Oh Suburbia

We live lives of irony, here in downtown Suburbia. It's the land between lands, for those who can't quite commit to the chaotic relational hotbox of the city, but are terrified that a Thoreauic life in the middle of nowhere would glaringly reveal our blandness. After all, what would we update our Facebook statuses with?

Lest you think I am making mountains out of molehills, let me explain:

A woman in a burka just walked by. I am curious, is she coming to or from the clubs just a block over? A girl wearing less clothing than I sleep in came out of the restaurant across the street. It's 50 degrees out, and windy. The elevation she gets from those heels can't be helping the situation, as, I imagine, it's hard to reach a trot before an ankle is twisted. At least the up and down exercise might fight off hypothermia until Ken doll gets the car. The guy with the blowout hair is wearing a massive silver rosary. How can I see it? Because his shirt is unbuttoned far enough to see the spot just above his navel that he forgot to wax. Maybe he's just out of Mass and couldn't be bothered with changing before happy hour was over at Senor Frogs.

I could go on. Talk about the roving bands of teenagers (where in the hell are you going? none of you can buy booze and nothing else is being sold at this hour...) or the group of 13 girls and 1 guy that just walked past (...make a friggin choice already man!). But I'll stop. This blog post isn't going anywhere. Or is it already there? Mmm...deep...

And all this from a coffee shop at 10:45 on a Saturday night, as the 6'2" guy in a flannel shirt asks the barista for a pumpkin spice latte.

Friends

If I have learned anything from recent life, it is just this: inhibition among dear friends is quite simply a waste of time. (Let me explain, lest you jump to the conclusion that I am promoting rampant drunkenness and rowdiness, excused if and only precipitated among friends. Though therein is another recent life lesson…but that is not for now).

I refer mainly to that inhibition of actions, a self-consciousness, we so often fall prey to when we are in constant company with those we most love. It is the brief pause in a phone conversation that turns an awkward silence into a premature goodbye, quick, before we are both left with nothing else to talk about. It is the mindlessness that deceives us into staying on the couch rather than braving the cold walk to our friend’s apartment because, after all, it is late and what would we do anyways? It is the festering resentment that we quite simply can’t be bothered to resolve because, in all honesty, it would clearly take too much effort to broach the subject and, as they say, time will heal all.

How silly all that seems now.

Now, a phone call is not mapped out, there is no agenda, no reason for the call. The call is the reason. The end goal is to be, however fleetingly, in the presence of the one called. Thus, all inhibition is lost. A prolonged silence is not a rift in the conversation or a breakdown in communication. Indeed, it serves more than words could. In that silence there is the fierce acknowledgement that to hang up, to rush a conclusion, would mean an acknowledgement of the spatial chasm between you and I, and that is quite simply too ugly, too raw a thing to acknowledge. And so we sit, the silence hanging, defying life’s paths that have so separated us, dear friends.

Now, a cold walk seems like such a trivial pain to keep us apart. What separates us now is a few hundred dollars and a day of travel, to mention nothing of Employment and that which it entails, and even in that there is barely reason enough to tether me down, keep me from visiting you. How I regret all of those spent minutes, wasted because of the weather.

Now, any quarrel or resentment seems as trivial as the tabloids. I can no longer afford the luxury of such triviality. To think that anything other than distance will separate us is seemingly absurd, petty nonsense. Inhibition, that feeling that makes one self-conscious to the nth degree, freezing the burning lump in one’s stomach to act in a manner true to who they are at their core, is a precious waste of even more precious time. If there exists that which would keep me from you, let it be nothing more than the inevitability that comes with living as adults in different parts of the world. And let even that be laughable.

This is what I say then: save your inhibition for those you care nothing about. All the time in the world can be wasted on them. But among those few, those of the inner circle, those who know you for you, those who deserve nothing less then the truth of your dependence on them, give inhibition no root. There is far too little time for that.

My Midwest Manifesto

The thing I've realized about blogging is that you stop once life becomes normal. You figure, oh hell, what's the point in writing if what I'm doing day in and day out is just as dull as what Tom is doing in the cubicle next to me?

Good news: I'm not in a cubicle and I don't have a coworker named Tom so my blogging can continue.

I've got 1.5 weeks of adult life under my belt. 8 full days of teaching behind me. 60 plus hours of lesson prepping logged. 15 hours of life wasted in traffic on the way. And 1 pulled hamstring from gym class dodgeball. And so I will write about the weather.

Disclaimer: if you are not from the Midwest, you may not understand any of the following.

Today is/was one of those days that Beauty has filled so full you almost choke on it. In typical Midwest fashion, summer left without so much as a fare-thee-well, and autumn has arrived. Rather, it seems as if autumn was already here, just waiting for the other seasons to desist in all of their busy distractions, waiting for us to just stop long enough to live. It is as if to say, hold. Stop talking, stop working, stop sweating through life at such a breathtaking rate. Simply be. Let the first cool breeze of autumn fill your lungs and remind you that it is enough to just breathe. That there is enough cause for bewilderment and joy in that act alone. The haze of summer has passed, lifting away with it the lazy weeds that have so long wrapped round our legs, holding us in its sticky sweet embrace. The fall winds have slapped us awake, biting through the slowness in our minds, reminding us that winter will be upon us before we know it. But it is not in a rude way, or a despondent way. It is not a foreshadowing of the dark to come, but simply a reminder of the dusk we are in. It is as if watching a fireworks show, when the petty cracklers and single blast rockets that have distracted us for so long give way to the grand finale. We immediately sit up, realizing in embarrassment how tame the show has been up until this point, how tawdry were those forays of sound compared to the chest squeezing concussions of now. And we know that in a mere matter of minutes it will all be over, that the sky will go black again, that all that will remain is the smoke and sulfur of the show. We will fold our blanket, store our lawn chairs in the trunk, driving home to the sweeping and dusting, the entertaining, the relatives, the dog scratching at the back door, the cooking and eating, the clutter that is life. But not for one second does that take away from the glory of the finale. Not one second do we consider simply getting on with what must be gotten on with and leaving early. Not once would we wish that the finale had never started, that the ordinary show had just lasted longer, or that it would be over already so we could hear once again, make small talk with neighbors once again. We become lost in the finale, our hearts beating in time with the blasts, imagining that this will be forever. The power of the present wipes clean the slate of the past, and pushes away any hopes for the future. It is enough to just be now.

Such is autumn in the Midwest. Live here for a lifetime, and you will understand. You will know days like today, days when you want to do absolutely nothing, shirking all responsibility and cutting all ties, not because you are lazy, but because the day is already full enough just being alive.

"Tears, idle tears,

I know not what they mean,

Tears from the depth of some divine despair,

Rise in the heart and gather in the eyes,

In looking on the happy autumn fields,

And thinking of the days that are no more."

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson