Back on the Horse

There are few things stranger than walking around your college town after graduating. And I don’t mean right after graduation. Back then there were still lots of familiar faces lurking, waiting out their apartment leases, tying up loose ends, hugging tearfully on the street every few days for fear that this time is actually, definitely the last time they will ever see each other. I mean several months later, which is precisely what I’ve been doing. Evanston, IL. This place that over the last four years I’ve grown more familiar with than any other place on Earth (far more than my real hometown, which grows stranger and more distant with every visit) is suddenly so bizarre. I still feel comfortable here, I still know these streets like the back of my hand, but at the same time I feel a little sticky about the whole situation. It’s almost like Evanston is an ex-girlfriend who I left on fairly good terms and now, as a result, is letting me crash on her couch for a limited amount of time. Everything’s the same, but I just don’t quite belong anymore, and I get the feeling she'll be relieved when I move on for good.

This odd, displaced feeling isn’t helped by my living conditions right now, which consist of a couch, a disorganized suitcase (bound and gagged with duct tape because the zipper broke), and my perpetual headaches and neck pains as a result. The whole experience of leaving home and going to college is one of displacement, but I truly have never felt as close to homeless as I do right now. My home in California is now, beyond a question of a doubt, my “parent’s house.” My future home in Manhattan is a mystical place that I’ve never actually seen, one that holds my future roommates, several boxes of the shit I’ve deemed worthy of taking with me across the country, and possibly a mattress. And right now, this instant, I’m sitting in a storied Panera Bread, the exact same spot where I wrote many an essay in college overanalyzing many a piece of literature, with generally no idea about anything that is happening in my life beyond the next few hours. Sure, there are a few things I know (in an hour I will be in an apartment I’ve visited a few times before listening to people read through a play I wrote, in another week and a half those same people will be reading this play in front of some sort of an audience, a few days after that I will be on a plane, probably reading a book or some sort, etc), but I have never, ever had my life defined by so much that isn’t known, by such a severe amount of mystery. Mystery seemed like a good word there. You could just as easily sub in “freedom” or “terror”, but that really depends on the day.

This whole summer has been like this, characterized by a loose, wandering, who-knows-what’s-next mentality. Appropriately, I read Into the Wild at the beginning of the summer, a book that deals with a young man who attempts to live his entire life by these principles; it proved rather inspiring to me, bizarrely so since in that instance the young man ended up dying an agonizing death alone in the Alaskan wilderness. Still, this stage of my life (or maybe it’s a sub-stage) has led to a newfound immediacy in my day-to-day life. I'm living moment-by-moment because, well, that’s really the only option I have. If I try and think too strenuously about the future (about jobs and rent and food and being a grown up and living in a giant city and having no educational structure for the first time since I was, what, five years old?) then I will inevitably freak out. So now, with my future so wide open in front of me, with no knowledge of what I’ll be doing in two months, let alone two years, I feel like I’ve learned to appreciate the smaller things in life. When I walk out the door in the morning, anything can happen. Any pretty girl I see on the street seems much more realistically like she could be the love of my life. I still don’t walk up and introduce myself to these girls, am far more likely to strategically position myself behind them and enjoy the view while I stroll for about ten seconds before I start to feel like a pervert and let her disappear into the crowd, but still. It’s just a different way of thinking about the world. Now that I’ve removed myself from that whole educational infastructure that has governed me for so long, life seems so much bigger and scarier and more exciting and more open and, just, gah. I don’t know. Writing this is the closest I’ve come to actually pin-pointing the feeling I’ve had all summer, and it’s still a garbled mess, each modifier contradicting the one before so I don’t feel like I have to commit to anything.

Of course, now that I’ve graduated, every older post-grad I’ve seen all summer has invariably felt inclined to tell me what the first year out is like. Most of it has been very negative. My friend Dan called it the worst time of his life, and stated unequivocally that I will feel the same way. Very nice. Last night my friend Carly said it’s been “the hardest time” of her life, also honest, but at least there was a little hope and determination behind those words.

Being back in this ol' town has also made me reminisce a bit about Senior Year of college, most probably the best, happiest year of my life (and just saying that had made me realize that I will no longer define years as autumn through spring now, but rather with that classic old Gregorian calendar). Even if that's the case, I'm hopeful: 2009 is definitely off to a good start. In fact, winter and spring of Senior Year were far superior to Fall, which was among the most emotionally draining periods of my life. But before I pass judgement on '09 I have a lot left to go, including those first few real months post-graduation, not this summer vacation/purgatory that I’m in right now. These upcoming months, September and beyond, are the ones that I have been told are incredibly difficult, painful, lonely, lost, miserable, etc. So who knows where 2009 will end up in the final rankings. I’m going to go ahead and say that this is going to be the most meaningful year of my life; already it’s very competitively jostling for that position, and I still have five whole months to go, four of them living on my own in New York City.

You know, I've tried this whole "blog" thing before, giving it a go for awhile in High School, and I could never keep it up. I just never enjoyed writing about myself. But I've rather liked this. Maybe I've matured, maybe I'm finally comfortable enough with myself that I can get introspective and not scream in horror at what I see. Or maybe I've just become more self involved. Whatever the case, I have a feeling I might keep it up this time. And by saying that, I've probably doomed myself to failure. Oh well. Tune in next time to find out!