dannydmc

[wanrming] The following post is extremely melodramatic. Please proceed with caution[/warning]





I've got a pair of cold feet. The feet of the ice giants; their trickling sweat forming rivers of ice, and canyons are carvered in their wake. The size of boulders they seem, and as cold of the vast Alaskan wastes which I know so well.
Classes started this week and I suddenly find myself embarked upon the great academic track so many others have tread in days gone by; my Father amongst them (though he only got so far, of course; I plan to get further. All the way to the top.) I always seem to find myself running tracks; planning each stop along the way and measuring my speed and distance with an agitated exactness that I don't quiet understand.
And, maybe thats it right there; Grad School, up until this week, has always been some future journey that I planned to take. A golden road to focus my attention on when the dark winters of Alaskan seemed to thick and oppressive that I could feel my soul creak and snap under the pressure. Part of my, I suspect, never expected to find myself at the gates and ready to plod forward.
Now I find myself taking the first trembling steps and I'm suddenly grasped by that same fear which always seems to haunt me as I take to the road. That worry of many a travler before me and the trepedation of many to follow. Those haunting words which seem to whisper at me from the darkness; "Are you on the right road?"
And, truthfullly, I don't know how to answer that question; if I ever really did. It seems like I've been on the wrong road so often, that I couldn't recognize the right one if it rose up and met me head-on. Face on. Slamming my skull into the pavement. Oh, I've crossed it from time to time, yes, but even then it seemed almost to be an accident, and I was too shocked to drive it correctly. Speeding up in the slow lane, crawling around corners that were meant to be taken with lightening zip; wind blowing in the face and the shriek of tires singing into the world.
I'm 25 and suddenly, I'm left to wonder if I'm becoming some horrid modern day Babbit; a young man who's never managed to do anything in his life that he actually wanted to. And what is it, exactly, that I do want? My answer, spoken so many times that the words are etched into the grooves of my tongue, is that I want to be in politics. I want to be governnor, at least, President at best; to stand before a shreiking crowd and tell them, not what they want to hear, but what they need to hear. To have my own name buffeting my body in great tidal waves that would knock a lesser man over.
Oh yes, I want that. Want it so bad that I can taste the sweat running off my upper lip as I prepare to speak.
But I want more.
I want a family someday; not now, but someday in the future. I want a wife and children, five hopefully; a new generation to carry on where we pastlings have left off (and, I'll tell you something now that I've rarely mentioned to anyone; a new generation to do better than me. To succeed the weak link which I've always feared that I am.)
But, more than that, and more to the point of this sudden on-rush of trepedation; I need to let loose. Just once. I need to go crazy; to experience the rush of controlled chaos as drop my shields and show the world what I can really do. Christ, I need that more than anything right now.
And, the worst thing, is that I'm terribly afraid I never will, because I always find those roads to walk upon which offer very little in the way of actual freedom. I bind myself too them so tightly, hold on to my own reigns with white trembling fingers, and never.let.go.

Jesus Christ, they want to reign me in even further. No more reading what ever tickles my fancy at the time; no more Campbell, no more Jung, no more Joyce, or Kerouc, or the Upanishads, or any future interest which grabs me by the balls and won't let go. No more writing fiction or any of the other things which I do to express myself.
I'm on a track now, after all, and anything which falls outside of the track is to be ignored and discarded. It doesn't matter.
Before I left for Fargo I had a nice lunch with my Dad's boss who had taught here for 23 years. He's always taken a liking to me, and I still suspect that the reason I was accepted was because of a letter me might have sent to the department. He told me that the great challange of school was finding out what your passion was; what it was that fascinated you the most.
Half jokingly I replied; "Well, thats the problem. Everything interests me".
"Yes", he said, "that IS a problem."

Why is it, that I just can't seem to let myself go and experience the things that I've always wanted to experience? Why do I always tighten the straight jacket around myself and snap at anything that would losen the buckles, just a little? I've never really considered myself a repressed individual; but I'm not left to wonder.

Maybe this is just what I described it as in my opening line; cold feet. Maybe I have nothing really to fear; except a little hard work and the scrapes which come from falling down and continuing the trek. I'd even go so far as to suspect that this is it.
But that nagging fear's got a hold of me right now, and it doesn't seem to want to let go.