Indian Rock

Indian Rock, something simple like that. A giant bolder formed from God knows what, right in the middle of these little woods. I scramble up the stone while they throw the frisbee back and forth below. I imagine them climbing all over this cold surface as kids to play "King of the World", then as teenagers to smoke a joint. How big this rock must have seemed to them then, and these woods endless. They didn't even notice these things grow smaller as they grew bigger. I envy them their childhood.

It's a strange thing, being in love with two people at once. It isn't about choosing, it never is. The idea of choosing is something forced on the lover by the beloveds, because the beloveds feel jealousy. The lover never feels the need to choose.

But really I was in love with his entire life, including his best friend, his hometown, his family. I loved him in his environment, not as something isolated that I could pull into my own world. He was his best friend and his mother and his nephews and the biodynamic farm and the Waldorf upbringing. He was hiking up Hook Mountain, canoeing to the tiny island for a picnic, playing flip cup with his best friend's little brother, drinking too much coffee, drinking too much beer. He was for me an entire life, a life I wish I had lived and tried to live. So, was it a love born of envy? He was a brooding writer with a nurturing mother. Everything I wanted to be, and I didn't even know it.

But that's the thing, isn't it? I am selfish in the end. I want to be everything. I use people, love them and use them. I want to live their lives for a while. I want to be, for a time, the brooding writer with a nurturing mother, the recalcitrant druggie with spoiling parents, the arrogant ignorant with no father. I want to be the selfless philosopher, the conceited athlete, the reckless traveler, the driven worker. I love their lives, and I want them all for myself, all at once. So, I take them, one at a time, since I can't have everything all at once. When I get bored with one life, I drop it for a new one. Everyone I meet, I take their lives into myself. I want to own each one. I am a heartless cameleon with no skin of my own.