Tag: college

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 109

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Maxwell House Master Blend, Office Coffee

College is mostly an ink blotch to me. To be honest, most of my life looks like that when I try to remember it, but college in particular. I know I attended. I know I spent four years at Duke University studying – what was it again? I’ll be damned if I could pin down too many of the memories, though.

Today I talked to a Freshman at UNC. Our conversation was brief. He’s going to school for business. He was wearing a purple polo, the slick kind, for golf. He had his hair done like every college Freshman. He was asking me questions but kept interrupting the answers.

I get nervous around people like that. I start to wonder how many of the same boxes I used to tick. It puts me in a nostalgic mood. I start thinking about school and try picking apart what it meant to me. I see a neon streak of faces. Some friends, some acquaintances, no-one I still know. There’s one crisp memory of standing in line at a coffee shop that doesn’t exist anymore. The barista’s speaking Spanish, even though he’s a white American guy, and it’s the first time I realize that people are complicated.

I had some bad dreams last night. I’ll spare you the details, but in each of them was a bright room I couldn’t get out of. Nothing like being trapped with yourself. I worry sometimes that I’m two people. Or three, or… In all these inky dark spots, who’s hiding? I think about the me that comes out sometimes – needy, scared, possessive. I think about the dreams I didn’t follow, and wonder how long it’ll be until they cannibalize me.

You know, the old myth, twins in a stomach, twisting the cord.

I used to think I knew everything. Yeah, I know what that sounds like, and yes, I was that much of a prick. In particular, though, I thought I knew everything about ‘me.’ I had a memory that stretched back two dozen years, all of it annotated. I could pin-point what I was doing most days from elementary to my first job after school. Now, though, I’ve lost that memory. It’s been gone for a few years. What I once took as ‘fixed’ looks ‘wavy,’ ‘certain’ became ‘confused,’ cats and dogs, etc. Giving it all up, I got a lot more humble.

Tonight had me thinking about college. I like to see myself in the Bryan Center, a student commons, eating food, thinking about you. Only I never know who the ‘you’ is and when I look down, there’s nothing on my plate.

Currently Reading: Queen, Suzanne Crain Miller

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You’re sure your new roommate won’t be like the last one who wore tinfoil socks and had a tendency to occasionally urinate in the refrigerator. You’re sure you’ll pass Math 106 this time around. You’re determined to actually join some clubs this year and not just sit around in your dorm eating spray cheese from a can and watching youtube videos about cats.

Patrick Rothfuss

Coffee Log, Day 359

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Maxwell House, Office drip

I woke up remembering the one time I knew this girl to have short hair. That was a while ago – 2009. Since then, she’s grown it out to wear with gowns shown off on Miss America. Before then, I knew her to have the perky ponytail every white girl in high school has.

What a heady time.

In 2009 I was a college Freshman. I had a single dorm with a window that looked down on the gym. It was always fuzzy behind a mosquito net. Years away from knowing how to read, write, do my taxes, or much at all about who I am, that perforated magic; missing thoughts; open questions; swiss cheese.

That night was cold if I remember. Hell, it might have been February. She’d been staying at UNC so we took the bus back to Duke. That might have been the problem, turning everything a darker shade of blue. We snuck through the weekend and upstairs to my tiny room. We closed the blinds so the gym rats couldn’t see us. And we sat down. I only had one chair, we took the floor. She was in the drabbest gray sweatshirt. She had a boyfriend back in Maryland. Halfway through the movie though, our hands couldn’t stop each other.

Next morning, winter was broken. Sun came down like mimosas. ‘Oh well,’ I thought, ‘Some good things are also bad.’

But the thing that stuck with me – after we got past the guilt of something surreptitious and on with our separate lives – was that her hair was short. She had this light brown hair. She’d play with it the summer I met her. And in current pictures it’s long and highlighted. That night, though, it was cut in a rough bob just below her ears. Almost like she’d hacked it off herself.

What was she missing? And did she find it in me?

Novel Count: 23,904

Currently Reading: Killing Commendatore, Haruki Murakami

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And I’m feelin’ like we should d-d-duck away
Netflix and Dusse

Smino, Neflix & Dusse


Coffee Log, Day 239

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Colombian, Starbucks Brand (grocery store bought, a gift)

Whenever I remember taking nighttime walks around Duke’s campus it’s always cold, even if I took the walk in August. Here are a few examples:

  1. A breezy Spring Semester romp through the Engineering campus. I’m bored, lonely, talking on the phone. It’s a weekend, maybe, because there aren’t any students. I see cars come and go from the Divinity school. This part of campus is steep; clean; new. The cafes are closed and I’m disappointed because I’d like to visit. Everything is new to me. I’m a Philosophy major, nobody needs me over here.
  2. The week before my Sophomore or Junior year, I’m passing back and forth over a ditch cut between two dorm buildings. I’m waiting on a woman I’ll often wait for, even many years later and well after she’s no longer waiting for me. We haven’t seen each other since last year and there’s a whole summer’s worth of conversation. We circle Old Chem, pass Perkins library, and spend time admiring the statuary on the Chapel. It’s hot and balmy, but the memory’s like freezer frost. I like to transport myself to that time before some of my most important questions had answers.
  3. This time it’s actually winter. We’ve had a snow. I’m walking late in good company. Couples throwing snowballs, kids taking pictures on second-gen iphones. I’m talking to a friend who’s going to school in Charlotte. We’re both intoxicated on a mutual distaste for parties and alcohol. Underneath me, snow melts like modern glaciers. My hot body, raging at all the wrong parts of the world, but breathing that cold air brilliantly.

I took a walk tonight and before I did I put on a sweater. The first sweater since March. The apartments had gotten dark and I made my usual circuit. Bewitched by the lights of the clubhouse, I took a detour. Our community espresso machine can make a hot chocolate; I hadn’t had one, now I have. It seemed right to baptize the night in unnecessary sweetness. The first Fall evening only happens once a year.

Currently Reading: Autumn, Ali Smith; Cherry, Nico Walker

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“Some days you get up and you already know that things aren’t going to go well. They’re the type of days when you should just give in, put your pajamas back on, make some hot chocolate and read comic books in bed with the covers up until the world looks more encouraging. Of course, they never let you do that.” – Bill Watterson

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Coffee Log, Day 181

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Cafe Pajaro, Extra Dark Roast, Trader Joe’s Brand

2010 changed me. I spent my summer on Greek oceans, the autumn falling in love. I had my first flirtations with teaching when I worked with America Reads and Counts; I wrote two stories and dreamed up others I wouldn’t write for another eight years. Duke had been rocky the first two years, but by Junior I had hit my stride. December had me sharing beds with the first woman I really loved. I guess you could say I was living a rosy-colored campus life.

Tonight, I went to a showing of ‘The Night is Short, Walk on Girl.’ It’s a Masaaki Yuasa film, animated, vibrant, a spiritual follow up to a short anime series from 2010 called ‘The Tatami Galaxy.’ The characters keep their faces from eight years ago but their lives and personalities have changed. The male lead is brasher; the heroine steals the show. The movie – like much of Yuasa’s work – is like tripping down a flight of stairs with two tall drinks in your hand, only to have a revolving group of strangers lift you up. It was good, not great, but it burrowed into me. I’d fallen hard for – and seen echoes of myself in – ‘The Tatami Galaxy’ as it aired in 2010.

I get stuck some mornings noticing the way I shave my beard. It’s semi-precise, consistent, but nothing like the pictures I see from college. I don’t remember when I changed length and blades, don’t remember why. It can be hard to stick the continuity between then and now. A small change, but keep putting coins in the piggy bank and eventually you have to empty it to make room for something new.

My favorite scene in ‘The Night is Short, Walk on Girl’ has four men stuffing down super spicy ramen in a big red tent. They’re competing to win rare books. Some want money, some want love, one is an old author trying to reclaim his first manuscript. Just as the competition finishes, the God of Used Book Markets pulls a string and the tent comes undone, the red tarp vanishing, all the old books flapping away like squawking birds. “I forbid the hoarding of rare books!” says the God, paraphrasing. The four men chase after their dreams, going their separate ways after having stumbled together. A few find their books. Others don’t.

Currently Reading: LaRose, Louise Erdrich

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“My still-as-of-yet rose-colored self was cut to the quick by that which is called reality.” – The Tatami Galaxy

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Coffee Log, Day 180

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Cafe Pajaro, Extra Dark Roast, Trader Joe’s Brand

The light-switch by my bedroom door is crooked. Tilted left. Hadn’t noticed it, now I can’t un-notice it. It’s the little things, man…

Lots of kids coming in for textbook money. Big deposits, the college arcade game nickel and dimes you. Some of them have parent’s cash. I see the white SUV’s idling outside, a father in pink polo, mother in aviators, alone long enough to consider if those thousands will go anywhere past a frat’s doubledoors. When I ask the kids, most say they’re going into liberal arts.

Then there’s the workers: leaner than the well-to-do, coming in bright red suspenders, flour-stained shoes. They’ve been saving three months of tips while living off Ramen. When I ask, most of them say they’re going into business.

I see a few high-school seniors. School starts next week, they’re wide-eyed. They do their best to sound almost-eighteen, almost ready to stamp a ballot, smoke tobacco, shoot or die for our endless occupations in the Middle East – but they never look you in the eye. We cut checks for fast food or baby care. Sometimes, we talk college. Most of them say they’re hoping to be doctors.

Currently Reading: LaRose, Louise Erdrich

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“Some people get an education without going to college. The rest get it after they get out.” – Mark Twain

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Coffee Log, Day 175

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Cafe Pajaro, Extra Dark Roast, Trader Joe’s Brand

College, summer, we filmed shorts, me and a few guys. One of them’s still in film, the other’s a rockstar.

We dug a hole in my surrogate-aunt’s backyard. We’d been hired by the fiction but the labor was real. Hours, hot, NC sweat lodge. It took a week but we did it. ‘Dig,’ he named the film.

I go back there. I’m in that hole. My muscles are younger. Hair thicker. I haven’t lost patches of my pigment to vitiligo. Brown dirt, careful not to hit the worms.

I liked it, working toward something with all of you.

Currently Reading: LaRose, Louise Erdrich

Support Relief for Family Suffering at the Border – RAICES DONATION CAMPAIGN

“The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.” – George Bernard Shaw

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