it'll cure anything, it will.
at sewanee, it's spring party weekend, which is either a weekend to hide in the woods, get lots of homework done, have a lot of fun at fraternity band parties, or be drunk from thursday afternoon to whenever the hangover wears off sunday morning. depends on your perspective, i suppose.
the deans called it spring festival weekend, which is a convenient way to avoid using the word party. festival sounds less debaucherous and more sophisticated i guess.
life, sometimes, is the most confusing thing. how am i supposed to know what is good and true and life-giving, and also what is the antithesis of all those things? death-bringing. because the opposite of life-giving is death-bringing, and i often think that there is little in between, or that what is in between doesn't matter much (for why be seeking after anything that is not ALIVE?) because it's inconsequential.
and to decide which is which? what have i but what has already been sung within my soul, what has already been painted on the walls of the inside of my heart, what has already been written in my mind?
i left the amphitheater tonight to a field of beer cans and the flickering lights of the stage somewhat disconcerted and confused about what to make of all this. i have "gone out" some this weekend, because in my head i've said that i wanted to be with people, and i've wanted to connect and make relationships with a side of sewanee with which i don't often interact. to some extent unfortunately, i know that my presence allows people to relate to me that normally wouldn't, and i hope that people can see that you can be at a party and have fun, but not have to be wasted to do so, and that you can spend time with friends at a party and enjoy yourself, but also still be a part of the reconstitution of the world away from the profane into a living world, the world for which the mountains and the rocks and the trees are groaning. but does my presence legitimize the destructive things that do happen? i'm not sure what to make of a lot of things.
last month, while in ecuador, i spent a lot of time thinking about sewanee, and my place in it, and what i would hope for it. what is sewanee's legacy now, and what could it be? what should it be? i realized that i often judge the people and not the systems. i abhor that tendency within myself. yes, there are destructive, death-bringing systems and cycles here, as there are everywhere, and it's easy to associate the people caught up in those systems and cycles with the negative aspects themselves. yet they are just people, (just as i am just a person) caught and held in a systemic destruction, one that many of us will spend the rest of our lives seeking freedom from.
so i began the walk home feeling old and alone in a place so full of youth. i wanted to reach out and love and touch and heal the brokenness i saw all around me, disguised as fun in the fulfillment of a temporal desire (am i only trying to legitimize the awkwardness i feel in these places, a product of my conservative upbringing?). friends there, friends there, some crying, some about to. some to cry in weekends to come, in the moments of hurt and emptiness. take courage, my friend, and seek life! and yet, there are things that must be let go, and i walked.
it began to rain, and my linen shirt was soaked quickly and the long walk became cold and longer. there was daybreak to be found in the deepest night, but for a while, only the darkness, and the sounds of a college night surrounded me. there are the feelings of insecurity always. like why can't i figure this out and get over myself and go drink and have sex and fun and enjoy it all again and again... but then there is the feeling that i am just alone and i am too old for this place. it's not a feeling of superiority, but a lament.
but there was grace tonight. daybreak. and nothing triggered it. i wonder if it was something spiritual that came around me and warmed me up. as i walked over the final stretch of the dam back to my dorm, i realized that i had grown warm, and that my tongue was out to catch the rain and that this place, my heart and my body was being cleaned by this cool, spring rain.
rain has always done that for me. sometimes it takes a while.
and i wanted that feeling of being alive that i wrote about in "if these mountains had eyes, they would wake." antsy with anticipation, i changed, and intended to go swimming at lake cheston in the rain in the cold water. though i often think it a weakness of my independence, i still think that happiness is more real, and definitely better when it's shared, so elizabeth received a crazy call from a wet boy, saying "come now. cheston. swim."
so we swam in the rain and shivered ourselves into warmth of life in that cold water. and i yelled freedom and felt so alive again.
"for one splendid fleeting moment something mellow floated through my deadly tired body. i said to her, 'open this window, from these last days onward i can fly.'"-werner herzog
from these last days onward i can fly.
1 comment:
LOVE THIS
Post a Comment