Lord I was born a ramblin' man

When it's time for leaving, I hope you'll understand.

Facing the rest of my life as an unsegmented whole with only prospective plans to mar its unblemished surface is daunting. I know it's a false perspective to see it like that; like a man staring up at a sheer cliff face without looking down at how far he's already come. Still, there are ways of seeing things that are pretty ingrained in my skull regardless of conclusions I've come to proving the contrary.

There are things I am supposed to do now. Go to grad school, get a good job, make money, start a family, buy a house. It's a shame I won't live forever. I want to do all of those things. But not right now. I have too much to do first.

When I finally do get to settle down, I'll probably be approaching eighty.

Things I need to do before I start a family and find a place I want to live for a while:

• Start the bookstore
• Start the accompanying programs
• Go back to school
• Publish some short stories
• Live somewhere else for a while
• Explore
• Publish some scholarly works
• Figure out what I think is important enough to do for the rest of my life, and find an equivalent career
• Find the right person/people to work/live with

Things I can do after I start a family:

• Work at the bookstore/accompanying programs
• Help start a school
• Write a book/more short stories/more scholarly works

I guess the difference seems to be mobility. I like being able to, at the drop of a hat, leave. Despite its strains, I think that I like living at three different places at the same time on some level. I can't get comfortable like I could in college, but part of me really does not want to get comfortable right now.

I want to move. I want my own space. Are those two desires incompatible? Whenever I travel I am sure to rent or share space, never to own or settle. When I stay still long enough, the space I stay in becomes my own. Can I shrink down what I consider to be my "own space" enough to travel with it? A few possessions (a few books and a towel)?

I don't think that would work. Possessions are not the same as space. I think it is familiarity that composes the kind of comfort I am seeking.

I do not want to stay where I am for too long. It is a nice area, but I have the itch to keep moving. And to form lasting attachments.

I am unclear.

Y'all don't know me

Right. So. It's been a long time.

I've spent the past few weeks doing all of those things that I love to do when I don't have something more substantial to do. I slept late. I read. I played many videogames. I watched a ton of movies and television. I thought about the future and I reflected on the past. And so on.

The trouble is that it's tough to stop doing these things when you've started. I would love to continue reading for hours upon hours every day until I get sick of it, as I inevitably will (as I do with everything). But in the end I never have the time. I spent almost a whole day playing videogames last week. I beat two of them in one day. I wish I could take the time to hit bottom with it. If I could just let myself be immersed in videogames for a week or two I would be so sick of them by the end that I would beg to go back to work.

It's a difference of happinesses, I think. These things occupy me. When I indulge in overwhelming quantities of reading, watching movies, playing videogames, and sleeping in, I am happy. For a time. But I am never satisfied. When I was writing my theses I was crazy and the pressure was intense, but I felt good doing it. And that feeling wasn't so fleeting as the feeling I get from beating a game or watching yet episode of The Office.

Now, don't get me wrong, I believe that reading (some) books is good for you. I believe that it can lead to satisfaction and durable, long-lasting happiness. In fact, I beleive that watching (some) movies can have a similar effect. As can playing (some) videogames. It's the overindulgence that gets to me. But I don't do well with pacing myself. When I was writing my theses I would do it in five or six hour shifts. Of course, then I would go home and watch some stupid movie or drink with my friends to unwind, but my point is that it was the same kind of immersion. I don't read just one book at a time.

My family does a reading competition every summer. We split into teams to handicap those with several jobs or a five-year-old reading level. I'm paired with my step-father this year. Any other year that would have been declared unfair (he used to do over 10,000 pages a summer), but he has a second job now that prohibits him from spending many waking hours at lesiure. My mom is with my brother, another previously prohibited pairing, okayed this year due to my brother's seeming lack of appetite for reading. My sisters are paired with my girlfriend, and the three of them are currently kicking our collective asses.

My oldest younger sister takes this competition very seriously. Whenever she has another book to add to the list she walks downstairs, book in hand, and takes her time writing the title, author, and amount of pages on her chart. Or she has me do it.

I don't ever remember losing. I'm sure I have, but I don't remember it. The losers buy the winners a book each.

I went to B&N yesterday. My grandfolks had gotten me a gift card there for graduation. I knew it was dangerous walking in. I had a $25 gift card. When I saw the buy two get one free section I knew I was doomed. I don't remember exactly how much I spent, but I do know that it was far too much considering how many books I still have to read and how unemployed I am.

I finally own The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. I also picked up two books by an author I've been eyeing for some time now, The Yiddish Policemen's Union and Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon (author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay). And I picked up one that just looked like too much fun to pass up, Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis.

Yes, I learned my lesson. When I open my bookstore the first thing customers will see will be a table full of irresistable titles with some kind of discount involved.

I want to start working out again. I get carried away with everything incorporeal and then I forget that I have a body that needs to be used as well. I forget sleep, forget food, forget interaction for hours if not days. If I could only wake up sometime before noon and do something physical I would remember to be human again.

But then I'd need to go food shopping.

What's that?

What is the difference between a good person and a great person? Probably quite a few things. But for me, one of the key differences is responsibility. A great person takes responsibility for their own lives and their own decisions. Generally, for a great person, if their life is shit they look no further than themselves for why.

Now, that is an enormous generalization. Mandela probably never blamed himself for being in prison for two decades. Then again, after having read his autobiography, though he was angry and upset about being imprisoned, I did not get the impression that he considered his life to be shit. In fact all clues point to the opposite. He studied by correspondence, he built a community in the prison, he continued to fight.

What I've heard of Martin Luther King Jr. suggests that he often despaired in his fight, that he was often scared and feared that his efforts were useless. And yet he continued on. He always had his faith in the group around him, in himself, and in his god. I would have entered into a ten round knockout fight with him on his faith in god, but I respect the hell out of him for drawing such power from it.

Now do you catch my drift? Great people take responsibility. And they fuck up. And they own it.

Example: Jon Stewart (yes, I am invoking a comedian as a great person) entered into an extremely long debate with Cliff May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, on our country's use of torture in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. During the course of this heated discussion Cliff May asked Jon Stewart, point blank, whether or not he thought president Truman was a war criminal for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was a pause, and then Jon said that yes, he did think that.

A few episodes later, Jon began the show by saying, "That was a stupid thing to say." He took responsibility for his words, did not blame the comment on May for having badgered him to that point, and simply apologized.

Guess what got me thinking about all this. Rocky Balboa. During the movie, Sly gets into an argument with his son after his son accuses him of 'casting a big shadow' and of being the reason his life sucks. This is Rocky's response (abbreviated):

[...] Then the time come for you to be your own man and take on the world, and you did. But somewhere along the line, you changed. You stopped being you. You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you're no good. And when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow. Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. And not you, not me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done! Now if you know what you're worth then go out and get what you're worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain't you! You're better than that.

Though the writing is a little less than subtle, sometimes its nice to be hit over the head with a message so clear. And the delivery is pretty fucking cool. It's hard to get chills from Sylvester Stallone's acting. And yet...

The point I am lamely attempting to make is this: This doesn't feel like a moment of crisis to me. Maybe it isn't one. But it is indubitable that there is too much work to be done for the good people not to be great. If we prove unequal to the challenges facing us, if we shirk our responsibility and blame a failing economy or the generations that came before us, if we locate our strength anywhere but inside ourselves, we will fail just as many good people have before us.

Commencement

The event of beginning.

I am now commenced. Which is to say that before this magical event I was not commenced. I had not yet started. None of that counted. What freedom! What a fucking waste!

What were the past 21 years if not a commencement? What are the next fifty? The following thirty? Does life not really begin until death? I know far too many people who died before "commencement" to make that title seem anything but a trite and slightly insulting premise.

It seems almost classist in its ignorance. As if all those who did not "commence" never began their lives. Don't even get me started on "graduation"...

Anyway, the college umbilical cord has been mostly cut (but for the part where I am serving on the Board of Trustees for the next two years), and I am now set adrift to "start" my life.

But fuck y'all, I started years ago. Didn't we all?

For example. Three years ago I moved to Washington DC for two months. Yes, it was a limited experience. But for those two months I lived on my own in an apartment that I paid for out of my own pocket. I bought my own food, paid my own way for transportation, and fell flat on my face in any attempt to build my own community. Thank fucking god I had that experience.

I'm looking for an apartment. A place to put my stuff. And I want a job. Something to pay for the apartment and for food and some transportation when my bicycle is not sufficient.

I'm also looking to finally put together that bookstore I've been hinting at all year. Let's see if I can do it before next spring.

I also want to take a break. I've been going nearly non-stop for the past seventeen years in a constant cycle of academia, almost always subjected to other people's standards. The way I learned to deal with that was to set my own standards higher than theirs. I want to take a break from that, if only for a few weeks. I want to read what I want to. Write whatever. I want to watch TV all day again, like I did over the winter when I was without motivation, but I want to enjoy it. I don't want to feel that quiet desperation that nags at me when I have something else I should be doing.

Commencement is a beginning in the same sense that every change is a beginning. One might as well hold a ceremony like that for learning how to drive, reading a great novel, having the kind of conversation that gets burned into your memory, and so on.

I'm beat. I moved out of the place that I've called home for four years today and I know that I will never live there again. Oddly enough, I don't feel all mushy like I thought I would. Maybe it will hit me later. Maybe I'm not that nostalgic.