For the sake of absolute clarity, let me just say: my life is fairly nonsensical.
It has taken me some time to come to this. I know that it's not what is supposed to happen. I know that the right thing would be to make some concrete choices that narrow my possibilities into some niche of expertise, to develop my skills and marketability so as to present myself to the world in the neatest little package, compact, simple to open and easily stackable. I should have "majored" in something (anything!) in college; I should have had internships and failed one class before getting my shit together; I should be satisfied with the adventures I've had thus far and not seek more; I should be happy to develop my career path and start to settle down. I also know that is, like, totally not what I want to happen. Maybe it would be lovely to have such a straightforward life. But I doubt it.
And let me just be honest. I tried. Really, I tried to say that I would be something specific, some one thing. But for all the effort I made to walk any one path, the earth-quaking pound of my honest heart would force me to stumble and widen the trail. So here I am. ("which is where, exactly?")
Ah, yes, the moment we've all been waiting for.
Nothing is quite like the feeling of being in a coffee shop in a new place for the first time with the intention of writing, reading, thinking. It's a kind of openness to one's own self because you've cleared your day for this, because this was the point anyway. I've written before about that feeling of leaving a place, and this is usually what follows for me, since whenever I leave somewhere, my first destination is usually a thinking spot, a reflective seat at a small table with an iced americano or hot chocolate, maybe a doughnut. (Speaking of feelings, there is also this). There is sunshine coming in the window which is, of course, drawing my gaze to watch the construction outside rather than to look at my computer screen or the pages written by Poe. There is sunshine here, of course, because it is California. Maybe I can say something of the feeling when you remember that weather is variable in different places. Like, there is a place where you wake up expecting sunshine, and you are not disappointed, a place where you can take sunshine for granted. And, of course, right? Just like the feeling of realizing that you ought not to hope for a clear blue sky, but learn to love rather the quality that your skin takes on when it is usually damp.
There is a kind of pretending that happens. I realize that I am a visible part of the world, and so it does seem like I belong in this coffee shop. I want to stand up and tell each person sitting at the scattered identical tables around me, that my life is nonsense. [I once read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper on a bus, and once I had done with it, I had some unshakable sense of lonesomeness. I looked around me and saw what seemed to be people, living their own lives (the gall!), and knowing nothing of the insanity I had just been witness to in this story. No one to share with me in the literary genius of being truly and vaguely freaked out by the simple descriptions of some remote, long-dead author.] It seems though, that rather than make a spectacle of myself and risk utter social alienation, I pull on some half-true identity in the milieu of this coffee shop like some house-dress that might fit; I sit here and say, by virtue of drinking this iced americano and minding my own business, that yes, I do belong here. And also perhaps, by virtue of that in itself, that the lives of all of these phantoms sitting surrounding me at identical little tables drinking their various drink choices, are also nonsense.
It has taken me some time to come to this. I know that it's not what is supposed to happen. I know that the right thing would be to make some concrete choices that narrow my possibilities into some niche of expertise, to develop my skills and marketability so as to present myself to the world in the neatest little package, compact, simple to open and easily stackable. I should have "majored" in something (anything!) in college; I should have had internships and failed one class before getting my shit together; I should be satisfied with the adventures I've had thus far and not seek more; I should be happy to develop my career path and start to settle down. I also know that is, like, totally not what I want to happen. Maybe it would be lovely to have such a straightforward life. But I doubt it.
And let me just be honest. I tried. Really, I tried to say that I would be something specific, some one thing. But for all the effort I made to walk any one path, the earth-quaking pound of my honest heart would force me to stumble and widen the trail. So here I am. ("which is where, exactly?")
Ah, yes, the moment we've all been waiting for.
Nothing is quite like the feeling of being in a coffee shop in a new place for the first time with the intention of writing, reading, thinking. It's a kind of openness to one's own self because you've cleared your day for this, because this was the point anyway. I've written before about that feeling of leaving a place, and this is usually what follows for me, since whenever I leave somewhere, my first destination is usually a thinking spot, a reflective seat at a small table with an iced americano or hot chocolate, maybe a doughnut. (Speaking of feelings, there is also this). There is sunshine coming in the window which is, of course, drawing my gaze to watch the construction outside rather than to look at my computer screen or the pages written by Poe. There is sunshine here, of course, because it is California. Maybe I can say something of the feeling when you remember that weather is variable in different places. Like, there is a place where you wake up expecting sunshine, and you are not disappointed, a place where you can take sunshine for granted. And, of course, right? Just like the feeling of realizing that you ought not to hope for a clear blue sky, but learn to love rather the quality that your skin takes on when it is usually damp.
There is a kind of pretending that happens. I realize that I am a visible part of the world, and so it does seem like I belong in this coffee shop. I want to stand up and tell each person sitting at the scattered identical tables around me, that my life is nonsense. [I once read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper on a bus, and once I had done with it, I had some unshakable sense of lonesomeness. I looked around me and saw what seemed to be people, living their own lives (the gall!), and knowing nothing of the insanity I had just been witness to in this story. No one to share with me in the literary genius of being truly and vaguely freaked out by the simple descriptions of some remote, long-dead author.] It seems though, that rather than make a spectacle of myself and risk utter social alienation, I pull on some half-true identity in the milieu of this coffee shop like some house-dress that might fit; I sit here and say, by virtue of drinking this iced americano and minding my own business, that yes, I do belong here. And also perhaps, by virtue of that in itself, that the lives of all of these phantoms sitting surrounding me at identical little tables drinking their various drink choices, are also nonsense.
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