My Hello
Eryk Charles Arthur Salvaggio (ecs1@keene.edu)
Tue, 09 Dec 1997 03:23:35 -0500 (EST)
High school made me think I'd grow up to be Seymour Glass but isn't it
odd that College made me realize I was Holden Caulfield and not even very
good at it.
Sometimes you think about Zooey and he's right, I am the freak and yes it
is all Seymours fault but it was always our choice, wasn't it? Could have
drowned ourselves into being the ackleys and Muriels of the world but
then you see the radiant glow of any random activity that for some reason
seems so much more than random, seems more like a gift and you can't
stand it but you love it anyway. You want to know why seymour killed
himself, then allow yourself to feel the happiness of inanimate objects
that are positioned just right on any surface and fall in love with it,
then try to pretend you don't feel a loss when someone bounds in and puts
it to its "rightful place." Try to smile and say that the movement was just
perfect and beautiful too but you know that it isn't but you know that it
is.
Then the corruption gets to you, and you'll never ever get away from
getting it. And you're living with a roommate who gets the time from
dames in the backseats of cars and doesn't even know if she likes
checkers, and sure as hell you can get angry with him but its when you
don't that you're in trouble. You try to say its perfect because it
doesn't know anybetter but you know that it isn't perfect because he
probably does.
Then you sit awake at 2:30AM on the top bunk in some dorm and as you try
to go to sleep you realize that there's no way in hell that you'll ever
manage to live in this place and so you get up and start typing and start
creating the world where you can. You end up staying awake for 48 hours
for every 12 asleep. You realize that for the Muriel Fedders to love you
you're gonna need a slight overhaul. And you realize that you need the
Muriel Fedders to survive, because you're at their mercy. And you realize
that a slight overhaul is impossible.
And you stand there at night and you think about these things and when
you've finally gone on that honeymoon to the beaches, you have only two
options, die or not live.
Muriel Glass is why people like me refuse to take prozac.
"A Green Tennis Ball
Bounds down the city street
and taps me gently
in my shoe."
-ecas