Approximately Adam: One of those nights

April 24, 2005
One of those nights

A few minutes ago as I was coming back from seeing The Upside of Anger, "Jumper" by Third Eye Blind came on the radio. I sang the first few lines out of habit, then stopped. As I continued on the route home, I noticed Maia was very quietly singing the lyrics to the song herself. As we came over the last couple of hills, we sang in unison, quietly... letting the atmosphere of the quiet night sweep us away. It was the capper to a perfect night. After the only mildly lackluster one before, it was a perfect reminder of how lucky I am.
I think I was getting a little worried - after however many months it's been at R.I.T. I rarely getting significantly worried anymore - because it feels like each time I go home it takes longer to readjust. Put in more simple terms, at R.I.T. I feel utterly apart from everything; even among my friends I feel like a stage act that enters on cue to entertain the assembled audience and then exits when the audience has had enough. The world is one thing, and I am a seperate other thing. Each time I've come back it has taken longer for me to lose that feeling, longer to feel like I am apart of things again. The last visit home I'm not entirely sure I got that vindication even though I planned it so as to spend time with two of my very favorite people. Perhaps that's the problem; when I plan my fun it only further seperates me from the universe that controls my fate. Tonight happened on a whim, and for the first time in along time I reached a point where I wasn't entertainer to an audience. It was two lonely people out for a night on the town in a world that seemingly had nothing to offer.
Yet a strange thing happened; somewhere between two luke-warm bowls of Chicken Noodle-O's and a rather late arrival for the early of the two possible movie choices, the loneliness went away for a while. In a list of movies that appeared to offer nothing, we found in a blah choice something that I'd long planned but long since ceased to have - a pleasant, enjoyable night at the movies. I had no expectations, no lofty plans in which to maximize my enjoyment. Like a lazy Saturday afternoon in front of the television, I just sat back and got a lost in a decent story with enjoyable characters that did nothing to change my life but everything to improve my evening. Unlike so many solitary moviegoing experience, after it was over we walked out of the theater exchanging initial comments about the movie back and forth until she headed up stairs to hit the bathroom. I did the same, primarily to blow my nose. The bathrooms are upstairs with the projection booths. The doors are closed with "No Admittance" labels on the door, but one was fairly open and I got to see the projector, full of light and whirring away. It gounded the experience in something organic that futher seperated THIS from the digital extravaganzas of RIT.
When we left, I kept the speed reasonable. I slowed down in anticipation of my turns. No great reason to - earlier there was fog so bad that I could barely see five free in front of the car and I still drove like a madman then - but for once I didn't feel the need to live up to anything. We talked for a while, and then there were periods when we didn't. For the first time in a long time, that made sense to me. It didn't isolate me to my own thoughts; I was part of whatever weight the silence carried. Like the night I first saw Garden State with Maia and Megan, I've been given a hint of how valuable life truly is - and given a glimpse of that quality that keeps me going forward even when every moment seems a struggle. There are nights like these that are like God saying that this is what His great plan is all about. There is great misery in this world, but there is also joy - especially the quiet sort.

^{posted by Adam at 00:54 |}

0 Comments: