How I wish
I love writing that begins with a situation and ends with it. It may not be related to the rest, it may only be tangential, but if there is something at the beginning and at the end, I feel like I have learned something, like that full circle that I just did with my eyes taught me something about life, something important and generally just beyond my grasp. I want to write like that, to bring readers in and quietly wrap a web around them while they sit back, mesmerized at my verbal acrobatics. So much of college has been spent arguing points that are my own in a voice that is not. I don't ever have to use "one" again in a paper. I want to be able to write like I speak, eloquent, but without the fear that a "don't" is going to lower my grade. I vacillate so much between so many different stations in life. Should I be a mother, a cook, a writer, a scholar? The worst part is that these doors are still open to me. I have closed not a one in picking a major. The wise one could do little to advise me today. I want someone to lay down a law. A declaration and a testament. A "Miriam, you will be a _____ and you will be the best _____ you can be." She said more doors would only open with the Peace Corps. She says I am perfect for fieldwork, the kind of person who acts as if she can save the world but knows that she can't. Knows she can't get funding without acting like she can. Knows how to put on a show and then close the doors at the right moment and collapse against them, spent. Perhaps if I were able to have a foot in both worlds? An office with four walls and an ethernet connection to ground me, a neighborhood in el Alto Bolivia to uplift me? There will be a job when I get back, not a career. I know this. I know the timing won't be right. It will be too late to apply for school, the hiring rush won't start for another few months. I'll just need something to tide me over until I find the Career, but which career? How in the Hell am I ever going to find the thing as long as I continue to excel as a jack of all trades? Isn't globalization about specializing? Don't people like me fit better into a scene from Michelangelo than a New York City high rise? Fuck. What am I doing? I need to find a place, any place where I can be the linguist, the cook, the artist, the craftsmen, the writer, and the scholar. Until I can be everything at once, those damn doors will never close.