A lot of things are coming to head as the semester comes to a close. My life feels drastically different in these short four months of the semester. I have become someone I almost don't recognize. It seems like my life used to have a certain degree of unpredictability, the future unwinding at an alarmingly random pace. Now my future feels warm. It doesn't feel predictable, but it feels more slow and gentle. I used to think that change could only happen slowly over a long period of time. I am proving myself wrong. Even if I change I will still struggle with the same issues, but how I push myself will show because I pick myself up when I fall, instead of dragging myself at the knees, burring myself deeper into the sand. It's realizing that your knees are beginning to be buried, stepping out before your legs are powerless. I've begun to lift weights. Not just for physical strength, but for myself and my emotions. Lifting the weight of the world feels like less work the stronger I get. This week I have felt my future shifting in a thousand directions. From 2 complicated relationships, to the end of this semester, the daylight strikes many angles. Sometimes I see clarity, other times my shades are rose colored and hazy, smoke eroding my eyeballs from what's right and real. Because future is such a strong theme in my life right now, I am going to write about "The House of the Future" from Maps to Anywhere.
The future is always bright, never bleak. We see ourselves as better human beings, setting unrealistic goals that are never achieved. It holds iridescence instead, changing with different angles of light, the way oil looks in a pool of water. The pink and green melding with blue, swirling in and out while changing the angle you're looking at. This is how the author feels about his future. His brother is going to die; he has no control but the color of his control is ever changing. As he matures and detaches, the blue becomes more of a bronze-gold. The future isn't really the future, it is a continuation of the circle you have already chosen to stick yourself into. You change your present because time has no boundary, no stopping point or past. That is a rather difficult concept for humans to conceive, none the less it's important for us to grasp in order discard this "better future" idea. In "The House of the Future", the author is obsessed with futuristic architecture and the idea of the future. He is adopting this idea because he needs to detach himself from his brothers death. He saw time as a bridge to happiness and perfection: "Time was the road that led to utopia-or so I believed-and life, prolonged, would be nearly perfect, human kind molded like plastic til virtue and peace and pleasure prevailed" Future is the answer to his brothers pain and suffering. It reminds me of believing in the tooth fairy as a child, fantasy that feels more real than it should. The act of him writing this memoir was his realization of how future is just a continuation of now, something you can't wait for. You have to act in now how you would act in your future. I hate watching people wait for their future. If you wait you are going to remain in exactly the same state as you were in. This is the biggest thing I learned this semester. You can't wait to get better at something, you have to get better RIGHT. NOW. Or else nothing will change.
This book was life changing for me. It has helped me see my life in a different, more detached way. I see much of my childhood and young adulthood as trauma and suffering, but after reading this novel I can see how you can easily look at a situation in your life and find beauty in even the worst things. You can morph it into something beautiful. Life has so many stages. Not every stage has to be enjoyable. I am finding more solitude and comfort in my skin as I age. Perhaps that's something every human being enjoys the older they get, but I think the transition point in my life is just as valid as any other. The author uses descriptive details and imagery that turn things I would be upset about into works of art. I have since incorporated this into my writing. I want to write about some of the things I have experienced growing up, but I want it to be a little bit more artistic and detached like his writing is. Writing in itself feels kind of like a detachment, allowing the author to feel the barrier between fingers and keyboard, screen and web browser. I can feel it developing itself on its own now, brain and fingertips less connected than ever before. Sometimes I feel like that's the best way to write, semi conscious and uninhibited. I want to show the bad in my life as something good, because that's largely how I've been able to come out so clean. I take what I get and turn it around. I use the bad for good. So many people continue letting their knees become paralyzed in the sand, unable to move in any direction. My protest is pulling myself out before it's too late.
really great!
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