The Law of Proximity

I have been trying, over the past week or so and especially last night, to write a new blog entry, and to do it in a way that's a little more than just narrative, a recap of what I ate for breakfast, what I ate for dinner, and what happened in between. Always, I ran out of steam, lost the next thought in a cloud of distraction, and whatever I wrote is immediately deleted. I've done that many times in my life, written pages of a script, short stories, songs, and deleted them without a second thought. I guess I've done the same thing with people. That, unfortunately, is a little too easy for me.

Sometimes the lyrics of a song haunt me and call me back to writing, which helps me cleanse my cluttered mind. Lately I've been hearing the following from the song "Crumbs", which I used for "The Shape of Things":

I can tell, by the way you're pushing crumbs around the table
You're not listening to me
And you say, that you have come as far as you are able
But you're not far from the tree
And you say, you're OK, but you live your life like it's over
And you say, you're OK, but you live your life like it's over

So I stop, many times a week, to look at the world around me and see the people who are near and far away. And there lies an idea I have about people whom you just can't connect with, and the people whom you do. It is those names, those faces, that can define us...that attempt to define us, but that's not right. The distance between us defines us.

I once wrote about a girl I knew for over a decade, a friend whom I used to write to nearly every day. She was the single most consistent and important friendship for years until she moved out here. Gradually, I started recognizing her less and less, and soon I realized that when she lived on another coast, she was still sharing the same space with me, living in that mailbox. When she moved to my town, her life existed in her zip code, and suddenly our friendship stopped being relevant. It didn't live inside the mailbox any more, the emails were saturated with appointments, schedules, dinners, inconvenient invitations, and the strange expectation that she could put forth less effort than writing email, because we were in the same city. The people who grew closer were the people who were physicallycloser. That's the way it always was.

Earlier this week, my company had what it calls a RIF (a Reduction in Force), laying off some 130 people, assassinating them from an odd family of people who have been driven to work and overwork for the past four years, stuck inside two buildings within a song from the packed Ventura freeway. While they were being informed that they were being let go, all of their access was being revoked. Most of them didn't get the chance to say goodbye, and I don't know who's better off, those of us who are staying or those who are going. We know each other, we've grown on each other because we are near. When the depth of friendship can be affected by a floor or two, the attention paid to distance is a greater thing.

In two weeks, I will be ending a 10 year relationship with my theater company with the final performance of "the Shape of Things". Aside from everything else I've written, I know that my relevance in a whole group of people will suddenly disappear, even darken in Playhouse's habit of slandering the people who leave. I keep getting assurances from those close to me that they wouldn't dare say a bitter word about me, but I know better. I'm making the jump into a void, into complete uncertainty, but I do know who will be in that void with me. The comfort of knowing the few people near me definitely outweighs the idea of not knowing everyone where I've been for the past few years.

The song finishes with:

And all the things you ever tried to tell me,
Somehow don't apply to you
You're the one evading hope, side-stepping every inkling
That the good guy, the early bird, the one who tries, the one who tries again wins

So despite the rejections from the girl, the company, the difficulties with career and direction in my life...I'm still in it. I pull in closer and focus on myself, keep myself strong and keep trying. Every last person might be off in their own zip code, but I will reach out to the people who have made an impression on me, and if they have no reaction to that or to me, then all I can do is keep moving. I can't be afraid to try again.

If I give up, stay in one place and everyone else keeps moving around me, my whole life will be a series of deleted pages. Hey, forget about this whole distance between people defining us. What defines us is what we do, and how we react to things. That is who we are.