Getting Somewhere

This is the most difficult essay I've ever written.

So far I've spent a week thinking. A draft in two days? Right. (Don't worry, I didn't have to turn it in; that was just to get us started.)


The prompt was something like "write about a place you like to call home." I don't quite remember. He tells us our prompts in person at the end of class, but the way he says it, it's more of an idea than an order, and the exact wording escapes me even when I write it down at the time. It's both frustrating and liberating. Ultimately more liberating than frustrating.

I love this class.

What is home?

I wrote this around 2 in the morning one night. I swear I couldn't have written it at a more reasonable hour:

Home. That's a powerful word.

Master Caswell, you ask me where home is--you ask me to figure out the core of who I am and how I got that way. You ask me to paint my dreams and visit my nightmares. I almost want to write about what it's like to think about it. It's a journey by itself. A long one.

It's funny how sometimes it's so obvious that everything happens for a reason. I'm going to counseling, Master Caswell asks me where home is, I'm trying to write letters to my father, my song...

If I'm too happy, I won't figure it out. If I'm too sad, I won't figure it out. So here I am in the middle.

Winter camping. Harsh environment, good gear.

I can't stop thinking at night. I lie there in the dark and there it is, all the world before me and I have to write it down.

I wonder what I think I'm doing.

Why do I have this unquenchable desire to figure everything out anyway? Why do I feel so driven to understand things? Would it matter if I did?

Rabbits seem to be happy. They don't know how to quanitfy the age of the planet or what it means to belong to a nation. But they seem okay without that.

What is the purpose of thinking? Why do we think?

Why am I awake?

I don't do things halfway, but nor do I ever finish them.

Where is home? Why does it matter? Why do I think? Why am I trying to write the world down?


Why am I awake?

It hurts so much.

I'm such a weird kid. It's just another essay. Write about home. Describe it. Turn it in.

Essays are never just essays. They're massive undertakings to see the entire world through a small piece of glass.


There are moments when I believe I know why novels are written. In those moments, I believe I know why we love music, and why we create art.

Sometimes I believe I can see everything, and everything in the world makes sense. There's just not enough time to think about it, to spin the words around it.


I wonder, why is it so weird to tell people what we're really feeling and what's really going on inside us, and inside our world? Why do we try so hard to maintain this vision of a well-to-do world where we always brush our hair and meet people for lunch on time?

I think we should talk about it. I don't think we should pretend it's easy to exist. It's okay to not brush your hair sometimes.


Nervousness is green, bright green, intense happiness is yellow, and depression is the rosy grey of raspberry tea with cream in it, gone lukewarm.


Why would I want to face my humanity? Why am I doing this to myself? Why do I write? What makes me think I can figure things out? Why am I doing this to myself? What makes me think I can do it? Why now?
And why does any of it matter?

I don't know.

Gathering information is no trick--the trick is putting it together and doing something with it.



So.


All of that heavy, jumbled mess has just possibly slowly gotten me somewhere. At dinner tonight, I was sitting by myself with my two pages of so called pre-writing--a mix of printer type and unruly inked-in phrases--when a possible layout occurred to me. I think I may have found a way to write this essay so that it's both happy and sad, like me.

Mostly, I hope you're having an amazing Friday.