Thursday, February 26, 2009

Tired

I just feel tired, stagnant. I spend my days fixing things when I want to explore. I thought this morning about how the day felt like Scotland did so many years ago. I tried looking at the street I was walking down in a new way. But all I saw was my memories. Fourteen years of memories. I have spent nearly half my life in Boston. I remember how when I was a freshman here for undergrad I just wanted to finish school and leave. I felt like the place, the tenor of the place was hostile to me. I was an invader in a new town and it desired me gone. Now I go other places and I miss Boston. But when I am at home I miss the feeling of seeing the world as a big place for me to learn about. I am itching to see new things, and I want to be able to see new things here, for convenience sake, but every where I look it is something I know. The neighborhood I live in now is the first neighborhood I saw in Boston. Sometimes I hear my senior year AP Lit teacher saying, "it is the circularity of the novel". Is my life some novel with a circular narrative. Am I just a living version of "Light in August". Where is the burning house? Where is my mixed heritage, my outsiderness. I fear getting old sometimes, not because of death but because I feel like I am getting farther and farther from greatness. Perhaps it was profound hubris, but when I was young I thought I really could be or do anything. It wasn't just that my mom told me that, I actually thought I had the capacity to be as great, in an epic sense, as I wanted to be. As I get older that feeling is fading. I feel myself edging towards complacency and normalcy. It is all just making me tired.

4 comments:

Aaron Friar said...

Brett,

It sounds to me like the first chapter of GK Chesterton's Orthodoxy the Romance of Faith. You should try picking it up. It might provide a fresh look at old things.

Carrie said...

Just read this post now.

Does having Asher allow you to experience that childhood excitement and idealism all over again?

e.b. said...

I suppose so, but I don't remember excitement and idealism from my really young days. I have always felt very conflicted about life and my place in it. I just always felt like that conflict was producing something, a sort of developing paradigm about life that was unique to me. I used that as a lens to create, probably crappy poetry and art, but still to create. I would say that Asher makes me more optimistic than I have ever been in my entire life. If anything, he quashes some of the inner conflict of my life, but he doesn't solve the issue I have with becoming mediocre or less than human. I can be a very good dad and have given up my aspirations and dreams. I don't want that though. I want to be a great dad, raise a wonderful man in this world, and be able to use what talents I have to their fullest.

I have been thinking and writing more lately however and that feels good. I have also been taking more time to just try to view the world around me, without the memories and past creeping in on me.

e.b. said...

Aaron, I bought GK Chestertons Orthodoxy, I am planning on reading it when I am done with the class I am taking this semester.