Tales of the Invisible Ben

Alone

This afternoon at 3, I dropped off my keys and left the Invisible Suburb behind for good.
I also said a final goodbye to everyone associated with my time there. I didn't handle it well. A better man would have been friendly and optimistic or at least kept up a solid veneer of civility and decorum. I am not a better man. Not by a longshot.

There were tears. There were laments and regrets. There were questions: Was it worth it? Did it ever mean anything? When will things get better? There were questions and there were answers, but the answers provided little comfort and the questions continue to wrangle and twist like little maggots in the back of my brain.

I left the Invisible Suburb, packed my car after a final hug and exchange of goodbyes and drove back to my new bachelor pad, my studio, jammed full to the brim with cardboard and memories. I ponder still what might have been and hope that everything works out for the best...but I'm not optimistic. I'm alone. Even in a big a city as this one, I'm alone. Perhaps eventually I work up the courage to change that, but for today, for right now, it hurts too much.

If I were a drinker, I would consider alcohol as a refuge, but I know that just delays the pain, hides it rather than eliminates it. The only solution I have at this point is to pick up the pieces of my life and rebuild, rebuild without the suburbs (or more accurately, the Suburb) and everything associated with that part of my life.

Which is not to say I won't miss it. Most likely it will itch like a phantom limb for the rest of my life and I will somehow need to come to terms with the fact that there are some pains that you just can't cure outright. The only solutions are hard work and time.

Living in a World Made of Cardboard

Hey all. The Invisible Ben here in his fabulous new studio apartment, which right now looks more like the warehouse at the end of Raiders than a place where one might live. I suppose its my own fault for having so much damn stuff (mostly books) and not enough patience after my move yesterday to put them away. Still, I'm sure this is a temporary setback.

I'm less certain about some of the other issues associated with my new place. The keys I received for the building's back door, for example, do not work and the odds of maintenance helping me out with that anytime soon do not look great. Perhaps even more frustrating is the realization, all too late, that my apartment building is only a few doors down from a nightclub whose bass beats are audible into the late night hours. Thankfully, it's only the bass and it's not extremely loud...but it is the sort of thing that might divert one's attention from work or sleep or whatever...I think putting a fan on can block out some of it, but I may have to resort to other measures if things get too distracting.

Even more annoying, and I hope this was a one time thing, was waking up at some point last night and realizing that I could not tell what time it was, despite having set up my alarm clock before going to bed. Also, the fan had turned off. Yes, you guessed it, my power went out. Now, I still need to get in touch with the electric company to confirm my billing, and last night when the power went out, I began to get very worried. I shambled over to the doorway, however, and discovered that my apartment was not the only one with no power. Emergency lights had gone on all down the hall. Things turned back on around 5:30 this morning...loudly...smoke detector beeping, fan whirring, clock radio turning on...the works, so I guess my concerns were ultimately much ado about nothing...unless it happens again.

Anyhow, much more to type, including a requiem to my couch, consigned to charitable donation due to a physical lack of space, but I have to get moving. I'm cleaning out my old apartment today. Last time in the Invisible Suburb for a while, I imagine.

Will hopefully not be too exhausted to add more later.

Goodbye to the Invisible Suburb

Tomorrow I'll be leaving a place I never expected to be and moving into a place where I'm not sure exactly what to expect. The moving truck is scheduled for 2 PM and I'll be leaving the Invisible Suburb behind for a new fellowship in the big city. I've signed the lease for my new studio apartment and despite some minor setbacks like a faulty back door key, the place seems to be nice enough. I'll be back in a city again after a few years out in the boondocks. Hopefully, the yapping dog in my neighbor's apartment down the hall won't be too audible behind closed doors.

A year ago when my girlfriend and I made the decision to move out to the suburbs, I was wary of the idea. From a purely logistical standpoint, it didn't make sense to move farther away from my archives, which were--and for the next few months still are--located quite close to Old Ivy. I had no doubt the apartment itself would be nicer than the room I had rented with a professor for my first two years of graduate school, but the suburbs? All of the recent historiography on the subject, all of the discussions I've had with architects and urban studies types told me that the suburbs deserve nothing but scholarly disdain. Whether promoting racial segregation, the decline of bustling urban shopping districts, or decimating expanded family or social structures, the suburbs have been the target of criticism and careful scrutiny. And now I was to be part of this? Old Ivy's environs might have been suburban, but at least there was the rationale, however flimsy, of it being a university town. Moving here, to the faceless, nameless, archetypal suburbia...that was another matter entirely. I'd be a commuter, spending upwards of an hour each day in my car, shuttling back and forth between work and home. Mind you, the thought of seeing my beautiful girlfriend each day helped soften the blow, but still, I was wary.

Nevertheless, I confess, gentle reader, that although it is isolating to the extreme, I do not hate the suburbs as much as perhaps an academic should. I like the open spaces and the quiet. I like not having to parallel park or worrying about a parking space in the first place. I think I may even miss commuting a little, though I can probably download podcasts of my favorite radio programs as needed.

For all these perks, it's time to go. That much is clear. Driving to Old Ivy is one thing. Regular trips into a major city during rush hour are quite another. Thankfully, my new commute will consist of a five minute walk, assuming the stoplights don't go my way at the intersection. I'll be driving much less and hopefully saving money as a result. There are at least 20 restaurants within a block or two my new building in addition to movie theaters and museums within easy walking distance. All in all, it should be a nice change.

But, there's still the ugly matter of moving. To be blunt, I have a lot of stuff: mostly books, but also a nice desk and a media unit that I'd prefer not to have to sell. I've hired movers, but I fear I'll be doing a lot of solo moving/cleanup work on the sidelines since not everything has been boxed. Also, because I'm moving, the weather has turned decidedly stormy, which is fine, except for the boxes I got from the liquor store without lids or coverflaps. Right now I should probably be packing, but I'm reaching a point of diminishing marginal returns. There really aren't that many more things I can set aside...except the computer and TV, and I'm waiting on those until tomorrow morning. Most likely, I'll try to run a load of loose (or looser) stuff to the new place before the movers get here, rush back, and then make sure the major stuff is properly organized for transport.

Still, moving remains a rough process, and one that I'm basically handling solo. I have not been as organized as in previous moves. There are no carefully laid out spreadsheets or book inventories. Everything has just come together haphazardly. Left to my own devices, I got distracted by side projects. An abstract is due for my European conference next month and I had to submit a funding proposal to the department in hopes of getting them to pay at least part of my way. I have an orientation to prepare for on Friday for my fellowship and various appointments to arrange for utilities such as Internet and electricity. There's a lot of things to keep in the air and I'm doing the best I can, but it's hard not to be overwhelmed.

Tonight I tried to destress a little by going for a run. (I recently got back on to jogging again and recompleted the Couch to 5K program) I ordered the same Chinese delivery order I got for my very first meal here in the suburbs a year ago when we first moved in to the new place. My fortune cookie's message was "Wish you a good journey."

There was a rainbow in the sky this afternoon between the storms. It arced over the identical houses and the winding streets of the Invisible Suburb I've called home for a year, a fitting tableau for me to say goodbye and perhaps an omen of a brighter future to come.

Hopefully, I should have Internet access in the new place by Tuesday. I'll post something then to let you know more on how things went.

Until then, be well.

Reunions

Tonight is my tenth high school reunion. It is being held approximately two hundred miles away from where I am currently sitting. Even as I type this, classmates that I have not seen for years are milling around, exchanging pleasantries, and partaking of drinks at the open bar as they struggle to recapture the past. They'll introduce old friends to their new significant others--or spouses--and try to explain to those outsiders the complex social dynamics that developed over a blindingly fast four year timespan in a school building which is itself another 15 miles or so away from the evening's festivities. And when the end of the evening comes, they'll leave, promising to stay in touch, only to forget that promise the next morning when they return to their everyday lives consigning high school back to its regular, eagerly forgotten place in their memories.

In and of itself, the reunion is not a particularly odd concept. After all, what could be better than catching up with old friends and learning about how much their lives have changed after a few years? I confirmed this fact recently, having spent two weekends during the past month visiting with some of my old classmates, friends I've known in some cases for nearly 20 years. Our lives have long since carried us off in separate directions. We have pursued our respective personal and professional interests to all parts of the country and, in some cases, the world. We have had relationships of varying durations. Some have gotten married. Some have even had children. We are no longer teenagers. We are men and women, leading adult lives and taking on adult responsibilities.

And yet, the jokes are still there. The references to events long since forgotten by everyone else involved. We still play Ultimate Frisbee and nerdy board games. (Next time, I'll actually remember to bring Diplomacy.) Our teachers' names may have begun to fade, but the stories of what happened in high school...and even junior high school, linger on.

I can imagine something similar occurring at my high school reunion and yet I decided not to attend. There were several reasons contributing to the decision, but the most noteworthy was the likely absence of most of my friends from the festivities...especially the ones who I had not seen at either of the past month's unofficial "reunion" sessions. Sure, there are some people with whom I would like to have a chance to catch up, but it never quite reached critical mass to merit the trip. (Especially since I had already spent two weekends traveling, first to Maine and then to Baltimore.) Nor did it seem likely that any of our former teachers would be in attendance. They too have likely moved on to bigger and better things.

Which is why tonight, on the evening of my tenth high school reunion I am here, reflecting on the decision and wondering how things will change by the time the next such event rolls around. Will I still be making excuses about why I don't see I need to attend? I can only imagine that online social networking sites will become more pervasive, allowing one to confirm that your secret high school crush is now married and has two kids without their ever knowing you cared.
And the friends who I care enough about to actually see every so often, well, they and I will keep in touch. So the need for the formal reunion, sponsored by well-meaning class officers is less than obvious. But who knows? The future is uncertain and that's what makes it interesting.

Reunions are only partly about the past after all, we all know what happened in high school albeit from widely varying perspectives. It's the unknown and the unpredictable, the future that developed to our classmates since we last saw each other, that makes the coming together memorable. It doesn't take a carefully organized event or an open bar to have that experience and it doesn't have to happen only on years which are integer multiples of five distant from graduation.

If you care enough, you make the time.

Gotta keep moving

Time is running out for summer. I know that some people love the month of August, but for me its arrival serves as a reminder that autumn is on its way and that those beautiful summer sunsets that seem to last forever are coming sooner with each passing day. Soon the people who complain about the humidity and the bugs will soon begin grumbling about the cold winds of autumn and dining al fresco will become an option only for those whose inner thermostat tends to run about 10 degrees warmer than average.

This is not the sort of thing that one can fight. Time, as the saying goes, marches on whether one likes it or not. When confronting the inevitable, different people adopt various coping strategies. My preferred one these days is to focus less on the seeming lack of time left before major events, such as my departure from the Invisible Suburb or the closure of the archive where the bulk of my Ph.D. research has occurred and more on making progress on various personal projects and objectives. As long as I get something done on my dissertation, as long as I can finish making arrangements for a moving truck, as long as I can square away insurance paperwork, then I can tell myself that I have not wasted the day.

It's not a perfect system. There are evenings when I return from the archive and wonder if I could have been more efficient, if I could have photographed more laboratory notebooks for future perusal, or if this entire enterprise is doomed to consume and (perhaps) overwhelm me. How can one hope to write a dissertation with an archive that is closing and about to be shipped to...who knows where? (Delaware? Michigan?) The same doubts could apply to my upcoming move: How can one completely abandon one set of friends and social relationships behind and cast off into the unknown?

The short answer is that there are some circumstances that one simply cannot control. Awareness of these is fine. Overawareness can be paralyzing. It's fine to allow oneself to embrace time pressure as a motivating force, but one has to keep moving.

Why? Two reasons. First, because each step is a tiny, but significant act of rebellion against the inevitable. Not all of us are heroes. Despite our ambitions to actively control our fates, we are just as often subject to their whims and more often than not accept outside circumstances or use them as excuses for our ultimate decisions (or indecisions). But one can take steps, albeit small ones, to re-exert some sense of control over our lives. Any progress is a victory in this game, no matter how small.

And the second reason to keep moving? It sure as hell beats the alternative.