Tonight, just after dinner, as I was headed out the door to sweet blessed relief from mind-numbing ennui (i.e. somewhere not my house), my dad decided it'd be a great idea to impart to me some fatherly wisdom.
I appreciate parental advice. But it's so often something I already know. And I know, writing this, that these are the words of an obnoxious twenty-something, prematurely (and probably falsely) world weary and aware. I know that I'll be clamoring for their help and guidance a few years down the line. But right now, everything he was saying, everything my mother nags me about, is common sense, things I already know, ideas and tools I already try to implement. With, admittedly, varying degrees of success.
Tonight's lecture consisted of telling me that I need to have more purpose in my life. According to my father's observation of me and my actions, I'm too casual, too laid back, too much a "take things as they come, roll with the punches" kind of person. I need to take charge and make things happen. I need to be proactive and take the initiative.
I'm being juvenile, I know. A lot of this antagonism is stemming from this enforced, protracted stay under this roof. The school campus is close enough to livable that being here at home is made exponentially more stifling.
Being home has made me confront things I don't really want to confront right now.
One of the books I've reread while being home is the seventh Harry Potter book (yes, I read Harry Potter). It's odd how much emotional investment I can have in a novel, in a series. Even this, the third time I've read it (and yes, I reread books as often as, if not more than, I read new books - a bad habit maybe, but worthwhile), I cried straight through the last eighty pages of the book, getting all blotchy and stuffy-nosed, my hair straggling a little from the sheer output of energy. Like I said. Odd emotional investment.
It left me ... strange. Full of this sapid, unexpected, and slightly bitter cocktail of emotions. Nostalgia, completion, quiet, longing, disillusionment, the barest taste of grief, like copper.
I recognize this.
2 comments:
i know what you mean about being emotionally attached to the harry potter books. i don't know when or how that happened, but when i was reading the last book for the first time i kept making excuses to not finish. i would stop after every chapter just to prolong it a little bit. as if, when i was done reading it, it would disappear. i cried when i was done, too.
Re: religion books. Yeah, like learning about, or memoirs, personal exploration, etc. Like Anne Lamott or the Dalai Lama or whatever. That's more than a little vague. Just, stuff you've found in your life, studies.
I'm being so uncommunicative lately. I'll call you for real soon.
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