I'm not exactly sure if the chai latte as what did it for me, but I can't sleep.
This has always been some kind of issue for me. and perhaps on top of the back issues, and the stress of trying to figure out what my life should look like, be like, and other fun stuff, here I am.
My students are currently writing meditations, and it's prompted me to write. So I write. I have been thinking a lot about how difficult this assignment is proving me to be for some of these students. Not only does it require them to think a bit more critically about the way their lives have unfolded, unraveled, it also requires them to think more about why they do the things they do, and who they have become as a result.
As I listen to them, I am transported back to certain parts of my life, and I realize a little bit more that in some sense, I never really thought so seriously about the way my life was. I just did as I was told. One of my colleagues shared yesterday, over softshell crab and sake, that her 'bad side' didn't get out much. Why not, we asked, probed rather. I needed affirmation for the kinds of desires and impulses that I try to suppress within me, so I pushed her to tell me where she was in the realm of herself and her bad self. She told of her marriage that had been expected, anticipated, willed upon her. That ended in divorce. That ended in a sensation of blankness, numbing hurt and an obliterated perception of self that has slowly, since, been rebuilt, reconstructed, redefined.
So I find myself in a place where I no longer wish to live in borrowed space; in these places where I have tried to live into the molded ideals of those around me. My conception of the PhD and where it would take me, my wish to go into some art focused study or career, my obsession with fashion, my love of capturing things with my eyes, these are just a few of the many pursuits that I can't seem to rationalize as practical or achievable in the span of my life. And what only grounds me more to the practicality of living 'the life that others seem to want for me' is fear. Fear of death, fear of debilitating instances, loss.
And so ironically, a couple of my students introduced me to the machinations and talent of mac miller and wiz khalifa, two young and aspiring hip hop artists from pittsburgh. surprisingly, and yet, not so surprisingly, these two young men have done what most people seem to overlook as opportunities in these times: they lean on what they know--their surroundings. So hails the likings of Pittsburgh--nothing special or particular about this city--a place that I used to visit when I was younger, and needed out of Cleveland--said my parents--to visit family friends. But this industry-driven city has still become the center of such hits as "Black and Yellow", and "Knock Knock", where the antics of these two young men surface to expose the retrospective properties that allow Pittsburgh to be, well, Pittsburgh, in all its glory, and likewise, reveal the significancies that make Mac and Wiz who they are.
So now I wonder, where is my life headed? I have been thinking about the different kinds of stories that students have collected, remembered and refurbished as something more tenable, more apt to empathy. And while theirs still seem authentic--repetitive and trite as it can seem at times, they all write with honesty. So begins my own attempt for the same truth-possessed phrasings and notions that these still doe-eyed ones are working to articulate.
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