A White Sheet

i've disappeared for a while, no? i said that i would. i am sorry to say that i did not run across the cobblestones and squares of Vienna screaming like a lunatic out of sheer exuberance. we've just left there this morning and my bus-mates can tell you, no screaming. something has happened to me that is compelling enough to record here under the unconscious watchfulness of the world wide web.

i have become hard. i am hardened.

i don't think i will yet be able to convey in writing what happened to me those ten weeks i was in new york. the effects of it will show up in odd places for a long time, i feel. in the way i think of certain things, in the way i talk about certain people. in the way i walk and hold my head.

i wrote to a certain beloved professor and told him that new york was more a distraction than an inspiration. i don't know why i thought it would be different. it was E. B. White, i believe, that said new york was feverish, that it had a fever that could never be tamed. it's true. you can be alone in new york, you can be in new york for vacation--and still the fever gets you. what it did to me was make a callus of my eyes and make a harder shell of my ears. nothing seems to impress me the same way anymore. nothing that is great and grand and worthy of the sincerest admiration evokes from me the right degree of feeling. as a result, there was no lunatic screaming in Vienna and i was kind of looking forward to that bit. i feel as if i might have offended her, thinking of her as nothing so spectacular. don't get me wrong, i got plenty of pictures and said many things in its favor and called it "beautiful" and "magnificent" and all manner of pretty things. but that breathless, overwhelming, sheer joy of being there never came, never rose. it's the fever that's dulled my senses. everything in new york can be just as great and just as grand and just as worthy of the sincerest admiration and being exposed to all of that for three months has built up my immunity to wonder. it was just too much to take that anything of equal grandeur falls prey to my dimmed senses. i've been to new york, so vienna isn't so much grander, is it? that's the mentality. even though vienna was the center of an empire, even though the romans patrolled the banks of the danube, even though strauss and mozart and beethoven and schubert unleashed their musical genius in its music halls and opera houses. even though three months ago i thought of it with the keenest excitement. poor vienna. had i only gone there first.

i think, too, that it has something to do with the freedom i had in new york. i supported myself for three months. i bought my groceries, did my laundry, washed my dishes. i vaccummed my room and swept the kitchen and fed the cats. i unclogged the toilet. i lived there. it wasn't just a vacation. it was my life. and here (salzburg now) my meals are taken care of as is transportation. my mother pays for most everything. i watch my money, you can be sure, but that's about all the control i have. i wake up when they tell me to, eat when they tell me to, get on the bus when i am told. nothing like the wanderings i had downtown or in central park. through the metropolitan museum of new york or around brooklyn. and i even find it hard to believe that i was ever that independent. parents have a way of always making you feel like their child. you're always their child and will always be their child so they take it upon themselves to order your life for you. and i am grateful that i can rest after my fevered life in new york, but there are things that i have to give up as well. i just never thought i would become immune to the wonders of the world. i'm too young to be so callous. i think that i will be good for me to go home. the mundane will bring me back to where i would like to be. i like being impressed. i like feeling humbled.

also. i have found out that i can read a book with mediocre writing so long as there is a compelling romance. isn't that disgusting to admit? but, now, i mean a compelling romance, none of those bedroom novels that have half-naked men and women on their covers. i mean novels about hushed affection with just the right amount of tragedy. i'm growing into tragedies. but this doesn't mean that i ignore my opinions on the writing. i got so frustrated reading Twilight one night that i thought i could do better and began writing again. this after a three month drought. so, you see, it pays to get frustrated. and what it really is, is reading. if i read constantly, i always find my way back to my pen because i never see exactly what i want to see in a story and so i feel i must write them if that's what i really want. you're never going to get what you want unless you go out and get it yourself. and while it may seem uniquely narcissistic to take pleasure in your own creation, plenty of people have done it and i think it a natural tendency. children, after all, are admired by their creators.

i am not going to discuss the situation on wall street (although i am rather fond of the actual street in new york's financial district). and i am not going to talk about the upcoming november elections. i figure enough on that is already being said, has already been said, will already have been said. suffice it to say that i shake my head and hope for the best.

well, more than hope.

tomorrow is a walking tour through old salzburg. goodnight.