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Lingering

The funk that grabs me now is the same funk that grabbed me last year at this same time in January. It seems that the year-end holidays for me are a time of romances unrealized that wander in my head, brought to teasing reality at the year's start, and then put away by circumstances undecipherable. I am left standing still as the world circles, human traffic moving about me with its purpose and certain urgency. Frozen, I feel like a man in the scene of a freeze-frame movie that sees the speed of his environment rushing in a blur about him as he smiles contently at the result. My smile is wan and light, reflective and bemused at the fates that tussle with me in cruel joke.
Music plays in the background. At this moment, it is tripped-out EBTG; earlier it was Elliott Smith (a troublesome story in itself, his disputed knifing suicide last November a reminder that the delicate melancholy of his songs was heartfelt and hardly manufactured). Music fits the mood; I see myself as that freeze-frame man smiling, fading, then closing my eyes, feelings washing over me. Then, I fall into myself in a rush of sentiment that haunts my place. I am lonely, although these sensations are consuming.
Slowly, I am returning to myself - just like last year. I think that I will be fine, I think that I am ok, I think that I will recover in quick pace and resume the frenetic pace that has claimed me for the past five years. Even still, melancholy, this sallow friend, clutches me and bathes me in creative angst. I hear the words hanging in the room: "Do you like being single, do you want me back, do you want me back?" As much as I want to move on again, I am lingering.

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