Imaginary Friends

Because really, it's the next logical step.

People change, surely in more ways than I can imagine off the top of my head. Not until I actually visit someone again can I know just how different everything has become. Phone conversations and Facebook comments are not the same as actual compantionship. They aren’t even proxy experiences for actual fellowship. But that’s what everyone has become: long-distance, text-only friends. The new “good times with good friends” last about as long as whippets (and are about as fulfilling).

So in many ways, as I discussed in the post Quantum Friendship, everyone is gone forever. But they’re still with me, unshakably so…

In my isolation, I have found that some memories have crystallized in a way that goes beyond nostalgia. I muse about such things on my blog so often that I sense my readers rolling their eyes and proceeding to skim the post—if they bother to read it at all. But I’m not going for wistful reminiscence anymore. No, I’m not going for bittersweet recollection or fond-spirited commemoration. I’m not going for a periodic tribute to golden days past. No.

No, I’m going for full-on dementia.

Yes! I’m going for fusion—the fusion of disparate chapters of my life in ways that were never even remotely plausible. In my glorious mind, while I’m sitting at work, bored, I am not just sitting in some uppity Texan retirement home during the night shift. I’m playin’ with the boys.

I’m geographically melding the best parts of all the towns I’ve lived in into one big uber-fun-opolis. After a hard workout at the South KC Shotokan dojo, I’m going to shower and head over to Scott Blanchard’s apartment in BG for some video games before taking him with me to go have beers with Herr Vogler, then continue going around recruiting my entourage like it’s Saga Frontier, which means three groups of five. And since I’m rolling with an entourage of imaginary, updated versions of my old friends, I might as well spring for an imaginary limousine, too!

Everyone’s here!

Embrace the madness! For it is good!