I’ve asked myself a couple of times over these past few days, “Do I need someone in my life right now? And if so, do I need a specific someone?” and I believe that is a double affirmative. Without analyzing the differences that are inherent in philial love as opposed to conjugal love and what constitutes a simple platonic relationship, I have come to realize I very definitely need someone to share moments with as they happen, and for a long time I was blindsided by ephemeral events into thinking that none of the people around me was fulfilling that role. The word “soulmate” is not one to be tossed off idly, but it had been said in an unguarded tone and it was right—then. I’ve only just concluded that once it is right, it is forever right.
I have said and done some foolish things in fits of cynicism and rancor. I long for a return to innocence. Innocence with insight, however, not naiveté. Awareness can be a fine thing before it blooms into the black rose of cynicism. Sophistication is only a short step from sophistry. Those of us who become alert to signs and mannerisms are sometimes all too ready to pat ourselves on the back and congratulate ourselves on the hardening of our hearts against the pain of involvement, but cynicism hurts, too. And the after-pain can be much greater than the other because there is always the knowledge in the aftermath of involvement that whatever went wrong is our own fault. Indeed, if one is so intelligent as to “see through” the motives of friendship, one should likewise be smart enough to find solutions to problems and take action. Not everything can happen by attrition. To be forewarned (and proverbially forearmed) and yet allow the bad to happen is socially criminal and at the very least, laziness. Who has a right to cry over their own laziness?
So, yes, I need a specific someone, and I know it is time to get off my duff and do the right thing. One should never run away from love in any of its forms nor be, nor pretend to be, blind to its presence.
Sunday, August 17, 2003
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Another Door
As it turns out, I do not run from this place, although I have had numerous opportunities and several provocations. Is it procrastination, a lack of conviction, or do I cry with egg in my beer? Certainly, there are some small satisfactions in my life that I had never previously experienced, and because of other commitments, could not have experienced in my prior life in New York.
Ever since reading Frank McCourt’s ‘Tis, I have had a hankering to be part of the educational system. Earlier than that, actually, before he wrote Angela’s Ashes, before he came to one of our parites with his brother Malachy, and they regaled us with tales of the opportunity that came their way on their return to America. Yes, before Frank spoke of the joy of connecting with kids and how he made a career of something he was virtually qualified for albeit without license, I had longed to teach, but somehow I always settled for clerical jobs. I recall reading a novel called The Fly wherein there was a scene that took place in a teachers’ lounge as observed through the eyes of the title character, and I was much charmed by viewing various films when younger such as To Sir With Love and Goodbye, Mr. Chips. I guess I have always longed for that sort of adulation—to be the one teacher who has a strong effect on his students. Realizing that my writing will probably never bring me lasting notoriety, teaching and being remembered was one kind of fame I could aspire to. It couldn’t have happened in my other life, but there was always the future, the unknown and unforetellable future.
In April of 2000, with the passing away of all I had grown accustomed to, every conceivable future opened its door to me. At that time, I had no desire to enter any. I wanted my own existence to end. I returned to the church and prayed for guidance. I worked (in an office, of course) during the day and at night I led a solitary and contemplative life, waiting, just waiting, I suppose, for everything to disappear—to awaken from a nightmare of loneliness.
The days drifted into months and I realized in December of that year that nothing had changed—except everything. And then, through a chance encounter and the discovery that throughout those long lonely months some doors had remained ajar, I chose one and slipped through, unnoticed, and soon found myself on the other side of one of those unforeseeable futures.
From what I had relearned during my Sundays in church, I could perhaps come to believe that this turn of events was predestined and, my underlying character being rather lethargic, this would be the easiest perception to come by, but it frightens me to think that stranger metamorphoses might await me. The fright is there in the notion of changes whose timing is off, much like the fear of Alzheimer’s Disease erasing a lifetime of knowledge.
I digress.
Now, I am an English teacher working at Tec de Monterrey, but with barely enough hours this semester to sustain a “way of life.” There is only that modicum of satisfaction in my performance that helps me to persevere whenever the doubts creep in. My first semester was average. At the end of the second, I was awarded a citation. Last semester, though personally satisfying, did not bring any notice of achievement. This, my fourth, which began Monday, the 11th, feels so far like another open door, only this one appears to require a key. I hope with my reverberations I do not miss finding it on the side of the road as I race forward, for that must be my direction. I must not be diverted by confusion nor dissolution.
Ever since reading Frank McCourt’s ‘Tis, I have had a hankering to be part of the educational system. Earlier than that, actually, before he wrote Angela’s Ashes, before he came to one of our parites with his brother Malachy, and they regaled us with tales of the opportunity that came their way on their return to America. Yes, before Frank spoke of the joy of connecting with kids and how he made a career of something he was virtually qualified for albeit without license, I had longed to teach, but somehow I always settled for clerical jobs. I recall reading a novel called The Fly wherein there was a scene that took place in a teachers’ lounge as observed through the eyes of the title character, and I was much charmed by viewing various films when younger such as To Sir With Love and Goodbye, Mr. Chips. I guess I have always longed for that sort of adulation—to be the one teacher who has a strong effect on his students. Realizing that my writing will probably never bring me lasting notoriety, teaching and being remembered was one kind of fame I could aspire to. It couldn’t have happened in my other life, but there was always the future, the unknown and unforetellable future.
In April of 2000, with the passing away of all I had grown accustomed to, every conceivable future opened its door to me. At that time, I had no desire to enter any. I wanted my own existence to end. I returned to the church and prayed for guidance. I worked (in an office, of course) during the day and at night I led a solitary and contemplative life, waiting, just waiting, I suppose, for everything to disappear—to awaken from a nightmare of loneliness.
The days drifted into months and I realized in December of that year that nothing had changed—except everything. And then, through a chance encounter and the discovery that throughout those long lonely months some doors had remained ajar, I chose one and slipped through, unnoticed, and soon found myself on the other side of one of those unforeseeable futures.
From what I had relearned during my Sundays in church, I could perhaps come to believe that this turn of events was predestined and, my underlying character being rather lethargic, this would be the easiest perception to come by, but it frightens me to think that stranger metamorphoses might await me. The fright is there in the notion of changes whose timing is off, much like the fear of Alzheimer’s Disease erasing a lifetime of knowledge.
I digress.
Now, I am an English teacher working at Tec de Monterrey, but with barely enough hours this semester to sustain a “way of life.” There is only that modicum of satisfaction in my performance that helps me to persevere whenever the doubts creep in. My first semester was average. At the end of the second, I was awarded a citation. Last semester, though personally satisfying, did not bring any notice of achievement. This, my fourth, which began Monday, the 11th, feels so far like another open door, only this one appears to require a key. I hope with my reverberations I do not miss finding it on the side of the road as I race forward, for that must be my direction. I must not be diverted by confusion nor dissolution.
Tuesday, August 5, 2003
Writing and Running
Something is wrong. Something is definitely wrong. At this time and place, I can’t get a handle on it. I’d like to be happy, successful, wealthy, independent, but at the moment, I don’t feel any of those things. How did I arrive at this state?
In April of 2001, I left my home in New York, left my previous life behind and moved to Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, Mexico, not least of all to begin something different, something fresh, something that had no resemblance to the life that had turned sad for me. I had mixed expectations and only a vague awareness of what awaited me here.
I guess I’m hoping now if I write about my experiences that I’ll be able to make some sense out of where I’ve placed myself. At the time I made this move, I felt very brave and some of the people around me said they envied me making such a decision. They seemed to think I was leaving the rat race behind and moving to fun in the sun—a permanent vacation of lying on a beach with a cold beer beside me and music playing. I guess I saw that too. I had been to Mexico before—the resort areas—and I think that’s what I really wanted. No obligations, no responsibilities, no attachment to things that turn sad.
I couldn’t see then that vacations are the way they are because they are not permanent. That it is their very fleetingness that charges them full of memories of lassitude and drains them of a sense of responsibility. You try to turn them into lasting situations and they morph into some halfway limbo condition.
In any case, there’s no beach here. It’s a three-hour drive away, and I’ve been there twice in a period of more than two years.
In looking back over one’s life, the good times sparkle like diamonds or bits of gold among the dross of the quotidian and one longs to relive them, to gather them together and make an other life out of them. One doesn’t see that they glitter precisely because of their juxtaposition against the ungleaming days and months. It takes the mistake of trying to do such a thing to recognize the folly of feeling that way.
Firstly, in the long view of hindsight, one doesn’t see that those bits were not faultless, but in gathering them together, in trying to relive them, their faults become magnified.
There are thousands of bugs, tiny ants, crawling over them, whose presence, when perceived, is an irritation. Then too, there is the fact that nothing can really happen the same way twice. So, yes, it is folly to believe one can recapture something that perhaps had been perceived incorrectly in the first place.
That being said, I find myself now in this place in the middle of a race toward a goal I already know will not satisfy, unable to return to a starting line that has been eradicated. Nor can I take off these uncomfortable running shoes to sit on the sidelines for a few moments to get my bearings. There are spectators who have come to watch, expecting a winner, and if I don’t keep moving, then I am just an impediment to the other racers.
The thing is, I want to keep running. I want to win. I want to hear the cheers of victory. I’m afraid, though, that I won’t stop to collect a trophy. I’ll just keep running long after the race is finished, and the spectators have gone home. I’ll keep running and running as I don’t have any home to go to.
In April of 2001, I left my home in New York, left my previous life behind and moved to Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, Mexico, not least of all to begin something different, something fresh, something that had no resemblance to the life that had turned sad for me. I had mixed expectations and only a vague awareness of what awaited me here.
I guess I’m hoping now if I write about my experiences that I’ll be able to make some sense out of where I’ve placed myself. At the time I made this move, I felt very brave and some of the people around me said they envied me making such a decision. They seemed to think I was leaving the rat race behind and moving to fun in the sun—a permanent vacation of lying on a beach with a cold beer beside me and music playing. I guess I saw that too. I had been to Mexico before—the resort areas—and I think that’s what I really wanted. No obligations, no responsibilities, no attachment to things that turn sad.
I couldn’t see then that vacations are the way they are because they are not permanent. That it is their very fleetingness that charges them full of memories of lassitude and drains them of a sense of responsibility. You try to turn them into lasting situations and they morph into some halfway limbo condition.
In any case, there’s no beach here. It’s a three-hour drive away, and I’ve been there twice in a period of more than two years.
In looking back over one’s life, the good times sparkle like diamonds or bits of gold among the dross of the quotidian and one longs to relive them, to gather them together and make an other life out of them. One doesn’t see that they glitter precisely because of their juxtaposition against the ungleaming days and months. It takes the mistake of trying to do such a thing to recognize the folly of feeling that way.
Firstly, in the long view of hindsight, one doesn’t see that those bits were not faultless, but in gathering them together, in trying to relive them, their faults become magnified.
There are thousands of bugs, tiny ants, crawling over them, whose presence, when perceived, is an irritation. Then too, there is the fact that nothing can really happen the same way twice. So, yes, it is folly to believe one can recapture something that perhaps had been perceived incorrectly in the first place.
That being said, I find myself now in this place in the middle of a race toward a goal I already know will not satisfy, unable to return to a starting line that has been eradicated. Nor can I take off these uncomfortable running shoes to sit on the sidelines for a few moments to get my bearings. There are spectators who have come to watch, expecting a winner, and if I don’t keep moving, then I am just an impediment to the other racers.
The thing is, I want to keep running. I want to win. I want to hear the cheers of victory. I’m afraid, though, that I won’t stop to collect a trophy. I’ll just keep running long after the race is finished, and the spectators have gone home. I’ll keep running and running as I don’t have any home to go to.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)