autumn and spring
This is going to be a half-assed, overdue retrospective.
Tomorrow I get up at 5:45, so I should already be in bed, but nonetheless I type for your pleasure and mine.
Tomorrow I take the train into the city to start my first day of work. I took the same train a week ago for my interview, and rain was coming down while I looked out the window at the city. The windows on Metra trains are tainted a light and sickly shade of green, making the industrial not-yet-ruins that line the tracks even more achingly beautiful.
I love when it's raining and everything around is covered with rust, and you can see skylights that are half sprayed-painted white and rusty pipes protruding from the roofs of warehouses. For me, that's the essence of cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh... though the heart and soul differ vastly, there's the same familiar skeleton of rust and forgotten wiring. All along the train tracks, there are patches of gnarled trees, cracked rubber tires, and fallen leaves that all seem to sprout from mounds of garbage. It looks as if the buildings and the ground itself are subject to seasons, just like the things that live in them. Like a tree sheds its foliage, grows darker when soaked, and bends in the wind, the brick and mortar buildings seem to hunker down, as if shielding themselves from the elements, and I could swear that all the paint peeled off at first frost, and that everything will grow back spick and span when the snow melts and life starts churning again.
Mostly unrelated -- I was just cleaning out my bookbag and wondering what to put in it, like it's the first day of school again. With two fingers, I gingerly lifted out a couple of dirty pens, not knowing which one had burst. One of them said "New Trier 1999 Saving the Best for Last," and the other, "Elder Hall 2000-2001 'Respect Your Elder.'" I never gave any thought to these silly slogans until I actually had to wipe away the ink to remember them and throw them away, but they sure take me back.
The first makes me think of senior year of high school, and of squirming in my chair during some endless talk about "the real world," and daydreaming about what college would be. None of these daydreams even hinted that the fact college would end, or even finish starting. All I ever thought of and expected was an endless blur of new: new knowledge, new experiences, and stuff that would no doubt need new words to be described. It never occured to me that, after a few years of it, I would seem all jaded and cynical, (subconsciously) looking down my nose at people who were taking steps that -- groan -- I had already taken.
The other pen is the same sort of thing -- it brings me back to sitting in the dining hall freshman year, twirling the pen as I did some homework and looking at hot girls with "Respect Your Elder" T-shirts. I would daydream the same sorts of things as I had, of 2000-2001 as an endless blur of year, one that would never end and would keep exposing me to new things. And two years later, I would walk by Elder and half-jealously shake my head at all the kids filing in and out, talking loudly or drunkenly about who knows what. I hate knowing what something feels like, already.
The hell of it is-- when I close my eyes and imagine the next two months, the next six, the next year, before I can go ahead and act, I'll sit idly and wonder, how am I going to do? How much money will I make? When will I buy a house? When will I get married? Where will I go on vacation? What will I accomplish? And it seems like there are tons of possibilities, all of which I can see and will get to choose from when the time comes. But then it'll end. Will I be sitting in a chair, tired by all I've seen, looking at people run by and do the same things I already did? I'm sure I will eventually, but the point, however poorly expressed, is:
I don't want to think about anything other than the moment right now. I need to remember that there is such a thing as the unknown and embrace it.
Tomorrow I get up at 5:45, so I should already be in bed, but nonetheless I type for your pleasure and mine.
Tomorrow I take the train into the city to start my first day of work. I took the same train a week ago for my interview, and rain was coming down while I looked out the window at the city. The windows on Metra trains are tainted a light and sickly shade of green, making the industrial not-yet-ruins that line the tracks even more achingly beautiful.
I love when it's raining and everything around is covered with rust, and you can see skylights that are half sprayed-painted white and rusty pipes protruding from the roofs of warehouses. For me, that's the essence of cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh... though the heart and soul differ vastly, there's the same familiar skeleton of rust and forgotten wiring. All along the train tracks, there are patches of gnarled trees, cracked rubber tires, and fallen leaves that all seem to sprout from mounds of garbage. It looks as if the buildings and the ground itself are subject to seasons, just like the things that live in them. Like a tree sheds its foliage, grows darker when soaked, and bends in the wind, the brick and mortar buildings seem to hunker down, as if shielding themselves from the elements, and I could swear that all the paint peeled off at first frost, and that everything will grow back spick and span when the snow melts and life starts churning again.
Mostly unrelated -- I was just cleaning out my bookbag and wondering what to put in it, like it's the first day of school again. With two fingers, I gingerly lifted out a couple of dirty pens, not knowing which one had burst. One of them said "New Trier 1999 Saving the Best for Last," and the other, "Elder Hall 2000-2001 'Respect Your Elder.'" I never gave any thought to these silly slogans until I actually had to wipe away the ink to remember them and throw them away, but they sure take me back.
The first makes me think of senior year of high school, and of squirming in my chair during some endless talk about "the real world," and daydreaming about what college would be. None of these daydreams even hinted that the fact college would end, or even finish starting. All I ever thought of and expected was an endless blur of new: new knowledge, new experiences, and stuff that would no doubt need new words to be described. It never occured to me that, after a few years of it, I would seem all jaded and cynical, (subconsciously) looking down my nose at people who were taking steps that -- groan -- I had already taken.
The other pen is the same sort of thing -- it brings me back to sitting in the dining hall freshman year, twirling the pen as I did some homework and looking at hot girls with "Respect Your Elder" T-shirts. I would daydream the same sorts of things as I had, of 2000-2001 as an endless blur of year, one that would never end and would keep exposing me to new things. And two years later, I would walk by Elder and half-jealously shake my head at all the kids filing in and out, talking loudly or drunkenly about who knows what. I hate knowing what something feels like, already.
The hell of it is-- when I close my eyes and imagine the next two months, the next six, the next year, before I can go ahead and act, I'll sit idly and wonder, how am I going to do? How much money will I make? When will I buy a house? When will I get married? Where will I go on vacation? What will I accomplish? And it seems like there are tons of possibilities, all of which I can see and will get to choose from when the time comes. But then it'll end. Will I be sitting in a chair, tired by all I've seen, looking at people run by and do the same things I already did? I'm sure I will eventually, but the point, however poorly expressed, is:
I don't want to think about anything other than the moment right now. I need to remember that there is such a thing as the unknown and embrace it.