Limbo

Today is the 23rd of June, a Saturday. According to my not particularly reliable computer clock, it is 5:33 PM. Pretty soon I will need to be vacuuming, removing extraneous papers from the corners of my room and pretending I was a tidy person all along. Sometime around 7 we'll start setting out stuff, organising glasses and silverware, plates and drinks and all that stuff. I will be interested to see how our party turns out; a combined effort from our flat--though only two of us have really invited guests. I am hesitant to put too much effort into it all, despite the fact that 2/3 of the guests will be friends of mine, because of a few particularly unsuccessful and disappointing attempts at planning something, which involve none of the people invited today but nevertheless dampens my enthusiasm.

I haven't worked in a week and a half, and until I reassume my swivel stool behind the desk at my old job I expect I won't be. I've had a good week: I finished a book; went running; met friends for coffee or drinks or lunch or whatnot; went biking; made tenuous progress on one of the two large projects awaiting me. I fill most of my time well, with reading, or newspapers, or writing, or sports. Still, sometimes I feel like I am filling time.

Half of me wants to live out my remaining very precious few weeks completely full-tilt, in a never-say-die, sleep-when-you're-dead, another-stupid-clichée fashion; another part of me wants to slow down and just take it easy. Mostly I'm subscribing to the latter school, still, I can't help but wonder if I am missing something, and if so, what. Travel has become self-limited, as I am lacking the enthusiasm to go somewhere alone, too lazy to visit the people I know and to whom I actually owe a visit, unwilling in many respects to go and do such interesting things as are available to me.

No one says I have to, either; I have none of this maniacal "typical American" kamikazee need to see every European capitol, none of this "this is my only chance" mentality. I know I'll be back; I think I knew that when I first arrived, at age 17, that Europe would be my home. Still, there is a long list of things I wanted to do, intended to do, planned on, hoped for, or hungered after that I just haven't done. There's a list of cities on my "to see" list that have been sitting there for near three years now, if not longer. For this year, I wanted to travel Switzerland, visit France, go hiking in the Alps, perfect my French.... so many things I just never got to.

Though I love just being in FR--and my days are usually filled, and I consider myself as taking advantage of such natural providence as FR offers--I feel I have spent lots of time in a way that, when I look back on it, I won't precisely be able to remember. Countless dinners stretching into the evening, breakfasts on the balcony, jogs and bike rides, strolls around town, hikes up the hill, movies with friends... Though each of these things is a special, unique memory, I am afraid they will run together into a single conception, or a series of activities otherwise indistinguishable, and that even they will fade. I have no way to keep the moments apart, to remember them as I would a trip to somewhere; those moments are recorded either here or in a notebook somewhere, or both. I want to look back on this and remember.

Of course, it isn't over yet. I've still got a few weeks, far too few but not to be overseen or underestimated. I don't have any last-ditch whirlwind tour of Europe planned. My apathy and I will attempt to fulfill some of the university expectations for this semester but from the perspective of 5:49 on Saturday afternoon, I can with somewhat honesty say that I will try, and with more assurance say that it probably won't happen.

Mostly I am trying to figure out how to use the time I've got. I don't know it's possible to go out with a bang (is there a congenital clichée disease going around?) or if that is even important to me. I've been busy for so long I don't know how to not be busy, and I can imagine the vacation I have taken from life for the past week will eventually bore me and I will get my act together. Who knows, perhaps I can get some of these requirements off my back, or perhaps I will prefer to pepper my calendar with coffee visits and drinks with friends than appoints in the library. The jury is out. In all respects.

The Circle Game

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star
Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like “when you're older” must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams

Time is elastic. When you are young it is very slow; ‘just a minute’ is intolerably long, ‘soon’ takes forever and ‘tomorrow’ may as well be an eternity away. Nothing can go fast enough. You wish you were older; with age comes privilege but also responsibility—and through a child’s eyes responsibility is a word which means doing what you’re told even when no one tells you to do it, restricted to discreet instances, bound to potential consequences and largely irrelevant. Few people can, at the age of six, recognize that growing up means shouldering more of the world; for you, growing up means a bigger piece of pie and a half hour more television.

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

The older you get, the more time stretches. Sometimes time passes quickly in leaps and bounds—all of the sudden months or years have passed—or excruciatingly slowly still. Normal speed is tolerable—you still wish you were older, you still want to be allowed to have sleepovers, stay out late, go out with friends, whatever—but you can tolerate normal time. The week stretches endlessly, the length proportional to the amount of homework required or the size of the Friday exam, and the weekend passes on winged feet. Summer can’t come soon enough and May drags on as if it were chained down and had to first fight itself free, and as soon as you know it is August again. Each coming year increases your allowance and decreases your bedtime. Your grades matter, your hairstyle and your clothes matter, and your young shoulders strain under the weight of other people’s expectations.

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels through the town
And they tell him,
Take your time, it won't be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down

You learn to drive. You get a job. Some of you start to drink and smoke and do other things you’d rather not tell your parents about. You learn to juggle all of these things, with more or less success. Other people’s opinions of you become important, sometimes more important than your opinions of yourself, which only very few people have anyways. A pimple is a tragedy and you arrange your entire morning to have a ‘chance’ encounter with that one person whose flaws you have smoothed with your imagination and your conviction that this person is your special someone, regardless of the fact that you don’t know them, they don’t know you and you don’t ‘have a chance’. Your dreams far outstrip reality; you no longer want to be an astronaut or a fireman or a ballerina and the loss of these ideals is not always replaced by “better” ones. You’ll go to college, and to do this you take the right classes and make friends with the right teachers, you study for exams and standardized tests, you sign up for the right clubs, you increase your extracurricular activities and you consider whether debate or DECA looks better on your resume. Time accelerates.

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There'll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through

All of the sudden there is no more school. Your applications and essays pay off and you receive the thicker packet among the thinner “It’s nothing personal, but…”. You fit everything you own into a car or two and then half of a 12 x 12 room and try not to get swept away. Among four hundred other confused and bleary-eyed students, some hungover, some still drunk, many just confused, harried, scared, excited, you hunch in the back and squint at the powerpoint and the small lone figure pacing the stage with a gravelly wireless for company. You take notes, you sit exams, you join clubs, fraternities, sororities, and it all comes piling in in a frantic rush. Finals week becomes hell on earth, you sit five exams, work 20 hours, sleep five a night, study, stress, eat poorly, drink far too much coffee and in the end are so unbelievably happy to have survived that far that you don’t even care what grade you got. Time accelerates. Soon enough you’ll be finished, words like Senior Thesis, Graduation and Career Fair loom in on your consciousness. Perceived time is now faster than real time; in no time at all a week or two or five or fifty have passed and you fend off tomorrow with such of your youth as remains.

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Somewhere amid the stress and the dreams “real life” begins; or rather, at some point you realize that it was there all along. The current carrying you is strong, powerful with the weight of tradition and expectations, yet you may still change it, swim to the other side or even climb out if you choose. You may drift and yet steer. You no longer yearn for the future or gaze longingly at the past, you simply are, you exist, you enjoy the moment you are in. Your perspective changes and you see something of the future though there are bends in the river beyond which you cannot see. If you are lucky you find someone with whom to drift along, or you prefer to be alone and resent when others ask you if you are “getting by” alone. Your expectations for yourself become more important than other people’s expectations for you, and it is shattering for the parents if the pedestal on which they have placed their little darling is more a painting of dreams than a mirror of reality. And this is your life; what will you make of it?