a morning worth noting

The freeway grows and shrinks and wraps around itself in fantastic shapes. Primordial in simplicity… elegant in its vitality… like blood vessels… and the little people in their cars. (and, where are they all going?)
But this morning it doesn’t matter where they’re going, because I have the soothing chatter of the radio, because I hear the deep, faceless laughs and the endless conversation about politics and pop culture. This morning I’m not filled with a philosophical inquiry about my fellow man; I don’t question why or what he is. I only know that he is. I only know that he has purpose.
And next to me, my father talks about the best routes to take, the definitions of “interchanges,” and the confused logic of graveyard plots. And with him, there has always been this sort of awe at logic. This sort of awed expression at mathematical beauty… logic, reason, rationalization, equations. And when I was younger and more immature, I never understood this beauty. I found his ideas sterile and generally inhumane. I flocked to my mother’s love of literature and the written word, of language and spoken beauty. And, in my youth, I considered this beauty superior. But only now, as I am riding peacefully along the freeway with my father, finally escaping anxiety and contrived fears, do I understand my father’s sense of mathematical beauty. This beauty of logic and of reason.
He wonders aloud how cemeteries are able to keep up with landscaping and other expenses, since the patrons only pay once. And what happens when they run out of space? But to him, there seems to be no wonder or fear at the absurdity of death; only a gentle wonder at the absence of financial logic, perhaps. There is no fear of absurdity, no questions about our ritual of putting the dead underground, in enormous, non-specifying groups… tombstones and markers, bearing the family name… and family names blending into one, and eventually, entire cemeteries becoming one distinct being… becoming the home of the Dead, not of Christopher So-and-So, or Mary This-or-That. Yes, in my father there is only a quiet speculation about the gruff exterior of things. And, for the first time, perhaps, I am able to see the beautiful order in this.
But, of course, this ideology unwittingly fails in so many situations, when life truly does become absurd. Because I must ask, how does this type of person address the Holocaust? Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Innocent deaths, meaningless lives, failed dreams? How do they address the World Trade Center collapsing on itself? The people jumping out the windows, choosing the lesser of two hells?
Perhaps, in numbers. Perhaps in calculations and slow steady reflections. Perhaps in historical perfection--in attempting to memorize all the facts exactly as they happened (but any fool knows this is completely impossible!) Perhaps in polite conversation, in gentle awe?
I can’t tell. But I long to ask.

There is a different smell to everything. A different feel. My dorm room seems welcoming and clean.
“It smells clean in here,” I remark. The groceries in their bags, the books stowed away in my backpack, the shoes lined up… Yes, there is a renewed beauty to everything. And if only I read Proust every morning! If only his beautiful writing echoed through my head at all hours, giving beauty to otherwise unnoticeable figures.
The city is still the same. The skyline is the same. The smokestacks are the same. But there is a renewed sense of beauty and calm to them.


I walk to class. There is still the smell of cigarettes… the wakening smell of spring… the sponginess of the grass. And subtly, suddenly, old feelings return to me, as though slowly awakening from a pleasant dream… the enormous columns of Golda Meir. The bike racks. The people all crammed inside the library. And I want to know that they’re being as productive as they look… that they’re not all sitting on Facebook and delaying some other important task… the Gothic windows on Chapman Hall, bringing with them an era long-since passed… an era where my idealistic visions of education are fancily floating about; an era where I am certain I belong, or should belong. And slowly, the old feelings return to me…
The anxiety and the contrived fears that I had forgotten on the car ride here start to call me again… “and what are you really doing? I think you’re wasting your time… hurry up, decide!” and I start running through endless pros and cons… start considering endless majors… My heart stretches out in twenty different directions. And I remember why I feel so tired all the time.
And the constant concern for my own health. The gentle fear underneath my skin… the worry slowly destroying the lining of my stomach, altering the beating of my heart. The red and sundry marks on my body… analyzing each one, coming up with a disease more horrible each time. The physical pain I truly feel. My mind races with worst-case scenarios. I’ve become so deft at imagining worst-case scenarios in a matter of seconds. I can analyze a situation and immediately come up with the worst possible outcome… because if I have imagined the worst, I cannot be surprised by it… nor can I be surprised by the bad, or the somewhat bad… and how thrilled I will be if it actually turns out good!

And now the same creeping sense of exhaustion arises. And my futon looks more and more enticing. And the anxiety seems more and more worth forgetting… worth drowning in the peaceful, unthinking bliss of sleep.

But, before I surrender my body to temporal relief, I recall, with happy fondness, the beauty of this morning. The unhurried, whimsical manner of life. The beautiful words I have read. I remember feeling happy and complacent in the car with my logical father. I remember feeling happy at my desk reading Proust, underlining my favorite passages. I remember feeling happy in my French class, sharply identifying the difference between quelle heure est-il? and quel temps fait-il? I remember the beauty and sad profundity of Chopin. I remember the beauty of my friends and of times long-since passed.
And then I rest my head. Not attempting to escape fear and anxiety, but to surrender to a quiet exhaustion. (or, at least, these should be my ideal motives… anxiety is always present, of course…)