Anomie

I might post later again tonight since this isn't new material and because I want to try writing something happy. I like challenges. However, I was browsing through some old files and I came across this, and I was shocked to see how nicely it complements my current mood. This is something I wrote last year (two semesters ago) right before summer break. I had a rough school year- the roughest yet, to be sure- and I just couldn't wait to get home. If I would have kept a blog that year, it would have been TWICE as self-indulgent and pathetic as this one. So, here's the story of my year in a composition. I wrote it for a creative writing class. The assignment was something like, "Write about an object that triggered a change in you." I chose my Alexander statue. It might be a little confusing. The original paper helped establish time and perspective with italics. It's also a little TOO sacharine, a little corny at parts, too, but it's got that same rawness I've unleashed in a couple of these posts- always liberating. Oh, some background- Alexander the Great is my personal hero, always has been. I tried to represent my internal grievances and disappointment through an imagined dispute between myself and Alexander, who speaks through the statue. It's really a clash between the new and the old, the boy and the man.





The Statue and the Man


It’s time to go back to Fraser, time to spend hours, days, months getting sunburned with a good book in my hands, my hands growing black against the bleached pages. It’s time to see old high school friends, to pledge to jog every morning with them until fifteen pounds are gone, to pretend I haven’t changed. I’ll be back in my room soon to play my keyboard, resurrect my stereo, and fall asleep underneath dinosaur-themed curtains that should have been removed and replaced when I was at college, if not when I learned how to walk. I expect some awkwardness. That much is sure. My family will have to accommodate a new me, my friends will have to accept my changes, but they’ll learn, and we’ll make out all right.

But what of Alexander?

A statue sits in my room, a bust, to be precise, of Alexander the Great. It’s milky white, like a boiled oyster shell or like one buffed by eons of sandy undertows. I missed it while I was gone. At first, I could still feel its steely stare, calling me to greatness, asking me to pick up a sword and shield, showing me the glow of the unconquered, unseen horizon, just like I always had. I could feel it in everything I did. Certainty and resolve were my aegis. Ambition was my torch. I was going to be a scientist, a physicist, and I was going to find worlds within worlds.
Summer starts this Wednesday when I toss my computer and bike into my father’s van to again find Fraser and lemonade, and ice cream, and thunderstorms, and pools, and Frisbees. Friends, family, jobs, habits- all waiting for me to pick up where I left off, to jump back in.

But what of Alexander?

He’ll know. The man who sleeps beneath his gaze is a strange one. The person who dusts his shoulders is different, is foreign. The new man will avoid phone calls and family dinners; he’ll listen to his music louder than the boy of last summer did. He’ll dread tomorrow and his next two hour car ride upstate.

Slowly, things began to shrink- my ego, my ambition, my congeniality, my certainty, and my view of the ends of the earth. College showed me limits, college showed me reality. It took the spear out of my hand and replaced it with a job application. It removed my brothers-in-arms and substituted them for fat, droopy sacks- inhaling smoke and vodka and expelling puke and piss. The statue that I envisioned to be seated on my desk seemed smaller than the one I had at home, less detailed, less powerful, less magnificent. Shrunk.

Spring seemed to help a lot. In a last-ditch effort to fix my life at college, I obliterated my schedule. I could again feel the pricks of independence, and the short, excited, pulsating breaths they fostered. I started acing my classes and showing interest. No conqueror on my desk yet. I planned next year, science-free, tried making friends, consulted advisors, and applied for scholarships. Not even a helmet. Some wounds need more than a quick bandage.

I’ll be in the Upper Peninsula in June to paddle down crystal rivers, duel voracious salmon, and feel the tops of mountains under my toes. The jerky will be a salty delight; my flashlight, a scalpel to slice away the thick dark that hides most interesting creatures. I’ll breathe the same air, memorize the same tracks, and visit the same bait shops.

But what of Alexander?

He knows it’s no salvation or escape, only diversion. He’ll notice how the vistas produce shorter gasps; the sunsets, less sighs. The ghosts of the year will remain. Without wonder, all things, even nature, lose their luster.


Poker pots, used car lots, chocolate, and Slurpees.
Blockbusters, gut-busters, pool tables, “hello cable!”
Head pressed against the seat, I dream of heat, of barbequed meat,
Sand beneath my pale and shivering feet.
My computer and bike thump against the van walls.
They’re just as elated to escape Holmes Hall.
The frost of February, the dark of December,
These are the only things I remember.
With nothing to do, there was nothing to say.
So, I sat, silent, and wasted my life away.

Books and magazines! I’ll have time for the multitude. My library card is going to be scanned more than Paris Hilton’s American Express. There’s a fantastic, old swing that hides behind the building. If you can stand a splinter, you can find heaven. There, I’ll forget, delete, and dream.

But what of Alexander?

Books are great, but they can stifle life. They can leave you content with inaction, speculation, and indolence. Over the last eight months, they softened him with the brush of every page. Life shouldn’t be paper, but marble, white marble!

Curiously, I began to cherish the exams and the papers. Homework and studying were celebrations. They were privileges, divine invitations to do something.

There will be yelling and hugs and stories and shrugs. I can’t wait to see my family. We’ve been close all my life, confiding in one another, drawing strength from each other’s uncompromising individuality- our identity had always depended on how un-identical we were. Once again, I’ll have to sweep my sister’s teeny-bopper magazines out of my room and pry her cosmetics out of drawers. J.J., my brother will be gripping his football, clenching its laces, before I even set down my dirty clothes, and, of course, I’ll oblige him. My father will have a fruity, alcoholic beverage with three ice cubes bobbing in it, to raise at my return, and my mother will probably have too many bags, keys, coupons, papers, and order forms to really give me the over-solicitous pokes, prods, and embraces that all mothers are prone to.

But what of Alexander?

“Stand down, stand down, men! A welcome? Bah! Seize the interloper!”

Summer always fixes things, the student’s sanity-saver. Everyone fantasizes about chucking their back-pack into a cobwebbed corner. The crash of pool-side cannonballs is deafening before exams are even mentioned. No one can fight the call of summer. It’s when the sun and the earth finally see each other through the clear blue glass of warm skies and suddenly rejoice. Moreover, it’s that time of year when accomplishment and ambition, after building and developing all year, are finally bolted onto their final pedestal for all to see and marvel at. Diplomas and report cards last the whole summer, their radiance sufficient to condone all types of sloth and joy.

I scoffed at the honors college. Would a GPA reduction really keep this caboose on track? Harder classes and the challenges they brought were welcome to the intellect, but a deeper, more fundamental, side of my mind knew that I needed something else: renewed purpose, a jolt of ambition, a fire to set my spirits ablaze. No gold-leafed borders will encircle my name on the mantle this year.

I’m no Alexander.

He’s no conqueror, not anymore. Will he ever know marble, what it’s like to set enemies on fire with a stare or to launch thousands of men into oblivion and eternity with but a word? Summer offers him sleep, not success. The fire is on his skin, not in his heart. Let’s hope next summer, I find him more familiar.