Come Sail Away With Me

"I'm done. I'm moving to Argentina," she said, her eyes red with tears.

For the next three days eurofly is running $399 round-trip flights to Italy and I just spent the last fifteen minutes trying to convince my boyfriend that we have to go. Keeping in mind that I currently boast a checking account settled at $600 and a credit card bill of $250 (must remember to pay that btw), I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when his response was a terse "We can't afford it."

Actually, my surprise was pretty minimal and after a moment’s thought I realized that I wasn't really asking to go. No, I was asking to talk about going. Like so many others before me, I was fortunate enough to spend the now ubiquitous semester abroad. http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/22/72-study-abroad/ I visited Italy twice during that time and am always looking for the chance to work the experience into a conversation.

But I'm not snooty about it, though I have been called that. I'm not trying to brag. I just want to talk about it. To confirm its place in my history before it becomes a mere collection of digital photos that my faulty processor could delete at any moment. I've seen this behaviour (London was my home those days) in many collegians that have traveled there and back again. The dog days of graduation (which seems to be my biggest trope) have brought about even more of this talk as we suddenly become free from obligation and face the opportunity to return to Firenze, New South Wales, Seville, or venture on to Buenos Ares.

I think, though, that, like my conversation with the boyfriend, this impulse is more about the possibility than the execution. Travel abroad had become our American dream. We can imagine ourselves anywhere, doing anything, with the freedom to move on whenever we please. And with an understanding family in tow (that you like but not enough to continue living with them), we could come home at anytime, postponing the process of entering the s0-called real world.

Leaving for Italy with $-50 in my pocket and only marginal language skills is an invigorating contrast to the steady job with excellent benefits I might be offered next week. During a recent interview I started to get nervous as I began to really picture myself at a committed position. What if this isn't what I want? I thought, in spite of the fact that this job description includes everything that I am looking for.

College was an amazing time of personal growth, learning from others, and freedom. I think that I am terrified of losing that; of becoming dull and lazy. The promise of going abroad makes me feel like it is possible to continue that growth forever until I become the jetsetter I always imagined myself to be.

But stagnation, like growth, is a lifestyle choice. What I need to focus on is pursuing what I really want. While travel promises many of these things, they can also be found anywhere in my life. If I choose to learn, grow, and live, then I will always feel alive, no matter where I am. So that's what I'm choosing. I don't need to run away to find it and I don't need to just dream about it either. I can make it happen every day by employing the same wonderment and love that I did in school.

So I’m not saying that going abroad is a mistake, I’m only saying that staying here doesn’t mean that we will become boring or, worse yet, our parents. If this is my American Dream, to live with adventure, then I'm going to do that right here. I know that the challenges I embark on now are not forever and that I may just find myself on the Danube in two years time. For now I intend to master a field and stabilize my relationship. It's not that I'm giving up going away, it's that I've realized that staying here is not the kiss of death. Life is a long and twisted path and I know that I will find myself in many places during it. I'm taking responsibility for my own happiness and not relocating it to Aix en Provence. I am, however, going to brush up on my French. Just in case.

Living Fat

Oh help me,

If there is any power in the rivers.

Change and destroy the body which has given

Too much delight!

Those were Daphne's final words before she gently transformed into a laurel tree. Afraid of Apollo chasing her, she begs Nature to neutralize the flesh that has overpowered her. Daphne had the restraint to will her skin to bark and settle deep into the forest floor. The body was her enemy and pleasure the ultimate taboo.

I’m not into that.

I recently picked up Michael Flocker’s The Hedonism Handbook at a used bookstore on a lark. The design was retro and the writing seemed clever enough so I spent a few hours with it out by the pool sucking the juice from nectarines. The main point was this: Daphne may have escaped, but then she had to spend the rest of her existence as a tree.

Unemployment leaves a lot of time on your hands. There are a lot of negative emotions that go along with that. We feel useless, lost, and a little like failures. But we’re not. We’re free. Recent grads are about to spend nearly fifty years in the workforce waiting. That stark reality shades this unemployment period in a new light. It’s not a tragedy, it’s an interim; simply a break between two things.

We’re familiar with breaks: they divide the first and second half of the semester fitting in a convenient little space for either the slopes or the tropics. I spent the first few weeks of this break getting serious and feeling down on myself. What is the point of that?
There are only so many jobs out there and it’s great to apply to each one you might be interested in. Follow-up calls, research, and resume-boosting activities are all great ideas, but they don’t make up a life. Too many grads spend a little time looking and the rest of it feeling like crap. Lying by the TV, trying to forget the reality of our situations, we forget ourselves.

Flocker says that the key is to be sure that you’re spending your time enjoying your life and not anybody else’s. We all have time to be a little hedonistic. Unscheduled travel, spontaneous cocktails, and luxurious outings can be fit into even our tiny budgets, especially if we cut the greasy fast fare out of the picture and save up for the petit filet.

But on a day to day basis, there’s so much to do and enjoy. Long walks in the park, incredible literature, deep French kisses, and great conversation come cheap. When a job comes along (and don’t worry, it will), I know I’m going to spend my time trying to pencil all that in. Right now I’m letting it come easily. Cheap wine, good books, and hot friends could keep me going forever. I think we forget that we had just about as much free time in school as we do now. The difference is that then we felt great and now we feel lousy. So I’m going to give up the drear and dive into bliss. From now on, I’m sticking to Ovid’s cheeriest yarns accompanied by raspberries and double vodka Red Bulls. Classic.

Aw, Thanks

While browsing imdb this week, I noticed that Alexis Bledel has filmed something called 'The Graduate Survival Guide." Where might that be now?

Resumes go out by the dozen but very few calls come in. Things have changed and the college degree is not what it used to be. Still, you'd think there might be something out there for smart creative gals. Careerbuilder is totally the new facebook. Funny how jobseeking websites become more and more user-friendly as the job's face turns cold.

Out of the thrity or so recent grads I'm keeping track of, about seven have found jobs. These are smart people, too. It feels like we were told such lies about how all this works. We've preened ourselves to academic distinction but instead of the hungry employers we signed up for, there are virtual resume-readers and unfriendly voicemail systems.

And yet, as I look at last year's graduates, they seem to be doing something. Do opportunities really float into our lives like the gradual transition of summer into fall? One day you wake up and there's a questionable leaf on your tree and the next thing you know, you can't remember when it got to be so comfortable outside.

Someone told me about an article that claimed that this generation is more assertive than the job market can handle. We expect more responsibility on the job and offer to do more. In the fourth grade, I was told that I should really have transitioned my casual writing to cursive, as we'd not be allowed to print in the real world of middle school. I floated into each new year and the demand was never made. No exam was thrust back in my face by an angry poindexter who couldn't understand non-joined-up writing.

While I never expected to be quized on koans, calculus, or Quixote, I did expect that the complex analytical thinking and detail-orientation seen in every job description might actually be expected. The world does not seem to be demanding much. I've unveiled so much only to watch it get dusty and that mystical chain of events called education lives in my heart alondside 'the nights we'll never remember and the friends we'll never forget.'

I'm sure that next year I'll be wondering, like I have so many times before, how did I get here? But until then I guess I'll just have to pretend to figure out where I am while waiting for the next phase to creep slowly into my life.

Away We Go

The first Harold Pinter play I ever read was The Dumbwaiter. The plot of this play is actually very simple: two gangsters, Gus and Ben, stake out a hit that turns out to be Gus himself. Underneath their chatty dialogue lies a political struggle that pushes and pulls all the way to the mortality line.

Here, I'll wander from literature to politics and cover issues both local and pervasive. I'll post articles I've written for a local paper and some [veryshort] creative pieces, maybe even some free responses to what I'm reading. For the most part, it'll probably be a lot of thoughts on my daily life.

Hopefully, though, like Gus and Ben's argument about lighting either the gas or the kettle, my simple ideas will reveal something more (to you and to me). Thanks for your interest.