Summer proceeds, though in smaller chunks than desired. Working five days a week is a bummer, especially when those five days include Friday night, all day Saturday, and all day Sunday. Nevertheless, being trapped inside for five days of the week makes me appreciate all the more those few days off, and soon after waking up, I’m always outside doing something.
Though, after waking up and before going outside to do something today, I went downstairs. My dad had bought me a new hammer, good for both framing and finish, and gave it to me along with a Cape Cod Lumber hat and nail pouch. The month in New Orleans is almost certainly a go, and all that’s left is to work out the details.
I looked up a bunch of thrift stores in the phone book and was going to go searching for the leather pants I’ll need for Thursday night, but it was far too nice a day to spend driving around, an activity which I’m once again coming to dislike, since commuting to work is no fun. (I think the only thing that makes it even minimally enjoyable is singing really loudly with my arm stretched out the window, grasping for the air that would be roughly brushing my face, if I were biking or running.)
So, I hopped on my bike and went for a sweet 10.25-mile ride around town, taking detours through Island Grove and the (relatively) new track and field next to the high school. Then, after a brief stop back at home, I went to Ames Nowell State Park and noticed that the ranger station was open, so I went in to talk to the guy sitting behind the desk.
Wearing a maroon DCR cap and a grey shirt was Walter Dow, who after some brief introductory questions on my part, got into providing me with his life story. He talked about his three kids, his boats, his job of 25 years at Edison, his time in the Navy, what he’s seen at the park, his son’s Italian wife who eats all his food, and so much more. Basically, while I’m confident I could now write his biography in this space, I won’t. Instead, I will tell you that I learned when the Friends of Ames Nowell meetings are (Sundays, 10 AM), that DCR reinstated his ranger position (which means that we won’t have to share a ranger with Wompatuck State Park), and that no major park improvements are planned for the summer (except some cleanup and repairs). Oh, and that the water in the park’s urinals froze over the winter, and the ceramic snapped into a bunch of pieces.
After I extricated myself from Wally’s life story with a firm handshake and a promise that he’d be seeing more of me over the next month, I went down to the dam and jumped around, just like old times, on all the granite blocks that slow the water moving downstream. I looked for some turtles downstream in the lazy burbling of the river, but all I came across was some fish-like thing that darted too fast along the surface of the water for me to catch a good glimpse of it. There was a group of loud kids in the woods across the river, who were loud enough to have probably been drinking or something, so I decided to seek some peace and animals elsewhere, and headed down the path along the pond.
I came across two of the cutest little kids on the big boulder that I used to climb when I was little (all right, I still climb it whenever I go to the park). One started climbing the rock with me; his name is Isaiah and he is probably around 7-years old. He agreed with me on the badness of littering, and he found a caterpillar to which we tried to feed leaves. (Eventually we came to the conclusion that the caterpillar was napping and didn’t want to be disturbed.) His little sister and I talked about Alvin and the Chipmunks because I told them that I had often come across chipmunks, when I was little, at the bottom of the big boulder. I think they were there with a babysitter, who was quite cute but whose age I couldn’t estimate with much accuracy (17 or 18, maybe).
After playing with the kids for a while, I went off on my way around the pond, but was disappointed with the amount of bottles, cigarette box wrappers, and other trash I came across, so I ended up picking up everything I came across and carried it, in a plastic bag that I also found on the ground, to the trash barrel on the way out.
On the way back, Isaiah was wading in the pond and was trying to move a big rock under the water, but couldn’t lift it, so he asked for help. I lifted one end, he lifted the other (strugglingly, obviously not wanting to let me down), and we moved it to dry land. But it was a pretty big rock (actually, a conglomeration of three big rocks glued together with concrete) and so he dropped his end, leaving me with a nice gash running down my thumb and palm, to the wrist. But I don’t hold it against him. 
Picking up the trash, which I had temporarily stored on the ground next to my shoes, the babysitter asked me in a slightly derisive tone, “Are you picking up trash back there?” “Yeah,” I said, seeing her cuteness wear off just a bit. “The world isn’t made any better when I see a problem, assume that someone else will take care of it, and walk away.”
…
I’ve always been a firm believer in the advice that my parents gave me—that, when I grow up, I had better do something that I love. And so, as I think about post-graduation possibilities, I’m left wondering, what do I love? What will make me happy? What can I do for work that will be so enjoyable that it won’t feel like work?
I’ve been thinking, albeit vaguely, that I’d either go into law, or journalism, or politics/government. But about the only thing that I’m sure would make me truly happy is being outside everyday, at least during the non-winter months. I think I would go insane if I had to be inside all day long, like at the hotel. It just confuses me how people can be inside, shopping for handbags and shoes and other crap, in the artificial air and artificial light, when it’s a sunny, breezy, beautiful 75º day outside. I sure as hell can’t do it, and don’t intend on spending the bulk of my life under fluorescent office lights, or surrounded by stately chairs, rich woodwork, and plush carpeting.
The big problem is, how do I reconcile things like law, journalism, or politics/government with my desire to be outside for my job? I can’t be a lawyer with a desk on the lawn of Central Park, or an elected representative with my campaign office under a tree (though it’d be kick-ass to try it). Being a reporter would probably keep me out and about a lot, but it still isn’t really an outdoors-y job.
Add to that the fact that my desire to go into one of those three fields may be driven a lot by my desire to be a Big Deal and make a name for myself—to do all those things that great men do—and that attaining success in that way, at the cost of the relatively laid-back life focused on close friends and family and nature that I value so much, might not be a good way to “do something that I love.”
I don’t have any conclusions here. Just trying to flesh out some thoughts.
…
I headed back home for dinner and then fell asleep shortly thereafter. Really, I shouldn’t have fallen asleep, because I had only been awake for maybe eight hours. But, sleep is turning into one of the biggest stumbling blocks I face in my attempts to develop a more “normal” sleeping pattern and get the things that I want to get done, done. Lately, I’ve been sleeping more than usual (making up for my lack of it during the school year, perhaps, I tell myself) and have been waking up too late in the day to enjoy all of the beautiful weather. I kick myself when I wake up at 12:30 or 1:30, for missing out on the beautiful mornings and for getting nothing done. But, it’s so incredibly difficult to get out of bed before my body wants to.
I think it’s the one situation in which I lack power over my will; I just can’t get out of bed unless I have some important obligation to get to, or unless my body’s had, like, seven or eight hours of sleep. It gets to the point where the mind-numbingly painful beeping of my alarm fails to wake me up, and instead becomes incorporated into my dreams, where my dream-self will hear the beeping and be relentlessly annoyed by it, and will try all manner of switches and buttons and levers to get it to stop, but it never does. I become increasingly unnerved until I wake up, and belatedly realize that the alarm wasn’t only in my dream, but has actually been going off for the past five minutes, in real life.
On the one hand, it’s pretty cool when external stimuli incorporate themselves into my dreams in real-time. On the other hand, it’s really fucking annoying.
Speaking of annoying: someone’s car alarm has been going off in pretty regular half-hour intervals since about one o’clock this morning. I don’t know if it’s being turned off or if it’s ceasing by itself, but whoever is letting it continually go off, to the detriment of the entire neighborhood, is supremely inconsiderate. Ugh.
Also annoying: Andrew’s already back in Florida. I had intended on, you know, hanging out with him and talking to him and such in the few weeks he was up here, but between sleep and work, him hanging out with his friends, me hanging out with my friends, and him bringing his girlfriend up here for about four or five days, we didn’t interact too much. His girlfriend seems much more agreeable than the last one, though, which is good.
Ah, what else, what else?
Chris lent me one of his guitars and I’ve been playing around with it. I can play the opening part to “Lazy Eye” by Silversun Pickups, and some scales. I hope I get further with it than I did in trying to learn the bass guitar, which consisted of me being able to play a few scales and “Mudshovel” by Staind.
The departure date for New Orleans is still up in the air, but it’ll probably be around the end of June. I’ll return by Sunday, July 27, for jury duty that week (I’m excited!). And then I am taking the next three weeks off from work. I’ll return to Wes either on Thursday, August 21, or the day after, August 22… which will give me a week of relative alone time before housing opens for returning students. Assuming gas isn’t five bucks a gallon by the end of August, that week should give me some time to visit some of the places I wanted to visit (Mt. Higby, the Scantic River, more of Maromas, O’Rourke’s, etc.) before the spring semester ended.
The X-Files: I Want to Believe opens on July 25. I won’t be here to see it, but damn, am I excited! Gillian Anderson is hot again (she’s so much better as a redhead), and though the monster-of-the-week episodes that the movie follows from weren’t my favorite part of the show, it’s still The X-Files, and I will eat it up when I eventually see it. Hell, it’ll be the first movie that I’ll have seen in a theater (aside from at the Film Series) in, uh… two or three years?
…
Next summer will be my last on the South Shore, with any luck. Don’t get me wrong: I like it here in Abington, if not for the people than at least for the family, close friends, and memories of childhood and teen-hood (I’m reluctant to call it adolescence) that are like a big, soft cushion that keeps me nostalgically comfortable within what John K. Samson calls “these frameworks labeled ‘home.’” But this place presents me with no challenges, no Big Deal future, and investigating its current direction leads me only to frustration (unabated and unsustainable development, an insular, negative, and conservative politics, isolated children/teens, isolated adults, the increasing drugs flowing in from Brockton… the list goes on).
Next summer will be my last on the South Shore, but I aim to make it one of the best. I will not work a formal job, and will take the three months off. Despite my mom’s urging me not to look at it as such, it will probably be my last indulgence in the innocence of childhood, free from the everyday burden of work and supporting myself. For one last time, I’ll be under my parents’ roof, having a meal cooked for me every night, riding around on my little Haro and spending nights with friends at the beach, playing wiffle ball in someone’s backyard, or driving aimlessly around in hopes of finding something to do.
After that, it’ll be one-week of allotted vacation time jammed between 51 weeks of doing whatever it is I’ll be doing.
Heh. Reading it one way, you might think I’m terribly pessimistic about the future. Please don’t read it that way, though, because I’m not. It’ll be different, for sure, but this transitional phase and what follows it will be, I’m sure—just as everything else I’ve yet encountered—strengthening, meaningful, and, most importantly, on balance, sunny.
