Pondering Ponds

So I just ran away from class and am sitting instead in the university botanical garden next to a pond. I get ponds. Vaguely dirty looking bodies of water where it seems ducks should be even if they aren't. There's a bunch of plants around with little tags informing me what they are but they're not interesting - surrounded by them is a pond. I don't know why or even how I get ponds. It's not as if they're a mathematical equation. But they make sense. They don't bewilder me.

Something is missing. I'm constructing this life around me and being a grown-up for most intents and purposes and by any sensible standard things are going really well. But it's still a substantial struggle getting up in the morning and I still come back to the dorms more exhausted than it makes any sense at all to be and stare at the ceiling for hours or go out to stare blankly at other stuff if my roommate's in. Those are my more concrete "something is missing" credentials. The actual, more pressing ones are that none of what I do with myself during the week makes anywhere near the amount of sense as does my sitting down here now next to this pond.

There's a kind of understanding that has nothing to do with intelligence or analysis or persistent investigation. At least half the time I don't understand what the fuck people are on about and why they react to things the way they do. I keep trying to make it make more sense to me, but I'm beginning to think it's pointless if not actually counterproductive. It's not a question of comprehension - it's a question of identification. Maybe you need to own your alienation. To express, even if not outright say, that you could only understand what the person is saying or doing through a kind of ad hoc mathematical formula, which you wouldn't necessarily be inclined to create. I see people doing this all the time and I feel a kind of envy I only fully (well, better) understand now.

Some things mean something and most things don't. The fortunate thing is you actually have a wide degree of choice, which it is entirely possible to not exercise stupidly. It gets more complicated, for me at least, when I try to figure out where other people fit into this. I'm thinking maybe that's a minor consideration. People will fit where you have room for them. You can't spend your time being bored out of your brain for the sake of being friendly. It's not like it's actually difficult for people to be interesting. You just need to stop being full of shit for a few seconds.

What's missing? An insistence on "this means something to me" and "this doesn't", regardless of how people wherever will react to this. It's not really something you can sweep under the carpet. I'm also annoyed with somebody or something and it'd be nice if I could blame somebody for it. Fact is I probably could and I just don't notice. This isn't supposed to be who I am. And I'm pretty sure I'm not just imagining the pressure not to play duplo on the campus grass. Maybe I need to start feeling as well as just saying that most people suck. Whatever the insecurities and anxieties that go into people's being judgemental arseholes full of ridicule, it's not actually something I can deal with or brush off right now. If I was serious about making this more than big talk I'd start giving people the opportunity and crossing names off my list - maybe it really isn't as widespread as I think. Mainly, the effort I associate with "being friendly" is actually the effort to understand what the fuck is going on and how I'm supposed to fit into it. No need.