das ewige Heimweh...
Every time I return to Columbia I am beset by two overwhelming but contradictory sentiments:
1) Everything about this place seems so unchanging. I walk around the house or travel through the city and I can remember certain poignant events that took place in various locations. The events exist now only in my mind, yet the places remain, essentially unchanged. The piles of clutter are all still present and in their usual places. Christmas presents are still lying around the living room in the exact locations that the were placed directly after having been unwrapped two months ago. The only change to my room is the usual pile on my bed of irrelevant mail that my Dad nevertheless dutifully deposits and the unabated accumulation of books my Mom thinks I might find interesting. On my walls the decorations remain the same, at once both mocking and comforting reminders of who I used to be. I look to my family and the friends who remain here and nothing seems changed. I feel so much older, but they all seem to have grown little.
2) Despite all this, my brothers turned 18 yesterday. They will soon be going to college, and they seem as determined to leave this house behind as I was my senior year. My family is changing significantly, and though we all feel it, none of us is able to express it to one another. I worry for my brothers because all of the qualities I dislike about myself (laziness, solitude, etc) are more pronounced in their personalities. Yet I cannot live their lives for them. I feel like there are still many exchanges that need to occur between me and my parents, but I do not know that I can tolerate remaining in this city to allow them to happen. Time is passing.
I experienced something similar the last time I went back to Missouri. Most things remained unchanged, especially my childhood friends. One glaring change was that my home of 5 years had been bulldozed and that plot of land now served as a parking lot for condos. Also, the poor, black neighborhood had been replaced by Wal-Mart, Home Depot and a slew of other strip mall staples. My friend's mother, a descendant of some of the founders of the town, mourned what Kirkwood was becoming.
Jessica Posner once described Columbia, or more accurately our lives here, as being "stuck in the roach motel stickiness." To my knowledge she has never returned once after she left for New York. Others have described it as a black hole. Ryan Collins described the past as a spectral hand holding humanity back from the present. I find that all of these images accurately describe how I feel every time I return to Columbia.
But for some reason I keep coming back. I think it may be the intense dread I feel when I think about the future, or rather the multitude of possible futures. Because of this fear of future failures and successes I retreat to the past instead of actually being present. I realize now that people often ignore my presence because I have no presence.
I can remember even in elementary school, instead of interacting with everyone else I keep mostly to myself, imagining I was somewhere else. When I moved to South Carolina I built up a nostalgically mythical Missouri in my mind. It was only after returning that I had to admit to myself the pointlessness and naivete of my fantasy.
In high school I longed to be in college, and now that I'm in college I long for the day that I will be free from school entirely. But I realize now that this is no way to live. How can make myself live in the present when it is something I've been avoiding my whole life? How can I let go of the myths of the past and present and concentrate on the here and now? How can I redirect my fixation from the dead and the yet to be? To truly live one must embrace the present; I have been looking this present in the mouth! I have been alive for 21 year but how much of that time have I actually lived? No more "I wish I could..."'s. No more "I wish I had..."'s. From this moment on I will live a life of actuality, not a life of potentiality.
1) Everything about this place seems so unchanging. I walk around the house or travel through the city and I can remember certain poignant events that took place in various locations. The events exist now only in my mind, yet the places remain, essentially unchanged. The piles of clutter are all still present and in their usual places. Christmas presents are still lying around the living room in the exact locations that the were placed directly after having been unwrapped two months ago. The only change to my room is the usual pile on my bed of irrelevant mail that my Dad nevertheless dutifully deposits and the unabated accumulation of books my Mom thinks I might find interesting. On my walls the decorations remain the same, at once both mocking and comforting reminders of who I used to be. I look to my family and the friends who remain here and nothing seems changed. I feel so much older, but they all seem to have grown little.
2) Despite all this, my brothers turned 18 yesterday. They will soon be going to college, and they seem as determined to leave this house behind as I was my senior year. My family is changing significantly, and though we all feel it, none of us is able to express it to one another. I worry for my brothers because all of the qualities I dislike about myself (laziness, solitude, etc) are more pronounced in their personalities. Yet I cannot live their lives for them. I feel like there are still many exchanges that need to occur between me and my parents, but I do not know that I can tolerate remaining in this city to allow them to happen. Time is passing.
I experienced something similar the last time I went back to Missouri. Most things remained unchanged, especially my childhood friends. One glaring change was that my home of 5 years had been bulldozed and that plot of land now served as a parking lot for condos. Also, the poor, black neighborhood had been replaced by Wal-Mart, Home Depot and a slew of other strip mall staples. My friend's mother, a descendant of some of the founders of the town, mourned what Kirkwood was becoming.
Jessica Posner once described Columbia, or more accurately our lives here, as being "stuck in the roach motel stickiness." To my knowledge she has never returned once after she left for New York. Others have described it as a black hole. Ryan Collins described the past as a spectral hand holding humanity back from the present. I find that all of these images accurately describe how I feel every time I return to Columbia.
But for some reason I keep coming back. I think it may be the intense dread I feel when I think about the future, or rather the multitude of possible futures. Because of this fear of future failures and successes I retreat to the past instead of actually being present. I realize now that people often ignore my presence because I have no presence.
I can remember even in elementary school, instead of interacting with everyone else I keep mostly to myself, imagining I was somewhere else. When I moved to South Carolina I built up a nostalgically mythical Missouri in my mind. It was only after returning that I had to admit to myself the pointlessness and naivete of my fantasy.
In high school I longed to be in college, and now that I'm in college I long for the day that I will be free from school entirely. But I realize now that this is no way to live. How can make myself live in the present when it is something I've been avoiding my whole life? How can I let go of the myths of the past and present and concentrate on the here and now? How can I redirect my fixation from the dead and the yet to be? To truly live one must embrace the present; I have been looking this present in the mouth! I have been alive for 21 year but how much of that time have I actually lived? No more "I wish I could..."'s. No more "I wish I had..."'s. From this moment on I will live a life of actuality, not a life of potentiality.