The ambiguous adventures of Sexually Non-threatening Matty II
Orlando is, however, my favorite Woolf novel by far of the several I've read. I don't understand why people don't mention it more often as one of her great works. It's flippant, it's funny, it's serious, it's complex, it's intriguing, it's mesmerizing, it's baffling, it's a quick, breezy read — everything good literature is supposed to be. But that is beside the point. I bring the novel up because it asks a common literary question —What is life? — then proceeds to wander through a multitude of different answers, finding dissatisfaction in each one. The answer, it seems, is that there is no one answer.
I'll come to the end tonight, so I can say for sure, but regardless, the novel fits perfectly with what I've been thinking about a lot lately: What's next?
Again, another common question. But for the past week or so, I haven't been able to talk about New York because I haven't been able to answer this question with any certainty. Now I'm not so sure there's any reason to expect an answer.
I don't believe in any form of predestination, but I sometimes wonder why certain books come along when they do. This book, assigned for class, seems to fit perfectly with this week in my life. The Essays of E. B. White seems to have come at just the right time to reveal the perfect alternative to studying computer science. Of course, maybe this is all part of the writer's excision: I cut away everything in my life at the time that didn't help me answer the questions at hand. It's quite possible that, had I not found these particular books, some other text would have fulfilled the need.
Either way, it was only after reading Orlando that I felt comfortable trusting my gut and it's ambiguous logic when it came to the Teaching Fellows.
I'm not going to New York. Even if I get in.
This just isn't the right time or circumstance for it. I told Lilly this the other day, and she was shocked: "But just a month ago you were so excited about it!" I was. But then I saw the city firsthand; I removed some of its distant lustre, felt the chill in the air even on a perfect spring day, and collapsed in my tiny hotel bed in my cramped hotel room, exhausted and lonely. I talked to my friend in the program and found out just how tight money would be. She told me about the intense physical strain her job exacted from her, and that "just living in New York is exhausting." Every time I came across a famous place or building, it was so much smaller than I expected. It was the people who felt bigger. They were more unpredictable, more interesting, and, obviously, more alive, than any of the landmarks that make up New York's glittering appeal. At first I wanted to move up there just to ride the subway with them every day.
But after a few meals in crowded restaurants, a beer or two in a Brooklyn hipster bar strangely reminiscent of Austin's Red Eye Fly, I also realized that their appeal would wear off as time wore on and their infamiliarity became ordinary, after I stopped seeing potential in every new face.
Of course there was a lot to love about the city. But there was so much to be wary of and so much uncertainty in the program itself. Whether one's life was a merely challenge or absolute hell depended what your class was like, what you were teaching, where you got your job, what college you did your master's work at, where you found a place to live, the friends you made within the program — all things that I would have little to no control over and that wouldn't be settled until almost the day school started.
Flying back into Austin, marvelling at the all the space and all the trees, feeling the town's comforting pace of life from the plane, I returned to the question that had bothered me all trip: Why try to escape that which is not suffocating you? I love Austin; I love my friends here; I love having my family close. The more I thought about it, the less sense it made to leave it all just for the sake of leaving. This would be so much different if I were going up there with a "normal" job, or if I were convinced I wanted to make a career out of teaching, but that's not the case. I feel like I could survive this program, and if I did, I'd probably be grateful I did it. But I know I'll be happy staying in Austin, at least for another year.
What I'll be doing, I don't know. I don't really care, either, as long as I can pay rent. For justification, I can only point to this vague, ambiguous notion of happiness — some strange combination of personal preference, ambition, and relationships that Austin satisfies. Things are good right now.
Okay, I meant to write a lot mor about the trip itself. I know these thoughts are really disjointed, but I needed to finally commit them to type. I'll hopefully get around to a brief rundown of what actually happened on the trip pretty soon. For now, I gotta go finish Orlando for class tomorrow.
G'night.
---
"Oh, Jesus, not again."
New York City, Rockefellar Center, Feb. 28, 2004.
"But here either his invention failed him or, what is more likely, provided him with so many instances of what a hand can do that he shrank, as his wont was, from the cardinal labour of composition, which is excision. . . ."Talk about ambiguity. Woolf's Orlando starts life as a boy; later metamorphoses into a girl; lives for well over 300 years; travels across Europe; rubs shoulders with all kinds of British royalty and literati, from Queen Elizabeth to Shakespeare; then lives with the Gypsies; writes volumes of verse; then burns them; marries a man (or is it a woman?) named Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine, Esquire; and I've still got 40 pages left. To the Lighthouse it's not.
—Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography
Orlando is, however, my favorite Woolf novel by far of the several I've read. I don't understand why people don't mention it more often as one of her great works. It's flippant, it's funny, it's serious, it's complex, it's intriguing, it's mesmerizing, it's baffling, it's a quick, breezy read — everything good literature is supposed to be. But that is beside the point. I bring the novel up because it asks a common literary question —What is life? — then proceeds to wander through a multitude of different answers, finding dissatisfaction in each one. The answer, it seems, is that there is no one answer.
I'll come to the end tonight, so I can say for sure, but regardless, the novel fits perfectly with what I've been thinking about a lot lately: What's next?
Again, another common question. But for the past week or so, I haven't been able to talk about New York because I haven't been able to answer this question with any certainty. Now I'm not so sure there's any reason to expect an answer.
I don't believe in any form of predestination, but I sometimes wonder why certain books come along when they do. This book, assigned for class, seems to fit perfectly with this week in my life. The Essays of E. B. White seems to have come at just the right time to reveal the perfect alternative to studying computer science. Of course, maybe this is all part of the writer's excision: I cut away everything in my life at the time that didn't help me answer the questions at hand. It's quite possible that, had I not found these particular books, some other text would have fulfilled the need.
Either way, it was only after reading Orlando that I felt comfortable trusting my gut and it's ambiguous logic when it came to the Teaching Fellows.
I'm not going to New York. Even if I get in.
This just isn't the right time or circumstance for it. I told Lilly this the other day, and she was shocked: "But just a month ago you were so excited about it!" I was. But then I saw the city firsthand; I removed some of its distant lustre, felt the chill in the air even on a perfect spring day, and collapsed in my tiny hotel bed in my cramped hotel room, exhausted and lonely. I talked to my friend in the program and found out just how tight money would be. She told me about the intense physical strain her job exacted from her, and that "just living in New York is exhausting." Every time I came across a famous place or building, it was so much smaller than I expected. It was the people who felt bigger. They were more unpredictable, more interesting, and, obviously, more alive, than any of the landmarks that make up New York's glittering appeal. At first I wanted to move up there just to ride the subway with them every day.
But after a few meals in crowded restaurants, a beer or two in a Brooklyn hipster bar strangely reminiscent of Austin's Red Eye Fly, I also realized that their appeal would wear off as time wore on and their infamiliarity became ordinary, after I stopped seeing potential in every new face.
Of course there was a lot to love about the city. But there was so much to be wary of and so much uncertainty in the program itself. Whether one's life was a merely challenge or absolute hell depended what your class was like, what you were teaching, where you got your job, what college you did your master's work at, where you found a place to live, the friends you made within the program — all things that I would have little to no control over and that wouldn't be settled until almost the day school started.
Flying back into Austin, marvelling at the all the space and all the trees, feeling the town's comforting pace of life from the plane, I returned to the question that had bothered me all trip: Why try to escape that which is not suffocating you? I love Austin; I love my friends here; I love having my family close. The more I thought about it, the less sense it made to leave it all just for the sake of leaving. This would be so much different if I were going up there with a "normal" job, or if I were convinced I wanted to make a career out of teaching, but that's not the case. I feel like I could survive this program, and if I did, I'd probably be grateful I did it. But I know I'll be happy staying in Austin, at least for another year.
What I'll be doing, I don't know. I don't really care, either, as long as I can pay rent. For justification, I can only point to this vague, ambiguous notion of happiness — some strange combination of personal preference, ambition, and relationships that Austin satisfies. Things are good right now.
Okay, I meant to write a lot mor about the trip itself. I know these thoughts are really disjointed, but I needed to finally commit them to type. I'll hopefully get around to a brief rundown of what actually happened on the trip pretty soon. For now, I gotta go finish Orlando for class tomorrow.
G'night.
---
"Oh, Jesus, not again."
New York City, Rockefellar Center, Feb. 28, 2004.
posted by Matt at 1:06 AM
|
<< Home