The metamorphosis
Posted Wednesday, June 18, 2008 @ 11:00 AM
I'm sitting in a computer lab in the basement of the student center (I'm taking classes at the University this summer until early July), freezing beneath air vents and fluorescent lights. I have enough time before I need to report to work that I could go back to my place, but sometimes I feel more thoughtful and more productive when I forget about my car in the parking lot and stay stranded on campus.
It has been a while since I felt driven to write—not just here, but at all. Things are beginning to bubble up again, whether it's the dissatisfaction with daily life, the stress of school and work, a sense of change, or the desire to procrastinate on a daily basis. Sometimes I think we experience sea changes in character without fully realizing it. Can one truly be cognisant of one's own transformation as it is happening? I find that for myself, whether the transformation is physical or unrelated to the body, it is often a single glance, an unremarkable photo, or a tiny moment which makes me aware. For instance, when I look at this photo, taken my freshman year of high school (was that really almost six years ago?), I see someone else entirely.
Mostly I see the physical transformation of my face—that single photo is the main evidence I have of the last of my middle school baby fat, before my jawline sharpened and I began to grow into my adult features. But of course there's an emotional resonance. I still feel a connection and nostalgia for the place it was taken. I remember the fabric of that shirt, the way it fit my torso when I wore it. I remember putting on that bracelet every day. I remember how my life was shaped by the daily routine of high school. I remember what made me happy or excited then. I compare all of this to today. When I visit that place now, I feel differently—it is a place of the past, which, despite all efforts, I can no longer really activate. I don't know where that shirt is, or whether I got rid of it. It probably wouldn't fit, even if I still had it. The bracelet, too, is gone. My daily routine couldn't be more different. What makes me happy or excited now might have seemed alien to me then.
It's not so much that I feel a loss at all this; I could care less about the shirt or the bracelet, the physical transformation of my face, or even the lack of active connection I feel when visiting such an important place from my past. It is true that my memory and my life plagues itself with sentimentality and nostalgia. But, stripping all that away, what remains is merely an awareness—an attempt to draw a line connecting point A and point B. True—I myself made the journey, but while traveling, did I stop to consider the shape of the path? To hesitate now as I draw the line feels only natural. After all, when we board a plane that flies from New York to San Francisco, how can we really comprehend that distance? What cities, what rivers, what houses have we flown over? How many people are below us, and what are they doing? How are they feeling? How many of them look up at the plane to consider its passengers and where they are headed? The most we emerge with at our destination is a pack of peanuts in our belly, a few chapters read, or a short nap—never a genuine astonishment at the great distance we have traveled.
Sometimes I catch myself having acutely adult moments, and I'm not sure what to think of them. Last night in my local grocery store, I stood in line at the checkout. Having already unloaded my items onto the conveyor belt, I considered how much money I would save with my discount card (nearly $17.00, I would discover), and how many buy-one-get-one-free items I had chosen. An extra tub of ice cream, two extra steaks, an additional package of cheese. I felt genuinely excited and satisfied with this. It was some time later before I considered what this meant. How often do adolescents find themselves alone in grocery stores shopping for planned meals to cook at home, genuinely delighted by the idea of a discount? When, if ever, do they feel relieved and content to return home at the end of a long day, read quietly, and turn in early for bed?
The spring semester and the brief extension of school into the summer has left me much altered, though I'm uncertain whether anyone besides myself can observe it. What's interesting about reflecting on the line—the connection between two different characters of my life, both of them me, neither of them me—is that quite suddenly I'm aware of the next point along the way. In acknowledging the distance between myself and point A, it's only natural to consider how far point C will be—incalculably so. The things I admire about myself from point A might not have come along to point B. What else might go missing when I arrive at C?
Welcome to the past, bucko. You're swimming through the archive of rocket-fish.org. If this isn't where you were headed, I suggest you get out of here while there's still time.
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That shirt, if you will recall, was purchased during our tee-shirt-underwear craze from the Alabaster thrift store. You found it and I was jealous, so you promised that when you were done with it you'd mail it to me, which you eventually did. I still have it; it's in a box in storage in Birmingham.
18 Jun 2008, 1:19 PM.
This reminds me of something a Buddhist monk I am fond of wrote on his birthday (the 17th):
"Where is that infant now? Where is the fetus he was before? The sperm and egg he was before that? And before that? Where are the toddler, child and young man he was reborn as? All dead, all reborn as the man who writes these words, a man who may or may not be reborn and reborn again, until he "dies" (which may or may not happen an instant from now) and the atoms that form him break apart and form something else - which is also nothing else and no one else."
Yours is much less depressing, even with the proper context.
18 Jun 2008, 8:05 PM.
Hi Glynnis!
I am SO glad to find a post here today. Every once in a while I check up on Rocket Fish to find that good ol' 'Cities from 2007' post still sitting there at the top of the page, and ironically it always made me a little sad as I'd be thinking "Where did Glynnis go? Is she okay? What's up with school?" even though I don't even really know you.
Many things change, many stay the same. As I moved out of my home and into a dorm I literally find myself in the exact same situation: how much discount does this bring me? Do I ever even EAT that?! Should I buy this item at the other store where it's cheaper?
Those things come and go. Like friends, maybe. I think the best way to deal with it is through always accepting yourself for who you are at the moment, really liking you for who you are, because next thing you know it's gone and your old neurotic self is suddenly reading Dan Brown and sipping red wine on a leather couch in a spotless house thinking where your husband and kids are hanging out.
02 Jul 2008, 3:31 AM.
One day I know you'll find a place called home.
03 Aug 2008, 8:18 PM.