At around noon I carpooled down with Brogan, who had a final to take, and since parking on campus is impossible we just parked near his old apartment complex and took the bus down to where we needed to go. There were a few new buildings, a few more new ones being built that looked like they would be large and impressive even though they didn't have windows yet. The trees and grass and sidewalk looked pretty much the same. And the faces, while different and young, looked the same as well.
I don't know what I expected; perhaps that it would all be the exact same, that it would be frozen as I had it pictured in my mind and not a brick would move until I was there to watch it move, or maybe that it would all be different and I would walk through campus and reminisce about the times when I'd gone to class in brick buildings instead of futuristic ones made of glass.
I headed to the library to reference a few books on screenwriting I knew were there. When I arrived, the library hadn't changed much either. More people were using the revolving door than I remembered, but the guard still was on his computer, drinking a soda through a straw.
The books that I was looking for were there, so I scanned through them, found the passages I couldn't quite remember and then began to write. In the breaks between the reading and the writing, I took pictures of impressively boring-titled books (Insects in Relation to Plant Disese: Second Edition) and sent out a text message trying to convince my "friends" that I was reading books of this nature. This was met with a level of skepticism, which is why I use "friends" instead of friends.
After I'd written enough, I left the library to grab some food and went to the place I always went to: Nikki's Pizza, a few block walk, usually into the wind. I ordered the same thing I always did (#1 - two slices of pizza & a drink, $5), but the guy working didn't remember me, so I pretended I didn't remember him. We talked about how nice the weather was for it being this late in November. I should have asked his name. It's not good when you see someone for two years and don't ask their name.
I rode back home with Brogan and decided to stop for food on the way back instead of sitting in five o'clock traffic. After a few beers and some surprisingly filling nachos, we chatted about his upcoming excursion into Spain at first and then God-knows-where else. There was also mention of Dublin and Sweden and drinking beers, hanging around for Octoberfest in late September, standing at the Champs-Elysees in July.
The future is exciting, even more so because we don't quite know where or what to be excited about yet.
But long after the dinner was over and as the nachos were still settling, my mind went back to UT, thoughts finding their way to cramming sessions, the hundreds of hours in that same library, the classes I couldn't bear to sit through -- so many memories gathering dust simply because they hadn't been touched in awhile.
Before I share a quote with you, I must tell you that I find word play mastubatory. It is a writer trying to show how clever they are instead of just telling you a fucking story. With the exception of newspaper headlines and a few exceptional poets, words aren't things that should be played with. Just write honestly, write what is in your heart and keep writing until something comes of it. Don't worry about the rest.
Yet despite this utter contempt for word-play, I found myself sitting in my room, thinking about college and what it all meant and then this quote -- so obviously guilty of playing with past/present, young/old -- drifted in, somehow. It drifted in and wouldn't leave.
Would the boy you were be proud of the man you are?
It is a good question, despite itself. It raises other questions, which has always seemed to me to be the mark of a worthwhile question. (This is why I despised math. The questions never led to anything but a single, correct answer).
We have a much better idea of who we are as children than we do as adults. We know what we want and who we want to be and we know this without shame. Somewhere along the way that all gets lost or tampled and we do as well and far too many people end up being accountants and account managers when they really wanted to be something much more but instead all they found was a way out. This isn't to say that your answer can't change -- it can, and very often should -- but there is always an answer, just as there is always the question: what do I want to be?
When, and perhaps more importanly why, do we ever stop asking?
When, and perhaps more importanly why, do we ever stop asking?
And once the thought - more specifically the question - had crept in, I looked back at classrooms and classes that felt so far away but in all actuality weren't, I looked at them under a different lens, trying to remember who I was then, who I was before and who I am now.
Not once did my mind go back to a test or a paper or anything that ever was printed on a transcript.
And while an eight year-old me certainly wouldn't have said, "I want to be a bartender when I'm 24... Do you think I can, Dad? Do you?" I can say with just as much certainty that I wouldn't have said back then that I want to be a sales rep or in grad school or doing hundreds of other things that sound better and more official to parents and old people who like things and jobs to sound official and important.
We all have our reasons. I have plenty and if you care enough I'll sit down over a beer and give you a few and maybe you'll see it like I do or maybe you'll nod until I leave and then tell your friends that you'd hope to be doing more with your life.
The point is it's worth looking back every now and then and asking yourself questions that sit in your stomach like a good beer and plate of nachos. It's a hell of a lot more interesting - and I'd argue worthwhile - than reading about insects and their relationships with diseased plants, unless of course you're into that sort of thing.
It began to rain last night after the dark had settled, not too long after I had found myself lost with these questions. I wondered if the sudden rain meant anything but I couldn't come up with much, so I decided it was just rain. It is a beautiful thing to be warm and in bed and in the dark as the rain falls outside and you just listen to it knowing that you don't have to move a damn muscle if you don't want to. I stayed warm and stationary, occasionally fending off texts that accused me of being a moron . The rain and its gentle patter became a beautiful backdrop to think about life and classrooms and pride and your dreams.
There were so many more questions. And there was plenty of rain.
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