I noticed that whenever I have no obligations to do anything, I have much less drive to do anything at all. Last week when I had finals to study for and papers to work on, I still found it really easy to find time to blog or do anything else that I consider constructive. All of my classes ended on Tuesday and I have been doing relatively nothing for days. The less free time you have, the better you utilize it.
Every year when the annual odometer hints at a rollover, I dust off my old paperback copy of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye. I feel like every time I read it, I read it a little differently. It’s kind of like how Holden visits the Museum of Natural History and realizes how he keeps changing, while the building and exhibits remain the same. My entire ENL 200 class this semester was composed of doing close readings on poetry, novellas, and short stories so I now know how to properly read a book.
Friendship is a slippery fish. When you are ten years old you have your close friends and they are really all you need. Sometimes a friend's dad will get assigned to another army base in another county and that's usually the end of the friendship. Adult friends are so much more complicated. The whole gender issue aside, you have all of these social obligations and Christmas cards and far away friends that you rarely talk to and friends down the street that you rarely talk to and the friends that you play music with and the friends that you knew from high school and the friends that you knew from college and the friends that you used to sneak out at night with and walk around the streets at night while everyone else was asleep. You'll give them a call once a year or see them at the supermarket or go out to a movie once and a while with them, but sometimes you wonder what the point .
For the last three years of my life I have not been interested in making new friends because I knew I would be transferring and moving a lot. The people I have become friends with in this period were just happenstance. Good friends are not made, they just happen. Good friendships naturally evolve.
Some connections are open ended. Some connections aren't real connections at all.
Speak easy,
Neil
1 comment:
"Some connections are open ended. Some connections aren't real connections at all." Some good food for thought.
I love how you reread Catcher in the Rye every year. My family makes fun of me for rereading the same books over and over again. "Does the story ever change?" is what they ask when they catch me rereading something. I used to just say "No! It's just a really good" but I guess the more I think about it, the reason I like to reread is because I have changed and different parts of books speak differently to me now. I think it is something only people who read a lot will ever understand.
dightw (I think the computer thinks I'm a virus because I've posted on here many times so the words keep getting weirder and weirder! maybe I'll take some of them and invent a story)
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