Half-Life
July 10, 2009
Mom and Dad were in town over Fourth of July weekend, and when they left they took with them the majority of my material encumbrances. All of my books, nonessential cooking implements, articles of special magical significance, and pretty much anything made of wool, fleece, or flannel will be moved to Fairbanks in their household goods courtesy the US Army, which is to say free of charge for me. Everything remaining will either be sold, abandoned, or carried in a suitcase. Scout finds our newly stripped-down living space mildly puzzling; she has more room to run around, but fewer things to knock over (and indeed, fewer surfaces to push them from).
Furthermore, Mom transferred a few thousand frequent flier miles to my shiny new Alaska Airlines account, which means my ticket north, set for the 31st of August, cost a whole five dollars. I still need to make arrangements for Scout to travel with me, and lord knows that every move entails dozens of little unforeseen expenses, but the rent for August has already been paid in the form of our housing deposit, so all in all this is shaping up to be a very low-cost move.
I'm really getting excited about Alaska. The closer that Mom and Dad get to their departure date, the more real my own becomes. I'll be heading down to Staten Island to help them pack out next week, and to eat a last round of those incomparable New York bialys. Mom's told me stories of those aspects of Alaskan living that particularly struck her fancy, but I have to admit that much more than the seafood bars, the arts and crafts centers, or the absence of state taxes, I am achingly looking forward to the open space. I don't even remember the last time my shoes hiked across anything but concrete. The funny thing about living in a lot of different places as you are growing up is the multiple standards you wind up idealizing. Intellectually the Cambridge area reminds me of Europe, and that efficient and wholly civilized realm is certainly where my mind daily chooses to dwell; but there is something about the western United States and its vast expanses of open space that...I initially wrote "calls to me" but that's wrong, it doesn't do anything of the sort. It is completely indifferent to my existence. Pursuing that kind of indifferent, inhospitable space seems to me a kind of self-erasure, not unlike what I suppose many people look to experience by vacationing at the seaside. (Bloody Transcendentalists, you have corrupted us all.) In the two years since leaving Reed I feel like I've been very busy. Bustling, efficient, setting daily tasks and fulfilling daily obligations, which I admit are satisfying in their way. But it was all with the underlying understanding that I was biding my time until I could head to grad school, and when Edinburgh didn't work out I found myself suddenly and alarmingly staring into the void. What am I doing this for? What is it that I want? I think some reevaluation is in order, and I hope that Alaska will be a good place for it.
Of course, I haven't breathed a word about the impending move to anybody at the chocolate factory, and this has created a rift in my brain that widens daily. (Tomorrow's going to be really bad, since I bought my plane ticket this afternoon.) We got our oven back! Yes, just last week we had a veritable Christmas in July, what with getting our oven license granted and receiving a full delivery of pastry ingredients in the same day. Going to work has been so much more fun this week. I've got a new pastry, the Brown Butter Rhubarb Tart, and plans are in the works to bring little jam-filled shortbread cookies into the lineup. Very exciting! But remember that our oven was out of commission for more than two months; I had a lot of time on my hands to find other creative outlets. Awhile back I drew a chalkboard sign advertising frappes, and it caught the attention of the owner's wife. She invited me to do some drawings for the main store in Walpole, and I countered her invitation with a request for some better drawing materials. A shiny new set of chalk markers were duly delivered, and I accordingly stepped up my game. Last week one of the managers and I took a trip to HQ, where I spent seven hours redrawing their menu chalkboards (and had mussels for lunch!). They were very pleased with my work, and the managers here in Cambridge took the opportunity to petition for some chalkboard menus of our own (we have these hanging scroll things that are covered in typos, discontinued products, and price adjustments). Here I am, a veritable goldmine of untapped talent, and for only ten dollars an hour! What a shame they didn't realize this a little earlier, say when I carved these lovely pumpkins (on my own time) back in October. But don't get me wrong, I would love to make some new menus for our store, and I know full well that the project will be cancelled and I will incur a lot of ill-feeling if I blurt out my plans to cut and run. So I just keep drawing. Quietly.
And thinking about going north.
Furthermore, Mom transferred a few thousand frequent flier miles to my shiny new Alaska Airlines account, which means my ticket north, set for the 31st of August, cost a whole five dollars. I still need to make arrangements for Scout to travel with me, and lord knows that every move entails dozens of little unforeseen expenses, but the rent for August has already been paid in the form of our housing deposit, so all in all this is shaping up to be a very low-cost move.
I'm really getting excited about Alaska. The closer that Mom and Dad get to their departure date, the more real my own becomes. I'll be heading down to Staten Island to help them pack out next week, and to eat a last round of those incomparable New York bialys. Mom's told me stories of those aspects of Alaskan living that particularly struck her fancy, but I have to admit that much more than the seafood bars, the arts and crafts centers, or the absence of state taxes, I am achingly looking forward to the open space. I don't even remember the last time my shoes hiked across anything but concrete. The funny thing about living in a lot of different places as you are growing up is the multiple standards you wind up idealizing. Intellectually the Cambridge area reminds me of Europe, and that efficient and wholly civilized realm is certainly where my mind daily chooses to dwell; but there is something about the western United States and its vast expanses of open space that...I initially wrote "calls to me" but that's wrong, it doesn't do anything of the sort. It is completely indifferent to my existence. Pursuing that kind of indifferent, inhospitable space seems to me a kind of self-erasure, not unlike what I suppose many people look to experience by vacationing at the seaside. (Bloody Transcendentalists, you have corrupted us all.) In the two years since leaving Reed I feel like I've been very busy. Bustling, efficient, setting daily tasks and fulfilling daily obligations, which I admit are satisfying in their way. But it was all with the underlying understanding that I was biding my time until I could head to grad school, and when Edinburgh didn't work out I found myself suddenly and alarmingly staring into the void. What am I doing this for? What is it that I want? I think some reevaluation is in order, and I hope that Alaska will be a good place for it.
Of course, I haven't breathed a word about the impending move to anybody at the chocolate factory, and this has created a rift in my brain that widens daily. (Tomorrow's going to be really bad, since I bought my plane ticket this afternoon.) We got our oven back! Yes, just last week we had a veritable Christmas in July, what with getting our oven license granted and receiving a full delivery of pastry ingredients in the same day. Going to work has been so much more fun this week. I've got a new pastry, the Brown Butter Rhubarb Tart, and plans are in the works to bring little jam-filled shortbread cookies into the lineup. Very exciting! But remember that our oven was out of commission for more than two months; I had a lot of time on my hands to find other creative outlets. Awhile back I drew a chalkboard sign advertising frappes, and it caught the attention of the owner's wife. She invited me to do some drawings for the main store in Walpole, and I countered her invitation with a request for some better drawing materials. A shiny new set of chalk markers were duly delivered, and I accordingly stepped up my game. Last week one of the managers and I took a trip to HQ, where I spent seven hours redrawing their menu chalkboards (and had mussels for lunch!). They were very pleased with my work, and the managers here in Cambridge took the opportunity to petition for some chalkboard menus of our own (we have these hanging scroll things that are covered in typos, discontinued products, and price adjustments). Here I am, a veritable goldmine of untapped talent, and for only ten dollars an hour! What a shame they didn't realize this a little earlier, say when I carved these lovely pumpkins (on my own time) back in October. But don't get me wrong, I would love to make some new menus for our store, and I know full well that the project will be cancelled and I will incur a lot of ill-feeling if I blurt out my plans to cut and run. So I just keep drawing. Quietly.
And thinking about going north.
you nearly said *exactly* what he says, about the land being indifferent.
"When I was traveling regularly in the Arctic, I routinely asked Yupik, Inupiat and Inuit how they characterized people from the civilization of which I was a part. 'Lonely' was a response I heard with discomfiting frequency. The cure for loneliness, I have come to understand, is not more socializing. It's achieving and maintaining close friendships. The trust that characterizes that kind of friendship allows one to be vulnerable, to discuss problems that resist a solution, for example, without having to risk being judged or dismissed. I bring this up because the desire I experience most keenly, when I travel in landscapes like the ones made so evocative here, is for intimacy. I have learned that I will not experience the exhilaration intimacy brings unless I become vulnerable to the place, unless I come to a landscape without judgments, unless I trust that the place is indifferent to me. The practice I strive for when I travel is to meet the land as if it were a person. To encounter it as if it were as deep in its meaning as human personality. I wait for it to speak. And wait. And wait."
--Barry Lopez, "National Geographic"
:) liz
That's pretty awesome. Sounds like an argument that I think Paul and I have tacitly debated for well on five years now.
Increasingly I feel that I will like Alaska very much.