In the Face of the Unfathomable

I should have known better than to believe that I would actually wake up at 8:00am this morning and start working. Then again, when this day began, there were lots of things I thought would actually happen. None of them did. And what has ultimately consumed the last six hours of my life is something that neither I nor anyone else could have possibly imagined.

After guiltily resetting my alarm a few times, I finally crawled out of bed shortly after 10:00am, and went to the computer to check my e-mail. All of my meetings that had been scheduled for the day were cancelled on account of the Nor'easter that roared through yesterday, so I had every intention of returning to the blissful world of slumber. But I noticed that Danielle was awake already, and decided to drop her a little note to let her know what was happening.

I was met with one word: "babe." This was most assuredly not the response I was expecting, and upon probing a bit further, I was asked if I'd seen the news lately. When I checked, the top story was a state of emergency over New Jersey -- old news, for those of us around here who have seen the damage the storm has wrought. But she said that this was not the story, that the story to which she was referring hadn't made the news yet (at least not on the internet).

In the bits and pieces that she could derive from having heard from friends and fractured news reports, she told me that there had been a "shooting incident" on the Virginia Tech campus, and that there was at least 1 dead and several injured. I quickly realized that I would not be returning to sleep, and instead got myself situated in anticipation of being a sounding board and comforter. At the time, she didn't seem too shaken up -- in fact, she encouraged me to return to sleep, an offer I flatly refused -- and after about an hour during which the only new fact was that there was not one shooting but two, I figured it was a safe time to head downstairs and have some lunch.

I chatted with some friends about the incident. I told them all I knew, assured them that Danielle was okay, and tried in vain to figure out what would drive someone to do something like this. But eventually, the conversation drifted elsewhere and the story slipped by the wayside. And why not? School shootings, while undeniably tragic, had taken many more victims before, and things seemed relatively sedate when I left, so why would things have changed, right?

Right?

It wasn't until after lunch that the proverbial shit hit the fan. Suddenly, the number of dead had skyrocketed from 1 to 22. Suddenly, the roommate of Danielle's that had class in the engineering building where the second shooting had taken place, the roommate that she and her friends had been trying to call but could not get ahold of, was of a much more paramount concern than before. It was like a punch to the gut to hear about it, even though I don't know Caddie all that well. The closest I can remember to feeling this way was during 5th period on September 11, 2001, when I suddenly realized that my uncle had worked in the World Trade Center for quite some time, and that I didn't know whether or not he had been working in the building that day. That Tuesday morning, when I'd called home to check on him, my fears were quickly allayed with word that he hadn't worked in the towers for years. But that moment when you expect and can reasonably consider that the worst happened -- that moment, even if it's only an instant, lasts for an eternity.

It may have been no more than a half-hour or so before word on Caddie finally came in: she had been in Norris, but she had escaped by jumping out of a second-story window. She was a little banged up, and had been taken to the hospital with some aches and pains, but she was okay. With that came the near-certainty that everyone that Danielle knew on campus, that everyone I knew at Tech, was okay.

The problem with things like this, though, is that there are going to be hundreds, even thousands, of people who will not be so lucky to get the all-clear. Far too many people are going to get the phone call to let them know that their roommate, their friend, their colleague, their significant other, their brother, their sister, their daughter, their son...won't be coming home again. It's an illusion. It's a nightmare. It can't actually be happening, right?

Right?

And why? For what fucking reason? It's the most asinine question to ask at a time like this, but it's also the most pressing. It's as if we as a culture could have, with the right information and under the right circumstances, have prevented this. It's as if we are, in our sadness, our grief, our anger, our frustration, reaching out at straws, looking for any reason at all to justify when something like this happens. In the aftermath of something that can't be taken back, we seek out the solace of a comforting friend and we seek out the truth. And sometimes that truth becomes an even darker tragedy than the kind perpetrated today in West Ambler Johnston Hall and Norris Hall. And then we wonder why we never had the answers to that tragedy until now.

It's to be expected. It's what we do. It's why there are reporters swarming the Tech campus right now, as they will, no doubt, for days. Maybe it's not so much cheap voyeurism as it is the fact that when shit like this goes down, we sit on the edge of our seats for some explanation because our minds can't possible grasp what could have -- and did -- go wrong. Maybe we'll know, maybe we won't. Either way, it's impossible to turn away and even more impossible to try and forget.

I wasn't there. I couldn't imagine what it must have been like to be there. I can't tap into Danielle's fears as she sat in her house and waited for someone to declare with certainty that it was all over. I won't ever know what Caddie was thinking and feeling when she leapt out a window in what she perceived to be the best way possible to save her own life. I can't even begin to wonder how anyone who was there in any of those rooms could have begun to consider how radically the next few seconds of their lives would play out.

I wasn't there. Most of us weren't there. But we all want to know the same thing. Why? When things like this happen, there has to be a reason, right? There has to be some sort of logical explanation, right?

Right?

And So It Goes...

The fine people of Google will be pleased to note that, being fully aware of the eventual loss of my Princeton e-mail address (well, not entirely, but remembering that it's alumni.princeton.edu is just a pain in the ass) and the similarly ephemeral nature of my forthcoming Penn State e-mail address, I have begun the process of making my Gmail account my primary e-mail address. The system I've devised suits me well: academic stuff to the academic e-mails, important stuff to my Gmail, and random you-must-sign-up-to-receive-crap e-mails to my aging Yahoo! account. Every now and again, I sign up for offers and give my Gmail, as I feel it might be important enough to warrant clogging the "important" inbox.

I used this tack when signing up for the Borders "shortlist" e-mails of nifty online offers. This became maddening during the grad school search because all too often the (1) in the new inbox entries list referred to the weekly Borders missive. Now that that's said and done, there's much less stress at finding the shortlist every week, but I was rather surprised to find that, less than a day after the weekly shortlist hit my inbox, there was yet another edition of the shortlist waiting. I was so surprised by the multiple mailings that it took me a few seconds to read the subject line, which provided the answer for why there was such a sudden new mailing -- which brings me, roundaboutly as always, to the punchline of this little story.

It was in that subject line that I, most unceremoniously, was presented with the news that Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. had passed away.

Those of you who know me well -- or know me well enough to have looked with any reasonable care at my Facebook profile -- know that I am a big Vonnegut fan. I was introduced to him by my English teacher near the end of my freshman year in high school (thanks, Ms. Vara), who suggested that for my term paper, I should read Slaugherhouse-Five. I was absolutely blown away. It was unlike anything I'd ever read before: a novel that took liberties with time and space, with the line between the viciously real and the absurdly fictional, with the very concept of genre. It was a war novel, a romance novel, a science-fiction novel, and a thinly veiled memoir all at once. It fucked with linear storytelling years before Quentin Tarantino made that kind of shit cool and modern. It was the first novel I read that used the word "fuck," the first novel I read that described the female body in erotic detail, the first novel I read that had a sex scene that didn't cut away at the good parts.

It was a novel that changed my life. For the first time, I realized that writing didn't need to be flowery and lyrical to be beautiful. It didn't need to made complete sense at any given time, and it didn't need to keep me in suspense in order to keep my interest. I realized too that what I valued from reading Slaughterhouse-Five was the experience, the humanity, the fact that I was being swept through a whirlwind of emotions. One page, I might be laughing my ass off, and on the next, I might be cringing. But no matter what I was feeling, I could take my eyes from the page. And when it was over, I knew I needed to read more of what this man had to offer.

Since then, I'm ashamed to say I've not read all of Vonnegut's novels yet, but I've been through the heavy hitters. I read Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions, the generally accepted masterpiece works. I read The Sirens of Titan, the book that made him unbelievably popular in the late 1950s. I read Player Piano, his first novel, the one that preceded The Sirens of Titan, and marveled that the same man could have possibly written those two books, and back-to-back, no less. I read Mother Night and Deadeye Dick and discovered some of the funniest and darkest novels ever written. I read them all and I loved them all.

And along the way, I discovered that Kurt Vonnegut wrote the way I wished I wrote. One look back through any of these entries, as well as through most of my academic papers, shows that I'm quite the fan of lengthy, meandering sentences with the occasional smattering of scholarly erudition and heightened vocabulary. Vonnegut wrote short sentences. He got right to the point. He wasted not a single word. Despite some of my most successful pieces being satires or more comic pieces, the ideas I tend to get on paper are usually more horrific or serious, with barely any room for levity. Vonnegut, on the other hand, laughed at everything, whether it was murder, Nazism, automation, war, religion, or even the apocalypse. He even laughed at himself, all the time, whenever he could self-referentially do so. But beneath the jocular veneer was a sense of despair, of subdued anger, the anger of a man who knows what he wishes he could see the world be like, but who has resigned himself to the understanding that he will only see it in his imagination.

To that end, Vonnegut was always focused on the big picture in a most astute way. Most of my writing has focused extensively on small details of life, of little sketches and their impact on my world. Most of the time, I overthink those small bits, trying to make something out of them that perhaps they were never destined to be. I spend my writing time reflecting on the state of my life and the place of that life in the world, and the fact that the big picture eludes me is a scary proposition to me. Vonnegut, somewhat similarly, focused on the small details. But he always had a keen eye for the big picture, and it made his heroes even more unique than they would be merely by virtue of his amazing sense of characterization. Vonnegut's characters are but cogs in a larger machine, but that larger machine is always the focus of his works. As a recurring trope, the machine tends to win; the little cog that stays in line stays there tragically, and the cog that tries to escape the machine gets destroyed or rendered useless. Through this strategy, Vonnegut made his commentaries: his characters were pitied not because the author wanted us to pity them, but because his vision and foresight, his ability to recognize the big picture and the dangerous path we were taking towards that picture, rendered us incapable of not feeling for their plights.

But even if his characters were often clustered into similar patterns and traits, the plots of his novels were nothing short of sheer brilliance. As a writer who struggles to figure out how to piece the plots of his stories and papers together, and has trouble trying to conceive the way his projected long work will eventually turn out, it is both frustrating and illuminating to see a writer like Vonnegut, whose imagination seems limitless. His plots are so absurd and far-fetched, but within the contexts of the book and within the scope of his career's work as a whole, they make complete sense. Rather than try to wrap all the loose ends up neatly, he more often than not appends an extremely simple plot device that renders most of those storylines moot. Instead of having everything fine and dandy at the end of his works, sometimes the good guy loses. Sometimes the world comes to an end.

Through it all, there was a simplicity and joy in his writing, a passion that has gone unmatched in most any novelist to come on to the scene in the last 50 years. Perhaps that is most clearly seen in the ending of Breakfast of Champions, in which Vonnegut inexplicably places himself in the middle of the action, as both the narrator and as a character in the story he's narrating. He has a brief and devastatingly sad conversation with himself, he acknowledges to himself that he's crossing the line, he admits in an appropriately post-modern way that he wishes he could do something for his characters to make everything better for them because, damn it, he kinda likes 'em. And in the end, he addresses a character in the end as a god-like figure, the lord and master of the world he has written, and performs an incredible literary move: he both acknowledges control over the world on the page, but almost immediately undercuts it in recognizing that that world he controls does not exist beyond the edge of the page. It's a sly but scathing commentary on his own profession, on the very inability of the writer to have a larger impact on the world outside the story.

At the end of the Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut seems to assert that the writer's impact can only be limited to the page, that all he can manipulate is the splatter of the ink on the paper. But to his many devoted and appreciative readers, those words have meant so much more. They have been amusing, inspiring, and portentious. Some of us have owed much of our love of literature to those words, and those people in turn have used whatever power they can muster to spread the word to others. Like the slow spread of Ice-nine, Vonnegut's words are destined to be among those that will ultimately change the world, even if that world at first is but the world of literature. But words can be a powerful and unassuming weapon, and Vonnegut's words, even the simplest of them, are so masterfully layered and delivered in such an unquestionably unique voice that there is much more than a good laugh to be taken from them.

Vonnegut said throughout his life that our purpose on Earth is to "fart around," and that no one should tell us any different. Even in his anger, his frustration, his depression, his dissatisfaction, there was at the core of the man a passion and vigor for life that most of us would be jealous for. He loved to live and he loved to write, and now, one of the great voices of our time has been silenced forever. The world of literature, and the many cogs in its machine, cogs like me, owe him a debt of gratitude for having spoken at all. And I'm prety sure we all hope he's still farting around in some better place, and making everyone else there with him real happy he's arrived, because things are going to be just a bit less happy around here in his absence.

The Tralfamadorians would say, "So it goes." Somehow, that doesn't quite seem sufficient. But I don't know what else to say except this:

Thank you, Kurt. You will be missed.

Conflict Resolved

Penn State University
Department of English
Masters Class of 2009 / Ph.D. Class of 2013

Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

A Veritable Cornucopia of Spring Delights

As I begin to type this entry, it's almost 2:00am on the early morning of Easter Sunday, almost two full weeks into spring, and already there is an energy, a fervor, and an unabashedly expressive feeling of optimism that has been otherwise lacking in my life over the last few months, as evidenced by the excessively melancholy tone of the past few entries. Fans who have been hoping for more of the same will be hopelessly disappointed by this entry, though you will be happy to know that the grandiose ambivalence of those entries has not entirely departed yet. It's just that, at the present time, I'm too imbued with the spirit of renewal to drown in the depths of depressing details.

So what has caused this seemingly 180-degree turnaround? Quite simply: it's spring time. I know what you're probably thinking: what a quaint, clichéd excuse that barely scratches the surface of the psychological complexity into which I normally delve around here. And if you're one of the ones who believes that to be the case, I must respectfully suggest that you have no clue how much the winter fucks with my delicate psyche. The truth of the matter is that I am living, breathing, walking example of what I call the inverse pathetic fallacy: rather than my mood impacting the weather and environment around me, I find that the climate of my world reflects rather strongly on me. When the winter rolls around, especially in February -- what with the departure of friends for their spring semesters, the eventual beginning of my own, and the promise of frigid cold, minimal travel, and mostly shitty sports highlights -- I begin to suffer from cabin fever in a major way. I long to be outside in warm weather, to know that amusement parks are open and that baseball season has begun and that the glorious summer is just around the corner.

This year, I was fortunate to not get too strong a case of the heebie-jeebies: having spent Intersession on the road, mostly in Florida, I was able to both not be lonely at home missing my friends and also get some much needed warmth and adrenaline. The moment I realized that on January 31 I was riding my 200th roller coaster, and that on February 1 I was in Walt Disney World, the blizzard blues melted away beneath the Florida sun and I, like a smoker on the nicotine patch, had gotten just enough of my addiction to make its two-month absence seem much more palatable. So even though I was -- and, to a degree, still am -- stressed as hell, my semester began on a relatively high note.

Now that the promise from Intersession has been realized in the turning of the season, good things have been happening at a relatively brisk pace. The first six weeks of the semester flew by, with Spring Break approaching more quickly than I'd anticipated. A lovely week interspersed with visits from my princess, who'd been on Spring Break two weeks before me, broke up the first six-week stretch nicely, and before long, I was home and somewhat relaxed.

I say somewhat because the first part of my Break fed perfectly into the aforementioned ambivalence. Two major life issues -- my thesis, and my graduate school situation -- still loomed over my head and, like cars spinning their wheels, were unable to ignore but also going nowhere. By the time Break rolled around, my chances at grad school hinged on a single institution, and during Break came the worst news my tender mental condition could have received: not a yes, not a no, but a wait listing. Granted, this did inspire a trip to the campus (which may or may not have helped my standing, stay tuned), but it also meant that I would not be able to utilize my Break to start making plans about next year. Which meant that my entire Break could, and should, be used to work on my thesis. And while I did do an awful lot of reading, the writing just didn't come to me -- much like the writing just hasn't come to me all along. It's beginning to get very frustrating and a little scary, and even though I'm sure it'll all come together, I shudder to think that the most important academic project of my career thus far will be something that just comes together spontaneously, instead of as the result of a carefully thought-out plan and a consistent, driving work ethic. The ethic has been there, no doubt, but the motivation has been somewhat lacking and the inspiration has been mostly dead. No explanations, but I'm running out of time, and I just know the month of April will fly by while I sit and struggle with getting this done.

Granted, when April is out of the way, the worst month of my life will be over and it will be a smooth, easy sail into graduation from there on out. And though my thesis -- and the wait on a final decision from Penn State, which should be coming some time next week -- are still unresolved and nipping at my heels, it's unfair to say that my entire months of March and April will be abysmal as a result. In fact, April has treated me quite well thus far, I'm happy to say, and perhaps the most visible example of this is the triumphant return of New York Yankees baseball, the trumpet that heralds the coming of the finest part of the sports calendar. Sure, the season just started, and yeah, they're 2-2, but I'm still encouraged: they've never been an April team, their pitching will warm up soon, and when any game ends like today's did (with Alex Rodriguez coming through in the clutch and launching a walk-off grand slam with two outs and two strikes in the bottom of the 9th) -- well, goddamn it, that's the stuff dreams are fucking made of.

And speaking of dreams coming true, I was able to accomplish a year-long goal on April 2, as Six Flags Great Adventure opened for the season and I was able to not only ride Kingda Ka -- finally! -- but also take not one but two laps on El Toro. The adrenaline rush of Ka was the perfect start to my spring coasting season, and the air on Toro is some of the nastiest around. I've written a lengthy trip report that is posted in other locations, so it's not quite worth rehashing here, but suffice to say that being back in my home park was just another undeniable symbol of spring prosperity and good fortune.

Also realized at last, after a very long but patient wait, was the experience of seeing the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino double-feature homage Grindhouse. I've been chomping at the bit for this to come out, and having finally seen it, I feel complete in a very strange way. To slip from the often-sickly bonds of the somewhat formal style with which I tend to write this blog, I must make a personal confession: Robert Rodriguez is my homeboy. Planet Terror may have scared me at times, which is the one thing I hate when movies do to me, but I've also never rooted for a movie so much as I did for the 75 minutes I spent in zombie hell. Tarantino's flick, Death Proof, sadly left me even more ambivalent as to how I feel about QT and his films, but the ending almost made up the relatively lackluster middle sections. All in all, between the two films and the positively kickass fake trailers inserted at the beginning and during the intermissions, it was three and a half hours in a theatre that didn't feel at all like three and a half hours (unlike Zodiac, which was two and a half hours that almost felt like four and a half). Even though 300 was sweet, Grindhouse still takes my pick as most fun you can have at the movies this year, bar none.

And with much of that out of my system, I can slip safely back into a mode of moderate self-restraint. As I've made plainly clear, there have been individual moments of excellence during the past month that have focused my mind and allowed me to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Granted, that light won't be so obscure or blinding once my thesis is out of my hands, but the fact of the matter is that it's there. And while I'm still not ready to come to terms with the fact that my all-too-fleeting college career comes to an end in less than two months, at least I'm not sitting here on my blog bitching and moaning about where my youth went and what the hell I'm going to do. Perhaps, after next week's grad school revelation, I'll have some more room to bitch, or perhaps once my thesis is handed in, I'll have time to panic about other pressing matters of psychological significance. Or maybe I'll just freak out inexplicably beforehand, as I am wont to do from time to time.

But at this point, who fucking cares? The ride right now is smooth, steady, and enjoyable. So as the weather warms (presumably...what the fuck is up with these cold snaps?) and things continue to progress positively, I feel like I should leave myself, at least in my mind, in the place where I would be now, had I an automobile, a bottomless gas tank, and no academic obligations:

In a car, with the windows open, the radio blasting, and the pedal to the floor. Doesn't get any sweeter than that.