on the eve of my-summer-is-over
hi all,
i’ve never had much experience with blogs. when i first set up a myspace account i was so excited i posted two entries – and that’s all i’ve got, for blogs. it’s funny, but just in briefly scrolling through the entries on here, the latest ones came after tori’s (latest) prompt. i’m writing now, because i’m in a strange state of mind, sitting here, in my almost-empty room.
tomorrow morning i will stuff my shy little-big dog into the backseat of my worn, dirty toyota and drive off, east on i-10, through flatonia, houston, sulphur, back home to lafayette, in louisiana. the apartment now is a mess. trash lies everywhere. i don’t know what my next move is, because i can’t vacuum without packing, and i can’t pack without vacuuming, and i can’t vacuum without knowing what my next move is. one of my two roommates is out at wal-mart; she’s been gone a few hours now. the other came through briefly today, to clean up her room (puppy-torn carpet and all), since she moved to her new place last weekend. what am i to do, alone now in the twilight, really, finally, wrapping up the last summer i’ve got before i join the proverbial…real world.
so what did i do this summer? well, the first, and clearest, thing that comes to mind is this: this summer i drove around all of freakin texas.
after that, around that, in and out of that, is a haze of things. the sometimes-unbearable heat, the heaps of fast food wrappers and diet dr. pepper bottles in my car, talking to people in a half-daze, sitting in meetings flushed and feeling out of place. curled up in my bed with the phone pressed to my ear, hunched over my laptop at my desk, over my journal at some coffeeshop, one cup of coffee after another, coffees, lattes, con pannas (yay for new terms). i’ve been to all the whole foods around here: austin, san antonio, houston – all except dallas, and that only because, well, i’ve never been overnight in dallas, so there’s never been enough time. i’ve felt excited, dejected, hopeless, happy, curious, angry, wondering, touched…but mostly hot and frustrated. it’s been one hot and frustrating summer, driving around all of freakin texas.
i used my summer funding to pursue something perhaps more personal than academic, when you look at the roots of it. i studied conspiracy theorists. i talked to people who believe that 9/11 was an inside job, that there is a new world government in the works, that nothing is what it seems. “the government is out to get you.” we’ve all heard that. well, it’s true. well – i’m still working on that.
“this project is for my graduation thesis for my degree in cultural anthropology.” i gave the same schpiel every time, staring into different pairs of eyes. what did i see in them? what did i learn? did i have the foundations of my reality shaken? was i jolted into an awareness that brought me a new set of eyes? did i become a new person – or, in the very least, become armed with new knowledge and understanding?
not really. academics aside, anthropological theory aside, conspiracy theories (an oxymoron, by the way) aside, i’ve learned this summer that i am who i am. three-and-a-half years of college later, all the stuff at school, at home, in china and over the summers, after all the hours spent on texas roads, i am still the same person, with the same thoughts, the same resistances, the same laziness, the same ridiculous worries. now, at the end, sitting for one last night at this stupid little desk in my stupid little room, the same questions are swimming around in my head. i’m still blinking furiously to see through my too-dry contacts. i’m still wondering what the heck my thesis will be about.
i took a fieldwork methods class last spring, and i worked with an activist group called north carolina stop torture now. what amazed me then was how people were dedicated to something larger than themselves, something called humanity. well, i thought, for my thesis i am NOT going to write about something so cheesy like that. but everything aside – i think, now, sitting here, and maybe thinking about this for the first time, humanity is what sticks out, from all the hours of conversations i’ve heard and was a part of. i chose “conspiracies” as my topic because of a faintly glowing belief in a magical and fantastic world. and when i think about it, now, i think…i think there were points this summer when i saw that world again, almost as clear as when i saw it as a child.
imagine someone who devotes his life to a website on freedom and sovereignty that few people visit. imagine someone living in a government home, seeing visions of the future and his role in saving it. imagine someone else writing legal articles alone in his huge house on the lakefront, a shadow in the system, unknown and without identification. imagine someone telling you, in the wicker chair of her backyard, that there are two worlds, one on land and one on glass, and you are not who you are, living on that glass. my head swam after every interview. the faces and voices blend together, the smells one giant, thick whorl of fog.
conspiracy IS about trust. the people i met trusted themselves, trusted that what they were doing was right, and trusted that humanity is a species worth saving. can i say that much for myself? who or what do i trust? who or what do i believe in? do i pay attention to the world around me? do i do anything to effect even the smallest of ripples in the fabric of this reality, these realities, these truths, this world, to deserve my place in it?
