I’ve recently found myself in a state of circularity.
An indulgence in the mundane, in the simple steps of going about my day knowing precisely what could and what might happen. I often don’t know how to feel about it.
I sit in my bed for a few minutes, potentially an hour. Eat food. Sit at work. Walk five minutes to my first class and another four to my second, presuming I make it to the first one at all. Take two minutes to walk to my second class on Tuesday and Thursday. Sometimes workshop. Usually rehearsal. Occasionally meet with my friends in the kitchen or for a pre-planned lunch. Often repetitive, yet simple pleasures that let joy flow over in my glass.
Everything has its place. As the days become warmer and longer I put on my shorts and open the blinds and resume my business outside. I walk to class, talk to friends, perhaps do my work with the window cracked. Maybe tomorrow I’ll do something new for me. A sense of spontaneity arises in seeing others in these once abnormal states: tossing softballs and lying outside in the grass, talking and laughing. I feel a sort of inspiration from the heat of the sun and the heat of this laughter to submerge myself in the things I enjoy doing but can never get myself to start.
And I never do it, but sometimes I do. I know I’ve felt like this before.
This spring break I swore to myself that I’d finish everything I needed to. I’d complete my final projects months before they were due and write everything I needed to submit. I’d play guitar and walk to the conservatory and make tiny metal flowers from the cans stacking up in my room.
I didn’t, by any measure. I spent the downtime at work or at the pool or with my friends. Called my mom. Drew pictures and made food for myself and for others. That should be enough. It might have been.
But I’ve been here for three years, and it often feels like this. Each excitement — the springtime, the rest, the sun — plays into a larger loop of time. I have just as much to anticipate as I do to miss. It’s a blessing to have an expectation and to see it fulfilled in augmented forms, to deviate slightly from the wheel and bask in spontaneity of each new moment, knowing well it’s simply a pivot from my inevitable rotation.
This past fall, I craved a change from this regularity, spending my time across the ocean studying abroad in Copenhagen. I was applauded by a stranger at a sushi restaurant my mom struck conversation with, patting my shoulders with a sentiment of “good on you for taking the initiative”. Good on you to catalyze avoidable change.
It often felt like the time would never pass. That I’d never board the plane back from Copenhagen and would never come home. Every moment hung in its frame, movement so rapid that it became still. I was shocked when it was over, just as I was when it began.
I’d go to sleep on a bus and I’d wake up in Germany. I’d rest in the home of someone I’ve known for years yet have rarely seen, or walk through a passage I’d only read of in a novella. I was not bound to a future, for I had no expectation of what it would be. I filled in the outlines of the idea of the journey I’d made.
The semblance of routine I did have was bound to be temporary. That I didn’t and don’t know if I’ll walk down Vestergade again after the final day of coursework. Rare chances of seeing now-familiar faces in the same context, in the same country. What I formerly considered constants became a matter of the digital realm, barring two peers I’d known from Chicago and the odd chance of sharing a friend-of-a-friend with someone back in the states. I was known only from the present onwards, rather any prior impression or prior self.
I was asked many times if I was ready to leave yet. We’d hit a month, a week, a day till departure. I’d say yes, I think so, the time will come when it does. Yet, I’d always be certain that the life I’d come to know in Denmark had no way to hold on to me. It will fade, shift into regularity and soothe its entropy, just as everyone in the picture will reset themselves to a homeward place. I keep my memories, my friendships, my joy, yet adapt it to the cycle I’ve come to know.
I return to Rochester and place myself back in the circle. I find the mundane and I enjoy it, I tire of it, become depressed of it, and repeat again. I learn and rest and adventure. Augment my day-to-day or maintain a familiar schedule to what fits my fancy and my energy and my time. Find more time for the special things, yet keep the routine that keeps me grounded. It will all keep happening, regardless of what I do. So I spin, and I spin, and I spin.
