil - the only soil his ithaca allows.
autumn, ithaca - these environments seem to indicate the most savory and loving tones and feelings, and for him, it feels like a revocation. a failure. a tragic lack of appreciation that feeds back into barren lonesomeness…
he wonders what it would be like to free himself of this reduced state - but he can’t break away from imagining himself tending to this sapling.
so, he plays on…