for lesley

I have a severe case of bad timing, here and now. I’m sitting in Philosophy 230, a class regarding moral theory and practice. I’m almost halfway through the class and I am extremely bored.

I’m pretending to be a landscape architect instead of a philosopher, sketching a scene of a plaza between two buildings. My design has a fountain and curved ramps and steps made out of concrete. And room for hotdog stands, those are important. A friend and I once were discussing architects, and he told me how Lou Kahn made concrete beautiful and this other architect whose name I forget made concrete sexy. I don’t know what I’m trying to do with concrete, which makes my design flawed at the basest of levels. And that’s why I’m pretending.

The man next to me is sacrificing his note space for giant block of black ink that occupies the majority of his notebook page. As he continues to fill it in with his bic pen, he looks absolutely ecstatic, like a child playing with gravity for the first time. He draws all class, never looks up, and the block grows and grows in size. 

The guy to my left, yea he just keeps writing FML on his page over and over.

I enjoy the teacher for the class. She keeps the class simple and uses life examples often to prove her point. So far today she has referenced people stranded on a rock, ice cream, and dead babies. She really liked her ice cream metaphor; she was taking about her favorite flavor of ice cream, but she looked like she had won fifty dollars instead. Her favorite flavor is chocolate. Mine is mint chocolate chip.

This class is no simple lecture, it relies on eager classmates to fuel class debates  for almost the entire class period. Our teacher is a mediator, and as much as she may like chocolate ice cream metaphors and knows her concepts, she doesn’t have the ability to see when class discussions go wrong and stale. Because of this, often someone would say something along the lines of these:

“Nazi Germany was full of Communists, we just disagreed with them and did what we thought was right.” 

Or:

“You better be clear I’d be after that son-of-a-bitch if he raped and murdered my wife. I’d kill that motherfucker!”

Or:

“I mean, this is a difficult concept. Okay, so like, really. If we look at both sides, like, I don’t know.”

Or:

“I agree.” 

And those are the only people in class that speak. Now here it is, here’s my real problem- it’s not that I don’t care about what we discuss, it’s that I don’t have the time to structure a good argument, and neither do my classmates. I’m sure they’re smart enough, but when they get four seconds to piece together complex philosophical thought, it comes out wrong almost always. And when I’m lazy and tired, which is more and more often lately, I skip the step of defending their arguments against myself, and just think of them as stupid arguments. I don’t want to be that guy, I tell myself, the guy who thinks other people’s arguments are stupid. Because the next step is to think the people are stupid. I never want to be that guy. 

Oh, and the bad timing thing. There was a time and place where I would enjoy debating and stretching my mind around grey-area concepts. Unfortunately, that time was about two years ago. I never thought I would have as little disregard for philosophy as I do now. Is it because I’m not learning it on my own? Is it the classmates? Is it the puppy-dog-esque teacher? I think that’s it, the teacher. But I don’t know, really.

I was getting on the bus the other day, working my way through the isle to find a seat. I started to sit next to a kid, when he stopped me and started explaining with much enthusiasm that his girlfriend was getting on at the next stop and he promised he'd save her a seat.

"Swear at me all you want, I ain't gonna move. I'll even fight you," he said

"Settle down man, I don't want to fight you. I'm not even going to swear at you. That's cute and courageous, you earned that seat," I told him. It wasn't until later that I meant it. 

At first  thought he was lying. There were plenty of open row seats and I maybe he just wanted some extra room. I might have done the same if i had the nerve. But as I found another seat next to a sleeping man, I watched this jittery little kid guard the seat as if his girlfriend was already sitting there and people were trying to sit on her, right there with him watching. This kid, he radiated the epitome of youth on a bus full of hum-drummers lost to the stale routine. He stood out, not in a good or bad way; he just did. 

As we passed stop after stop the kid's girlfriend never got on and from the precious spring of elation, the kid folded into his seat and started to blend into the bus crowd with his newly found teen angst. Someone sat in his prized seat and he jumped as if to defend it further, but settled again into his depressed state. 

To be young and expendable yet resilient is a wonderful thing. 

I fell asleep eventually, and when I woke up, the kid was gone. 

getting lost

living two different routines is a strange thing. 

after getting back to iowa, and spending time with people after a month back in louisville, i realize how easily i slip from one established situation right into another.

different parts of my person are stressed between the two, keeping me the same person, but it feels different.

on the ride back from des moines my friends and i took a wrong turn and we ended up on a deserted road with white fields of snow stretching to the few lights that dotted the horizon.

at first i didn't really realize it; it was a weird situation we had gotten ourselves into and could, for the most part, get ourselves out.

then i checked myself and took note of where i was. 

i was in the middle of corn fields, in a state rooted strongly in a culture i have never been a part of. 

i was on a gravel road seen rarely by even snow plows in an old chevy that could easily be overtaken by the snow.

i had no idea how to even give someone instructions on how to find us if we had gotten stuck. 

i was in the middle of nowhere.

then i came down and shared the moment with the people i was with.

we turned around and made it back into ames, to somewhere, yet we were still in the middle of nowhere. 

my room is exactly how i left it.

i had no bags to unpack, since they got lost by the airlines, so i went right to all the same things i was doing before i left.

weird, huh?

#3

home life, 

living at home, 

is exactly the same as it has always been.

My dad 

still fixes up the house every weekend.

he still

finds ways to slip me 20s and cover the small things.

he

tries so hard to let me live like some kind of upper-class kid

without me realizing it.

"no dad, i'll ride the bus i don't want to drive."

"i like goodwill dad."

 see, he grew up poor

with only a mother too afraid to let anyone see

she was afraid.

he still

tries so hard to make everyone happy that he to often

forgets about himself

which in turn makes me

pretty damn sad.

I wish he could realize how good of a parent he is,

and that no matter how hard he tries,

he can't make up for the 42 years

his dad has been gone.

My mother

still mirrors my grandmother with every passing day.

she is

always on her feet, doing something for someone.

and if you're sitting nearby, 

she'll bring you a bowl of pretzels without you asking.

she's always

thinking about anything related to her children

and

as much as i want her to be wrong,

she's usually right about lots of things.

she's 

fucking good at her job,

to raise money for a small college.

i saw her speak to some people she works with and 

she can talk to anybody.

she'd probably bring saddam hussein a bowl of pretzels 

if he was sitting in the next room.

my sister 

is different from me,

which makes giving her life advice,

which i'm supposed to give her,

hard.

she's still struggling

with her health,

with being overweight,

with making friends,

with picking which high school to attend.

see, i don't think she even knows

what kind of people she wants as friends,

and i sure as hell don't know.

my mom might.

her friends don't really call

and she plays it off as though 

when i get back in town, we'll hang out

but we never really did.

and she goes through hobbies

to keep herself out of boredom.

i see my father and mother struggling 

with my sister on so many fronts.

to keep her self esteem up.

to distract her mind

from pain.

i want to help so bad,

but anything i offer is only temporary 

because things will change

and i will leave.

and i can't say when i will be back 

for sure.

 

my mom leaned over to me in church yesterday

and said she was glad i was able to be home.

that's when it struck me that i was somewhere,

but i don't know if i would call it home.

#2

tonight i got caught up in

a movie!

a decent one, too. (!)

The guy, he was counting cards to

pay for college.

At one point i got so

involved

i had to pull myself back and

examine my own situation

as a kind of

reality check.

At first i was relieved to realize

nobody is going to beat me up over playing

a friendly game of blackjack.

but

then i realized i still have to pay 

for college.

this made the movie somewhat less

entertaining

and a little more

disheartening. 

maybe i should start counting cards.