Ben Van Dyne's LiveJournal

Subject:	Occupations.
Time:	10:42 pm.

For those of you who don't already know, on Friday I was offered, and am accepting, a job as an organizer with DART. So I'm graduating on May 20, then off to Dayton on June 17 for a classroom training and then to someplace (I don't yet know where) for a four-month training placement. And then, an Actual Job, perhaps in Charlottesville, perhaps not. Regardless of where I end up it's just the sort of work I want to be doing.

Between graduating and starting my training the plan is to be living someplace to burnish my Spanish, probably Mexico City. Anyone want to come? I mean, maybe, depending on who you are. I don't travel well with just anyone.

3-11 May - Exams
12-18 May - Splitting time between Atown and Cville
19-20 May - Graduation
21 May - Move Out
22-23 May - Cousin's wedding in Tennessee
24 May-11 June - Mexico City
12-17 June - Wherever my training placement is, to secure housing and the like
17-24 June - Organizer training, Dayton, OH
24 June - 6 October - Training Placement

All this, of course, subject to much change.

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Time:

12:43 am.

Each journal entry carries the hope of being the first of many and the burden of prior false starts, as though regularity alone were a virtue, as though every sentence and every entry were justified only if it were followed by another.

I’ve never excelled at writing entries regularly. My last was 380 days ago, or so. This is partly from malaise, partly from business and an easy distractibility, partly from a fear of the banal. Some people write appealing words about their daily lives; I write better thematically. The chronological element is not series of events, but the evolving salience of competing and complementary themes.

I do feel a need to write more, but it doesn’t flow. I want to do lots of things here: I want to make a list of my failings, and talk about them, not as an exercise in masochism, but to understand them. I want to think about the people I know, and why my relationships with them seem so basically unsatisfying at times. I want to get my fingers back into practice doing good, honest writing that doesn’t have all those extra, superfluous, unnecessary, gratuitous, redundant, unneeded words that slide into my academic writing, despite a professed commitment to writing Strunkian prose.

So, a metaentry to exorcise hopes and burdens.

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Time:

4:29 pm.

1 Ene 2006, 14:28
Madrid, España

Después de cinco días en Madrid queda evidente el vínculo entre el lenguaje y la identidad. He hablado varias veces con Abby acerca del idioma propio entre personas íntimas (otro tema interesante), pero lo que se me ocurre ahora es cuánto el castellano forma parte de mi identidad. Sea quizás por haber formado tantas partes importantes de ella durante mis viajes (todos, menos varios en carro y el más reciente a Bretaña) a países hispanohablantes.

Por eso me ofendo cuando la gente que puede hablarme en español no lo hace (y aún más la gente que lo habla desde niño, y aún más, hay que admitirse, con una guapa mujer)—aunque tengan buena razón: La verdad es que no hablo bien, o mejor dicho que hablo irregularmente, sin la segura habilidad que viene con ser verdaderamente fluente. Entonces, ¿cuál parte de mí identidad no es real? (¿Y vale la pena averiguarlo?)

Pasando a otro tema, pasé ayer, nochebuena, trabajando para VUUS en mi cuarto, aunque fui a la Puerta del Sol, el Times Square de España, para las últimas minutas de las fiestas. Lo pasé muy bien pero extrañaba a mis compañeros, y agradezco que no fui más temprano. (Después quemaron unas motos, que están todavía el las callejones del barrio.)

Para los que leyeron mi última entrada, que era “sólo-amigos,” me siento mucho mejor y los pesadillos no me han molestado dos noches ya. Todavía no me he acostumbrado a la hora de España. Quizás hoy. Probable que no.

2 Enero 2006, 21:11

Veo una noche sin dormir. Tengo un tren que sale a las 7, no tengo alarma y nadie va a estar despierto en el hotel para despertarme, así que parece mejor que pase la noche sin dormir hasta el tren, o, ya que quiero ver... pues no, la señora acaba de venir y me prestó una despertadora.... Según la tele, en dos días de 2006, tres personas en Madrid se han matado por la violencia doméstica. Increíble.

3 Enero 2006, 23:17
Valencia

Estoy en la casa de la doña Pilar, lugar donde me quedo 10 de las 13 días del curso aquí. (Pasamos dos noches de viaje en Granada y Córdoba.) Voy a salir a las 00:00, por un ratitito, con unas chicas del programa que me invitaron a ir con ellas. Sin embargo, siento la necesidad de dormir, ya que no dormí mucho anoche y tengo que levantarme a las 8. Este programa tiene una reptación de ser para los que quieren tomar mucho. Espero que esta gente que quieren hacer el J-term (y que fue eligida por el Prof. Gerli) sea mejor gente, pero según que hablaban inglés lo más pronto posible, no tengo gran esperanzas. Ya veremos.

Se contará más en otro momento acerca de la señora y de la ciudad.

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Time:

8:43 am.

If there's one thing I've learned from Rose, it's that overcommitment is the key to happiness, and I don't disagree. Here are things I'm doing: Philosophy Circle, a discussion group for sundry philosophical topics; VUUS (pronounced "views"), the Unitarian Universalist student group on Grounds; intramural Softball and intramural Ultimate Frisbee (each has one game and one practice a week); the Queer Student Union, the largest and oldest GLBTAQLMNOP group here; Casa Bolívar, the Spanish house, which lets me come over and speak Spanish even though I don't live there. I've been to mass a couple of times but did not partake of the Eucharist, as I was not welcome to it, and did not want the blessing if it was merely the consolation prize.

Other things which I have either sampled or intend to try are the Passport Program, which provides opportunities for people to go to ethnic, religious, and cultural events outside their normal routine; the Outdoor Club, which, in return for $35 or so a year will let you use any and all of their equipment for your own adventures, plus do things like take you skiing; I still have some mixed feelings about BRMRG, the search-and-rescue group I went to West Virginia with.

There's also the local church, of course, but I've only been to a couple of services and haven't really gotten involved. I don't plan to, though I'm having lunch with the ministers Wednesday. I'm all about meaningful, spiritually profitable relationships, I just don't want the church to be sucking away my energy.

Also, I just got like nine hours of sleep, but it was still fitful. I don't know whether or not to feel cheated.

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Time:

10:58 pm.

A statement of the obvious: This is very much where I live. This place has become Home with astonishing speed, or at least has the appearance of home to my road-weary eyes. I don't really miss Arlington at all, though I do miss the people sometimes. Even that is only in the past few days, as the adrenaline high of the first week in a new place had kept me from home-friend-sickness. I never expected that aspect of the adjustment to go so well.

I'm getting over (what I'm hoping are only) a couple days of crankiness, which started after I came down off the adrenaline, but I do have a few non-illusory dissatisfactions. The relationships I have here, even with people I knew previously are all sort of... incomplete. I have a number of young relationships where part of me is present, but which part depends on what I'm cultivating for that particular company. None are well-rounded, and there are no immediate friendships, none of what Elena called "secret twins separated at birth stuff." That's okay, I guess, because if it happens too quickly it can be limiting. Patience is called for.

Dissatisfactory thing No. 2: I am bored. This shouldn't be the case, coming as I have to a Real College, taking five classes, some of them quite intense (at least by reputation), and being already in the second week of class. There's no reason why I should be able to get all of my work done for tomorrow and for Wednesday in two hours and have the rest of the day to putz about. The bad news is that it's already too late to add another class, which I otherwise might like to do, since all the interesting ones are very, very full, and of all problems, a lack of stuff to do was not one I anticipated, so I'm not on any wait lists. Even this journal entry drifts a bit, without the urgency of being squeezed in among other things, or made a priority over them.

Things should pick up soon. If nothing else, several extracurricular things, like the campus Unitarian Universalist group, start this week and that should take up a little time. Again, patience.

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Subject:	Is it ethical to write a letter and then post most of it online?
Time:	7:02 pm.

Some of the people I've met here are absolutely wonderful. The best few of them of them already keep me from being ashamed of my seriousness, which is something I really appreciate (since I don't always get it at home, and since it's something I might have been embarrassed about without their examples). A couple of them might yet be great friends. I had feared an absoluter solitude, so it's reassuring to find spirits in any way kindred.

But: after a few serious days of setting up life (a hum of meetings and social gatherings and trips to the store), I'm overdue for regenerative silliness, and there's no one here to share it with. I keep forgetting to tell the joke about the Quebecois with three cats. I don't yet know the boundaries of silliness or offense. I don't know who I can gently tease or be absurd to without absurdity becoming the paradigm of a growing relationship.

A quote (here paraphrased and unsourceable, even by Google) that has always stuck in my head: "As human beings we tend to resist both the serious and silly aspects of ourselves. Most of us end up existing in a great gray muddle that is truly unbearable to anyone willing to pay the slightest bit of attention to their state of being." I have seriousness (if not yet intimacy), and it's gratifying, but it deepens the yearning for play. I've been here less than a week. It's too soon to expect from these young relations the intimacy that ridiculousness demands. Still, I feel its absence.

I fear giving a portrait of my time here that is excessively pessimistic. I am not wholly crippled by a yearning for fun. Really I'm doing quite well--much better, frankly, than I'd expected--and today was my first day of not feeling totally up to things. I mention it mostly because it's the one glaring point of dissatisfaction, and it's mostly in moments of malaise, unfortunately, that I take the time to write. I was never such a lover of Home until I left it, and now it harbors all my perfect memories, cleansed by distance.

I'm excited about all my classes: History of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, Introduction to Symbolic Logic, Arabic 101, Spanish Literary Analysis, and Anthropology of Religion. I'd like to take more, but five classes is a "normal" load and I don't want to overburden myself as I make the transition. I feel vaguely priestlike , in a good way, a feeling reinforced by the fact that most of the serious folk I've fallen in with are Catholic. At least one of them has told me I should become a Jesuit, which I took as the compliment that was intended. This is when I really appreciate having learned to speak Christian, albeit with an accent.

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Subject:	A moment to catch my breath
Time:	1:34 pm.

There's a lot to do, and this place is very big. Still, I'm almost done finding things, setting things up, and figuring things out. All that's left is good night's sleep, which I don't expect to get regularly but would like to get tonight since classes start tomorrow. Barring major problems later today, those classes, for those who are interested, namely me, are:

Philosophy 211 - History of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy
Philosophy 242 - Introduction to Symbolic Logic
Arabic 101 - Introductory Arabic
Spanish 330 - Literary Analysis
Anthropology 232 - Anthropology of Religion

I think I may drive to Northern Virginia on the Friday of Labor Day weekend. I know that I made a promise I wouldn't avoid Charlottesville for six weekends, but this would only be a brief trip, there and back in the same day, to drop off extra things, get bookshelves at Ikea, check on Jacomina and James (I think Elena will already be gone) if it's a bad weekend, and possibly give a ride north to someone who's going that way.

Though the last alone wouldn't justify the trip, in the swirl of socials and receptions and barbecues, I have rediscovered just how much less at home I am in big groups of people than I am when I can have a conversation. Giving someone a ride back to Greater Arlington might do more for my C-ville social connections than staying. And in any case, I'll be back for the weekend, so I won't miss my types-of-drunk-and-horny tutorial.

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Time:

6:48 pm.

Well, I'm here: in Charlottesville and in the throes of anticlimax.

There was the chaos usually associated with Moving Day, plus a little internal stress which I think was only sporadically manifested in crankiness and panic. (Rose and Jamie can correct me on this. It may have been obvious the whole time.) Now that the dust has settled somewhat, there is, of course, a laundry basket of stuff that I wish had gone back with my Dad, but it can live in my trunk. Tuesday morning I have nothing to do, and that will be the day I go out in search of bookshelves.

Oh, yeah. Good news. I have room for bookshelves, since my dresser fits inside my closet. This is excellent news, since I brought a lot of books, though not as many as I wanted to at first. You may be glad to know that I've further weeded out books, including my compact OED, which I'd like to have but really is kind of over-the-top, bookwise. I like to read them, and they're useful, and I won't say that the Encyclopedia-of-Philosophy-makes-women-take-off-their-pants system has never worked, but really it's about feeling safe. Some people have blankets, Rose has that pig, Jamie has knives, I have books. As I feel better and more secure here, I'll need fewer trappings and fewer reminders of what sort of life I want to live.

There is much to be done. More later.

(I think I'll be fine.)

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Time:

11:23 pm.

I'm at my sister's place in Brooklyn. I've had a lovely time: We went to Coney Island today for some beaching, went back-to-school shopping (but in an ironic way), and have had several excellent meals of the type that New York so ably provides. It has been a lovely, low-key trip that will accelerate tomorrow into two busybusy days before I move to Charlottesville. I have a flurry of preparations to make, and lots of people to spend time with before then, particularly those who are also leaving soon, like Davi.

My nervousness about going to UVa has not abated, but I'm definitely feeling more confident about the whole thing. Excited, even. I think I'll be okay once I get down there. For the moment, I'm a little more concerned about saying goodbye. I like goodbyes, if only inasmuch as they expressions of affection, which I enjoy generally. But this is a goodbye of the sort which I've never yet had to make. Before it's always been with the intention of returning, but I may never live in Arlington again.

This is a bigger step for me than I've tried to let on, and since my close friends have long since made this transition, I think they don't quite understand the stake I have in it, and the pressure that entails. (The fact that they've made this transition already is one reason I try to be nonchalant about it.) I get sympathy for my nervousness, sure, but it's the wise, infuriating sympathy of those who've done it, not the commiserative sympathy of those who are doing it, too.

On the whole, though, I just feel pensive, in need of neither commiseration nor euphoric sharing. Most of my emotions are expulsive. My contentedness is always solitary.

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Time:

10:06 am.

Yesterday Jamie, Davi, Sam, and I biked toward Purcellville (a 40-mile ride, all told). Two houses from our start point a bungee cord got caught in my gears and we had to take them apart to pick it out of there. This was an omen we blithely ignored, and we finally got on the road about 4 pm.

This, it turns out, was stupid. The heat index in the sun was still easily above 100°F, and despite drinking what seemed like an absolute shitload of water (and more than my companions, by at least .5L/hr) by the time we were in Herndon I felt terrible. A half-hour's break got me going again for another five or six miles, but then I was feeling bad again, darkness was falling, and the taste of almost-vomiting in my throat made a continued sojourn seem unwise.

The really frustrating part is that if my hydration illness is not taken into account, we were all doing fine. In air conditioning right now, my body feels great and wishes it had done the whole 40 miles rather than about half that. Hell, if I'd done better with water, I probably could have burned it all the way to P-ville.

James and Davi biked ahead to the intersection where Rose and Andrew were to pick us up, and when they got there they found a fire station which sent a brush truck back for me, although the guy was not happy about it. I wasn't happy about it, either, but wasn't in a position or mood to argue, so I went back to the fire station, where we were met by Rose, Andrew, and Joy Cobb, whose house was our original destination. We were fed pizza and chips and played pool, and came back to Arlington to sleep off the sun. I feel fine.

A good cautionary tale to have in my repertoire. Not doing it again.

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Time:

1:00 pm.

What
is a wave
‘til it crashes
on rocks?

This morning I wrote four poems. For me, this is an extraordinary output, even if three of them end up being trashed as imperfectable--which they will if the usual proportions hold. I've thought that I missed doing so much writing, but that's really not the case: I've missed doing good writing, writing that (even if it's silly, foolish, giddily oblivious, or pompously sincere) is still honest and full in the moment of its birth. A literary existence is a long-burning fire if it's fed right, but it's awaited a spark.

Today will be another of those lethargic days, but after weeks of resisting I'm melting into its pace. The exterminator will come and I will make the most of my exile--perhaps in the library, perhaps in the basement of 141 contriving organizational projects, perhaps just sitting outside in Washington August's muggy indignities.

//

It was a shorter exile than I anticipated. Jamie and I filled it with coffee, scrounging in Goodwill for a good desk lamp for my Charlottesville room (no luck), and touring WIMSA's new digs on Glebe, trying to figure out the best arrangment of furniture for the reception area given the anticipated flow of people.

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Subject:	Fleeting and future connections.
Time:	3:14 pm.

I've been thinking about my mental list of people to keep track of, people who might someday be useful, or fun, or great friends, but who for various reasons can't be those things now--people of great musical talent and charm, quirky brilliance, literary merit, linguistic skill, or who possess a sad and sparkling look at the world which coaxes my own to emerge, to emerge, to emerge.

Age is the most frequent and most frustrating of those reasons. At the delicate age I inhabit, even a few years can be a world of difference in the outlook we hold on life, on where we are and what we yearn for, or the way that yearning is manifested. Our essences are held in common, but it's a losing struggle (or a Pyrrhic victory) for that to be enough.

Beaten back and forth like seashore debris! And how much of our joy comes from the waves we happen (just this once) to share, though the next one may tear us asunder. And how vain and hopeless to have such a list, as though the memory of a wave could be held as a blueprint for another, better, that I could keep for always.

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Subject:	These long and dogged summer days
Time:	1:18 pm.

Ethiopian food at Dukem's last night with the Findley de Regts and Dad was fun, although not as good as Zed's in Georgetown and more expensive. It does not join the rarefied ranks of my favorite places. That was the last of my events for this week, and now life is punctuated only by the twice-daily emptying of the basement dehumidifier, notwithstanding the fact that I do have a little bit of work today: handing out flyers at the Clarendon metro stop for two hours from 5:30 to 7:30. It pays poorly, but better that you'd think it would and work is work.

These are lethargic days, with sunbursts of motion but none of the humming activity that I thrive on. I've read the whole newspaper more days this summer than ever before in my life, and I look forward to being busy enough that I have to make time for the paper rather than kill time with it. Even my usual time-killing project, the sorting of my books into the takers and the leavers, is now concluded, with some help from Flake-O's ruthless but bibliophilic eye, and I'm left with no major projects to fill my days and no major events to mark the passage of time.

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Time:

10:13 pm.

I had a nice time last night with Greater Davi, whose extended farewell events included a Great Big Sea/Saw Doctors concert at Wolf Trap. Ticket was free, which is always a nice way to start.

I'm struck by how few of the people there I really knew: Davi, of course, and Lia, my erstwhile road companion; the Klines, whom I like more each time I see them. Hannah Pocock I got to see once more before our mutual departures. Rachel, whose last name I do not know, and who I had not seen since just after the Mystery Workshop some three months ago. And many more.

Davi is one of my closest friends, even when we've not spoken for a while, which has happened more than once. So it can be a little awkward to find myself in the midst of people who, on the one hand, are my peers, but on the other, really are strange*, and young, and very much in different parts of their lives than I.

[*...in the sense of being strangers, not in the sense of being unusual, which, as long as it is not pretense, I can appreciate.]

Nevertheless, I jumped in with the understated enthusiasm that is my oeuvre, and was utterly charmed by the cleverness and depth and grace of the people whose company I shared. The whole night had a sort of playfulness to it that I've been missing in my life. We danced and ate mustard out of the jar. Rachel and I exchanged jokes, back and forth (the finest sort of affection, of those that can be had with minors), and I finally got smart enough to Google-search "moose cock" and retrieve the joke with that punchline which I'd been missing for years. It was a light and lovely evening. I was aglow.

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Subject:	لإسلام
Time:	8:37 am.

A theology of atonement: We never quite make up for the wrong we do.

We all need, and by grace attain, fullness outside the self. I've been looking for it in the wrong places: in the fleeting fulfillment of my own perceived needs and desires, and not in the palpable, sustaining Spirit that I used to see through the people I loved that left me so much in awe.

Those needs and desires are real, of course, and to dismiss them altogether is to set any hoped-for transformation up for failure. I still have fears, concerns, insecurities, hurts, and Things I Want to Talk About. But as long as I’m trying to be a little less self-involved, I’ll skip those: They'll wait for me, or disappear.

In speaking with Mary Katherine Morn (for a few days yet, the minister at UNMC) over lunch last week, she suggested that I try letting go and stop grasping at imaginary threads of control. Now, equanimity has never been my strength. A part of me yearns always to act, to change, to be just a little better, until I claw my way to happiness—but so far it's mostly just given me bloody knuckles.

I need to give up on earning impossible redemption and throw myself at the feet of Grace. I am in no position to ask forgiveness from anyone. All there is left is the openness of surrender.

I miss the honesty and fire that submission gave me. I miss being humbled by the simple goodness of people. I miss offering my gratitude in the guise of generosity. I want to be subject to people again. I want that to be my prime delight. Acceptance—of responsibility, of circumstances, of my own smallness—is the only way I see to exist geniunely.

This is a lesson I need every once in a while. How to make it stick?

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Subject:	A non-emo post. How about that?
Time:	7:20 pm.

When I first fell deeply, transformationally in love, Davi and I were having one of the long, deep conversations we erstwhile had, and he asked me a question which I don’t remember but whose gist was “How much do you love her?” or perhaps “How do you know you love her?” Partly because it came out so easily, I will never forget the way I responded: “If I knew that she needed me to leave her and never see her again, it would be the hardest thing I ever had to do, but I would do it without a moment’s hesitation.”

Even then, I had an inkling (maybe a self-fulfilling one) about how that relationship would go. (Most of you will recognize which it is, though it doesn’t really matter here.) More to the point, I instinctively understood on some level that it was—had to be—about her, and not about us. About her, not about loving her, because if it were about loving her it wouldn’t be wholly about her. Loving her was not the aim, it was just the natural consequence of her.

It was adolescent passion, but it also revealed to me a fuller meaning of Paul’s command to his fellow Christians: “Be subject to one another.” That is the relational paradigm of the religious person. Not “Make yourself some friends,” or even “Be in relationship,” but “Be subject to one another.”)

(Ephesians 5:21 is a part of the Bible that's unpopular because it's about who should submit to whom. Immediately after this is a particularly distasteful section about how wives should submit to their husbands, which is part of the reason for Paul's bad reputation among religious liberals. I believe this interpretation, while broader than Paul intended, is consistent with the vision of community with which Paul is ultimately most concerned.)

I am at my best in relationships when I am a little bit in awe. I believe that there is significance seeping from every bit of creation, and I never see it more than in the people I love. In my moments of greatest connectedness, I feel awash in the Holy in everything I interact with, whether a tree or a table or a person. Each of those demands different responses, but all responses are rooted in amazement. All philosophy, said Plato, begins with wonder.

Let's skip the familiar specifics of the last year or so: at some point, I became more concerned for my friendships than for my friends. This was written to me in an email:

“It seems like your friendship[s have]… been brought down to a list of required behaviors and duties without the desire to care for one another that should be inherent in the friendship.”

That’s precisely it. It became about the friendship, not the friend; the position, not the person. At some point I got to be more concerned about the "closeness" (whatever that means) of the relationship than with being in loving awe of the person I was in relationship with. In the debate between living connection and empty ritual, imagine my horror to discover which side of it I've come down on. No wonder it didn’t work.

In the past months I’ve created some fantastic messes. For some people—Rose, Jamie, Fred, et al.—even more than for people in general. How terrible that those should be the people I love most! Thinking about why is almost irrelevant to what I need to do now for the sake of people I love, which is the essential subject of this post. Introspection about the reasons for those failures seems self-indulgent by comparison.

What really matters is that at the end of the day, I do care more about the friend than the friendship. I do love the patterns of friendship, but I love the person more. If devotion to my friends means abandoning the friendships, then I owe them that, without protest or hesitation. Punto. I have to be devoted to people independently of reciprocation, which may or not be forthcoming. I'll do it because it's my privilege and duty. Even if I did have a right to reciprocation, it's selfish to enforce other people's rights less zealously than my own.

You know, most of you, that my vision of friendship is not rooted in fun. You might be forgiven for thinking that it was rooted in "not fun," but at its best it is rooted in love. When I am in active relationship with anyone, I want it to be from mutual love, not guilt or a sense of obligation. Active relationship only has value as fruit of devoted caring. In short, no more bothering people even if it makes me more alone.

In the quantity I produce them words are only getting cheaper. True though it is, it will do little good to say once more how deeply I have been blessed by my friends. When I've said it in the past, it's too often been as a self-righteous cry and not as a grateful whisper. No more. If I say it again, it will be first in gestures and smiles and inside jokes, and then I will submit to whatsoever may come.

###

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