Thursday, Aug. 19, 2004
I've never had a way with women, but the hills of Iowa make me wish that I could, posted at 10:53 a.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com The drive went well. We left Baltimore at 7am and got to Lansing at around 5pm, listening to Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island on the way. I spent the afternoon and evening in Lansing, a city is currently pulling on me like a magnet. I drive through the campus of Michigan State, and the nostalgia hits me like the hard rain of a sudden summer storm through the window, and it's powerful and I'm not sure where exactly it came from or why it strikes like it does. Much of my college memories are grand - the friends, the RA job, the Common Grounds that I started, the moment I joined Gold's Gym, working at Cuppa Java, Grand River-ing it - but there's the dark corner that I don't like to think about as much. Like, last night I remembered the January I got in a car accident, a minor one but it still shook me up, and how I had a fever at the same time, and how I used the combination as a way to mask the rather profound depression I had at the time. I didn't go to my finals that week and ending up failing everything for a semester. They let me take them again, and I ended up only failing one course, but that was a dark moment. I remember that summer I lived in Sny-Phi, the year before the January incident, when I would look out of my window and imagine what it would feel like to get on the roof outside, and how far the fall was, and if it would actually hurt or not. I was not suicidal because I was not high enough up, and was just too scared of death, but I remember listening to that Bjork song about throwing yourself off a cliff and listening to what your body sounds like tumbling down, and wondering what it would feel like for me. That was 1999 or so, five years ago. I weighed over 300 pounds, deliriously unhealthy both mentally and physically (and they're very interrelated for me, they still are), and the feeling that my time had passed and I was treading water was present with every breath.Still, last night was filled with the good memories, and most of my MSU career was happy. It is where I learned that I wanted to teach. It's where I learned to value diversity and friendship. Last night, I had drinks with Erin, who has remained one of my closest friends since we met as first year RAs in what, amazingly, was in March of 1998. With Alan, who has aged better than any of us, maintaining the boyishness that black men seem to be able to maintain longer than anyone else, able to pull off the bald head look that I wish I could and wish I didn't have to think about. With Jen, who is quitting her job and going back to school to become a high school school English teacher, who is still quick with a grin and with what seems to be, in all cases, a genuine affection and enthusiasm for life. Those people, and all the others that I remember most - from friends of my freshmen year like Jake and Tiffany and Jenni and Jason to friends of later (um, 5th and 6th) years like Simon and Gale and Stacia and Kevin - form the best memories, and my worst ones are also there, and it's clear to me that many of the most powerful experiences of my life, both positive and negative, took place at Michigan State, which is why going there produces such a flood of undifferentiated emotions that grasp onto me even though I'm not sure what they're telling me to do.
Are they telling me to move back to Michigan? I hear it, pretty clearly. There are cities there now that I think I could tolerate, even enjoy. Lansing, particularly East Lansing, still has a lot to do. There's culture. James McBride was there speaking last night in a free community book speak. It also seems like a city that isn't as overwhelming as Baltimore. Baltimore is a small big city, and that is true, but it's not a small city - those that think it is have just spent too much time on the east coast - and it's often overwhelming to me. But maybe it's because I'm such a creature of habit. I don't know.
Things here in the midwest are so much more spread out. I can drive on the highways and leave my cruise control at 77 and barely have to vacillate for hours. I go the distance from Lansing to my hometown of South Haven, and it feels like nothing, but somehow when I get back to Baltimore, the shorter distance that it would take me to get from Baltimore to Philadelphia is something that seems too insurmountable to attempt.
I must temper my thoughts with the knowledge that I'm only visiting in the summer, and even today I had to buy a sweatshirt. The weather is shitty for seven or eight months of the year. I also must remember that I'm not teaching right now in the summer, and I'm broke, so things that I see that are different from my present situation have appeal. I don't feel as much of a part of Baltimore when I'm not in the midst of a school year, when my finger is not on the pulse of the youth of the city, so right now, in the end of August, I don't feel as much a part of it as I normally would.
Still, the home buying process, and even the finishing the Master's process, are both things that I need to think deep about in the next few weeks or months. Michigan beckons. Or does just change beckon? I don't know. It's hard to tell.
I think my wistfulness is a direct result of my loneliness lately in Baltimore. I think my issue is not that I don't have friends -- I have plenty -- but that I don't have one person to keep me there. I have many people, but not one person. It is destabilizing. Unfortunately, my instinct when that happens is to run away rather than confront, because I feel like I've confronted it enough, although I know that confrontation and glancing blows are not the same.
***
Yesterday afternoon, I saw my old friend Michelle and her husband Marques and their new baby Olivia. It seems so strange to me to see these people that are married with kids. I'll see Jake this weekend as well. Will the awkwardness remain between us until I "catch up" with them? Will I remain friends with them seeing them for an hour a year on quick trips through the state, getting to hold the baby and speak about homebuying and health and school? Is our friendship in a holding pattern until I become a little more like them? Or will that make our distance even greater, when I - the one who can travel - no longer travels as much as I do? I imagine it's tough to pick up and drive eight hours if you have a six month old baby. I certainly don't blame them. I want to stick it out with them. I genuinely like them. But I manage to put distance between myself and nearly everyone I know, and I'm not really sure why. Or is it not me, but life, that manages to put these distances between friends as we make our own, more stable, healthy, and longlasting, bonds between ourselves and our progeny? That must be life. My parents have just two or three friends left from college. I do not want to let my number shrink like that. But I certainly have let it happen to high school friends, where not only do I have only two left, but I literally only talk to two people. And I haven't hit my ten year anniversary yet.
Some people have the instinct to settle down very young and have kids. Others have the instinct to go far away. I followed that last instinct. But I wish that I followed my other instincts more and was less of a thinker. It's weird. From an evolutionary standpoint, I guess I should follow my animalistic instincts more, but my humanist instincts of thought are much stronger for me. I wonder if it's because people aren't meant to overthink like I tend to do. Of course that's why.
This entry is becoming random thoughts. I listened to a lot of Dar Williams on the way here. I think she does it to me a bit. Her song "Iowa" could very well be titled "Michigan," even though the onomatopoeia ("Iowa" = "I awoke") wouldn't work as well.