For me, opting to get a studio apartment when I moved to Boston seemed like a no-brainer decision. For one thing, no one I knew lived here, and as much as I loved the prospect of spinning the Craigslist lottery wheel and hoping that it didn't come up "rapist," I wasn't keen on the idea of having a stranger-roommate combo. The second major factor was moving. I'm sick of boxing up all of my possessions every 364 days. If I lived alone, I wouldn't be subject to a roomie's moving whims, and would automatically have the opportunity to (dare I dream it?) stay in one location for more than a year if I so choose.
The decision was so automatic and [weirdly enough, given that I was long-distance real-estate shopping] so painless, that I didn't stop to consider the fact that by living alone, I've entered into a whole new sociocultural group, complete with stereotypes.
For example: in 2007, a medical research organization decided that "living alone" was an alarming enough condition that they conducted a study for the purpose of discovering whether a middle-aged person, living alone, would die sooner than average. (Fortunately for my gender, only the men fulfilled the early mortality prophesy. In fact, single-living women were not only less likely to die, but also less likely to be obese or hypertensive.) Of course, the fact that this study occurred in the first place is telling. The researchers began their report by explaining that choosing to live alone, "especially in urban areas," is "considered a psychological risk factor" associated with "social isolation" and "emotional loneliness," and thus worth studying for its life-and-more-likely-death implications.
Thanks a lot, science.
To be fair, I've been in my apartment for less than a month, so my eyes are potentially still too fresh and rose-colored to judge. There's ample time for me to fall into various and sundry stereotypes, Thoreau-ian and Unabomer-ish alike. Yet I'm already feeling a little defensive on behalf of my kin. Thus far, I really like living alone. I like that the mail is always for me. I like not having to quarantine my food to "my half" of the cabinets and refrigerator. While I'm not keen on taking the full hit on the utility bills, I'm comforted in knowing that I am personally responsible for every cent of electricity that I'm obliged to pay for. (Is this what it felt like to be an only child?)
As for feeling "socially isolated" or "emotionally alone," I have yet to feel either -- partially due to the fact that I'm contractually obliged to converse at length with my grad school classmates on a regular basis; partially due to the fact that I am, after all, making friends; and partially due to the fact that Skype keeps people even 1,000 miles distant from forgetting what I look like. Having had several roommates over the years, I'm loath to accept that having another person proximal to my bedroom would somehow increase my chances of Being an Objectively Successful Human over the next few years.
...
On the other hand, you should probably come talk to me again after I find the first spider or cockroach in my apartment. Without a roomie to kill it, there's at least at 45% chance that I'll surrender territory and take up residence in the hallway.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
What is life but reckoning
It's a weird thought that ten years have passed since something occurred which I can remember with clarity and cognizance. I'm still young, which means that something that happened five years ago still qualifies as "kind of a long time" in my personal history. Ten years seems like a very long time to me, and so the fact that I can knowingly mark the 10th anniversary of something is significant in its own right, apart from any significance of the event itself.
In terms of September 11th, my youngness is revealing in another (though related) way. Yes, I can remember 9/11. I can tell you where I was, what I was doing, what I thought, and what pieces of footage I saw on TV as various events unfolded in real time. I was 13, and as such wasn't a complete nincompoop. I remember 9/11.
At 13, however, and no matter how precocious I was or thought myself to be, I didn't understand September 11th. Illustratively, here's an excerpt from my diary on that day (it should be noted that I didn't actually keep a diary. I only wrote entries on days where I thought something inordinately significant happened, and so literally the only entries in that diary are from 9/11 and the day of my first kiss):
"[...] During gym class was when I found out. My friend Suzie came up to me and asked if I had heard about the Pentagon while we were in the locker room. Then, during gym itself, Mrs. Furlan told us about everything. Unlike usual, everyone was very quiet. [...] It's hard to believe that just this morning the biggest news that filled the televisions was that Michael Jordan was playing basketball again for the Wizards. [...] The news says that this was a terrorist act, possibly by Afghanistan. There are no planes in the sky; it's a little strange. I noticed that people are taking this differently: some laughing, some mourning, some just act like it's not happening and talk about something else. Some look it full in the face and discuss it. [...] We just heard the President speak about retaliation. This is all very frightening. People talking about war. I thought that maybe in my life I wouldn't have to live through a war. Now I'm not so sure."
My diary entry communicates with pretty much total accuracy what I was feeling that day. Which is to say: not much. I understood that what happened was a tragedy in the same, emotionally distant way that I understood the Holocaust to be a tragedy. I understood that it was horrific, historically important, grave, consequential, and that it would undoubtedly have ramifications into the future. I remember writing in my diary and simply trying to record my experiences because I thought I would find them interesting or significant at a later time. I mentally attempted to accept how big of a historical event had just occurred. But I didn't feel much.
I remember thinking that a building collapsing to the ground was a huge and terrible disaster, but for whatever reason (and I'm thinking the reason was "being a child") I didn't think of the people -- the firefighters being asked to climb up 96 flights of stairs, the debilitating panic of the office workers nearby, how horrific it must have been to have 65 floors worth of skyscraper crashing down on you as your last moments on earth. That kind of terrific empathy was, frankly, well beyond my capacities as a 13 year old and is still something I doubt I completely grasp.
And so it's been over the last ten years that I've slowly, gradually started to absorb the actual tragedy that was September 11th. It's not an easy task. The words September 11th, tragedy, patriotism, hero, and particularly terror have become so exhausted in the lexicon to pretty much lose all meaning. Complicating matters is that fact that, in the venture of gaining information, you have to be an intelligent consumer, discerning between emotional tributes and tawdry displays, between meaningful investigation and careless bandwagoning.
Particularly in the last couple weeks, the media has been completely saturated with "tributes," "memorials," and "dedications" to 9/11, as well as several spoonfuls of analyses over whether or not there are too many tributes in the media. Now that it's been a full decade since 9/11, it's even harder to figure out what's in good taste and faith.
I agree, overall, that there's an almost garish amount of 9/11 retrospective leading up to the 10th anniversary. But as someone who is still attempting to emotionally comprehend an incident that I was too young to take in at the time, I've been cautiously touched by and thankful for the impassioned journalism. It's a dubious decision to unearth footage of terror and fear. But today I'm a 23 year old with a brain and a desire for cultural meaning, and I feel like it's right for me to re-experience the event and empathize with my country like I couldn't a decade ago.
In terms of September 11th, my youngness is revealing in another (though related) way. Yes, I can remember 9/11. I can tell you where I was, what I was doing, what I thought, and what pieces of footage I saw on TV as various events unfolded in real time. I was 13, and as such wasn't a complete nincompoop. I remember 9/11.
At 13, however, and no matter how precocious I was or thought myself to be, I didn't understand September 11th. Illustratively, here's an excerpt from my diary on that day (it should be noted that I didn't actually keep a diary. I only wrote entries on days where I thought something inordinately significant happened, and so literally the only entries in that diary are from 9/11 and the day of my first kiss):
"[...] During gym class was when I found out. My friend Suzie came up to me and asked if I had heard about the Pentagon while we were in the locker room. Then, during gym itself, Mrs. Furlan told us about everything. Unlike usual, everyone was very quiet. [...] It's hard to believe that just this morning the biggest news that filled the televisions was that Michael Jordan was playing basketball again for the Wizards. [...] The news says that this was a terrorist act, possibly by Afghanistan. There are no planes in the sky; it's a little strange. I noticed that people are taking this differently: some laughing, some mourning, some just act like it's not happening and talk about something else. Some look it full in the face and discuss it. [...] We just heard the President speak about retaliation. This is all very frightening. People talking about war. I thought that maybe in my life I wouldn't have to live through a war. Now I'm not so sure."
My diary entry communicates with pretty much total accuracy what I was feeling that day. Which is to say: not much. I understood that what happened was a tragedy in the same, emotionally distant way that I understood the Holocaust to be a tragedy. I understood that it was horrific, historically important, grave, consequential, and that it would undoubtedly have ramifications into the future. I remember writing in my diary and simply trying to record my experiences because I thought I would find them interesting or significant at a later time. I mentally attempted to accept how big of a historical event had just occurred. But I didn't feel much.
I remember thinking that a building collapsing to the ground was a huge and terrible disaster, but for whatever reason (and I'm thinking the reason was "being a child") I didn't think of the people -- the firefighters being asked to climb up 96 flights of stairs, the debilitating panic of the office workers nearby, how horrific it must have been to have 65 floors worth of skyscraper crashing down on you as your last moments on earth. That kind of terrific empathy was, frankly, well beyond my capacities as a 13 year old and is still something I doubt I completely grasp.
And so it's been over the last ten years that I've slowly, gradually started to absorb the actual tragedy that was September 11th. It's not an easy task. The words September 11th, tragedy, patriotism, hero, and particularly terror have become so exhausted in the lexicon to pretty much lose all meaning. Complicating matters is that fact that, in the venture of gaining information, you have to be an intelligent consumer, discerning between emotional tributes and tawdry displays, between meaningful investigation and careless bandwagoning.
Particularly in the last couple weeks, the media has been completely saturated with "tributes," "memorials," and "dedications" to 9/11, as well as several spoonfuls of analyses over whether or not there are too many tributes in the media. Now that it's been a full decade since 9/11, it's even harder to figure out what's in good taste and faith.
I agree, overall, that there's an almost garish amount of 9/11 retrospective leading up to the 10th anniversary. But as someone who is still attempting to emotionally comprehend an incident that I was too young to take in at the time, I've been cautiously touched by and thankful for the impassioned journalism. It's a dubious decision to unearth footage of terror and fear. But today I'm a 23 year old with a brain and a desire for cultural meaning, and I feel like it's right for me to re-experience the event and empathize with my country like I couldn't a decade ago.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Adventures in solitude
I'm in Boston. 1,007 miles, 3 Great Lakes, and 1 laughably eroded mountain range now separate me from Chicago. Everything I own on this planet, as it turns out, fits into a 5x8 U-Haul truck plus a few cubic feet of Aztek trunk space. Campus is beautiful. Every building looks the same, which is great for aesthetics and cohesion but terrible for my ability to successfully navigate campus. My apartment is also beautiful. The walls are serendipitously already painted colors that match my furniture and linens perfectly. Moving in took less time than I thought it would. I never think that I have too many books until I have to move. Now that I'm all moved in, I've already decided that I could use more books. Boston drivers honk as often as geese and just as randomly. The nearby interstate allows motorists to drive on the shoulder during morning and evening rush hours, which looks weird and feels weirder. Everyone I've met has been unusually friendly, including random townies. I touch-up painted the walls in my apartment when I was bored and without internet, which made me feel hyperbolically competent in DIY house repair. I prefer playing my Gilmore Girls DVDs in the background while I putz around, rather than music. I stocked a bare-shelved kitchen with 100% of the foodstuffs I need to survive for roughly $170. I don't feel lonely yet and I think it'll be a while until I do. I do miss my seester, my parents, my friends, and my GR. I was slightly embarrassed this morning when the Comcast guy came to install my internet and my bed was still unmade with a teddy bear splayed on my blankets. I'm ahead in the reading for my classes but feel like I should be more ahead. The T is harder to figure out than the L. I haven't actually been to downtown Boston yet, but I have finally memorized my zip code. Very few people I've talked to so far have had a Boston accent. I'm curious to find out if anyone ever thinks I have a Chicago accent. My picture in my new student ID is surprisingly flattering. My first class is on Thursday.
Let the games begin.
Let the games begin.
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