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avahuang · 6 years ago

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Onzuiver: a play in one act

C: So say you are 18 years old and you meet this guy. And he’s good-looking—it doesn’t really matter, but it makes the story easier if the protagonist is good-looking. And you are too, but you’re insecure about it. And it’s your first summer in Boston, you’re interning, and he asks you out. And he takes you out for dessert on the second date, and you have sex with him, and yadayadayada. At first it’s all fine, maybe for a month or two it’s all fine. By “fine” I mean that you remain intact, critical, in fact a little bit detached. You’re along for the ride, but you haven’t been thrown into the water—you’re not immersed, you’re not drowning. And then you leave the city, and the two of you break up—rather, he breaks up with you over video call, he knows it’s not right, long-distance, whatever—and then it begins. The really interesting part. Because you feel something really remarkable, a kind of acute panic—you can’t bear to lose this guy. All of a sudden it becomes evident, the pain makes it evident, that you’re really quite attached, that you feel deep inside you somewhere between the sternum and your sixth left rib a kind of wild floundering. And you become convinced that this horrible agony can only be rectified by rectifying the external situation, i.e. the two of you must promptly get back together. You need to once again seal the envelope that has been ripped open. But he fights your efforts, and then you push back because you can’t accept the reality of a world without the person you’re now convinced you’re madly in love with, every single thing that is not him seems leached of life, totally incapable of holding your attention. I mean you read all the advice about being strong, no contact, respecting yourself and respecting your partner, really good advice, but it has no sway over you emotionally whatsoever, you’re so far from any anchor to sanity, calm, self-respect: for the very first time in your young life you are completely immersed. Completely at sea, all alone, and you know this isn’t a novel experience, people survive it, but the thing about the chemical insanity of youth is that everything feels so incredibly zoomed in and an experience like this—really being in love for the first time—swallows up your entire horizon like a giant crimson sun emitting incredible heat. Just imagine staring at a huge red sun that seems unbearably close to you—you can feel the uncomfortable warmth, you have the peeling burns on your skin—and all around people are telling you that it’s an insignificant thing, ignore it. And you wonder aren’t they flooded by the sunlight, can’t they feel that it hurts? But of course they can’t, the sun’s only there for you, and you feel isolated by this private phenomenon, you can’t really talk about it because you know there’s something shameful about the outrageousness of it, how divorced from reality you’ll sound. It’s like admitting that you think a novel with elements of magical realism is actually true, that you can live in a totally sane and functional world and then cats just come up and talk in human voices and giant suns descend and hover meters away from the ground. It’s madness. But that’s the funny truth of it—our emotional lives are madness, especially the first time we experience really significant events. Everything’s so wildly distorted and things that have very little impact on your life objectively have a massive impact internally. And because they have a massive impact internally they begin to change your real, external life in significant ways. Believing in that giant red sun actually alters how you act.

(Silence)

C: So for a long time you’re just trying to get this guy to love you. There are all these things that happen—you graduate, and you get a new job, and you move back to Boston—but these are not really things that matter to you at the time. There’s a part of you that acknowledges that they are new and profound, but the central fact of your existence, sad as it is to say, has become this guy. And remember, you’re still super isolated by this, because there is an objective world in which you are a high-functioning young woman, care about your career, care about your friends, are even-keeled and self-confident and cheerful, and it’s shameful to admit that you have a private obsession that’s totally consumed you. And the thing is that because this guy’s a little bit older than you and he’s been through the wringer already with someone else, had his heart masticated and spat out on the ground a couple of times already, and through unimpaired eyes understands that the two of you really are a bad match, he likes for your good qualities—you’re attractive, smart, fun to be around—but the phenomenon that you’re experiencing, this mad love which seems in the moment like the first real thing you’ve maybe ever felt, is totally one-sided. And he can tell something really serious and strange is going on with you, that you’re obsessed with him, and he’s bemused and a little repulsed by it. And he’s trying to be decent, but it’s confusing because you’re totally incapable of having an emotionally honest conversation with him--I mean, think about it, you can’t go to the guy you’re desperately trying to win over and say, you’re this giant red sun in my life and I think your heat is kind of frying me to death--so he can only observe from outside symptoms what’s going on, a good deal of it you’ve managed to internalize and isolate from everyone else, and you’re telling him all these totally bullshit things, trying to sound reasonable--I want to be with you, it’s okay if we keep things casual, it’s fine if we’re not a long-term match--and he really does like you some of the time, and of course it’s flattering to be the focus of such intense, seemingly irrational attention, it would make anyone feel special and powerful--so he keeps wavering between what he knows he observes in the objective external world and the pull of you--your urgency--and things continue like this for a while, time passes.

(Silence)

C: And then the really bad thing happens, which is that through sheer force of will and pure relentlessness you manage to convince him that dating you is maybe not a terrible idea and the two of you get back together. Yes, really. [looks at audience] And the thing is of course that no one explodes or dies, it’s all relatively anti-climatic after all this time, all this longing. The two of you aren’t really that compatible with each other, he was right from the beginning, in fact he’s kind of a shitty partner--hypercritical, hypocritical, jealous, emotionally unstable, just as he warned you. But because you’re so invested at this point and he kind of is too--after so much time and pain you both just want things to be stable for a while--you go on dates and have sex and message each other cute emoticons, the normal stuff, and you’re too needy and he’s too absent, and then after a couple of months you realize that you’re actually, uh, not really happy. You have what you want, this beloved person, this glowing ball of sun, and in fact most of the time it just feels kind of lackluster, kind of wrong. And of course there are really tender moments, transcendent wonderful moments, because there’s some inherent compatibility and quite a lot of attraction and he cares about you after having known you so long, it’s just the mere exposure effect, and so there are bright spots, glints of the light on the dark pond. But you begin to understand what’s actually been going on all this time, which is that you’ve actually been madly in love with a narrative layer on top of the real person, some idealized person who looks like your actual boyfriend, has the same blond hair, same crooked nose, and you’ve wedded all these fantasies to them, believed they are the answer to the mundane parts of your life, your dissatisfaction, thought they would elevate your life, save you from your uncertainty about your job and all your insecurities about yourself and your desire to find purpose, find meaning, be capable of one single independent thought separate from all the ingrained values that’ve been fed to you by your parents and society and all the capitalist institutions around you and all the mid-brow whitebread media you consume. But of course this idealized person doesn’t exist, godfuckingdamnit, you’re in love with someone who doesn’t exist and never will, and instead you’re stuck dating someone who you have all these confused feelings for because he’s become inextricably intertwined with the person in your head, you’ve been interacting with him believing that he’s this person all the time, and now turns out he isn’t, he’s just some 25-year-old who has good qualities and bad qualities like anyone else, and you see that it’s not going to work, I mean he’s not going to fall madly in love with you, and you guys could continue maintaining this thoroughly mediocre equilibrium, this relationship where neither person is miserable but both are kind of vaguely dissatisfied, but why bother? So the plot culminates in the only way it can, in a breakup, and you cry for a bit while listening to an Adele song and then you chug on with your life. And it takes a while to really be able to process and understand this experience, to articulate all of these things to yourself in a coherent way. For a long time you’re really ashamed of it, and then you realize how common it is, that in fact it’s just a kind of side effect of being that age the same way weight gain is a side effect of Lexapro: being swallowed up by your emotions and interacting with an idealized version of someone instead of trying to really understand who they actually are. So it felt in the moment Capital-S Shattering but now that you can zoom out you realize that it’s actually quite normal, and in fact some people never grow out of it. And then you’re hit with the final heartwrenching revelation, which is that now that you have sort of reprogrammed yourself into a healthy mature adult and you’re aware that you should never idealize your partners and probably never will again, you’re thoroughly insulated from that all-consuming madness, the heady temperature and magic. It was purely a production put on by your teenage hormones and that glorious feeling, which made every tiny thing seem so significant, which could alter time in ways that were beyond language, is not going to be repeated. You could date every incredibly cool person in the world (and for a period of time after the breakup you make a real go at exactly that), but you’re never going to feel the same way again because it was just an internal thing, a reflection of your emotional and mental state at the time, and you can’t replicate it. Tragic but true: adulthood cannot be undone. And so all that energy you put into the guy and into trying to win his love can’t just go into another partner, at least not right away. You consider the possibility that real adult love could be (well, more subtle hopefully) just as significant, but decide you’re probably not ready for it. And then you realize that all the care and thought and time--all that momentous effort--has to go into yourself, into the person who generated all of those feelings in the first place. You have to redirect your focus into your own life and address the emptiness and dissatisfaction that made you susceptible to this whole madness in the first place. It’s not a good revelation, it’s like looking for keys frantically all over the house and realizing two hours and one locksmith later that they were in your front left pocket--like what a waste, couldn’t I have just been a little less stupid in the first place? But all of us start out kind of dumb I guess, and all you can hope for is that every iteration of yourself is a slightly better iteration. That’s all we’re ever given.

(Silence)

#writing

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thetravelingresearcher-blog · 8 years ago

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A Catch Up! Frustrations, Research, and Travels May 30th - June 19th: From developing my research to traveling from Cadiz to Seville to the Sierra Nevada mountains and back again

Well! I have certainly lacked a bit here. The past 2 weeks and some change have been a whirlwind of excitement, adventure, life lessons, delicious food, incredible views, and intense research! Before I dive into the nitty-gritty, I want to point out some important lessons I have learned along the way.

Culture is a very interesting topic. While there are wonderful, extravagant, weird, wild, and just plain neat cultures in the world there is one defining barrier that bars one from fully submerging themselves. That barrier can be defined as language.I am just a man who has never ever in his life been thrown into a situation where I have almost no ground but myself with which to refer to. my ability to charm people with words, ask directions, have deep conversations with incredible individuals, and generally submerge myself in a place has been halted by the ever so high language barrier. I came to Spain not knowing a lick of Spanish, which is very frustrating, especially after spending two years learning another European language (German). While my language skills in that Language are average to fluent, I sit at ground zero with my Spanish. I am basically like a 1-year-old. I can say things like:I would like (blank)’, ‘it is hot outside’, ‘how are you’, ‘I am well’, ‘can I have’, and other cursory phrases that help me out when in a restaurant, or simply greeting somebody and talking about the weather(it is always sunny in Spain. I have seen a maximum of 10 clouds since I have arrived). so basically I am at ground zero, which is so very difficult. I will share two experiences since I have been here that have absolutely frustrated me. I will begin with a more comical one:

The “Vodafone Experience” This is something my flatmates and I have a shared experience of... the dreaded recharging of our data plans at the hellhole that is Vodafone. I do not think I have ever had a worse experience while being on the receiving end of customer service. I have never met people who are so opposed and difficult to dealing with foreigners, and who so openly oppose each other. It all begins with walking in and grabbing a ticket that specifically says “recargar”. From there one take a seat in the nice red round cushy chairs in the corner. One might loose themselves in the soft music being played, and begin to relax as they wait in the queue. Keep in mind that I am an obviously American individual. eventually one hears a mispronunciation of their name (Anglo names and Spanish names are quite different, as is their pronunciations ). One walks up to the servicer, expecting the lady/gentleman to help me out, and be patient. They ask, “what can I help you with” in Spanish and I respond politely, “Neccisito recargar mi telefono por favor”..... Not a second later, the servicer bursts into rapid, LOUD Spanish about me not being able to recharge my phone and blah blah blah. They are obviously frustrated, and I quickly pull out my phone to fire off a paragraph of what I would like to do in Google Translate, and I shove my phone in front of their face.... They take a second to look at it, then look up at me with this look of annoyance, and possibly hate and begin the rapid Spanish even louder than before. At this point, I am back in my chair, and pretty intimidated, as I have no clue what this person is saying to me, or why they are so angry and making a scene. People are staring at me and all I can manage is a feeble “yo no se” (I don't understand). To this, the person screws up their face, then shakes their head like I am an idiot. I continue to explain because I have done this process of recharging my phone successfully before in another city. I don't understand why they are being so difficult. The scene is slowly exploding and I get a bit angry. I don't understand why they won't do the same process they have done before. Eventually, I try to explain the steps this person must pursue and they look at me like I am still an idiot, but to this, they understand. The process is completed, and I walk out with sweat beading off my forehead, and not because it is insanely hot outside.

The “I wish I could help this person” experience This experience is a bit tamer than the former. Most days I go to this quaint, cozy, and tucked away coffee shop down a narrow street. The walls are lined with books, the floor is covered with beautiful carpets, and the waiters are incredibly nice. In fact, I am writing this post from the very spot. I typically get a table by the window, adjacent to the bar, so that I can see what is happening inside and outside the shop. Jazz plays in the background and sets the calm mood of this gem of a spot. I order my usual, a Cafe Americano, and open my laptop to begin work. As of late, I partition my time between doing research and planning travel. around 12 o’clock every day a blind man ambles his way into the room, and makes a big entrance, loudly exclaiming, “Hola! Buenos Dias!” He then makes his way to the end of the bar, where he takes a cautious seat, and orders. Every day I see this man come in, and I notice that the waiters will stop whatever they are doing to help him around (He likes to move a lot). He seems like a very nice man, and I can't help but want to introduce myself, but how? I speak next to no Spanish.

I can't help but feel a connection between this man and I. He is blind, and I can't speak the language. I want to help him on his way home every day, but how can I? How could he communicate to me where he wants to go, and how would I know anyways? The streets of Cadiz are dangerous. Taxi’s buzz by, with no heed to your safety, even if you have to press yourself against the wall. Scooters come out of nowhere to surprise you, as they cut you off around a corner. People will basically walk over you if you do not keep moving. How does this man do it? He must be some kind of scientist, who has broken down how to get around a chaotic, narrowly streeted, loud, smelly, and generally intimidating city? I cannot fathom. Thus, I cannot help but want to help. I get the most joy out of life by helping people. It is the best feeling in the world, and almost always leads to a wonderful story and a cool adventure. I cannot help but want, alas I can't. The language barrier bars my way.

I hate saying I can't. and there may seem a repetition of that word in this section. Please take note, because I have. Learning a language may be difficult, but it is an awarding endeavor. The one I plan to pursue. I hate the expression and I wish to rid myself of it because I can.

So there is that.... Now onto the...

The research I don't want to bore you guys to death with my academic endeavors here, but I am very excited about them. Overall they are going well, and the research is chugging along and formulating itself beautifully. It feels great to be an undergraduate, doing lead research in a field that is in large unexplored (at least in the area I am studying). I will give you a basic rundown of how I have progressed, and we will call it at that.

So....

I have formulated my hypotheses and theories about how Gibraltar will develop itself concerning nationality, and the cleavages that will show themselves as the wheel of time turns (catch that reference anyone? ANYONE?). I have developed my research, and with the help of my extremely smart mentor, have decided to pursue a comparative study between Hong Kong’s experience with sovereignty change in 1997 and Gibraltar’s upcoming possible(probable) change.

From there I have developed an outline and have begun writing. It is crude, but with time It will be a beautiful essay.

So......

Adventure Two weekends ago, I decided to accompany my flatmate, Peter, up the largest mountain in the Iberian Peninsula, the Mulhacen. sitting at an incredible 11,387 feet, it was the first mountaineering experience I have ever had, and the highest I have ever been. Words cannot begin to describe this experience, but I will try.

Hiking at elevation is more difficult than at sea level, naturally. along with the continued exertion of gaining elevation, there is the small matter that the higher you go, the less oxygen there is. Every 100 meters or so one must stop and catch their breath. This makes the process of summiting the mountain, or any mountain, a labored process.

If there was no risk though, there would be no reward. That reward is the internal satisfaction of achievement, and the external satisfaction of seeing the vast, sweeping landscape beneath you. It is an emotional and personal experience to climb a mountain. While one might do it with people, the challenge itself is a lonely endeavor. One that is only shared when you are off the mountain, and even then it is personal. I have had similar experiences all my life, and especially in recent years with my work at Northern Tier, but even carrying a 70-pound canoe and a 30-pound pack up and down hills, through mud bogs, and across rickety boards for miles doesn't quite compare. Those walks are exhililerating, but they just don't quite compare...

Specifically because climbing a mountain is a more direct metaphor for life. I won't go into detail, as I think one should not read about it and experience it, but if for some reason you cannot climb, hike, or endeavor up a mountain, let me know, and I will share this metaphor with you. It is a good life lesson.

So that is it for now! Other than that, I have had other experiences here in Spain, but they are far less impactful. Until next time, my readers.

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