The Waiting Place

You know how at some point in every woman's life, she realizes that whether she likes it or not, she has turned into her mother? I realized that I'm my mother today. I think it's too early to be my mother. Or maybe she is just far too un-motherly. But either way, it made me laugh.

I don't know what to do anymore. The end of the year makes people do strange things, doesn't it? I think all the sunlight has made us all a bit crazy. And sometimes it's good crazy, like let's have random dance parties crazy. But sometimes it's bad crazy, like let's all bitch at each other crazy. It's weird how different people are reacting to the upcoming emotional trauma in the form of exams and graduation. But really, haven't we all just become a bit too dramatic for our own goods?

I went for a run today, something that I haven't done in a very, very long time. I thought about a lot of things, I thought about why I went out for a run. Mostly I went out for a run because I was bored. Why was I bored? Because I'm just passing my time, waiting for something to happen. That's really what the majority of life is, isn't it? You find things to do to pass the time in between the real moments, the real things. Not that that's such a bad thing. I've read and written more in the past weeks than I have in a long time. I've spent important time with Maria and Katherine. I've been content. So no, it's not bad, but it still is waiting. I don't know what I'm waiting for, I don't know what you're waiting for, I don't know what any of us are waiting for. But I am pretty sure that most of us are waiting for something.

Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down.

As I grow older, I’ve come to realize that win/lose isn’t really as black and white, as obvious as I always thought it was. Winning and losing in the traditional sense have no real relevance to daily life, to social interaction, to reality. The greatest tragedy of all is then perhaps that not everyone sees it this way.

I don’t even know how to function in a win/lose world, at least not in a social win/lose world. Of course some things are win/lose, like competition debating, sports, the stock market…but relationships? To make relationships about winning and losing is philosophically perverse. It eliminates compassion, understanding. It eliminates humanity.

It breaks my heart to think that we all are out to get each other, that other people harbor silent grudges for years, that no one can simply accept disagreement maturely. How are we all planning on ever functioning in the real world if we can’t constructively discuss rather than “bitch”, if we can’t disagree about anything, if we all can’t always have our way? I don’t think that “conniving”, “manipulative”, “hurtful”, or “good at bitching” are the characteristics that future employers, Ivy League universities, friends, or spouses are looking for.

How can we expect any country to ever resolve conflict, any company to comply with environmental standards, any government to act fairly? All of these actions, conflicts, etc. arise from self-interest, from individuals wanting to get their way, from people being frustrated with being out-voted, out-voiced. How can we ever ask anything bigger than ourselves to work out disagreements? How can we expect that everyone else should act collectively, put aside self-interest, if we can’t manage to do so in an issue as small as a two-hour dinner?

I am not sure what any of you have learned over the course of two years (some of you, I fear, have not learned very much) but speaking for myself, I have learned a lot about the value of maturity, of dignity, of articulation, of compromise. I have learned that before this place, I over-estimated people. I thought that, with education, anyone could overcome ignorance, arrogance, conceit, and obstinacy. That belief has been proved wrong. It has been hard. It has been long. I have held out, I have been blithely optimistic in the face of all evidence to the contrary. But now I’m forced to look at how the cards have fallen and unfortunately, it’s disheartening.

I am not sure if this is really how you want it to end. If so, then I am heartbroken. I am not sure if you are proud of what has happened, proud of how you have acted, proud of what you have done. If you are, then I am disgusted.

I believed in you. I believed in all of you. You have let me down. You have let yourselves down.

Am I angry? No. Am I disappointed? Always.

Empty Talk.

If I only I had the time, if I only I had the talent, if only I had the focus, if only I wasn't so damned scared of what I have to say, if only I knew that you would read them, if only I wasn't so damned scared of myself, if only I thought it would matter.

If only I could write it all.

If only, if only, if only.

There is quite possibly nothing more frustrating than having everything to say but not being able to say it.

Irredeemably. Nonsensically. Irresponsibly. Stubbornly. Irrevocably.

Constantly.

Infinitely.

Claridad.

I often find myself wondering why I am such a mess. I think that it generally boils down to the fact that I was born in the wrong country. Now I know that sounds stupid but in all honesty, why the hell was I not born in Latin America? I feel more at home there and with that culture than with my own. The food, the people, the music, the language, everything. But I'll never really fit. No matter how good my Spanish gets, no matter how much time I spend living there, no matter how many songs I know or how much literature I can reference or how politically opinionated I am about Latin American issues, I will always be on the outside looking in. I will always be watching Latin America through a transparent curtain, watching and learning and loving but never being included. How frustrating.

I've moved on from all of the Neruda and am now into a collection of Benedetti poetry. It's lovely because all of the poems remember where they came from. They have distinctive roots. Benedetti allows his poetry to be biased, to be opaque to foreigners, and I can entirely respect and admire that. The poetry is what it is, the countries are what they are, and that is that. No pretending, no glossing over, no exaggerating, no romanticizing. It's refreshing.

At the moment, life is routine. A routine of contented nothingness. There is nothing left to do anymore, not much left to say. It is undoubtedly the beginning of the end. And in the face of inevitable end, there's not much else to do besides laughing and dancing the nights away.

I am not afraid of regretting much. I have been only what I am, and I really couldn't have done it all any other way. The only thing I am afraid of is how alone I am without you. I guess it was foolish to think that these two years would result in any different outcome, but still. It is sad, like we have been playing out this satirical tragedy for two long years and for what? For nothing, really. For loneliness. And although it may have been foolish to imagine things otherwise, I still could not have possibly been prepared for the reality of the end. But I guess that sometimes, there really is nothing else to do but to leave.

"Lento, viene el futuro. Lento, pero viene."

So true, Sr. Benedetti, so true.

La Rose

The Little Prince was so in love with the rose. It didn't happen instantly. He watered her and cared for her, kept her warm, listened to her. He invested in her. The rose was not easy to love. She was difficult and proud, stubborn, almost a narcissist. But the Prince kept watering her, kept listening to her.

He began to look beyond the pride. He did not see the beauty anymore. He couldn't see the love when it happened. It wasn't in the water, it wasn't in the conversations. But that's how he knew it was love. The most important things can't be seen. The love was in all the time he had invested in her, the responsibility he had taken on in caring for her. She tamed him.

The Prince knew that you must take responsibility for that which you tame. It is only fair. You cannot tame something and then expect it to become untame again, to fend for itself, to be alone. The Prince thought that he was taming her as well. But he was not. She was not tame, she did not understand, she did not really see him at all. She enjoyed being kept warm, enjoyed being watered, enjoyed having an admirer. But it didn't really matter if it was the Little Prince or any other thing that came along. She was not about to take responsibility for anything, let alone the Little Prince's heart.

And so he left. He went far, far away. He worried about his rose, he thought about his rose. He still loved his rose. He was still tamed. But he could not be there with her anymore. He had to keep his heart as far away as he could because although it was tamed, the rose would never care for it. He was tamed for nothing. The rose was important because of the time he had spent on her. But he was useless because of the time the rose would not spend on him. The Prince could not keep allowing himself to be tamed for nothing.

There was nothing else to do but leave.

Brown.

I have been sitting here for the last 30 minutes reading through all of the applications that I submitted. All those frustrating days sitting in my cupboard of a bed on campus, pulling my hair out at my kitchen table back home with paperwork strewn everywhere...the years and months and hours put into my future, all summed up into neat little paragraphs of 2000 characters or less.

So yes, I know I have worked hard. Not necessarily academically, but I have worked very hard on myself. I've worked so hard to be the person I want to be, to shape myself, my views, my mind, my core. This work has been more than any grade could ever convey. I know I have worked, just in different ways than most people have.

But still, I have to stand back and ask, "Why me?". To this, my sister would reply, "Valerie, why not you? Who else? Who better?". But she is not here to say that (and I miss her more than she knows) and so therefore I find myself asking answerless questions.

I do not think I will ever know why I get the opportunities that I do. In my head, I am still a 10 year old girl playing kickball with the boys in an open field in Kansas. I am still an awkward 14 year old whose biggest problem is that every morning she pokes her eye with the mascara wand while trying to apply makeup to make herself look older. I am still the stubborn 17 year old who refuses to do half of her schoolwork because she can't see any benefit in spending time writing essays about books that she read 6 years earlier.

I don't know why things happen to me. I am sure that I must be making some kind of choices to influence things, but I don't know what those choices are. It always surprises me that good things can happen, almost like the universe keeps dragging me to exactly where I need to be.

It is comforting to see everyone's lives spreading out before them. It assures me that we all actually do keep breathing after graduation, that we can be real and interesting people even when we are far away from this place. It makes me realize that I will see people again, that we can still be connected, that although we won't live together anymore, phone lines and internet connections and 20 minute train rides and international flights really could be enough to hold it all in place.

I still want to ask, "Why me?". But I think for now it's best if I just shut up, smile, enjoy the sun, and give in to the tidal pull of the world that is urging me out, urging me forward, urging me to let go.

Immortality

You know, in Classical times, the best thing a person could wish for was a legacy. Honor, pride, remembrance. Achilles went off to battle because he wanted to be remembered, because he wanted his name to be whispered across the pages of history, because a man never truly dies if his name remains immortal.

I think, in a much less epic way, that that's what we all really want. We don't want to think it's possible to replace us, to get over us, to live on without us. We want to think that we make the place, we make the people, not the other way around. I feel my own imminent replacement acutely. What do I want to be remembered for? What do you want to be remembered for?

Speaking of memory, isn't it frustrating how your mind always seems to capture the strangest moments in perfect detail? Sometimes, in a moment, you say to yourself, "I must remember exactly how this feels,". But you don't. The moments you try to hold on to slip away the fastest. Maybe that's because you can't plan the things that matter most. The memories that you do hold on to always seem to be unexpected, sometimes superficially insignificant. But in reality, they are usually the most telling moments.

It's extremely hot out. We're sitting with all the windows open, the sounds of the city blowing in with the wind. We sit on the black couch and chainsmoke, barely hitting the ashtray. It's too hot to get dressed, we sit around in our underwear the whole time. I'm drinking boxed white wine. It's cold and tastes wonderful, but that is because I'm too distracted, laughing at your jokes, to actually taste the wine.

I wait until 1:00 a.m. because it's the first time all day that we're alone. I make chocolate brownies and cover them with bathtowels and make you hike all the way up to our spot with me. We don't even have a flashlight. I light a candle on your brownie and sing Happy Birthday. We talk for far too long about how old we are, about how much we've grown up.

I'm running after you. You won't stop. It's cold and the ground is wet. It's late and dark and I'm scared and I don't know what to do. I grab you and we're standing straight underneath a light, highlighted against all the surrounding blackness. You're crying. My heart hurts. I want to sit and watch you cry forever, I want to hold you and feel you sinking into me. It is so real. It feels like you have broken through some wall, even if only for a few minutes, and I'm allowed to see the flood, the pain, the emotion behind everything. You keep turning away from me but it doesn't matter. Now I know that you care.

We're sitting on the steps, listening to jazz music. The weather is perfect, city lights mix together with the stars. We have coffee and crepes. I sit with my arm around you and I want to cry because I'm so proud of the woman you've become and I don't even know why. All we are doing is eating butter and sugar crepes and laughing at the boys sitting behind us trying to hit on us in French. But I am so proud of you that night that I feel like I will burst.

We are laying off the dock, our heads hanging over the side. The world is upside down. The water and air are both so clear that we can't tell which way is up and which way is down anymore. You say something philosophical, probably borderline pretentious. Half of me feels stupid, the other half wants to laugh at you and your self-aware intelligence. So I do laugh. And half of you thinks I'm an idiot, but the other half thinks I'm cute. I can tell. I smile for the rest of the day.

I come back to the room, I've brought you dinner. You are already asleep in your bed. You fell asleep on top of your sheets, in all of your clothes. I've only known you for a week but my heart hurts with how much I love you already, how much I just want to take care of you. I write you a Post-It note in bad Spanish and hope you realize that you are already my sister.

It is autumn but it's sunny. There are a lot of us, all outside enjoying the weather. You jump in the freezing water and swim around for ages. Everyone thinks you are a crazy person. I know you are a crazy person. When you finally come out, you are the palest thing I've ever seen. I wrap you in two towels and try to carry you back. We put you in the shower to warm you up and I realize that you need to be taken care of, that you need someone to look out for you and wrap you up and keep you warm every once in awhile. And I realize that I don't mind being that person one bit, that I actually love taking care of you.

It's summer. I'm wearing men's pants and a white tank top. I leave the party. I'm so upset that tears won't even come out anymore, I am simply shocked. I wander around on the dock and end up at my favorite spot. It is the first time I've really been there alone with nothing to do. I can still hear the music from the party. I finally start to cry. Then I hear you coming up the path behind me. I ask you how you knew where I was. You tell me that you care about me and that you know me, that you just knew I'd come here. I lean into you and cry, you wrap a jacket around me. I know everything's going to be okay.

Like I said, I always remember the strangest moments. But you are all, at least for me, immortal.