A Postmodern Pilgrimage
Marco’s answer is prescient. At least, I realize that it is now as I sit in the Life Science’s Library and try to sum up my past year’s pilgrimage into a 2500-word document.
I sit on a sofa. One of the many sofas I have sat on for inspiration. I remove myself from the scene. I see myself sitting on the sofa. Above me, a cloud of thoughts, fragments of a year. The obvious now seeps in. The thoughts in front of me can’t ever be channeled coherently, correctly, into the LR Final I am working on down below.
What is a cloud? From below, they fill the sky, coming and going as they please. They are shapes, animals, beings, dreams and inspirations even as my mind tells me they are really just a random mass of water vapor drifting across the sky caught in cycle that will repeat itself for eternity; or, at least until humanity does something stupid enough to stop this life giving cycle.
My thoughts are a cloud.
They swirl above the person I see, typing on a keyboard, while I am comfortably removed, perched in an unknown corner. I watch my thoughts as I would a cloud. I try to take in the entire picture and am overwhelmed. I am overwhelmed by the variance, the complexity, the hopelessness of ever making sense of everything at once.
I try to clear my mind. I try to remove myself further from the cloud swirling in front me. I close my eyes, and the cloud is still there. I relax everything now. My breathing slows. My body melts into the building. I watch my heart slow down in a constant effort to relax, separating myself from all distractions.
Breathe… In… Out…2…3…4…5…6…
My eyes slowly open.
In front of me is the same distraction, the whirring whirlwind of thought that I observed before. I concentrate harder on the lower edge of the cloudy mass. Slowly, confusion begins to fade away. I can now see a single thought. I gaze at that thought. Examine it. Find it foreign. This thought is unfamiliar. I move closer to it. I can feel it now…
I have been traveling by bus through
the rainy mountains of
I knew that if I studied hard, I could pull a 4.0 for the semester. It was within reach. I did study hard – for the most part – but the 4.0 didn’t come. I guess I didn’t study my hardest. Little did I know how little it would matter now. Little did I know how little it ever mattered.
Two weeks ago I left the safety of
the language school and my host family in Heredia. I was a resident of their house for four
weeks. I came unable to speak much
Spanish. Now I could at least order a
beer at the local bar, find my way through a foreign city and manage a
conversation with the local wise man. I
left all of this – the little comfort I allowed myself to create and accept
since arriving in this country. I made
my way north through the rain forests of
Now I must return to society. This morning I hiked out of the rainforest to the bus stop at the park entrance. What will it be like to return to my home, my family? Should I even go back? There is so much for me out here. Home means three more years of college and then a life shackled to a desk and a computer. That is not life…
My back shivers with a chill sent
from the cold metal of the luggage return rack.
Not unwelcome, it is enough to keep me awake. Enough to make me remember and enjoy this day
for as long as possible.
This is the first time I’ve really seen Matt and Ben as something other than our instructors, the guys who wake us up every morning and kick our asses for fourteen hours a day in the sun all for one show, one ten minute show. It seems insane when I think about it now. Was it a waste? I don’t think so. I’m different. I knew I would be after this summer. The scary thing is that there are even more changes to come. I’ll be a freshmen at college in three weeks. All this changing, to what end?
They always kept their distance from us. We were their students. We had our fun, our inside jokes between the brass instructors and the brass line but they were only ever that – an inside thing. Now that circle is broken. Nothing can be kept inside. After the show, we all promised to keep in touch as friends do, knowing that it probably wouldn’t happen once we returned to the real world.
My attention is drawn back to
Matt looked at me real seriously for what seemed to be eternity. He slowly opened his mouth and said, “Yeah, we go back to our lives and things return to normal, but they won’t ever be the same. You’ll take a little bit of this life and the lessons learned where ever you go. It’s a part of you now and you can’t ever get rid of it.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I wouldn’t want to get rid of it anyways.”
It’s hot. I mean hot as hell. It doesn’t help that those damn security regulations forbid you from bringing your own drink into the stadium and you are forced to pay $3.75 for 20 ounces of water. Whatever, I pay it. It’s worth it today. Vince Young just made an amazing touch down. The band plays the fight song as the crowd cheers. During the appointed time in the fight song, the entire burnt orange student section breaks out into unison, “Give ‘em hell! Give ‘em hell! Make ‘em eat shit!” I pause for a moment to consider whether these are the ‘real’ words to the fight song or not. It doesn’t matter, they are real enough to the UT student section.
I remember when I first came to campus that I promised myself I wouldn’t get brainwashed at UT. I guess I let myself down on that one. Being a brainwashed longhorn fan is just so much more fun than sitting at home on a Saturday and trying to get homework done. I think I’ve discovered the real purpose of college – partying and having all the fun that your parents never let you had as a kid and you will never be able to have again in another four years when you get a job and actually have some real responsibility in life. I’ll enjoy it while I can.
I am eating dinner by myself tonight. It’s not something that I normally like doing and it’s kind of depressing, but it is what the world comes to at the end of the semester. It doesn’t help that it’s freezing outside and I can’t walk out in the wind for thirty seconds before my nose starts running uncontrollably and I start coughing. Screw the winter. I’ll win one day.
The next battle I’ll win. I start preparing immediately; the Asian waiter brings out a hot bowl of soup. I love Madam Mam’s. The lengths I go to make myself feel good about eating alone are almost as depressing as the fact that I’m eating alone for the third night in a row. I have my backpack with me and three books lying next to me at the dinner table. Maybe if it looks like I’m eating by myself because I have to study I’ll look like less of a loser.
Despite these attempts, I really don’t mind eating alone. It’s actually refreshing. I enjoy it. Yeah, that’s it. I’ve spent the last several days engrossed in my books. Western civilization actually turns out to be interesting when the time is taken to study it and fully understand it. Economics I think I will always hate. Ah, but the prize book is one I don’t really have to read. It is a book about Tolkien. Even though I turned in my Tolkien project two weeks ago, I ordered several books written about him and his life to read for fun. I like the man. I probably enjoyed researching and writing that project more than anything I have ever done for school in my life.
It’s a funny thing I’ve learned about college so far. Professors only spend three hours a week with you and you learn more from them in those three hours then the seven or eight hours I spent in my high school classrooms. Not only do you learn more in class, but given the freedom to pursue your own interests outside of class you also learn more. This is the first time in my life I have actually been able to read multiple books per week. I absolutely love it. I feel like I’m actually learning something for once. I think about all the time I wasted in high school classes. I would love to have that time back today or at least today’s knowledge while in high school. Things would be different for me then.
The screen of my laptop sits in front of me. I stare at it in disbelief:
How could Willie just die like that? I saw him just one month ago in our class – happy, laughing, alive. I expect the deep feeling of sadness to hit me at any moment once the news of Willie’s death sinks in, but it never does. I just stare at the screen and wonder. Why was it Willie and not me or one anyone else in our class for that matter?
I think these thoughts not with sadness or even happiness for a life well lived, but with an actual lack of emotion. Why don’t I feel sad? I begin to think about why I am not saddened by Willie’s death. I should be, right? He was a great guy. I didn’t know him very will, but he was a great guy. Great people should always be missed and mourned when they depart.
I am all of a sudden frightened. I try to think about this emotion while mentally dealing with the internal war going on in my mind. I began to realize that I am not really frightened because Willie died, but I am scared over the fact that I am unable to feel an emotion when I think about Willie’s death. What kind of human being have I become? Do I still have the right to call myself human if I feel nothing when another human being dies? I feel a sense of tragedy and sadness for Willie’s family. But for Willie himself, I still feel nothing. I respect him for the life he lived and the way he approached his own death. I pray that somewhere he is not angry with me because I never shed a tear when he died.
The fluorescent light beams down at me, exulting in its own synthetic nature as I tilt my head forward to stare at my computer screen once again. Like every night for the past week, I find myself at my office at 4 AM trying to get the financial model work. It just doesn’t want to balance. I’ve gone over all the information three times. I’ve recalculated all of the numbers four times and the damn model just won’t balance.
I could call it a night. I could call a car and go back to my
overpriced and underspaced
After a long decision making process, I decide to stay at the office. I’ve spent many nights at the office. What’s one more? I’ve got another 12 months left on my contract here. Then, I can move on to my next meaningless job.
What kind of life is this? My parents and all of my friends think I have a great job. In one sense I do. I’m one year out of college and on track to bring home over $100K this year. This is the job that my parents said would put me on track to the good life. What a good life this is… No, I am a member of the living dead.
The Happy Business Man, Photographed by Eugene Berman
[2]
I knock on his door and walk into his office. Visiting professors’ offices has always been weird for me. I feel like I’m invading someone’s personal lair. His office is lined with books and memorabilia of a life well lived. Maybe this is the good life.
I hand him my project and walk away after an awkward but well meant thank you. I feel as though a burden has been lifted off of me when I turn in the project. He probably won’t like it. I’m sure of it. He might not even understand and give me a terrible score, but I don’t care. I made that project for myself and no one else. Mine are the only standards it should have to live up to.
The cloud swirls violently in front of me, only inches from my face. I can barely recognize those individual moments of my life. I see both memories of the past and figures of an unfamiliar future. The words that Marco Polo spoke to the Great Kahn come back to me: “The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have.”[3]
My field of vision expands to encompass the entire cloud as I return to my distant perch. The cloud continues to swirl. What once was violent, random, haphazard, now seems tranquil, beautiful, serene. I watch the cloud as I do the other clouds. I dream. I imagine. I realize that those thoughts I witnessed tonight have already passed or have the possibility of passing in the future, but neither are definite. I take comfort in recognizing the little that is mine and the much that I don’t and will never have.
The cloud is now dissipating into the environment, back into the person typing in front of his laptop. It disappears completely, but I am not left with nothing. I still have the little that is mine. I am left with my experiences, thoughts and memories - devoid of dead pasts or possible futures. They, alone, will be enough to guide me. I need not worry myself with all possibilities, but instead live, and allow the path to unfold.
Word Count: 2,877