clashing of worlds

I used to drive to work on DE-41, Newport-Gap Pike. It picked up in Newport, near my parents' house, and shoots north into Gap, Pa. Thus the name.

Approximately 4 minutes from my office, depending on how I catch the red lights, DE-41 merges with DE-48 at this strange, curved, tangled intersection. I used to approach this intersection daily with an incantation: Stay green stay green stay green stay green! Those suckers on 48 don't need to get through the intersection as badly as I do! Plus, if I was stuck behind a truck all the way up Newport-Gap Pike (apparently a critical truck thoroughfare), that intersection was my one chance to gun it and dart around him as 41's single lane split into two momentarily at the merge.

Since I moved into the city, though, I take DE-48 straight northwest out of my neighborhood.

Today, I was cutting it close on my morning commute. Traffic wasn't too bad all the way, and my incantation worked its magic on enough red lights that I was almost doing OK by the time I rounded the curve ahead of the merge.

Then came that fateful intersection. Against all odds, and at the expense of my former self, I found myself uttering the incantation -- with one key alteration.

Stay green stay green stay green! Those suckers on 41 don't need to get through the intersection as badly as I do!

I don't actually remember if it worked or not, because suddenly I found myself dazed by a head-on collision of my past and present self, an identity crisis, a clashing of worlds. As I coasted past the light and on my merry way to work, I was shaking off the strangest sensation of traitordom, an impossible contradiction in the way things are. Like a tear in the matrix.

I know, I know, I'm sensationalizing my Friday morning (can you really blame me, though?). But I have always felt particularly sensitive to world-clashings, as I juggle what feels like a whole solar system in my cerebral identity-centers.

In a related vein, I'm excited for this weekend because I'm throwing a birthday party for myself, to which I invited friends from at least 3 of my worlds: high school, college, and Delaware. And within those worlds even micro-worlds are fairly represented: people I met doing this or this, through this or this person. There are spontaneous sparks and slow-burning flames that resulted from sometimes seemingly sourceless chain reactions.

It can be supremely unnerving, but I think secretly I like throwing worlds against each other to see if they stick or absorb each other or bounce off in separate directions. I like watching people I like discover that they in fact like each other. I think people are like ions, and that connections between us completes something incomplete in the world, corrects awkward static in the fabric of a macro-universe.

In a much less abstract vein, and to finish off this quick philosophical lunch break blog, here's how I kind of like to imagine my life:

"The most random collection of groomsmen in the history of weddings." - Zoë, I Love You Man

...Speaking of making connections...