Two weeks
Two weeks from now this room will be boxes. My life, as I have lived for the last nine months, will be packaged (unlabeled) and delivered to a forest I learned to hate last year.
One's environment is what one makes of it. If I learn again to loathe the stuffy woods and smokey barrooms, it will be my own fault. But what else can I make of it? I am a collection of memories and experiences propelled by a list of future aspirations--almost none of which can possibly come true where I'm going.
Technically, there is enough green-stuff stashed in pockets that I could set out on my own. Technically, I could move just about anywhere in this country and live comfortably with two or three months to secure a source of more green-stuff.
But then I would be even more alone.
I have learned precisely how slowly I become accustomed to new surroundings. It takes months just to begin trusting the common roads, and further months before I can hope to begin uncovering the secret places that could sing for me. It will take a year before I can forge even a shakey friendship, and by then I hope I will be packing again, only this time to go somewhere with some promise.
Two weeks and the University community that has seen to the blooming of my philosophical life will no longer house me. I will kiss away the lagoon, the cracked sidewalks, the strange cement structure with the word "DREAM" scrawled in careless graffiti. The last few months I've felt increasingly unwelcome in the standard structures, with a thousand young faces I'll never meet speeding by just to wish they could leave.
Forgive my wistfulness--it's already been two years since I last saw Jennifer, yet I've somehow kept moving forward. I'll live, surely . . . and in fact I'm convinced all the negative energy pressing down on me will be something I can overcome and use to fuel the art that keeps my heart beating with the knowledge she never felt the same way.
In a meta way, this post disgusts me--this is how I've been writing since my first blind experiments: some landmark beginning with a steady spiraling horror, and then a flicker pretending to be strong enough to overcome. Honestly, I don't know what'll happen. It might not be alright, and your saying otherwise will never change that.
What I know is in two weeks I'll no longer cringe from the obnoxious bass beats blaring from custom sound-systems. I'll no longer curse the white-skinned 'thug' living above me for yelling at his girlfriend or stomping around as un-ninja-ly as a man can. I'll no longer feel like a local outcast at ever concert, play, and performance, surrounded by peers that seem to know everyone's name but mine.
In two weeks I'll move away--and perhaps I'll move on.
One's environment is what one makes of it. If I learn again to loathe the stuffy woods and smokey barrooms, it will be my own fault. But what else can I make of it? I am a collection of memories and experiences propelled by a list of future aspirations--almost none of which can possibly come true where I'm going.
Technically, there is enough green-stuff stashed in pockets that I could set out on my own. Technically, I could move just about anywhere in this country and live comfortably with two or three months to secure a source of more green-stuff.
But then I would be even more alone.
I have learned precisely how slowly I become accustomed to new surroundings. It takes months just to begin trusting the common roads, and further months before I can hope to begin uncovering the secret places that could sing for me. It will take a year before I can forge even a shakey friendship, and by then I hope I will be packing again, only this time to go somewhere with some promise.
Two weeks and the University community that has seen to the blooming of my philosophical life will no longer house me. I will kiss away the lagoon, the cracked sidewalks, the strange cement structure with the word "DREAM" scrawled in careless graffiti. The last few months I've felt increasingly unwelcome in the standard structures, with a thousand young faces I'll never meet speeding by just to wish they could leave.
Forgive my wistfulness--it's already been two years since I last saw Jennifer, yet I've somehow kept moving forward. I'll live, surely . . . and in fact I'm convinced all the negative energy pressing down on me will be something I can overcome and use to fuel the art that keeps my heart beating with the knowledge she never felt the same way.
In a meta way, this post disgusts me--this is how I've been writing since my first blind experiments: some landmark beginning with a steady spiraling horror, and then a flicker pretending to be strong enough to overcome. Honestly, I don't know what'll happen. It might not be alright, and your saying otherwise will never change that.
What I know is in two weeks I'll no longer cringe from the obnoxious bass beats blaring from custom sound-systems. I'll no longer curse the white-skinned 'thug' living above me for yelling at his girlfriend or stomping around as un-ninja-ly as a man can. I'll no longer feel like a local outcast at ever concert, play, and performance, surrounded by peers that seem to know everyone's name but mine.
In two weeks I'll move away--and perhaps I'll move on.
posted by SJ at 4/18/2009 04:03:00 PM
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