South Africa: Departure

Day 0: The dogs could tell that something was up. Mackenzie, the smaller of the two, became especially affectionate two days before I left. I found Scooter inspecting my suitcase the morning before I was to take of, howling in protest. That night, they found me on the couch and molested me with all of their dogness. I let them.

Day .5: The worst part about the security beforehand was the wait. Even though I'd shown up almost 4 hours early, it still took 90 minutes to go from bagcheck to body scan.

It wasn't long after arriving at the gate that boredom and hunger hit me simultaneously. A Buffalo Wild Wings was open at 8:30 in the morning serving beer and wings. It seemed like a dare so I did it. A few hours later, my buffalo-sauced beard and I took off for Africa.

First Impressions:

The first thing I see is Table Mountain, bidding and forbidding. People drive and walk by, passing through it's shadow as if it isn't there, as if it's an illusion.

We stuff the coach bus with our things and set out from the airport toward our new homes. And even as the airport diminishes behind us, merging with the surrounding landscape, the mountain remains wide, tall, regal. I cannot take my eyes off of it. I trace every line and peak as if committing each stone to memory. I blink and it is a different mountain. I blink again and it is new again.

Without warning, the informal settlements come into view, a patchwork of corrogated tin and steel roofs, walls, and everythings piled upon everythings. Myriad shapes, textures, and colors climb together and on top of one another, crushed and pressed together. Tyres rest atop some of the roofs, blue-green tarps wriggling beneath them. A child in red shorts bolts out from one of the shacks and begins chasing after another in blue shorts. Another smaller child stands in an alley looking on, a bright orange bowl dangling at the end of his fingers, empty. None of them wore shoes.

And then, as suddenly as it appeared, the settlement vanishes, replaced by a golf course, impecibly lush with infinite greens. Here there is no trace nor reference to the shacks and shanties. Men swing clubs with broad smiles on their faces, applauding one another and themselves. It's as if the settlement never was.

There's a word for this but it escapes me.

I try to stitch the running children and smiling golfers together and cannot. I wonder if they are strangers to one another. I wonder if the children can see the men propped up and pleased with themselves, golfing in the lazy afternoon sun. I wonder if the men notice the children run-tumbling about the settlements carried by dusty brown feet. I wonder if this is normal and wonder how that can be so.

I am not here. I am at home wrist deep in Doritos and ennui. I am staining my remote control orange and bunching my toes into fists against the carpet. I blink. I swallow. The wind sweeps past and about and through me, filling me with nameless longings. I am grasping at forgotten prayers.

I don't know where I am.

The Rest

I arrived on campus for the last time, pensive, brooding behind the wheel. Everything was white, heavy, silent. The entrance to the garage hung open like a great grey toothless mouth, a slick black strip of asphalt lolling out of it like a disobedient tongue.

In the library, the stink of stress-sweat hung in the air like a thick and desperate warning. Students were strewn about haphazardly; a woman in a corner chewing a bagel, a young man sleeping heaped against the wall with his hand stuffed in a text book, three young ladies (that may as well have been one that could have five) huddled around a small table littered with a disaster of books and papers, one chewing her bottom lip, one chittering like a cicada, one lost in bug-eyed wonder, leaning over the splay of books and papers, rapt.

I fart loudly and do not apologize. There is no need. This is an asylum.

 * * * * *

Less than 20 minutes to go before the exam and the room is already mostly filled. There are plenty of new faces. One of them is weeping openly, shamelessly, great heaving gaspings and snortings. Someone, it seemed, moved in to offer comfort but, incredibly, asked to borrow notes.

A girl just asked me if this is the room class is held in. I can't bring myself to respond without sarcasm. I pretend I haven't heard her. She pretends she hasn't asked.

Beyond these walls, a lazy dawn is announcing herself. Students mill like ants through honey. A young man props himself against a dirty window and lights a cigarette. I see none of this, yet I am sure.

This is how it always is.

* * * * *

I have not slept. I cannot sleep. I must sleep. I leave the exam room, dazed and accomplished. It's all over and it's all over. I'm out of the building and on the sidewalk and behind the seat of my car, keys in hand. It occurs to me, "I won't be back. Not for a long while."

I smile. Then I start the car and take the long way home.

The Last Day

I'm sitting in the library as I write this. This is remarkable given that, for most of the semester, it was nearly impossible to find a computer that wasn't already occupied. From day one, the library was a crowded whispering circus of students banging and angling to and fro. Now that we've come to the end of the semester, the literal last day of classes, that's all changed.

The library, once a sub-audible thrumming hive of students, has been rendered strangely vacant. The students here are few and far between, a remainder, and echo, relics on the shore yet to be swallowed by the sea. I'm at a hub of six computers and I'm the only one here. More than half of the computers on this floor are abandoned, powered but powerless, their monitors made sullen black cataracts peering into nothingness.

It all feels very Twilight Zone and important. Rare, even, as if someone should be taking photos or writing poems about this, as if someone learned and wizened should be called to bear witness before this and they both pass into memory and then nothingness, as if they never were, as if they never happened or  mattered.

Next week is the beginning of finals, and the library will come alive. This swept and painted menagerie will be undone, writhing and thundering with co-eds wide-eyed and determined to make up for a semester's worth of neglect in a single afternoon. They'll bleat and tear papers and howl and cry and beg no one in particular for deliverance from their ignorance. Their generic prayers will tremble in the wind like dead leaves, their lonely woeful mouths making the sound of dead and dying things. They want nothing specific - just not this. Anything but this! Anything but suffering!

They'll spit sulfur and sweat violence, pounding at the keyboard, the clicking of the keys a useless rattling incantation. I will wade through their tears like a minister who, recognizing the irretrievably damned, passes over them. "I cannot help you", I'll think and not say. "I want to but cannot. It is the way it has always been. You were warned." They will, some of them, repent. They will, some of them, die again and again before surrendering to their fate, muted by the swaying noose of the gallows, men and woman made sullen in the shadow of their groaning eldritch truth. They swallow their fate like sand and are purified by it. They are fated and made by this weary fate.

Finals week is upon us. The curtain rises on this, a new tragedy. Act I, Scene I.

We are all damsels.

The Big Push

Fair warning: It's about to get weird. And biological. Indulge me.

There have been more than a few moments were, just before class, I felt the abdominal grumbles and pressures signaling that I'd have to have a "seat", and soon. It instigates a very unique form of panic - "Do I or don't I?" which, at times, becomes "Must I?"

The trick has been learning how urgent "urgent" is, and, only slightly less importantly, how long of a "seat" I'd have to take. There's nothing more awkward than rushing through the final minutes of a decent sit-down and scrambling to class with the telltale "Deuce" waddle. It's the sort of thing that you may not recognize normally, but, when you've recently engaged in the practice, your eye tends to be able to pick out those who might be able to sympathize. More often than not, I wait - mostly because I don't want to chance being late, but also because I don't want to corrupt what is supposed to be a period  of deep relaxation and meaningful reflection coupled with contemplative hand-held gaming. 

There's a point to this. I swear. 

Finals week is upon us - upon me, really. Because, even though it's something that everyone here will experience, sometimes at the same time, and even in the same room, it is ultimately a very personal experience. It's important to go into it calm and relaxed, confident that you're having done this countless times before without disaster is reason enough to expect a positive outcome.

Yes that is a poop metaphor. No, I am not proud of myself. 

Thanksgiving has come and gone. The last of the pies and turkeys have forced themselves upon me, leaving me sweaty and taut and helpless. I can feel the various sips and bites imparting their goodness unto me, a warm universal glow of delight issuing from my abdomen as I surrender to nature's process, relishing the echo of the feast. 

But, hark, there is... a remainder. "Must I?" is a memory. Now there is only "I Shall!" Now there is only "I Must!"

So, yeah, finals week is a lot like taking a dump. 

It's an unpleasant, awful thing that no one likes to think about for very long. But, if properly prepared for, it can also be a thing that leads to a deep sense of personal satisfaction and accomplishment.

The semester is all but over and I know now that I am full of it. I only hope that when it comes time for the big push, I am up to the task. 

...mostly, though, I just wanted to talk about poopin'.

Gratuitous

I open my eyes upon a day that's too long before it's even began. The clock reads 5:29 AM. I steel myself for the onslaught but it does me no good. The bleating lasts an eternity. I lash out in all directions, swatting aimlessly, succeeding only in knocking the alarm under the bed. From there, it's louder somehow.

I roll over and pop a pill.

The road is lousy with bad drivers. I navigate the heathen, dripping, sneezing, sweating, hacking. My eyes are on fire, my brain packed in wool. Twice, I slam on the breaks to avoid imaginary vehicles. The road pays out beneath my car. The world rushes past, an inconsequential blur, a movie.

Blowing my nose on my sleeve, I pop a pill.

My nose is stuffed shut. I stare at the monitor, gasping like a fish, like a predator, like an inexperienced high school lover. My skin is tighter than yesterday, old, clammy, cold to the touch. This isn't my nose. This isn't my skin.

I take more pills.

My ears are too hot and too cold. It's much too hot in here. I draw my coat around myself, shivering. Sweat pours down the back of my neck. My shirt is tacky with it, sticking and un-sticking itself to my skin. This is torture. This is hopeless.

I try not to move and pop another pill.

Vacation lingers just out of reach, a phrase on the tip of my tongue that I can't quit spit out, a name I can't quite remember. I giggle in the awkward silence, pretending to know, praying for the bell to save me. I sit in the library anticipating, hearing the phantom uneven thrum of overburdened teenage hearts, smelling the dank animal stink of finals week stress, the air thick and electric with panic. No one around me knows it but we'll all be dead soon.

I shut my teeth against the truth and take another pill.

"It'll all be over soon," I tell myself as I stumble toward my car, realizing that, no matter what, I'm right. The sun climbs higher in the sky, highlighting the sin of my existence, issuing everything but warmth. It mocks me. I flip it the bird. A young man with a terrible beard mistakes my gesture. He barely summons the energy to say something that sounds like "whatever" before changing course, now heading in the opposite direction. Had he actually seen me? Was that just my ego? I don't care. I cannot care.

I stuff my greedy frozen fingers into my pockets. I am out of pills. No matter.

I am home. I am sleeping. I am on vacation.

Soon.

Class Action

So this happened...

Drew: *sits down with a loud grunt*
CuriousStudent: What happened to you?
Drew: Nothing. I'm just old.
CS: How old is old?
Drew: How old do you think?
CS: I don't know... 25?
Drew: *stares*
CS: 26? 
Drew: Keep going.
CS: 27? 28?... 29?
Drew: *stares*
CS: 30?!
Drew: *leans forward*, *in Batman voice* Keep going.
CS: I don't think I like this game.
Drew: Who does? We all die at the end.
CS: ...what's your major?
Drew: *in Batman voice* Pain and Suffering
CS: Ah. Um. Ok?
Drew: *in Batman voice* ...with a minor in ...Justice!
CS: Yup. I get it. You can stop now.

Stretch

A few weeks ago, I stopped counting the days. It seemed gratuitous. The count was and is meaningless to me. It's a substantively void thing pretending to represent something meaningful;

Day 1: A New Beginning
Day 18: Getting comfortable
Day 34: A Seasoned Veteran
Day 52: ZOMG 'XAMZ!
Day 71: Teh BurnOuts!

I've been feeling stuck out of time this semester, as if a series of things are happening all around me divorced from sequential order. The general linear feel of life and life events has been submerged beneath a thrumming torrent of concurrent everything. It all begs my attention simultaneously and it's all important. I reach out and grab what I can; repairing, completing, apologizing, thinking, reading, eating, drinking, re-reading, writing, fretting, testing, hoping, contacting, connecting, reconnecting, forgetting, at times in complete control, at times at the mercy of the maelstrom.

Again and again I'm finding that things aren't as unorganized or tumultuous as they appear to be. There's a "real" version of things that I'm able to view when I occasion to break the surface of this... stuff... and have a good look around. Everything is normal. And I'm ok.

That exam I thought I failed was a B. That paper? A-. I don't see the change because I'm living it. I don't feel it because it's gradual. I've grown so accustomed to the feeling of progress that I can't recognize it any more. The constant ache of moving to and fro is numbing, taxing, invalidating. I have no frame of reference.

I crave relative stillness to reflect upon. I crave boredom. I crave silence to balance all this violence.

Less than a month remains of this semester, including a week of vacation. It feel like I started yesterday. It feels like I'll begin tomorrow. It feels like I've always been doing this. Rest is an illusion. A fantasy. Stillness is my imagined heaven, existing only in my mind, desire making it both tantalizingly real and infinitely intangible.

I am burning out and it's ok. I have prepared for this. I am not breaking, I am bending. I welcome the wind. I can smell the wet-mud stink of tomorrow's improbable Spring. I can feel the earth warming sun insisting against my skin, fat cloud animals luxuriating above and about me. I am dreaming. I am wanting.

I need a vacation.

I have a little over 300 pages of reading and 25 pages of writing before I can breathe a finishing sigh. Until then, I am because I must. Or something. I'm almost done.

* * * * *

As a reminder, I'm working to raise money to study in South Africa this upcoming Spring. I've attached a donation button to the top right of this page just under the "About Me" section. If you're so inclined, click the donate button and make a donation in the amount of your choosing via PayPal.

Many many thanks to those of you who've already offered monetary support. It is both desperately needed and greatly appreciated.