...I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker...
As I suspected, I can't sleep. Well, technically, I haven't tried yet. I am most certainly awake, regardless, and am going crazy thinking.
I just re-read Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. The first time I read it, there were definitely moments when I stopped and thought, "This is my life," or, "This was so nearly my life". It's heartbreaking, really. This time I was a bit more detached-- perhaps because I'm better at letting go of what-ifs and lost possibilities; I can accept that the past is over and finished, and accept mistakes and missteps and everything else. In short, I've learned how to let go. I'm not especially proud of this skill; to me, it shows that I am losing a part of my identity. It's not as if obsessing over the past is a particularly admirable trait; however, doing so is very much a part of who I am- or, I suppose, who I was- and it is discouraging to see these former pieces of me shedding away, or perhaps even unspooling from me.
This LJ entry completely negates the previous paragraph because here I am clearly revisiting the past.
Here is what I know: I have always been comfortable and confident in my place in the world, completely sure of future successes and happiness. I have never questioned my future. I was somewhat shy around people I didn't know, but I was popular in high school- not in the overbearing, in-your-face prom queen sense, but certainly well-liked and a part of the (pardon me for saying so) "in-crowd". I wasn't nervous about my future but looked forward to seeing where I would go and what I would do.
It is only in moving back to Connecticut that I question my life, past, present, and future.
Back home, UConn is considered to be fairly prestigious. Certainly, of my classmates, I have gone the farthest and am in the most well-known school. The business program at UConn is nationally recognized, and there are only a handful of people who are surprised or disappointed that I'm going to a U of and not Brown or Berkeley or whatever.
Here I am conscious of the fact that I went to a public high school, that I attend a U of, and that these facts alone make up a huge part of my identity as well as my future.
It's ridiculous, I know. Who cares? But I do. I know that I would have gone to prep school had I stayed in Connecticut, and I most certainly would not be attending UConn right now. Does it matter? Would my life be any better or worse if I had?
I don't feel the need to impress anyone or to define myself by what my diploma reads. But I still feel that I am not living the life that I was supposed to lead, and I feel like I will never attain the life that I almost had.
And yet... I am so glad that I did not lead that life, because even now, I feel changes in myself from where I was a year ago. And maybe Connecticut isn't the right place for me, and if I stay here I will become snobby and detached. I don't know.
This book is phenomenal. When Lee talks about Cross... I get goosebumps. I want to cry along with her, and smile in delight with her, and tell her, "Yes, that's exactly how it felt; I couldn't phrase it better myself." Everything, from the way she describes his weight on top of her, the way he stroked her hair, to their fight at the end, and how she finally got over him, all of it- it's spot on. It makes me simultaneously miserable and ecstatic to read it and relive it all and to recognize it as true: my own naivete and hers, the way you know without a doubt when it's over, and the anticipation in the beginning. Even if all I identified with in this book was the whole mess with Cross, I would have cried along with her and claimed Prep as one of my favorite books ever-- alongside A Separate Peace and Catcher in the Rye.
I'm being awfully long winded tonight, but there is one last thing:
"I understood exactly what this murky resentment toward her was, and I understood that I would never be able to express it. I resented her for having said, back in October, that she didn't think Cross would be my boyfriend. She had made it true! If she had said she could picture it, it didn't mean it would have happened. But by saying she couldn't, she'd pretty much sealed that it wouldn't. Had she not understood how literally I took her, how much I trusted her advice? She had discouraged me from being hopeful, and how can you ever forgive a person for that?"
Last of all, thank you Heather, for never discouraging me, for always being positive and supportive and understanding. Thanks for being the one who knows me better than I know myself, and for loving me as much as you do, even knowing it all. :)
Something more-- "The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock"-- T.S. Elliot
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
* * *
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--
If one, settling a pillow by her head
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all."
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
I just re-read Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. The first time I read it, there were definitely moments when I stopped and thought, "This is my life," or, "This was so nearly my life". It's heartbreaking, really. This time I was a bit more detached-- perhaps because I'm better at letting go of what-ifs and lost possibilities; I can accept that the past is over and finished, and accept mistakes and missteps and everything else. In short, I've learned how to let go. I'm not especially proud of this skill; to me, it shows that I am losing a part of my identity. It's not as if obsessing over the past is a particularly admirable trait; however, doing so is very much a part of who I am- or, I suppose, who I was- and it is discouraging to see these former pieces of me shedding away, or perhaps even unspooling from me.
This LJ entry completely negates the previous paragraph because here I am clearly revisiting the past.
Here is what I know: I have always been comfortable and confident in my place in the world, completely sure of future successes and happiness. I have never questioned my future. I was somewhat shy around people I didn't know, but I was popular in high school- not in the overbearing, in-your-face prom queen sense, but certainly well-liked and a part of the (pardon me for saying so) "in-crowd". I wasn't nervous about my future but looked forward to seeing where I would go and what I would do.
It is only in moving back to Connecticut that I question my life, past, present, and future.
Back home, UConn is considered to be fairly prestigious. Certainly, of my classmates, I have gone the farthest and am in the most well-known school. The business program at UConn is nationally recognized, and there are only a handful of people who are surprised or disappointed that I'm going to a U of and not Brown or Berkeley or whatever.
Here I am conscious of the fact that I went to a public high school, that I attend a U of, and that these facts alone make up a huge part of my identity as well as my future.
It's ridiculous, I know. Who cares? But I do. I know that I would have gone to prep school had I stayed in Connecticut, and I most certainly would not be attending UConn right now. Does it matter? Would my life be any better or worse if I had?
I don't feel the need to impress anyone or to define myself by what my diploma reads. But I still feel that I am not living the life that I was supposed to lead, and I feel like I will never attain the life that I almost had.
And yet... I am so glad that I did not lead that life, because even now, I feel changes in myself from where I was a year ago. And maybe Connecticut isn't the right place for me, and if I stay here I will become snobby and detached. I don't know.
This book is phenomenal. When Lee talks about Cross... I get goosebumps. I want to cry along with her, and smile in delight with her, and tell her, "Yes, that's exactly how it felt; I couldn't phrase it better myself." Everything, from the way she describes his weight on top of her, the way he stroked her hair, to their fight at the end, and how she finally got over him, all of it- it's spot on. It makes me simultaneously miserable and ecstatic to read it and relive it all and to recognize it as true: my own naivete and hers, the way you know without a doubt when it's over, and the anticipation in the beginning. Even if all I identified with in this book was the whole mess with Cross, I would have cried along with her and claimed Prep as one of my favorite books ever-- alongside A Separate Peace and Catcher in the Rye.
I'm being awfully long winded tonight, but there is one last thing:
"I understood exactly what this murky resentment toward her was, and I understood that I would never be able to express it. I resented her for having said, back in October, that she didn't think Cross would be my boyfriend. She had made it true! If she had said she could picture it, it didn't mean it would have happened. But by saying she couldn't, she'd pretty much sealed that it wouldn't. Had she not understood how literally I took her, how much I trusted her advice? She had discouraged me from being hopeful, and how can you ever forgive a person for that?"
Last of all, thank you Heather, for never discouraging me, for always being positive and supportive and understanding. Thanks for being the one who knows me better than I know myself, and for loving me as much as you do, even knowing it all. :)
Something more-- "The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock"-- T.S. Elliot
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
* * *
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--
If one, settling a pillow by her head
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all."
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.