I've been having trouble writing lately. I have about ten incomplete and unpublished drafts on here. The truth is when I'm at home, I become a lazy shell of a person who doesn't do anything but watch television and play video games and occasionally crack open a book. I really don't like this person. Which is why I can't stay here in this soul sucking little town.
That might seem like a harsh thing to call it. But I'm reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and it's about people with active, introspective, dreaming minds living in a soul sucking little town. The meager, poor town is completely devoid of opportunity and wreaks of ignorance, racism, and hopelessness. I don't live in the World War 2 era South, but I live in the closet modern day approximation. I can relate to the restless souls roaming the unnamed little town's dusty avenues. They feel totally isolated, alone in their thoughts and pining over unachievable dreams.
But the thing that gives me hope is that I'm not a character in the novel--I do have a future and my dreams are attainable. I get to leave. At home, my mind becomes a wasteland of sitcoms and football stats. At school, it's full of poetry and philosophy and grand pictures of what the future has in store for me. If I stayed home, I would never survive. Like Biff, Mick, Singer, and Dr. Copeland in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, I am not made for this containment; I am not content with what little this place has to offer me. It stifles me; it kills me.
There are upsides to small town America, and people tend to claim it is only my youth that drives me away; middle age will have me crawling back again with 2.5 kids, a mini-van, and a born again religion. But I know that isn't true. It's more than the slow pace, getting stuck behind tractors, driving hours for entertainment; it's the feel of the people and the despair in the air. There are no possibilities here. People work the same minimum wage jobs from the time they're born to the time they die. There is no room to think, to grow, to evolve. I valued that capacity when I was eight, and I am sure I will still value it when I'm eighty. I can't bear to spend any time more than Christmas vacations and summers here.
I love my parents and brother, and I cherish spending time with them. But outside of my family, I am completely lonely here. There is nothing, no one here for me. I exist in a different space now, and I can't fit in here anymore.
My heart is a lonely hunter, and there's nothing to be hunted in this desolate place.
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Jan 6, 2012
Dec 11, 2011
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.
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.
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