Jacob and the Angel

i think that if you added up the number of people i have exchanged casual conversation with at this university, it would be a rather large number. is it like this anywhere else in the world? we are all students here, whether grad or undergrad, and we all are ground by the same stones. but few things unite people like misery. if you were in a place where only the happiest people in the world lived, i'd think you'd be rather lonely. not that no one would ever talk to anyone--everyone would be genial and good-humoured--but you'd have nothing to share. happy people are selfish, in a way, because they exist within their own haze of happiness and while this happiness may cause them to be kind to others, they do not leave that haze. they give kindness with a sort of absent, benevolent air and the miserable people they are helping know that that happy person doesn't understand anything about you, anything about your misery, and anything at all but their own happiness. there are always exceptions but for the most part happiness requires you to form a sphere around yourself to guard you from the misery of the world and in doing that you are alone. perhaps this is why few people are ever really happy because happiness isn't everything that one would desire.

i am already hoping that next quarter will be better. it's been lonely these past ten weeks. i've had no class with old friends, no old classes with old friends. i miss french and writing most acutely. but i suppose this is my own fault since i decided to drop the french minor. it was a moment of weakness that i do regret. if i had just stuck it out, dealt with the professors scattered ways and the extra work and the shaky deadlines, i could have had so much fun. then i see a friend who tells me that she is glad i dropped because the class didn't improve after i left. til this day i don't know if what i decided was right or better. should i have stayed and dealt with everything? or should i have really left and spent a lonely quarter? i did do the latter, but the possibilities of the former still seduce me. i suppose the fact that they are possibilities make them seductive. reality and certainty are in no way appealing, but they are what they are. i'm sure if i had stayed i would have had some regrets too. there's no escaping them when decisions have to be made one way or the other. i'm not taking a french class next quarter, but i am taking a writing class, which might perk things up a bit. i don't know which instructor i will get, but whoever it is, i am already wanting to impress them. it is time for me now to return to some of the things i began last spring quarter but never finished. i have files and files of stories i'd begun but never ended. we shall see if they will still strike me as clever now when i go back and read them with eyes freshened.

and really its like high school again. i miss the seniors that have already graduated and realize too that i will be leaving soon and in my own time. except here, a lot of students that should have graduated are still here, like ghosts reluctant to leave the places where they've spent the best years of their life. they are alum now and still here. taking classes and organizing meetings and writing papers. to think that they would do all that just to remain. and to pay the heightened tuition fees. they must have money to burn or else loans piling up. i am glad to see them, though, when i don't think of the sacrifices they have had to make to stay. i am glad to see that they had so much fun that they too are having a hard time grappling with the idea of leaving. i was told once by a woman that i should stay in school for as long as possible because the real world is no fun. but i don't believe in delaying the inevitable. in this case, anyway. as dark and uncertain and disheartening as the future seems, i will have to face it and pass through it and come out the other end a self-determined woman. then maybe i can return and get my graduate degree. the more time passes, the more i think this is a good idea, that this is what i want to do. i told a friend, rather vehemently, that grad school wasn't for me. i told her this not three months ago. yet now i think of it with a strange sort of longing. i was more ignorant then, those three months ago, and thought i knew what i was doing, what i was going to get myself into. but i realize now that i don't and that what i want from life can be found in higher levels of education. at least i think so now. perhaps as more time passes i will change my mind. as i am apt to do--if you haven't noticed.

but most of all, most of all, i want to write. i want to do this so badly that i ache sometimes. i don't want to spend my days in cubicles and offices, fetching and carrying, calling and faxing, copying and meeting. i want to write. and i wonder if years from now i will look back at this entry and laugh at myself for being so naive, laugh at myself from some lofty corporate position where i make $70 or 80 or 90,ooo a year. when i think of it, i shudder: when i think of a life where i've had to give up my writing. is that fate really in my future? whatever becomes of me i want one thing wholly and absolutely. i want to be...moving. i want to be going from place to place, idea to idea, new school of thought to new school of thought. i want to be active and invested and passionate--but of a temperate kind. i don't want to sit somewhere and rot. i want to travel the world and always, always learn. i want to live a whirlwind life, a life full of places seen, things heard, people met, works written. i want to be able to do it all and to be able to say that i have done it all. i want a full life. whether this means being happy, whether this means being successful, whether this means being rich. i want always to be moving. so that when i am tired i can rest easy knowing that i have done my fare share of living life. but if you know me, this doesn't mean getting drunk night after night or going to strip-clubs or wandering the country comme jack kerouac. i am a wholesome person, a little naive, a little more conservative--but that doesn't mean i can't live life to the fullest. i want to learn how to play instrument after instrument. i want to learn multiple languages. to reach the fullness of life through knowledge. is that so disgusting a desire? does my wholesomeness disgust you? if you told me so, i wouldn't mind because its what i want and to hell with what you say.

it is time now for my Jacob to wrestle with his angel. and believe me, he has. i think constantly of all i want to do and all i have to do. these thoughts turn themselves over and over in my head--but we shall see, in some time, what will become of me. i will have a hand in it, i'm sure.