Unexpectedly inspired and kicked in the gut

Filling the space between my ears, essentially filling the universe as I know it, Sufjan Stevens changed the course of my day. It’s amazing how much the small gesture of sharing music can effect someone, well, someone open to “gusty emotions on wet roads on autumn nights” to quote another Stevens, this time Wallace, in one of my absolute favorite poems “Sunday Morning.” To return the favor of sharing something moving, I share this: http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2017.html It’s one of the most thought provoking things I’ve ever read (the #1 in that category has to go to Paradise Lost, despite my love/hate relationship with it).

To come back to the story of this morning, I woke up with the sense that I had nothing to look forward to, just a hazy mass of time at my feet. That and my dentist appointment (which went fine). With my headphones drooping from my ears Sufjan breathed new life into me, fitting eerily well with a gusty autumn morning. It’s so easy to get into someone’s head, fill it with something new, change the course of a day, alter the whole story. But when I got to work the bad news came, reigniting my urge to get out of this place. In short, the bad news was that all the work we did the last few weeks was for nothing and it will still be a while before I get a real salary, and everything will be repulsively stuck in place. Or so it seems right now.

I’m getting more tired of the ‘land of lagom’ as the days pass, wondering if there isn’t a more fulfilling place for me if only I can break through the complacency. It seems more and more the only reason for me to stay here is because circumstances have dropped me here. I didn’t choose the place, I chose the girl. Now the girl is gone, and all I have is the place, which I’m not in love with. The place is ok. The job is ok. The friends I’ve made are better than ok, and are the only compelling argument to be made for staying. But that argument begins to wear thin. There are too many ok’s, and ok is not good enough. I do not have the Swedish mentality. I never believed I shared any part of the American consciousness, but I’ve come to realize that was only part of a youthful angst. I’m glad to have thrown that off, and be able to see now how much good there is in being American, and to understand so much better how this giant place I come from has affected who I am. Whatever this mess is that I am, wherever this mess of a life is leading. What is one more setback after all of this, anyway?

And so emerges yet another hill to climb. I wonder what I will see when I finally reach the top.