About an hour ago I was sitting in a (recently, I assume) kosher Dunkin Donuts, sipping a cup of coffee and reading V. by Thomas Pynchon. Ah, to be home again. I kept my schedule wide open this time around because I wanted to have as much time as possible to spend with my dad, who is undergoing treatment for cancer, my sister, who recently graduated from Columbia College, and my momma, who I just don't get enough time to talk to. As a result, I found myself in a kosher Dunkin Donuts at noon on a Tuesday reading Thomas Pynchon. I think the reason why I like reading the modernists and post-modernists like Pynchon is because I'm forced to chew on the text. I have to work at them to figure out what they're getting at. Consequently, this practice helps me dig through all the things going through my head so I can figure out what I'm getting at. My walk home (I am insurance-less and therefore car-less) afforded me plenty of time to do just that.
I'm not sure I can quite put my finger on what I'm experiencing right now. Unsurprisingly, being home at the same time in which so many of the people I grew up with are home has brought about a sense of nostalgia. But it's not a nostalgia filled with memories. It's not a nostalgia for things that happened. It's more a nostalgic feeling for things that never happened. It's a memory of impulses not acted upon and promises unfulfilled. It's not regret - not at all - but rather a curious cascade of what-ifs and what-nows.
Part of it comes from being so far away from New York and so far away from the life I've created there. The work I'm doing in the South Bronx means very little in Skokie, and it's difficult to communicate what it is I do when my audience has no understanding of the environment in which I work.
Part of it is that I feel more connected to the person I was when I was living in Skokie, which I suppose was back in high school. Throughout college and the year after I generally felt lost and directionless. I didn't have the same sense of purpose that I did when I was a high-school student, and I couldn't escape the feeling that I was missing out on something. Teaching, for reasons I've written about in the past, has renewed my sense of purpose, and I think I'm starting to develop some longer-term ideas of what I'm trying to accomplish. In general, I feel pretty good about myself and I want to build upon what I'm doing now into something larger. What that is, exactly, I haven't quite figured out, but I'm working on it. This is more than I could have said in any of the past five or six years. So the what-ifs come from this sense of lost time in my twenties, and the what-nows come from what I plan to do with myself over the next few years.
It's interesting to hear about the people you grew up with and all the different paths their lives have taken. I'm overwhelmed by all the possible directions I could have gone, and to think of all these other people, with their own stories and their own lists of could haves and should haves, is mind boggling. I imagine that a lot of people my age are going through the same thoughts as me, taking stock of how they got to where they're at and wondering if that's a good place to be. Maybe they're even drinking Dunkin Donuts coffee as they do it.
Another thought strikes me while I'm in this reminiscent mood - I really like the people I know or have known. I'm interested in their stories and I'm happy to be associated with them in some way. I have this line from Finnegan's Wake popping up in my head from time to time: "Here Comes Everybody." I think that's what it feels like for me as I come home and listen to all these different stories of what people are up to, and I start to think back to how I remember them and the feelings and images I associate with them. Everyone rushes back into my consciousness, and I wish I could tell them all that I think of them and that they matter and that I wonder how they're doing now. Here comes everybody. Welcome home.
And there it is. I feel it so plainly with every word I type. A sense of wonder. That's what connects me back to those long-gone days and what endears me to Skokie in spite of it being, well, Skokie. I like the people here, the people that came from here. I like that they're a part of who I am. I wish I had a better way of letting them know.
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