The Heart of Ram's Head

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is a novel about the evil that lurks inside of all of humanity; when pushed close enough to the breaking points, primal actions emerge in primal situations. Conrad alludes to Nietzche's quote: "when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you."

I have found a modern setting for this novel to replace the African Congo: my university's dining hall during finals week.

Every student is on campus; there is no going home during finals. Every student also emerges from their studying cocoons composed of flash cards, crumpled notes, highlighters, and tears at the same time to eat from communal vats of cheap food.

Just as the characters in Heart of Darkness fight for survival in a world with no rules, students fight for an empty table. The idlers stare at their stacks of plates adorned with used napkins and empty glasses with melting ice as they complain to one another about this test and that. Those without tables stalk the lucky few, pacing around and around, stomachs growling and minds imagining the moment they forcefully swipe the dirty dishes from the tables and throw a jacket onto the chair, like the Belgians taking the Congo, claiming the table for their own.

After twenty minutes of stalking the tables and a few minutes before cannibalization seems viable, finally one opens up! One of your pack approaches the table, but a swifter student seizes with a maniacal victory laugh. Death glares ensue as your group returns to pacing in circles in the increasingly frustrated throng.

Eventually, you ecstatically seize a table for your very own with just enough seats to accommodate your numbers. Heading out into the abyss, you seek to win yourself a plate of warm nourishment. But alas! all the stations are out of food and the lines waiting for the disgruntled workers to replenish their stocks extend agonizingly far. From a distance, you spot a pizza about to be removed from its fiery shelf and thrown to the masses for consumption. You elbow your way to the front of the crowd to ensure a good spot to pounce upon the fresh, cheesy goodness.

Ducking and spinning and fighting all the way, you manage to claim a slice for yourself. Still riding the high from your victory, you go for a glass to obtain a drink to augment your recently acquired food. There are none. You seek a fork and knife. There are none.

Frustrated, you stalk back to your table to sit down, prepared to choke down food with your fingers and no liquid accompaniment.

Your chair is gone.

You slam your plate down on the table, causing the grease bubbling in the pizza to splatter into the air. "Where is my chair??" you announce to the patrons eating all around you, silent and ignore your plight.

In your mind, you are ripping the chairs from underneath their smug butts, separating their heads from their bodies and skewering them on sticks around your table to serve as examples for further people who want to steal your chairs. Gathering the chairs from under the decapitated bodies, you stack them up and sit high up in the air, shouting "the horror, the horror!" over the whole scene as people cry in the floor, clutching their plates and murmuring, "I just want a seat...a glass... a fork."

But instead you share a chair with your friend, squashed tightly together as you silently eat and then surrender your table to the next group to set the cycle anew.

As you exit the double doors into the cold world, hardly full and satisfied, you think how when they swiped your card, the dining hall staff also swiped a little piece of your soul. A little of your faith in humanity.

But you have survived. You have stared into the apocalypse and won.

Goodbyes, Part Two

It seems like graduation should feel different, exceptional. I mostly felt normal.

It was just like everything else our school ever did. It was slightly chaotic and unorganized, but ended in something beautiful, even if it was only beautiful to us. School board officials gave slightly forced speeches, the superintendent gave a genuine one, and students demonstrated why we deserved rented ferns at our graduation. It did represent our school as best as a few short hours could.

But I felt pretty normal. I didn't feel like I was moving from a high school (and college) student to a high school (and college) graduate. I just felt like I was sitting in a gym floor wearing a silly outfit with some friends. Even walking across the stage still seemed like a rehearsal; I couldn't possibly be doing it for real. Maybe we spent too much nostalgia throughout the years to really summon up the emotion on this typically monumental day.

There were really only small, isolated moments where I felt something greater than what I feel every day.

The first came when we walked in and I first saw how many people were occupying the gym's bleachers, packed in like sardines, snapping pictures like paparazzi (fanatical, proud parents are probably the only photographers in the world scarier than paparazzi). I thought how wonderful it was to see all of the people I'd never have to explain what my school was or how I came to this place in my education to in one room. They all just understood; they knew the magnitude of our accomplishments without belabored explanation and questions. They just clapped. I felt happy, but I didn't feel graduated.

The second came while I was reading my short, inconsequential speech. Most of the time, I was just terrified. I didn't look up into the crowd because I had to read and concentrate on keeping my voice from breaking. But then I got to a feeble joke all my classmates would understand and I heard a few tiny laughs from them. Before, it felt like I was just speaking to the wall out of obligation, but then I realized people were actually listening. That sort of sums up all of my high school graduation--sometimes it didn't seem like it, but people were listening. I felt proud, but I didn't feel graduated.

Next, skip to the end of the ceremony. The principal "by the power bestowed upon her by Surry County Schools" or something like that pronounced us graduated, and we turned our tassels. Excitement bubbled up inside me, the kind of excitement that is rare and raw and can't be replicated. I looked around at the cardboard topped faces smiling in rows and knew they felt much the same.

In that one singular moment did I feel truly graduated.

I could post forever about all the little moments and exceptional people that made my school so wonderful, but it just seems unnecessary. I may be graduated, but a little part of me will always be sitting in the T-building waiting for school to start.

Goodbyes, Part 1

I was just catching up on all "The Office" episodes I've missed in the last year so, but I had to stop after the "Goodbye, Michael" episode. After seven real years and twenty television ones, Michael Scott worked his last day at Dunder Mifflen, and it was the second saddest thing I've ever seen on television (number one being the Gilmore Girls series finale, which still tears me up even though I've seen it several times). Though the show is mostly silly and the characters over the top, the goodbyes were just so heartfelt and sad.

The whole time, I kept thinking of my community college. Maybe it was because I haven't really got the closure on high school yet, but I'm pretty much done with the college. Maybe it was because the college seems a little bit like Dundler Mifflen. Maybe it's just because every goodbye is hitting harder these days.

Whatever the reason, I feel like I should pay a little tribute to good ole SCC. I spent much of my time there ragging on the place, ashamed of walking among some of the least intelligent people I've ever met. But SCC is great because I also met some of the most intelligent people I've ever met there. It's a place of extremes: really young and really old, really lazy and really ambitious, really homegrown and really exotic.

A few of the professors, one in particular, set me on course. Essentially, isn't that what community college is for? I went from studying something everybody else assumed I loved to something I know I love. The professor saw in me what I refused to admit was there; he kept me from settling. As cheesy as it sounds, he gave me the confidence I needed to pursue the path I know, however difficult, I should be going down. Though I never expected to find it on community college campus, I found challenge and direction. I wonder if he knows how much his words hit home. If I had never gone to that school, I might still be plodding down the wrong path.

I also got my first job, the best job I could ever have, at SCC. It furthered reinforced what I had just realized--I need to be a teacher. It showed me I could do it and that I would love it. It allowed me to meet people both inspirational and infuriating. It let me feel some of what it is like to part of an office a la The Office. That experience, something I could never have anywhere else, is now an essential part of me, thanks to SCC.

I'm going to miss eating artery-clogging meals in the grill with whatever random people found in there. I'm going to miss everyone freaking out when the water in the fountain outside the grill freezes over. I'm going to miss being the only person in the library looking for a book instead of watching "That 70's Show" on Youtube. I'm going to miss teachers start considering you less students and more humans, friends. I'm going to miss being in classes of all ages and all walks of life and meeting people who are getting construction degrees so they can build their own houses. I'm even going to miss the taxidermy conferences and spending forever looking for a parking space.

I'm probably still going to try to deny the community college credits on my transcript, even though I earned them while still in high school. But even though I never would've attended SCC if it weren't for my weird little high school, I wouldn't trade my time there for the world. It made me who I am, and while I might not be the ultimate version of myself, I can't image I'd be a superior me without SCC.

During their emotional goodbye, Jim tells Michael that "goodbyes are a bitch." He was definitely right. I never thought I'd say it, but I'm going to miss you, SCC.

Goodbye

There have only been a few times in my life where I felt the unique sadness that comes with the thought that you will never see some one again.

Even if it's not even someone you're incredibly close to, just some one that fills up your days, it's sad to let them go. You lose the security of knowing that if you ever did want to talk to them, they would be there. The familiar faces you've come to know will soon be replaced by strange ones, ones that do not know you or your past. Most of the time, I consider this an exciting idea, but today, as I did many things that I've done for the past four years for the very last time, I couldn't help but feel fond of a sea of familiar faces.

I think I often under-appreciate the simple feeling of sitting in a room full of people that know you. They understand your quirks and your mannerisms, they know where you came from, and they know where you want to go. A room full of people bonded from similar experiences is truly a great thing.

And when you're about to leave it, it's so sad.

The first time I felt this, I was about eight, and I came home from school and sat down on the couch beside of my mom. She told me we were moving to Texas. I remember just crying and crying. By the time my tears had dried, Mom was on the phone in the kitchen. I got up and wrote lengthy notes to my two best friends, begging them not to move on and forget me. Of course we've long since forgotten each other; it was but first or second grade. While I only have a few vague memories of them, the sadness I felt while writing those notes remains sharp in my memory.

The next time, I was leaving the place I'd so dreaded moving to--Texas. Leaving was the hardest thing I'd ever done, and now (seven years later), it still ranks pretty high. I loved all those people so much and I still remember a lot of my time there, but again, the strongest memory is of writing a note. I was sitting in a classroom in my new town, fuming. I missed my old school and friends terribly, and hated the new one with a passion. We had some random free time, and I yanked a piece of notebook paper out and scribbled a furious note about how much I hated everything in Virginia to my Texas best friend. I remember the smell of the black pen's ink, all the strength it took to hold back my tears, and the relief I felt after I mailed it. I don't talk to her anymore, but the kind reply I received to that angry, angry letter carried me through the next few months in a place I hated.

More and more of these are coming to me as I type, and I just keep getting sadder and sadder, but still I write.

I remember the last time I saw another Texas best friend. This time, it was he who was moving. I ran to his house, the grass where I'd run so many times before worn into an oft-beaten path. He was sitting in the back of his moving truck, possessions piled high behind him. He threw a gift at me--a beanie baby cat that I still have. I don't remember the conversation we had, but I remember the realization that I would never see him again as that truck pulled out of view.

The most recent time I remember (excluding today) was the last day of middle school. While I wasn't truly going anywhere this time, I knew I'd be at a different high school than most of my classmates. It was kind of surreal walking to the bus after that final day. I remember looking around, walking alone, at all the people around me saying goodbye. Even though I didn't really love middle school, I was grieving for the familiarity of it all. The sea of familiar faces. There was nothing left to fear there, nothing unknown. While this a great comfort, it also means you have to get on that bus for the last time and pull away.

Now it's time for what is the greatest goodbye yet. While I know there's next year, I also know it won't be the same, and it's the loss of the familiarity and safety of my high school class that I grieve for. I hate counting life in "lasts" but it's simply unavoidable. I'll never be in that place again, and for that I'm horribly sad.

I may really suck at being sentimental, but I'm great at feeling sad.

Friday Night Lights

High school football games are curious things.

As with all high school, everybody is sorted quite well, but there is a place for everyone. The jocks, obviously, on the field and their girlfriends are cheering for them. Other popular kids sit in the student section with obnoxious school-colored decorations, yelling back and forth with the cheerleaders. Proud parents and high school has-beens adorn the stands, yelling everytime something remotely good happens. Musically talented geeks or those who can wave flags semi-gracefully join the band, and other various geeks perform for the ROTC colorguard. "Rebels" and kids with skinny jeans and blue hair hang out around the sidelines, far away as they can get from the field while still being at the game, looking like they're above it all but they're still there. And, my personal favorite, the high school wannabe gang, usually from middle school, dressing like the older kids and wearing way too much makeup and pretending they're having the greatest time.

This various slightly, but pretty much the formula at every high school in every city in every era. There's a slight beauty in it though, when everybody from every clique or group, is screaming at the top of their lungs in celebration when the team pulls out a difficult win.

The high school football game is indeed a curious thing. I'd like to shoot a documentary about it, Discovery Channel-style. Instead, I'll sit in the stands amongst the many groups, not really fitting into any of them as usual, and enjoy the microcosm and the game.