Jenny Ijoma
Nolan Chessman
GS-UY 102 D
22 July 2015
Nostalgic
Irony
The
body is a vessel. It’s marvelous, it’s a room. There is a singular noise to be
heard from said room, a particular beating driven from such a place that has
the largest capacity, the largest potential, to do practically anything. But it
beats. It drives you, the individual, to a destination unknown to you, so
eloquently, so exquisitely. Do all you can to ensure you are content with where
you end up.
A
goldfish will die in saltwater. Its body isn’t equipped to handle it. It serves
its purpose in a different setting, it wants to live where it’s comfortable; it
will flock to what its cells feel compatible with, a thought so realistically
unfamiliar to the body as a whole, like a secret language every entity dances
to. Think of the latent forlorn feeling of losing your place. This experience
washes over the train of thought you have, it overwhelms it to the point of
derailing it. Where are you?
I
blink. The familiar street corner that appeared in front of me through the only
window available now shows gallant buildings constantly being worked on, the
furthest one advertising a lottery. My night sky, pale and empty, has its own
idea. It shines bright, geometrically illuminating as far as I can see through
these frames. The city is different. Its unfamiliarity to me is as obvious as a
candle in a dark room; in the work Here
is New York by E.B. White there is a large elaboration to the scenic
mystery of the city of New York; I fail to hear “Manhattan’s breathing”, as
E.B. White says, its vitality that of a person with inner workings, thoughts,
desires.
My
mind zooms to home, or what was. I blame my upbringing. There is a terrifying
disparity between fantasy and reality; it pains me to feel the almost
bittersweet comfort in the honesty of the city that is to many that arrive “to
escape, not face, reality”. My home, a two story structure, built like a cot
made to withstand the test of time, now a room in a building that reminds me of
the Empire State Building. My fences are gone, now a clever mix of concrete and
glass, and while White is right, there is a particular reason as to why this
city is the “destination… the goal” despite being built on practical contempt.
If you want invisibility, you’re in the best place. Your face, forgettable,
thanks to the city’s “gift of privacy” and insulated individuality.
Sometimes
I relay to myself, in hindsight this probably was not the best decision, and
other times I remember the sobering feeling of sobbing on a sidewalk corner
feeling lost, all in place, in mind, and in time. The city has a beautiful
ability to “[compress] all life, all races and breeds, into [such] a small
island” that subdues the few, but strangely many, quips and whims the mind
seems to have when it lurches at the possibility that perhaps “it is healthier
to live in a community where, when a cornice falls, you feel the blow” and you
feel important, rather than irrelevant, and pointless. But if the “price of
[your] ambition is a life closer to death”, as Brian Doyle says from the work Doyas Voladoras, a literature work
abstractly spinning upon knowledge of the hummingbird, then perhaps there is
joy to be had when living in the fast lane, that there’s a form of happiness
that can be somehow successfully derived from its “forlornness or
forsakenness”, by White’s terms. How awful it must be to not fully comprehend,
to have to balance between the unreasonable destruction or fulfillment of an
individual in such a stunning place that nearly hand delivers “spiritual
sustenance and maintenance of morale”.
Dreams
and desires are equivalent to each other: when deferred they have the uttermost
potential to have our “hearts grow cold”, as Doyle says. Potential is the key
word. Whether one wants a new job or another wants to go to a new place, there
are risks, there are always risks. You quit your job. You sell your home. Human
beings are so interesting; how is it a person can honestly be happy spending
their precious “two billion heartbeats” living a life they are comfortable with
changing on a dime? With the flick of a wrist, the thought of change plants
itself in your head, it grows and suffers, taut for nutrition, and in sensing
its thirst for the sun, blooms within your eyes with the target it originally
had for you.
I
flew over a thousand miles into the bright light. It was gorgeous distraction
to the distraught feeling that consumed my insides. I had longed for the chance
to start over, to get an opportunity to leave where I had grown up, and home
paled in comparison of the city. Suburbia, the wishy washy idea of balancing
residency with a side of big city dreams, never prepared me for the environment
I walked in on. The stereotype was true. As I walked within a crowd of motley
individuals consumed with their own lives, I wore a cloak of invisibility.
There was a scary air filled with the “gift of privacy” and utter abandonment
that could render a person practically senseless.
I
wanted so much for the cliché. I wanted to laugh instantaneously with a
stranger and end up becoming their confidant, their friend. I wanted to bump
into the man of my dreams on the street, share a conversation, and continuously
pinch myself as I asked myself whether the experience was real and truly
happening right before me. I so wished for a chance to be so immersed with my
surroundings on a journey elsewhere that I find myself in an abandoned library
of sorts and just ooze and pour at the bounty of literature right before me. My
thoughts, putrid birds flying onto my shoulder tops, would chirp their inner
songs urging me to fulfill the tiniest wants: get lost here, find this, try
that, and go wherever.
Freedom
was never a choice for me. From a young age until I found myself in college, my
parents enforced the strict understanding that my life was not my own. How does
a caged bird fully embrace an open door? Is it too afraid to fly out, for fear
of the unknown, or does it leave, completely and entirely hopeful that its life
will get better, that everything ultimately gets better?
If
deferred dreams dry in the sun only to float away in the wind, turning into
specs of dust, as Langston Hughes says in the work Harlem, then we must recognize that we are “utterly open with no
one in the end”, as Doyle states, and to make our dreams an actuality, no
matter where they may possibly take us, be it across the street, in a car, or
on a plane. These actions will get a reaction, and that reaction is the
insurance of a “rejuvenation” so plentiful it will creep into the corners of
your mind that hid away the childish urges to cater to your heart’s quirks, to
whatever possibly allowed you to be happy instead of the ordinary humdrum that you
fell accustomed into living.
Maybe
life is supposed to be lived in parts, each relatable but somehow independent
of each other. Yet that relationship bridges the gaps we have within ourselves,
it builds the foundations of who we are to each other and to ourselves. Where
you arise from will compose you, you are scripted letter by letter from the
humble beginnings of your youth or the extravagance you felt upon your face
every morning as a child. As you step away from this, be it from maturity or
anything else, your independence, your freedom, will be scarred from the cage
from which it left. It will fly to new heights, and do what it wants, what it’s
always wanted to do.
The
city is beautiful. It’s living, it is alive. It’s full of wonderful chances to
ruin your life and sprout like a phoenix and start over once more. It wants to
play with your heartstrings and make you forget about the “What Ifs” so that
you know why the fascination can’t die, so that you to try to horribly fall
into its chaotic humdrum only to realize that such a plight is impossible and
unrealistic. Yet take joy in it. Find the happiness, find a form of happiness,
in any way you possibly can. There is such a loveliness to the neglected
thought that receives water again. There is such a joy that can arise from
living a dream, not matter how extravagant. Take matters into your hands
instead of dwelling on the possibilities that can arise from an idea; take an
idea and put it into action.
Works
Cited
Doyle, Brian. "Joyas
Volardores." The American Scholar. The American Scholar, 12
June 2012.
Web.
16 July 2015.
Hughes, Langston.
"Harlem." Poetry Foundation.
Poetry Foundation, 1951. Web. 19 July 2015.
White, E.B. "Here Is
New York." Here Is New York, E.B. White (1949). Travel
Studies, 1949.
Web.
16 July 2015.
