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Lying in the Sun and Sighing in the Moon
by jean at 04:31 PM on November 20, 2005
School is hard. I go to work and I go to class. Then I go to my apartment and study. In my free time I have a choice of cooking dinner, buying groceries, and doing laundry.
Days or nights that I can't take this routine, I go to the bookstore, get brunch, or shop for clothes. If I feel I can start again, I start again. Does this sound dreary? It feels dreary.
I feel out of touch with everyone, and I guess I really am. I'm not in touch with them the same way as I used to be, of course. I don't see my friends at our favorite coffeeshop several times a week. I'm a thousand miles away. I don't linger until the shop closes up for the night and join the nightly ritual of convincing everyone to go eating at 24-hour Korean restaurants in Koreatown. If you show up after 2 a.m. when the bars close, you can notice the cars in the parking lot outside. Several of them will be parked crookedly.
I can't remind my friends to park on a side street to avoid the drunken Koreans.
When looking north, I don't see mountains. When looking east, I don't see mountains either. There is no ocean. There is a giant lake, but the other side of it can be reached in a few hours by car. The other side of the Pacific is not reachable except through 12 hours on an airplane. When I am driving around Chicago, I still feel amazed that I should be so far away.
I suppose I should mention things I can do. I can check out any of a few million books in the school library. That is nice. I can wander the library bookstacks, which smell like rotting paper, leather, and binding glue like all university libraries do. That smells like knowledge to me.
If I log onto the campus network, I can look at unimaginably expensive subscription Web sites, like the Oxford English Dictionary and academic journal sites. "Your access courtesy of..." is always printed discreetly in the corner. I study and eat in halls with dark wood-paneled walls, vaulted stone ceilings, and giant oil portraits of very rich men everywhere. That last part isn't exactly a good thing. But it is amusing, as if I'm going to school with Harry Potter.
I meet a lot of undergraduates. They are so young! Even the oldest ones are still eight years younger than me. Last night one called me to cancel a ride I was supposed to give him. He left me a pitiful sounding voicemail saying, "I'm sorry... something unusual has happened. I'll try to make the party later. You don't have to pick me up." Later I saw him at the party. What had happened? He'd been hung over. He gave me a look like a wounded sheep would. All that over a hangover!
comments (8)
If you drink to the point of having a devastating hangover and then go to a party, then a hangover isn't an unusual experience for you.
by anna at November 21, 2005 7:42 AM
Sounds like my experience moving to Calgary to go to university, all those many years ago... Big city, no friends, no familiarity.
Thankfully those things get better over time. Get more familiar etc...
by chuckwoolery at November 21, 2005 4:24 PM
Ah, so he is a dirty lush! Good point.
by jean at November 21, 2005 7:03 PM
I hope so, Chuck. I have a huge urge to just make a run for it and go home. I'll stick the year out. But my interest in going for a Ph.D. is taking a hard beating.
by jean at November 21, 2005 7:05 PM
Pleased to be advising what the hoped-for long term outcome of this foray would be. Jean.
by anna at November 22, 2005 7:30 AM
Don't they call it making strangers? When you're in a far off place away from the norm? Not friends, you make strangers. Maybe some'll become friends, but because your time there is short and you know it, you're really just making strangers. I've made strangers. I lived in London for a fair whack and I can't remember a single name of any of the people I went drinking with, lived with, worked with. Strangely though, I remember where they were all from, Portsmouth, Cornwall, Sunderland, Glasgow...
Now when I tell stories about them it goes, "There was this guy I worked with in London, from Portsmouth." And: "I went drinking with this Glaswegian girl in London once..."
Can't for the life of me remember a single name. If I see any of them again, I know to do the:
"What was your name again?"
"It's me...*Insert name here*!"
*Brain sighs and slaps its tiny forehead: Ooooooh that's it!*
"Noo, idiot, your LAST name! Of course I remembered your first name!"
by Ex Crimson Guard NCO at November 22, 2005 3:46 PM
Anna, I don't have a long-term plan. I'm planning two or three years ahead only. I'm going to wait until June to see if I want to apply for Ph.D. programs again. Right now I think I will, though. If I do, I have a few in mind. I'll go a few years and see if I continue or don't.
Office jobs are really hard on the body and I don't like how seasons and years pass and you can't tell, and also offices sometimes look very unpleasant inside, the chairs are unergonomic, and the air in the A/C system is dusty. You know? In school I get to walk around the campus, the buildings look nice, and the bulletins and notices are kind of cheerful. They make things sound hopeful, like interesting things might always just be around the corner. That's nice.
Nice save, Crimson. I like that saying. "Making strangers" fits. Some of them are even peculiar on top of it, since they're graduate students and all. One gal says that every student has their nemesis. When we sit in discussion (which has about 20 people), we all have one person who we secretly stare at, because we don't understand how a person like that could exist. And when they look our way, we pretend that we were reading our notes the whole time.
Chris, are you around? Have you ever experienced this? Perhaps not, since you study, you know, a real subject. :)
by jean at November 30, 2005 9:47 PM
I usually see those people hanging off some babe's arm. Oo-oo'ing with all the pumped up enthusiasm of King Kong in the presence of petite women. I don't ask, "How or why does that exist?" But I do wonder, "How the FUCK did he manage it?"
A young fat lass working the nightshift at a garage gave me the, "I haven't see you" routine the other day. "Can't see you, engrossed, too busy." She was one of those people you mentioned. As she ignored me I was imagining her life's story. Dull read it'd be. She was mopping the floor listening to music, looking like a downs sufferer or something. I knocked on the window a few times, but nope. She was all pissed at me for wanting petrol or something, she didn't have time for me, too busy being pissed at the world - and in that five minutes pissed at me - for her being born with that face, with that body that she let go, and with that god awful taste in slacks and t-shirts that was clearly my fault, and with that shit job that her parents she probably she still lived with forced her to get.
"Whack whack whack! Move your fat arse woman! Some of us have lives!" *Imagine the slowest, laziest, I could drop dead right now and nobody would care... kind of walk. And then I go...* "Hiya, can I get twenty Embassy with that please? And can you put the points for the petrol on this card, ta." :)
by Ex Crimson Guard NCO at November 30, 2005 11:15 PM