That, anyway, is what I have learned.

The Beginning: Creation

I believe in two beginnings- the beginning of the earth and the beginning of me.

Have you ever seen a beautiful sunrise? I mean a truly beautiful, brilliant sunrise? As if Eos and Aphrodite are awaking and stretching across their canopied bed, tossing their duvets so it ripples across the sky, creating colors and patterns that could never be repeated. A sunrise that when you stared, if you watched intently enough you could see each ray emerge, tip to tip, forming a band across the sky, that would eventually be the illuminating vision of Earth opening her eyes for the first time that morning.

It’s a statistical fact (if that brings any credibility) that fear of the darkness is America’s most common fear. If the light brings so much beauty, then that “statistical fact” makes sense. It’s easy to be scared of things we can’t see or know.

I’ve been told that a sunrise is simply night evading the day, fading back down. If I were darkness, I’d be scared of the beauty that light could bring as well.

If you want to know my story, you have to go back to the beginning. The very beginning. I was born in New Jersey, right outside of Princeton, in a town called New Brunswick. I was born in a snowstorm and our car crashed on my way home from the hospital. Apparently car accidents a couple hours into a new life isn’t very good for an infant. That day, April 12, was the sunrise and almost the sunset of my life.

In the beginning, there was Adam and Eve. And Zeus. And Io. And the axis mundi. And the sun and the moon and all of the stars. But there was also nothing. And everything.

All at once.

That, anyway, is what I have learned.

The Middle: Suffering

I’ve heard that any life worth living is only valued by the suffering that it has endured. Suffering has to be the best teacher of any on this earth (sorry Dr. Sexson), because it teaches you about what your heart used to be. As Charles Dickens has said, “I have been bent and broken but –I hope- into a better shape.” It’s necessary to have a world of pain and suffering to school a brain into a soul.

Sometimes, we must undergo breakups, and losing friends, and losing lives. Hardships, difficult times, and narcissistic wounds. It’s hard, it seems like it lasts forever, and it can break a person. When these times happen, it’s easy to lose happiness and pleasure, because it feels like we are losing who we are. However, that loss of fleeting happiness doesn’t necessary mean that we’re losing our pure, natural, infinite joy. Sometimes joy is the voice at the end of the day saying, “The sun rose and the sun set, and you made it through both.”

Suffering is intense. It’s endless. And it’s self-inflicted. Everything we do has been done. Every thing we think has been thought. Every word we’ve spoken has already been said. Every sin we’ve committed has already been committed by Adam and Eve, by Zeus, by Persephone, by Europa. Every little thing that we have ever done, thought, said, believed- it has already been. I think the hardest part to believe about this is that all traces of originality and independence are erased from the very core of our being and all of our new experiences simply become others experiences that we seem to remember. I want to be original. I want to be new. I want to be an explorer, a wanderer, a discoverer, but I can’t. Because everything has been explored, everywhere has been wandered, and every thing has been discovered. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t recreate it. You see, everything has been found, discovered, and done, but I can re-find it, re-discover it, and re-do it and do it differently. I can make a difference simply by doing things differently. It’s not about originality, but rather about creativity.

That, anyway, is what I have learned.

The End: Resolution

I guess I don’t know much about the end, because my full end hasn’t come yet. I’ve watched friendships end, I’ve watched love end, I’ve experienced many ends in my life, but I’ve yet to experience the end. What is the end? Do you know when it comes? Are you comfortable when Hades sneaks up and wraps his arms around you and takes you down to the underworld? Or are you ripped from a perfect moment, a perfect time, a perfect love- do you leave in an instant or do you fade? As you slip from the world, where do your memories go? Are they still here? Are they floating around, reminding everyone of you? I lost my grandpa on my fourth birthday. Every year, I hear him through my dad’s tears. Every year, I feel him through my dad’s hugs. He’s not here, but isn't he? It doesn’t seem like he went willingly to the underworld called death, it seems like he’s still fighting it every day. Fighting for life, even in death… 

I know another end is coming soon; I’ve been feeling it since September. Montana is ending for me. In December, I’ll return home to Georgia. I’ll return home to the smell of maple every morning, and the sound of the wind blowing through the willow trees that surround my childhood home. I’ll return home and leave this chapter behind. I’ll leave the suffering that has happened here. I’ll leave the experiences that have dictated the past two years of my life. I’ll leave the people who have seen me at my worst and my best. Montana, as an experience for me, will be ending. But Montana will live on, and even though I'll be 2,000 miles away, I'll see the same thing as each of you every night. The Gods are still there, living reincarnated in the stars, watching over us, getting closer and farther away every day, and in the same way, as constellations present themselves across the world, Montana will be as close to me as it will be to some of you. 

I think that THE end is simply the place you go when you’re looking for a new beginning. Some people choose to go to the end, and some people are simply put there, but either way, I think we all end up at the end when it’s time for our new beginning.

Or at least that’s what I’ve learned.

The Full Circle: What I Have Learned

I’ve learned that the best way to learn about mythologies is to sit in Wilson 1-122 and listen to every single initiation rite, and displaced myth, and every comment that each of you say. I’ve learned that the best way to understand these “mythologies” is to understand that each life in this room is a mythology. That everything, and nothing, is true in the world. That all at once, everything, and nothing, is the origin of every being. We came from somewhere, called Nowhere, and will go nowhere, called Somewhere. I’ve learned that “we are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that death itself trembles to take us” (Thanks Bukowski). I knew from the moment I stepped into this class on August 27^th that something was different, something was better, and something was new in this classroom. Whether it was the professor, or all of you sitting in front of me, or simply the air of mystery that brought all of us together into Lit 285, something was different. And now, looking back on the last three months, I can say that what was different then is different now. I know the birth date and birthplace of a fellow student. I know about one of your uncle’s choices of career, if you call it that. I know about how some of you love Kobe Bryant and I know how there are some people in here that have witnessed and experience initiation at its most brutal. I know how writing has changed some of your lives and I know how a simple airplane trip can change someone’s life for the better. I know that some of you enter this room every day a new person, and I know that no one will walk out completely unchanged by what has happened in Wilson 1-122.

I’ve learned a lot this semester, but perhaps the most luminous thing I’ve learned is that I already knew all of this.

I already knew all of you.

I just hadn't realized it.