Time marches on

It seems that Time marches on without consulting me. I don't remember granting Time permission to turn me 23.

Oh, life.

Sometimes I look at pictures of people enjoying the places I once lived but now can't (Oxford, Moravian), and it tears me up a bit inside. I'm a horrible, chronic dweller--you'd almost think I enjoy it.

Slap a picture down in front of me of people in a kitchen in an old building by the city centre shopping mall (read: St. Michael's Hall, Oxford) and I'll turn nostalgic. Instead of seeing a funny kitchen, I'll remember the hue of the glaring, flourescent lights stinging my eyes during 2 a.m. refueling breaks; I'll see smiling, familiar faces and taste Lady Grey tea with a dab of milk and honey. I'll think of conversations, confessions and tears, and nearly collapse into laughter again as I picture a giant, mishapen cookie covered in neon-green icing.

It's like a talent, really.

Life at my alma mater moves on as well; this may be most strongly evidenced by my need to now refer to it in the Latin instead of the vernacular ("my school"). The glow of the orange streetlamps on Church Street are no longer mine; the obnoxiously loud church bell tower now rings without me. The sounds of cars drifting in through the window along with a sharp, cold breeze, too. (Winter was always paradoxically hot inside that dorm.) Circles of friends drift further apart or closer together as I watch--as I think of how long it's been since I've talked to any of these friends, whom I used to see on a daily basis.


And then I look back on all of these sentiments and feel downright silly.

How much more unfair the passage of time must feel when you're trapped in a nursing home bed by the feebleness of your own body. How much more helpless it must feel, lying there, contemplating the end. Feeling that it is come too soon, even though the days creep by with all the maddening sloth of the mundane.

Every time I think of it, it makes me downright sad. We did so much, more than most people; but in the end, it's still not enough, is it? It never is.

Where is the world without writers?

An old (yet good) quote from the NYTimes on the "return" of the Daily Show and Colbert Report in the midst of the writers' strike:

In a statement, the two hosts [Colbert and Stewart] said they would prefer to return to work with their writers. “If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence,” they stated.

Warm weather brings warm spirits.

Something I wrote (very, very quickly) during my lunch break at work last week:

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When asked how I like my new job, I have fallen into the habit of
using the non-commital answer, "It's okay, I guess." I've always
found it hard to gloss over something I'm not excited about--and come
on, I'm working an entry-level office gig with mostly administrative
duties. It's a far cry from afternoons spent in the cozy,
living-room-like offices of my professors last year, surrounded by
books and discussing the rise of the modern concert in London, the
impact society had on Wordsworth's poetry or my latest short story.

However, one thing I do like about my job is the chance to walk around
Old City. To absorb myself in the steam from the sidewalk grates, the
smell of sizzling grease coming from a reflective, silver sidewalk
cart and the busy pedestrian traffic during my eight-block walk from
the train station to my office. To see the lights of the city in the
early-evening darkness. And to take my lunch break in the manner I
grew accustomed to in England--to walk along brick sidewalks,
absorbing architecture and people, a tasty sandwich in my hand.

I've not had a lunchtime stroll in a few weeks, but today I was called
outside by the unseasonably-mild weather. So was, it seems, much of
the rest of the city. I passed many people doing the same, and
several said hello to me. I have to admit, this perplexed me.

"Happy New Year," said a large man dressed in orange, as I walked toward him.

"Uh, happy New Year," I said with a hesitant smile, as I continued to walk past.

"Nice weather we're having," he said.

Is this why he's striking up conversation with me in the first place?
"Sure is...," I said.

Usually I assume people (make that, men) who go out of their way to be
friendly to me are actually trying to hit on me. Which makes all of
my outgoing-and-friendly circuits seize up with nervousness,
eliminating all eye contact and, most especially, smiles. Perhaps
it's silly, perhaps it's rude. But it's my way.

I didn't think he was trying to flirt, though. Maybe it was because I
had randomly started smiling at the memory of a conversation with a
friend? But I know that if it was me, the sight of someone
spontaneously breaking into a grin at the sight of the sidewalk isn't
exactly something that would encourage me to strike up a conversation
with a stranger.

Then I wondered if he, and the other two people that greeted me during
my half-hour stroll today, were not simply flirting or confused.
Perhaps people these friendly have existed in the city all this
time--and I've just been too busy to take the time to smile back.

Morning Pages - 22 Dec.

(In case you're not familiar with writing exercises, the idea behind this one is to write freely when you first wake up, thus, "morning pages".)

Everything about my life right now is so open-ended and uncertain. My family doctor of 19 years envied that of me yesterday morning, as we sat in one of the old, fake wood-paneled exam rooms of his practice. He wistfully told me that this was the best time of life right now, and that he was really excited for me. I fidgeted on the loud, crinkling paper covering the bed.

"These are the best years of your life and you'll always look back on them with fondness—everyone does," Susan told me. That's what her mom said to her. So I guess I'm supposed to take the bull of life by the horns. I'm just not exactly sure how.

What made finding a job so difficult for me was the lack of clarity surrounding several, completely different kinds of life paths. I could run off to a third-world country with the Peace Corps. I could be like a handful of my Oxford classmates, throwing caution to the winds and living a Hemingway-esque bohemian's life in a random foreign country.

I'm kind of tempted to take Susan up on her offer of running off to Alaska, to freedom and life experiences. Wouldn't it be cool to say, I've lived in Alaska? With my craziest friend, in the funkiest apartment imaginable, working completely random jobs? Even though I was beginning to loathe my previous job serving at a country club? Even though I know I need to do things like hold down my new job for 2-3 years so that someone hires me again some day. Save for grad school. Save for my retirement.

"Do it now, while you're proverbially unattached. And unfettered," she said. Maybe part of it was the Jack talking.

I could be a journalist, something I'd first done out of necessity in college, then grown to love. I could look into law. I could work in publishing. I could quench a new-found need to help others by seeking work with non-profits as a grant writer. I could get my MA and PhD and teach at a university.

Perhaps the one common thread here is literature. I have time to read again now that I've graduated. Time to read, and to remember that I used to love to read. When I was eight years old, you couldn't convince me to put a book down. I read in class, on the schoolbus, while I walked around the house, while I made my sandwich for the next day, and I read in my bed until the late hours of the evening and I finally had to succumb to sleep. I haven't read like that in years.

It was Mariane Pearl's memoir of her husband Dan, "A Mighty Heart," that re-kindled the college love I'd discovered for journalism. The writings of expatriates that convince me to seek foreign lands. The sheer pleasure of absorbing the beautiful characters and expertly-wielded writing devices of "The Kite Runner" that show me that I have learned a thing or two about writing and analyzing fiction. Now that I ride a train and have a regular opportunity to absorb style after style, character after character and voice after writing voice, I've never felt more inspired..

...to do something.

well, hello there.

I think I'm craving change in my life. I nearly cut off half my hair last week. I spent two subsequent days staring at online testimonials of the ways in which the Peace Corps would enrich my life. Two days ago I took a look at my Xanga and thought, 'well, I'm done with this now.'

And so I've created (another) blogger. Arguably, virtual make-overs are not exactly life-changing alterations, but the impulse is there nonetheless.

The hope is to create something better than a drama portal (which all high school, and oftentimes college, blogs become). I'll share my thoughts, observations and some personal photos, but, most of all, I also hope to *write* again. The modes and mediums of creation in my life have all nearly eroded away since graduation day last May, and it is my hope that a fresh canvas will inspire me to write once more. To write fiction excerpts, thoughtful personal essays, perhaps some researched discourses.

It is my hope that this blog may serve those ends, and that perhaps you'd care to read once in awhile. Thanks for checking in.