Mundane Turbulence

Day 3 was also kind of eh. Progress, though:

1488 miles from home in Allston to my mom’s to my sister’s to Kelsey’s to a Super 8 in Henrietta, NY to a KOA in Union, IL to an Econolodge in Jackson, MN

There REALLY was not much to see along this route today. Which reminded me of something:

How ya gonna keep’em down on the farm once they’ve seen Karl Hungus?

You can’t just softball it in there, Wisconsin – ya’know I’m gonna dog it!

Not too much to report on Day 2, except: STAY THE FUCK OFF OF I-90 GOING THROUGH CHICAGO.

1058 miles from home in Allston to my mom’s to my sister’s to Kelsey’s to a Super 8 in Henrietta, NY to a KOA in Union, IL

And, just for the hell of it, another swell roof photo from my last night in Boston:

My favorite in this one is Marco – what’s he plotting behind that shoulder there??

BOSTON

Wow. So…yesterday, I lived in Boston. I went to work, and I was productive and had a great conversation with my (now former) supervisor, Dave (favorite message from him that day: “Good bye Christian the RA and hello Christian the friend.”)  A bunch of my favorite peeps came out that night, and we rolled deep all over Allston, being our silly selves and enjoying whatever it is that we do together. It was my roomie Alena’s idea that we stay up to watch our last Boston sunrise (she herself is moving a bit farther than I am, to Stuttgart, Germany), and so I did that with everyone that could last:

We got goofy on the roofy, and my voice was raspy from laughter – I couldn’t have imagined a better final Boston night

It wasn’t until I had all of my stuff packed into my dad’s car this morning that my move became the reality that it had always threatened to be. I took my keys off of the ring they’d been on for the last six years: I was leaving home. I couldn’t really speak much beyond that point, and after choking out, “I’m feeling emotional,” I got my hugs, tried unsuccessfully not to get messy in front of my friends (but, seriously, these are the people that put this together for me), and drove off to my mom’s, where there were more hugs and even messier crying, and then to my sister’s, where there was a conclusion to the teary goodbye we’d began the night before. And then my father and I were off.

Throughout my life, I have been fortunate enough to experience more beginnings than I have endings. And while this move is quite a change for me, I have never felt that it meant the end of the friendships that have granted me so much strength and pride. But, while I expect to return in the future, I know that I will not ever return to what I have just left. My life matures and progresses, but there is a cost for such things, and I do not think I will again spend a month awake every night until the early morning, willing my body to accept physical exhaustion in exchange for friendly affection. I don’t expect to host parties with five-by-a-dozen friends, dancing into the next day on floors slick with beer. I doubt that I’ll often close out the bar and invite the group back to my place to continue the night. Certainly these things will be replaced with analogous joys, but that transition does not occur without melancholy. Change necessarily involves endings.

So I cried today. A lot. I cry as I type. And I’ll miss this way that I’ve lived, and I’ll miss this way in which I have experienced and perpetuated my friendships.

But we’re on the move! I’ve decided that I’m going to try to post each day a little update on my trip out to Missoula. Here’s the map of Day 1:

404 miles from home in Allston to my mom’s to my sister’s to Kelsey’s to a Super 8 in Henrietta, NY

I was so glad to see Kelsey today. I am so proud of the kind of mother that she is becoming, and it makes me happy to know, beyond speculation, that I have a best friend out there who is going to raise a great person. It fills me with hope.

Sometimes you just have to give the people what they want: photos of your face on animal bodies.

And a special request: me as Mr. Owl.

Wow. So…I’ve got a bachelor’s degree.

This event has been a long time coming – ten years, to approximate – and its arrival has been difficult to accept as fact. Sometimes you find yourself doing something for so long that it really feels like there’ll be no end to it.  In 1999, I started school at the Massachusetts College of Art (which, for some reason, has had “and Design” recently tacked onto the end of its moniker), and it was a three-year disaster. I had no business seeking higher education immediately after high school: I had talent, but no drive; I had ideas, but no plans; I was bright, but without discipline. There was no way I could succeed there, because I had no vision of what success was for me. All I had was a vague notion that the art school model might somehow be different from that of my previous academic career. Which…was way, way off. Mostly I just spent my time wishing I wasn’t living at home.

Christian living back home: terminally annoyed. (Although at least late night Chinese was available in walking distance.)

But leaving college didn’t exactly bring further guidance to my life. I pretty much just dicked around for a few years: living in an apartment (and learning by process of elimination how to live with others); working a job at a video store (which was relatively easy); getting dumped (and dating and getting dumped some more and dating some more); making art (in a far more productive fashion than while at school); ya’know, doing those things that aimless 20-somethings do, I assume – and it wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t too good either.

My mother, in her wisdom, suggested that I get my life moving in some direction by seeking employment at Harvard University, so that I could take classes and finish up that ol’ degree. This seemed like a very prudent proposal to me, so I just sorta…made it happen, I guess. I hooked a bit and I crooked a bit, and I wound up with a pretty rockin’ job, taking classes for extremely rockin’ fees. Long story short, between then (2005) and now, it seems that I’ve done what I set out to do: degree, direction, et cetera – and that certainly feels good.

Commencement, which was on June 4, was an emotional experience. I spent much of the morning avoiding conversation with others…I had this sense that any utterance regarding my journey of those four prior years would cause me to bawl uncontrolably. I didn’t want people to know how important it was to me – this thing that so many others do as a simple matter of course – it felt like something of a weakness to attach such sentimentality to such a mundane undertaking. But there it was: this meant a hell of a lot.

Here’s the shield of the Harvard Extension School, my alma mater:

Some of my friends are probably sick of hearing gush, but this shield is meaningful to me. The two bushels of wheat were the fee for classes at the Lowell Institute – the precursor to the Extension School (which, by the way, was founded 100 years ago), and the burning lamp signifies learning by night. This is a very honest representation of what it is to attend the school, and although the shield simple, it symbolizes both the school’s utilitarian foundation, and the struggle with (and often against) time that its students face. And that I faced. Processing with my fellow graduates to Harvard Yard on Commencement morning, I carried an inflatable lamp and a couple sprigs of wheat, which had been handed to me by Extension School staff. As we passed by the processions of other schools, their students would ask me what the items meant, and when I stopped to explain it to some of them, I felt my throat close, and I choked on my words. I claimed those mementos personally, and in that moment, explaining their story was like explaining my own. That cheesy inflatable lamp was the reliquary for my memories, and that wheat had sustained the life that made those memories. These things deserved silent reverence.

I was able to move past my sensitive perception of the items eventually, though. One of the highlights of the morning was when one of my dearest friends, Anna (who was graduating from the Divinity School with a Master of Theological Studies), found me and we snapped a photo together. She asked about the wheat and lamp, and I was able to get through the explanation without making a mess. I later lost both items in the chaos of the day, but I was given an Extension School lapel pin, and I will likely cherish it always. I love that power can reside in vessels of diminutive sizes.

In any case, the weather was beautiful, and pensive nostalgia was not the order of the day. I embraced family members, conversed with friendly strangers, and finally accepted the diploma that I had earned: the most quantifiable measure of my journey.

And they even got my name right.