Que Será Será

I should not let myself lapse like this. It’s an unsurprising phenomenon that the farther away you get from writing the harder it is to return to it—just like going back to school after summer, back to exercise after laziness, back to the waking world after a nap. I suppose it’s been three weeks now, and while I have some shiny new (and rather good, I must say) excuses, I know that this is exactly how I let my writing go last time and then didn’t write again for two years. So thanks to JDM for the wrist-slap, and also for trying to ruffle my feathers by espousing journaling as a superior form of writing. Here’s what I have to say about that: your mom goes to college. And writes in a journal. Hah.

So my excuses range from birthday getaways, to fires, to work—all last weekend I was camping with my students, and you can tell this is a good excuse because it’s one where if I had been given the choice whether to write or to be camping, I am absolutely certain I would have chosen writing. Mostly, though, because of being sick, which somehow always creeps up on me right before these trips. Sunday and Monday were my worst days, the kind of days where you remember that you should never wish to be sick so you can get out of work, because being sick SUCKS. And these are the days, my friends, to not have to sleep outside in the cold where you can’t prop your head up. But the trip was a success, and we managed to hike, play on the beach, cook, read Oedipus Rex (the study of literature must not be sacrificed to the great outdoors, must it? And at least now there are 7 more young people who know that “Sophocles” rhymes with “Hercules” and not with “bifocals”), and challenge our greatest fears on a high ropes course. In which yours truly climbed 3/4 of a climbing wall. I never thought I’d see the day. Still, I don’t imagine I’d be any more successful if you placed me in front of the Half Dome cables again. I heard the World’s Greatest Rock Climber on NPR, talking about how the rock communicates with you when you find a handhold, a foothold. You reach for it, and it bites back. I prefer a bit more sophistication in my communication. With any luck, Pam and Oscar will let me into the Finer Things Club. I know I’m behind, but I’ve read Angela’s Ashes, and I would happily prepare an extra credit report on Oedipus Rex. If you couldn’t tell, I’ve discovered that The Office comes on one of the few channels that comes through on our rabbit ears. Oh Frabjous Day!

But I digress (can you digress from a topic that is yet to be established? I’m sure I can, anyway). Ladies and gentlemen, today’s topic is The Future. Having spent the ENTIRE weekend (minus a couple of hours of blissful West Wing escape) writing a transcript and recommendation for my one senior student who has a November 15 deadline for his first college application, the topic is fresh in my mind. Or rather, no other topic can really infiltrate my mind because I have been holed up at home, in front of the computer, all weekend. Except for four hours yesterday in Target, the 99 Cent store, and Trader Joe’s. I’m sure my purchasing behavior would make a vibrant topic for a future post. But as this is the present, we must speak of the future.

I have been trying to counsel Gorby on his next move, trying to stay one step ahead of the college game, oscillating between being so jealous that he gets to go to college, and so thankful that I don’t have to deal with all the pressure and uncertainty of one’s senior year of high school. It is sobering, though, because enough thinking about someone’s future and you begin to realize that the future he’s planning for is the present I’m living in. And what am I doing with it? Spending every waking hour preparing other people for their futures. I’m not resentful…but I find myself craving a break from the…constancy of it, trying to steal precious minutes for self-reflection from the ever-mounting hours of obligation, and when I do find those minutes it seems so much easier to spend them in the West Wing. But am I living in the present? I’m not pining…at least not actively…for the golden days of yore (although I’d love the daylight hours back, thanks—Daylight Savings is my friend), but nor am I doing much that I enjoy outside of work. And I do enjoy much of work. But…it’s work. So what kind of person am I to counsel someone on the future? It’s too depressing to say “don’t be like me, whatever you do,” and I wouldn’t mean that anyway. But I see these kids, and they’re all in that phase where they’re still convinced their lives will not be ordinary.

I remember that. I remember believing that I might very well become famous, find the perfect relationship completely devoid of problems, change the world for the better and travel to every country in the world and, oh, maybe win the lottery or something. I think I believed it all through college. And in college, as it was ending, as it was slipping away like the memories in Eternal Sunshine, we made promises to each other that we would all go in for a ranch in Montana that we’d split 10 ways and all live there and have babies together and write and think and party and watch the sunrise. And it’s not that I wish that’s what I were doing, not most of the time anyway, but I wish it were possible to go through life without splintering your heart into a million pieces and necessarily blunting some of them so that you don’t feel the pain of ordinariness, and of obligation, so harshly. Should I tell Gorby to enjoy college because soon enough he’ll have to start choosing which of his loves to indulge and have to suffer the splintering of friends to the four corners of the globe (if that’s a contradiction in terms, why does it happen so easily?)? Should I tell him to enjoy high school because it’s the last time all the people who are most important to you are within 20 miles of you at all times? Should I tell him he’s embarking on the last four years of his life that are reserved for his own self-discovery? Or refrain from depressing old-person-speak and hope that he just doesn’t discover it for himself too late? Aggh. This is what comes, my friends, of being 26. This second quarter of a century is a doozy.

When I was 17, I wanted to act. I wanted to go to college, demostrate my laudable intelligence to all the world, and then act anyway—be the next Jodie Foster, Claire Danes. Have a funky apartment in the Village and only go to LA when I had to; my real passion was for off-Broadway. I yearned to love myself enough to think that others would love me, to be wanted, to have relationships to write novels about in one’s old age (not journals—novels). I wanted to be skinny. I wanted to be memorable without being slutty, edgy without being a poser, I wanted to travel, to dance, to have it all. But that was just my so-called life. This is my real one.

Reading The Odyssey and Oedipus, the question of prophecies, self-fulfilling and otherwise, is bound to come up. We’ve discussed whether we would want to know what was in store for us, if we had five minutes with Teiresias. And although for some reason the notion of prophecy is quite romantic, I’ve never bought in. Inevitability is so…ordinary. I’d much prefer a version of destiny in which I shape the events, even if that means that I am to blame for them not turning out exactly as I want. I’d rather have five minutes with Doris Day, to lull me with the comfort that whatever will be, will be.

I was asked by a student last week whether I actually like teaching. I still feel guilty that she had to ask. My answer was long-winded, with a bunch of yes-buts: yes, it’s incredibly rewarding, but also incredibly exhausting, draining, work-intensive. Yes, but I never envisioned that this is what I would do. Yes, but I would like it better if I didn’t have to get up early (although nor would I want to stay later than I do). And although I don’t lie, I feel quite uncomfortable telling kids that this was not something I aspired to. I don’t want them to think I don’t want to be there with them, and I don’t want them to think that teaching is not something to be aspired to. I don’t want them to worry that they won’t achieve their dreams, and most of all I don’t want them to see me as someone who hasn’t. Partly because of pride. But partly because it’s more complicated than it was back when our biggest fear was to be ordinary. A substitution of dreams is not the same as their squashing. Taking the good with the bad is not a compromise; it’s the way life is. And 26, though it rounds up to 30 (so did 25, for that matter, but that seems so arbitrary), is not too old to still do some of the things you always hoped you might. I lived to write another day. Anything’s possible.