Wide Open Spaces

Feeling a lot of gratitude, that's all. Helena, title is for you.

I finished my last final ever as an undergraduate in the science building. I’ve never taken a class here, but I’ve always thought about the clear glass bridge with the uncomfortable chairs and tiny tables, so I sat there today and conflated Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth with “Woodstock” by Joni Mitchell and “Wide Open Spaces” by The Chicks.

As I got up from the little table, knees stiff and hips tight from sitting so long in one attitude, I started to hoist my corded earbuds towards my ears when some completely non-intellectual force stopped me. A voice quite distinct from the quick, sharp yap of the ego told me to slow down. I slowed down so fast I almost tripped down the curved staircase of the science building to certain death. But I didn’t die and instead a lump formed in my throat and it’s still here, right now.

It’s hot, actually hot in Chicago today. I’ll be jumping in the lake soon.

So, after I stepped out of the science building, I walked through the quad. The roses are so bright and red today. The grass is green and new, there’s almost no evidence of the Palestinian solidarity encampment’s tents that were unceremoniously destroyed by CPD around this time last year. Almost.

DePaul’s administration has done a lot of irreparable things. In many ways, I’m glad to be rid of this place, but where there is grand administrative hatred, there is also grand community, and the sowing of real love and promise and purpose.

I’m walking through the quad and peppering myself with sentences I can’t quite contain. This isn’t quite the rushing over of creative energy that I sometimes feel. It’s something more like the indefatigable urge to write that Rilke talks about, like things are too big in my head and maybe paper and a keyboard can save me from that, or in writing I can produce some kind of roadmap to truth. I rarely know what’s true when I start writing, but putting the trouble of figuring it out in hands instead of just in head takes the onus off of the brain that wants to be all of me, but that just isn’t.

Every day when most of my friends get together lately feels like the best day in the world. We took senior photos by the lake last night and after a while the gown and stoll and cords were abandoned and I floated like a ghost in my white babydoll dress. There’s a little bit of wine on it from the only other time I wore it at my twenty second birthday party this November. I don’t think it’ll show up in the photos.

I wish for one million arms and a giant body so that everyone I love might exist comfortably on it and in it for all time. If I could build the houses and find the dogs to make such a world whole and fully realized I would do it and I would keep finding friends to fill it with and I’d get free.

I wish also for a camper van and funding for a national park sabbatical and time to write. I’d get free doing that, too.

I have some little promises to make…

I’m going to figure out how to have a wall collage and a grown up room.

I’m going to start lighting candles for my friends who are alive and moving away soon. I am going to stay conscious of my web of love, even as the spaces between the silk get wider.

I’m going to try to not intellectualize.

I’m going to try not to feel ashamed.

I’m going to try not worrying about things like my hair falling out.

I’m going to try to get used to making a genuine effort at things and not cutting myself off before I even start.

I’m going to email professors that I love and tell them that I do and express hope for cafe meetings and thoughts on my manuscript and recommendations for graduate school.

I’m going to give myself and my boyfriend more flowers.

I’m going to let myself like myself and take compliments and feel beautiful and feel weird and feel okay and I won’t pathologize any of it.

I’m going to keep at this work of loving the world, because it isn’t easy and it’s mine and I want to.