Bloomington/Indiana Thoughts, Part 1

It's now August, and we're in the dog days of summer. The mostly warm-to-hot days of June and July have given way to day after day of muggy, cloying warmth, interspersed with thunderstorms to liven things up now and then. Somehow, the last two months have passed, filled with work and little adventures and time spent with loving family and friendly acquaintances and supportive friends. And so, time has sped by, to this point.

There are only a few fireflies, here and there, lighting up the twilight, and that, more than anything, is a silent, sobering reminder that time does march on, and despite the seeming perfection of life, it dwindles and sputters and dies.

_____________________

Speaking of time passing, and the rhythm of seasons, and the ebb and flow of time passing...

...The students are returning.

You live in Bloomington long enough that, come May, when the spring storms are receding and the green foliage is at its most vivid, you rejoice, for the students retreat. They go back from whence they came, and you enjoy the reduced amount of traffic, the briefer wait times at restaurants, the shorter lines at the grocery stores, the fewer dude-bros hanging out around Kilroys on Friday and Saturday nights. But then you become one of the people that go to ground during certain times, usually around the middle of August, and then again during the Little 500.

We really cannot complain too much, because the existence of Indiana University, and thus the students, is what makes Bloomington Bloomington. We're a significant little city in this state. Without the university, we'd be another Solsberry or Hindustan or Danville or Paoli or Elwood. It is the students--their presence, their money, their diverse cultures, both national and international--who  make us who and what we are.

So they are returning, (or arriving for the first time) and the poor little shits are having to practically have to row their way here, because...

_____________________

The last few days, we've been completely deluged with rain. Not, like, "Anchors Aweigh!" or "Louisiana drowning" rain, but several hours of steady rain, on and off, which can lead to some real gully-washing. Tonight, when wandering back to my car after a lovely outing with a couple of new friends, I noticed the rain-washed streets, reflecting a gleam from yellow streetlights. As I gazed into the murky gold muddling the asphalt, I thought about a younger me, 12 years younger, looking at a similar rain-washed street, in the same damned city. Then, I was a new arrival, just starting grad school, on the cusp of what I once thought was THE relationship of my life. I was 24 and bright and clueless and yet felt like I knew everything. Probably just like the students who look at those rain-washed streets tonight, for the first time.

It would be a goddamned privilege to live here for the rest of whatever years I have left to me, watching the generations of students come in and out, keeping this a town forever young. And yet...
______

On a slightly more sinister note...Lauren Spierer. Several years ago, I saw this poor duck and the circumstances of her disappearance showing up on my newsfeed. Being an Indiana news-junkie, even then, I was disturbed and saddened. And now, having moved back here, I can see that her presence is as strong as ever through her absence. One of my companions tonight remarked that we were driving past the place where Ms. Spierer disappeared--and as it turned out, it wasn't that far from where I had lived, just a few years prior. Like, just seven blocks away.

All safety is an illusion, even in a quiet little liberal college town.

Thoughts on Two Marriages

Last month on Facebook (the most reliable source for all breaking news) I came across a little article announcing that the author Elizabeth Gilbert and her partner were separating.


If you're not familiar with this storyline, never fear--I can sum it up for you pretty quickly: Talented author realizes that she is miserable in her marriage. Author divorces husband and decides to travel around the world to a lot of countries that begin with the letter "I" to eat pasta and find herself. Instead, she found herself another fella, fell in love, and wrote a memoir about the whole experience, making a boatload of money in the process, and getting a movie deal too. I can't say for certain, but I think there's a strong possibility that the book and movie inspired a good few women of a certain seconomic and educational strata to leave their partners and chase after their inner Julia Roberts.


(Not me. I didn't take a months-long trip to Italy or Indonesia or India, although I DID take a 17-day vacation to Indiana.)


I wanted her to have a happy ending. (I mean, what curmudgeonly troglodyte asshole DOESN'T want someone to be happy?) We all wanted her to have a happy ending because we want to know that we will have happy endings. But here's the truth: there's never a totally happy ending. Perhaps a happy pause between storylines.


Regardless, I did feel a slight see of connection with Elizabeth Gilbert, as one is supposed to do when reading the work of a talented memoirist. And then, she decided to marry her fella, for complicated reasons...but before she did, she wrote a book facing down her ambivalence about the institution of marriage. Ironically, or perhaps coincidentally, I read it right before I got married.


We have nothing really in common, Ms. Gilbert and myself. She has achieved a great deal of worldly success and is much farther along than I am in her skills as a writer. But yet, here we both are, both of us separated and terminating our relationships with the partners that we once thought we would be with until the end of this life. I got married, and couldn't make it work. She wrote a book on marriage, and got married, and couldn't make it work. And there are no doubt a lot of people that have plenty of thoughts on that matter.


Last weekend, I came across a blog post about Elizabeth Gilbert's announcement, and the world's more-than-slightly-stupid reaction to it. I agreed quite strongly with her statement that "to suggest that readers are (or should be) somehow 'disillusioned' with the news of their separation is to hold Gilbert to a ridiculous standard--one nobody can uphold." She also takes the pretty generous, but not inaccurate, view that "marriage does not need to last forever to be a success." That all sorts of amazing things can come out of marriages that don't last. Children, and happy memories, and positive impacts, and lasting friendships can make marriages--even ones that end in divorce--a success.


Here is, at least for now, where Ms. Gilbert's and my story differ most drastically. I feel like--and I say this with no bitterness--my marriage was anything but a success. We didn't have children, we are not coming away with a lasting friendship, and just about all of my recollections of our six years together are tinged with vague emotions of contempt, boredom, disgust with both of us, homesickness, bitterness, disillusionment, and distrust. I know I shouldn't indulge in those kinds of emotions, and I want to move past them, move past this travesty of a marriage and all my flawed thinking that got me into that mess to begin with.


Maybe it's time to eat, pray, and love my way through Indiana. I've got the eating part down.