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bookclubonpluto · 5 years

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Lost

My hair tickles my chin, a breeze playfully sweeps it back and forth. The air is warm, but the breeze is cool. Blazing pink clouds contrast against baby blue skies, the color seeping into the rocks that dot the landscape. Piles of large rocks lying around me as though some giants were playing with them but never cleaned up. The rocky sculptures are skirted by prickly Joshua trees, and small cacti poke out along the desert floor. The pinks blend into reds the pale blues into dark horizons. With one last flash of color, the sun disappears, allowing the blues to blend with purple, and pale lights begin to dot the sky, getting brighter as the sky gets darker.

“They might ultimately decide not to express the Dopamine,” my professor lectures, and I bring my eyes back into focus. The starry night is replaced with the harsh white lights on the classroom circling, and the toy rocks are replaced with student dolls that sit inanimately as they listen to the lecture. It's become too easy to get lost in my mind. At first, I used to have to close my eyes and concentrate, but now it's become as easy as staring at doodles on my paper.

A tree doodle appears and is quickly replaced by a real tree. A tall sycamore towering over its neighboring trees. The sky is once again ablaze, this time a fire dancing among the clouds. A fresh green lawn blankets the foreground, extending to the trees that frame this gorgeous sunset. Wind chimes ring behind me and the familiar sound of an ambulance oscillates through the air. I am perched on the brick wall behind my house, a place that I mostly use to talk on the phone, but sometimes just for the pleasure of watching the sun go down. The rough brick scratches against my skin, reminding me I’ve been sitting here for an hour now and it’s time to get down.

“Where is Sofia? What did she do to get the money?” a different professor speaks up. This time I'm in a lilac box. The Classroom, they call it, and it's the site of my Writing the Essay class in Goddard. It's easier to be present in this class because we are often asked to get lost in our thoughts and those of others. But I still get lost in my own thoughts and lose sight of the class. I don’t really remember making my way to this classroom, but I’ve grown used to this as most Tuesdays tend to be the same.

The lilac walls fall and are replaced with a floor to ceiling window and a crowded room of people trying to order coffee. The room is noisy and with standing room only, the seat by the window is a safe haven. I watch as people walk by, they come in tides, each group a kaleidoscopic carnival. Since coming to NYU this has become one of my favorite places to come and write, a place where I can be alone but also surrounded by people. The added bonus of being at Starbucks cannot be overlooked, and as I sit at the window looking out to the park, I sip at a warm cup of coffee. What have I learned, I wonder. I’m not really sure I can answer in any tangible form.

While my first week of school seems like a decade ago, the summer days spent watching the sunsets seem to only have been a week ago. It’s almost as though I’ve merely been on vacation for the past few weeks, and my mind is still waiting to go back home and start school. Am I satisfied? No, not really. Do I have any regrets? No, not really. While waiting for college to begin, I imagined the adventure I would have, getting lost in the city and the friends I would make along the way. I couldn’t wait to see all the things I would learn. Instead, it seems that all I’ve learned is to get lost, and not in the city, but rather in my mind.

Resolutions are easier. They are actions you can name. My own resolutions often seem to be centered around tangible things. This year I’ll learn to do a push up (Circa: 2015, update: I still can’t do a push up). This year I’ll be vegetarian (Circa: 2014, this one was actually forced on me by my parents, update: I actually never liked meat so I lasted all year). This year I’ll get straight A’s (Circa: 2016, update: I hate math and it hates me). I went through many basic resolutions, but most I never took seriously. Yet, in the back of my mind there were always deeper resolutions that I wanted to pretend didn’t exist so that when they didn't happen I wouldn't be disappointed. This year I’ll make sure my parents don’t fight during the holidays (Circa: 2008, update: 2017 was the first of what I hope would be many holidays without a fight). This year I’ll be more confident (Circa: 2010, update: I’m still working on it). This year I’ll be happy (Circa: 2017, update: I have since learned that I should not make happiness be the goal, but rather the goal should be to allow myself to be happy). So this year I have a new resolution. This year I will allow myself to live and get lost in the adventure of life.

#resolutions #college #endofyear #thoughts #writing #aesthetic #photography #california #newyork #satisfaction #home #lost #class #sunset #joshuatree #socal #goldensunset

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bookclubonpluto · 5 years

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Expectations: Not Your Average Novel

Coming into college was a lot like starting this essay. When I sat down this afternoon to write, I started with fiction. A story so vastly different from my own life, that it was easier to get lost in the story, than it was to face the reality that I had only ever read of such experiences. Before coming to college, I imagined that college would mean that I would be starting a brand new narrative. Life would simply be divided into a before and an after. But here I am sitting in a limbo of both worlds. The melody of a song from the before and the voice of my roommate in the after both clash in my ear, but yet it is a sound I have grown to long for, the familiarity of the unknown.

Growing up, getting lost in someone else's narrative was as simple as opening up a book or starting a movie. In elementary school my mind was always filled with fantasies of what middle school would be like, then once I was met with a completely different reality I began to fill my mind with dreams of what high school would be like. By the time I was in high school I was so caught up in the illusion of what high school could be like, that I spent three years waiting for it all to begin. It was the third week of my senior year, as I was walking in through the gates I gotten to know so well in the last three years, going to the lockers that had once been a dream that only high school could make a reality, that something began to itch at the back of my mind. My brain trying to remember something it had yet to think of. As I made my way to class, my best friend at my side, I was caught up in the feeling of it all. I knew exactly where I was going, the metal of the door handle felt familiar against the skin on my hand, the clashing of the air conditioning against the hot California air felt almost like an echo of a memory that had become habit. As I greeted my friends, who sat at the spot we had adopted since our freshman year, I stopped and turned to my best friend and said, “We are in high school.” She laughed, pausing only when she saw the unfamiliar seriousness on my face. “Oh you’re being serious, ya we’ve been in high school for three years now. Are you ok?” Just like that all my memories came crashing back, and I realized how my expectations of what high school would be like, had been stopping me from coming to a realization that was apparently natural for everyone else. I decided in that moment to try my best to stop expecting and just live.

But who am I kidding, I still came in with expectations. I was successful in not expecting anything out of my social life, but when it came to aesthetic, I couldn’t seem to stop myself from imagining the beauty that came with living in the city. The first day I arrived, the sky was covered in a low red cloud, the mist clung onto your clothes begging to be recognized, the sky was dark, as it was almost 9:00 PM, and as the taxi wove its way through the city, my mind remained groggy. It was impossible to imagine that only a few hours early I had been standing in the airport, my throat already parched from the dry heat of California summers, the sun beating down on the hot pavement that led up to the airplane, and as I stood on the steps that led up to the small plane that would take us across the country, I searched the entrance for one last glance of my sister and my mother, hoping to say goodbye.

As the plane took off and I waved goodbye to cliche blue skies and swaying palm trees, I tried to imagine what type of world I would be arriving in in the coming hours. I imagined a bright city, stars overhead, cars zooming past, and dozens of people scattered on the street. I imagined my dorm room, the 7th floor they had told me, right in front of the park, the treetops would be the blanket on the foreground that was surrounded by lit buildings and the background would be painted skies I had grown so accustomed to back home. Instead the window that would provide me with such views, was across the hall, right in front of my room. The blanket of leaves was replaced with air conditioning motors, the lit buildings I had imagined were now the lit windows of my neighboring hallmates, and the painted skies were left up to imagination hinted at only by the pigeons that would fly down occasionally reminding us that there was more than the brick wall that blocked all else.

A similar thing happened with academics, I had practically planned my four years down to each specific class before I had even stepped on campus. A journalism and psychology dual degree, that's what I had promised myself and my parents, it’s what I had promised to practically anyone who asked why I was going to NYU. The first few lessons in psychology fascinated me, but as the weeks went by everything began to lose the magic of being new, and started to become a subject I resented. The not-even-close to passing grade on my first midterm reflected my disinterest, and as the weeks went by I found myself struggling to convince myself that this was the right path for me. Yet while I was unsatisfied with psychology, I began to fall more in love with literature and writing. With every story I read, whether it was in my seminar or Writing the Essay classes, my fascination with words became more embedded. Even after doing worse than I expected on a writing assignment, instead of giving up like I had in psychology, it only made me want to write more. I had never expected to want to improve at something, having grown up with the complex that mistakes meant failures, and I realized maybe it was time to change my academic expectations.

So ya maybe college isn't quite as I expected, and although this reflection may seem negative, everyday I find myself being fascinated by college. While my view may not be great, I find myself spending time sitting in our hallway staring out the window that hold everything I had imagined. The same goes for my academics, I may not be enjoying what I had promised myself I would, but instead I am finally allowing myself to explore new areas of study. Just like theres no clear divide between a before and after, my expectations have not changed all at once, but rather slowly molded themselves into what they are now. My new expectation is one, for me to live and allow myself to expect, but not be confined to these expectations but rather allow them to grow as I am. That being said, this is my narrative so:

Welcome to College, My Novel.

#college #writing #relfection #novel #story #hopefully relatable #new york city #nyu #california #socal #expectations

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