Today one of my friends was talking about how they were really excited because they are going to Burning Man for the second time next week, and they were all "dude, you have to experience it at least once in your life, it's like nothing you've ever seen or done!" And I started thinking about it, and how I probably will go one year just to see what's up and say that I did in fact go back when I was young and reckless (even though i'm slowly realizing that people like me are never young, not one day in their entire lives).
It was at the point that I realized something--I don't ever participate in anything. Ever. Even when I am technically "participating", I am always there as an outsider, and an observer. I remember in girlscouts, sitting on the periphery wondering what everyone found so fucking fascinating about the pet rocks that we were painting. Don't get me wrong, I was painting one, but I was really interested in the weird activity in which we were participating from a sort of anthropologic point of view. And i was like, 6 or something. I can watch someone totally engrossed in something, lost in their own world, oblivious to the observation and judgement of others, but I have never been able to actually emulate that person in any real way. I envy them.
Anyway, this is my first memory of this particular state of being, but it has totally permeated my life since then. From everything, from sitting in the student section at football games, to wandering around people-watching at LEAF year after year, to sneaking peaks at fans during concerts, to the very culture in which I grew up and spent the first 23 years of my life immersed--I will participate, but only in the most marginal way possible. I can't turn off the observer, and sometimes she drives up the fucking wall. She makes me feel like I am actually watching my life passing me by, even as I am simultaneously living it.
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