monday, february 17th, 2025
the first entry. it's an honor, but hold your applause until the end. it is 0934 as i write this, and i do so at my desk in the bedroom of my parents' house which i now call mine but will soon depart. that's right, bystanders bare ye baleful eyes upon me - the great american freeloader, living still in the home of his parents at the ripe old age of 18 years. that's another reason why i'm enlisting in the united states air force - i'm pretty eager to get out from under my parents' thumbs. i've heard all about the "you'll miss it here once you've gone" but just between you and me, i don't really buy it. not that my parents are evil, but they've certainly done some less than Christian things to me over the years, and for that reason i'm just about ready to pack up and head off for the next chapter.
it's certainly a funny thing, becoming an adult. for a lot of kids now in the west, the blow is initially a little stunted - you don't go to bed 17 years young and wake up 18 and independent and envigorated and ready to take on the world with the inexplicable beige peacoat and bowler and briefcase that appeared on your body and on your head and on your lap as you're already driving off to your mid-level salaried corporate job. that doesn't happen. it didn't happen to me. i went to bed a confused kid and woke up that same kid, the only change being i was now even more confused at the lack of magical briefcase or the stagehands breaking the truman show setup to tell me this wild charade is finally over and i can go back to somewhere else as someone else.
like toru watanabe, the protagonist of haruki murakami's fantastic novel norwegian wood (which i finished earlier this week), the past nine months have left me in a strange place. in those months i have sailed ten times around my soul, seeing new sights and entirely new lands every time, and yet simultaneously remaining entirely still as if a scientific specimen suspended in its amniotic test tube. i have done things here and there, and yet there hasn't been anything to which i can say i have really done with my life and self. sure, i got some work done on my degree. sure, i got a bit of writing done. sure, i got back into drawing and painting for a bit. sure, i've continued working out and training. sure, i followed along with my military processing and the many obstacles and hoops to jump over and through. sure, i got my driver's license. sure, i've been working my meaningless monkey job. sure, i've tried to pick up a few good habits and kick the bad ones. sure, i've thought myself to the ground and rebuilt again like an endlessly repeating game of jenga. yet despite all that, i fail to conjure any answer to the question "what have you done with your life since being declared an adult?" a student says he is in school, working towards x degree to get y job. the worker says he is saving x amount of money to buy y thing(s). the artist is fashioning his next masterpiece, the athlete trains for his next competition, even the homeless man is working toward 'getting back on his feet'. and here am i, a train piercing the mountain air and howling down rusted tracks through remote forests and deserted settlements, set out on the lonesome path less traveled, towards where?
in the past few months, one piece of mental imagery i've found myself repeatedly stumbling upon is the thought of a series of rotations. a shifting, spinning something. in retrospect, i see now that something is myself. though i have certainly felt like it, it would be a little reductive to term what little of my adulthood i have thus experienced static. i have certainly had movement. sometimes unbearably fast, sometimes unbearably slow, sometimes frantic and thrashing and yet going nowhere, and other times in smooth legato loops and strokes. but none have really placed me anywhere different than where i started. i have only performed rotations on rotations on rotations. variations on a theme.