Reflecting On Time and Place: A University Essay
If you're as tired as I am, then you'll know how stressful the silly season can be. Along with final exams and the scramble for extra cash comes the Christmas rush and yule tide spirit. Don't get me wrong, I adore Christmas and the holiday season as much as the next 5'8ft elf, but the madness that overcomes ordinary people during this period of festivities is enough to make me want to skip Carols By Candlelight, avoid the shops at all costs, disappear off the Internet grid, and lock myself in my room with my fairy lights, The Holiday, and some Take-A-Lot specials. And to the people who are groaning silently and saying, "Pipe down Sarah, it's only November..." We all know what you will be getting in your stocking this year.
But I digress... For my English literature course, which happens to be one of my majors, we had to write a reflective piece about a time of day or a place. I decided to combine the two, and write about the 1pm to 2pm at UCT, which is known as meridian. This is the middle of the working day when students can take a break and have lunch. I recently got feedback for my essay, and to my amazement and total pride, I got a First, which is 75%! In university, especially in English literature for a reflective assignment, it is extremely difficult to get an A-grade, so I was bursting with excitement and happiness that a reflective piece based on my own experiences with no academic sources or referencing could harness a First!
I have decided to share my precious piece with you. It was one of the most personal pieces of academic writing I have ever written, so please treat it with care. And finally, I hope you enjoy!
Choosing between two directions at one
The
prick of a needle is something I no longer convulse at after having been for
innumerable blood tests as a child. I
will not, however, ever be able to withstand the bile-stirring and
flatulence-inducing turpentine that rips through my body when the clock licks
one in the afternoon. One in the
afternoon is when the air gets thick with carbon dioxide as people spill from
the cracks and crevices they were confined to for forty-five minutes of REM-inducing
lectures. One in the afternoon feels
like slipping your hand into a sink of murky dishwater to pull out the plug,
only to brush across half of your supper as it slides like oil off your
submerged plate. One in the afternoon is
the prequel to an eternity spent rotting and bubbling underground like a stew
nobody wants to eat. One in the
afternoon at the University of Cape Town is meridian.
Majority
of my time in meridian is spent perching with the club-footed starlings on
Jameson stairs for an hour, allowing my thoughts to permeate the air so that
the idle chatter around me becomes less of a scattered ambience, and more of a
white noise. I watch as the students
around me buzz and swarm in hives of social cohesion, and try and piece
together their lives. Meridian is the
best time to observe people in a natural environment, and it often provides me
with a sense of calm in an otherwise chaotic world. While I am observing people, I am in control
of their narrative: They become vessels
through which I can solidify my thoughts, and mould them into characters with
interesting pasts and scandalous futures.
I can make them into the people I want them to be in other universes. I can create the perfect person: Someone without the flaws, mistakes, and bad
habits that I see so regularly within myself.
I paint their storylines on their clothes, fashion them a new face, an
exotic name, and a lifestyle. I give
them the qualities I wish I had. I give
them the families I wish I grew up with.
These people become my dolls to play with, and become new eyes through
which I can explore the world with. I
control their direction because I am their puppet master. I am an all-seeing, untouchable presence when
I am at the top of Jameson stairs.
Sometimes,
however, my thoughts cannot be heard with all the noise that surrounds it: The laughter, the shouting, the talking, the
singing, the movement, the dancing, the running, the fighting, the kissing, the
screaming, the jumping, the crying, it all becomes too much. It fills my head so my mouth cannot
speak. It fills my sinuses so that my
eyes drown. It rattles my body so that I
shake with overwhelming fear and anxiety.
I scream above it, but it comes out as a whisper. I try to stand up, I try to run away, I try
to reach out my hand for help, but I cannot move. I am stuck.
Trapped. My body begins to harden
into the granite, and I can hear the ringing of absolute silence drumming in my
ears. As I continue to harden, my eyes
mist over until they cannot move. They
stay fixed on the horizon, not quite seeing anything, aching for someone to
break the mist that hangs like a sheet of glass over them. When the metamorphosis is complete, I have
become one with the stairs. I am a
right-angled granite figure positioned to stare out into the abyss for
eternity, not feeling anything. Yet
somewhere inside me lies the power to move.
Surely if I am the stairs, I have a sense of direction, and can follow
it. If I am one with the stairs, I can
take direction of my journey, and continue moving forward into a more
comfortable and stimulating place. The
only thing holding me back, the one thing keeping me from breaking my suit of
granite and emerging like Excalibur, is fear.
Fear of what the world will look like when I emerge. Fear of the responsibilities I will have to
assume when I am human again. Fear of
people not noticing I was gone. Fear of
people treating me differently after having disappeared. Fear of what it means to be a functioning
human again. My anxiety takes the form
of a granite statue infused with Jameson stairs: Too scared to move, and too frozen to speak.
On
other days during meridian, my thoughts mirror the claws of the starlings:
Mangled and broken. This is when I am
slow. I become the food in the murky
dishwater. Submerged, wasting, and
useless. Where am I going? Why am I here? When will it be enough? Questions I don’t know the answers to throb
inside my head. I become tired. Too tired to answer them. Not because my thoughts are trapped. But because my lips are dumb. My thoughts crumble to ashes. They scatter, free. But they leave me behind. Empty and numb. Lost behind a cloud stuck between two
mountain peaks. I stare out into No
man’s land. And feel nothing. Soulless bodies surround me. No narrative comes to mind. Everything feels so out of reach. Almost as though the distance between myself
and the human world has increased. I say goodbye.
It feels like I have no means of returning. The stairs underneath me start to lift into
the sky as easily as a broken spider web.
I am carried away, floating high above the ground into the vast blue
atmosphere. Here it is an extension of
No man’s land. There is nothing to
see. Nothing to feel. No one to pretend around. Here I can breathe. Here I can cry. I could not do that on the ground. I had to be happy on the ground. I had to fill my mouth with words, make
plans, and move my arms and legs to the beat of everyone else’s music on the
ground. I do not have to do that
here. Here I am alone, and it is
quiet. I can make my own noise. I can hurl words into the silence. I can scream tears into the darkness. I can claw at the air, and not be
afraid. This is what my depression looks
like. I can wonder far, think terrible
thoughts, and imagine wicked deeds. When
I am alone in my head, I can be free.
Stairs
carry with them a sense of certainty.
They present you with two options:
To ascend, or to descend. Stairs
are confident in that regard. No matter
what anyone says about stairs, no matter their opinions about the practicality
or functionality of stairs, the stairs themselves know that at the end of the
day, they will go up, or they will go down.
This is a sense of confidence and certainty that I lack in my own life
that becomes clear to me during meridian.
I yearn to be as confident in myself and my future as the stairs are
about how they ascend and descend. On
most days when I am alone and ruminating during meridian, it feels as though I
have no sense of direction. I cannot
imagine myself growing up. I feel as
though I am stuck in the body I inhabit, and that this body will never grow, or
become more than what it is right now. I
feel stuck in the present. I see no way
forward for myself. Sometimes I think
about my future wedding, but I see myself as a prepubescent bride with a
wedding dress drooping at the chest, and sagging at the back. When I imagine my family in the future, I see
myself as not being strong enough to carry my baby in my arms. I simply cannot think progressively about
myself, and it terrifies me. What does
this say about the way I think about myself and my own abilities? It must reflect how little faith I have in my
dreams, and how I imagine myself moving forward into the future.
Being
stuck in the present is another thought that is deeply disturbing to me. If anything, the present should be the most
exciting space to be in. It is a space
of infinite possibilities: You may have
been planning to go up the stairs, but in the present moment where you find
yourself, you may decide not to go up the stairs, and turn around in another
direction. The present is the moment
when you define yourself by the directions you choose to follow. Perhaps this is what I am afraid of. Perhaps I am afraid of making such concrete
decisions, and am wary of people watching me as I take my steps, as I watch
them. I see this too in the way that I
feel too afraid to stand up during meridian, because I am filled with the fear
of what will happen when I stand up, and who will see me stand up. This fear is what ultimately holds me back
from running up or down the stairs.
Instead, I choose to sit, actively in observation, and passively in
thought, while everyone else takes their steps into their futures.
One in
the afternoon on campus stirs very disturbing and convoluted feelings for
me. These are feelings that involve
intense extrapolation, which often render me feeling anxious or depressed. During these moments, everything inside and
around me feels stagnant. It feels as
though the present cannot move forward while I am sitting on the stairs,
because while I am on the stairs, I am not moving. I see everyone else around me moving forward,
but I remain where I am. The stairs feel
a shift in the lack of movement, and open feelings for me that cause me to
think critically about where I am heading, what my next movement will be, and
where my future will take me. The stairs
know that while I continue to remain seated, I will never achieve
anything. All I will continue to
experience is the feelings of uncertainty and insecurity that will keep me tied
down. The stairs remind me that
everything in life involves the decision of direction, and which direction you
take determines where you will go.
Everyone has to make these decisions every day, and these decisions
determine what doors will open when we reach them.
At the moment, I am too scared to consider
these decisions. I remain in my
comfortable seated position, and allow the people around me to navigate the
stairs as I watch them. But if I am
going to be an influential and successful person in this world, I have to take
the stairs. I have to knock on doors,
trip up a few times, get my hands dirty on the banister, bump into rude
strangers, and feel the breathlessness in my lungs after one too many
flights. I have to allow myself to let
these feelings in. I have to raise my
feet off the ground, one at a time, as I take control of the direction of my
own life. I will not be infused with the
granite. I will not take the form of a
club-footed starling. My feet need to
assume the power of the granite they are stuck to, and carry me with full
confidence in whatever direction I decide to take. This will not be achieved in one hour on
campus, but I will become sure-footed, one step at a time.
XO
