A rant

A big “fuck you” for me. Not just an immediate fuck you but a long lasting one because i’ve decided to take the cowardly way out. No reason, really, but i figure i can sort my thoughts out if perhaps things seem more familiar and a strong doubt of my ability to psychologically handle another complicated situation in the near future. Maybe that means trying to pick up where my life was before last Wednesday night. Maybe that means reinventing my life. Probably it means laying low for a while and trying to figure out what the fuck i was actually thinking and what the fuck i did.

Sabrina and i had a good “duct tape” talk on Thursday night…it was a bit superficial but it seemed to fill in a few gaps, if only temporarily.

Friday night i ended up at the pub again, had one fine pint of the black stuff, a good discussion with friends, then proceeded to screw up again. Got a bit closer to third base but not really much more than before. For screwing up though, damn was it good. If i ever have to screw up in such a terrible way again (hopefully not), i could only wish for such pleasure. I realized that this was the girl in my five-star soft porn collection…so attractive that i couldn’t resist imagining a photograph of the moment and putting it in my prized bin. Top ten.

After a few hours i became tired (although she never came close to fatigue for some very, very fine reason) and decided to call it quits and promptly passed out. A few hours later, we were on the train to the Lake District, Britain’s largest and most breathtaking National Park. There were six of us who went and we had a great time hiking trails to majestic points and marveling the beauty of nature (something i tend to forget about living in Iowa).

During the big hike i had lots of time to think (new thing to me of late), assess and decide what i was going to do. After we got back to the hostel (Saturday night) Sabrina and i talked for an hour or two about what was going on between us. I realized just then how powerful this Situation was, how passionate i was about this Situation, and suddenly feeling emotions i haven’t felt in years. I explained in the most elegant of phrases that i could muster, decorating my words with brilliant metaphors, decisive conclusions about why, why this was happening…and why it might be ok. I said that this is a huge point in my life, something that i can’t see the whole of and Time only could sort it out. My heart and head were caught up in some new, colorful world. I was awake from a long slumber. It just kept coming and coming. We said our goodnights and decided to talk about it some more on Sunday morning—

Now that i think about it i was just really horny and everything i said was bullshit.

—Nevertheless, it felt right at the moment and i knew i had Sabrina impressed and perhaps even convinced one way or another.

Sunday and today were different stories. I noticed she wasn’t looking at me. If we were in the same room alone, she would leave. There was always someone between us. She talked more and more in Italian with Chiara. What they didn’t realize is that from what little Spanish i know i can usually ascertain a great deal of Italian. Sadly though, my hormones and self-deceptive thoughts clouded any sense i could make of their conversations and i remained, as to this moment, confused beyond belief about what happened.

And now what do i do. On my hike on Saturday afternoon, in my long thoughts i came up with two points.

The first is the difference between pleasure and happiness.

In the Dalai Lama’s book The Art of Happiness, he touches briefly on the subject. Happiness is the vanquishment of suffering, the eternal beneficent goal we all are seeking in every action. It may be a long, treacherous road or immediately rewarding. There’s no telling. We know happiness when it happens, although sometimes it isn’t clear to us until later on in life, ex post facto.

Pleasure is happiness’s deceptive twin. Sometimes it brings the greatest rewards and can be the road to happiness, or even happiness itself. Sometimes it brings nothing but destructive consequences. You usually don’t have the mind enough in a situation to understand where this pleasure will lead you.

But you always have the mind enough to know that it’s fun. Pleasure is always fun and always a good time.

Back to our [last] conversation of Saturday night: I explained this to Sabrina and said i didn’t really know which way it was going. That much i still believe. The other part, however, was about it being ok to not understand yourself and your actions but to justify them from what little you know at the moment, particularly in reference to the first point i made. This is where i created an error, which i believe is a common one that people make, especially horny men. Basically i told her that we had to carpe diem, to live in the moment–to enjoy ourselves before she had to leave in three weeks. As you can plainly see now, this is Mr. Winky talking. It was ok, i assured her, and i wanted to give her what happiness i had to offer before her return to fair Verona.

That was the gist of the conversation although i was exceedingly eloquent, if i must say so myself. I guess it wasn’t enough however, and maybe she saw through my bullshit plan and that’s why there’s the frustration there is today. I’ll find out tonight when i go to settle this manner once and for all. I woke up yesterday thinking, “This has all got to stop” and now the truth is finally sinking in.

As with Bridget, who knows. I don’t. I don’t know how i’m going to look at her or myself again. Although i have never done such a terrible thing to someone in action before, the dirty deed has been committed over and over for years in my head. For this i feel guilty too.

But going out and telling Bridget right on…i don’t think that will solve much right now. Emotionally, i’m at the edge right now and such a thing could ruin my England experience and perhaps have repercussions throughout my life. It’s a personal battle…where it’s

ME VS. ME

and it’s all taking place in my head. To bring in more characters will only complicate the situation. Maybe it’s something i need to work out with God, maybe it’s something i need to work out with my English friends who seemingly already know all about what’s happened, maybe i need to sort it out myself and never turn back. Believe me, i know it will come back to haunt me for the rest of my life. But perhaps that’s the penance i need to pay for such shenanigans….

I struck a match this week.

In a world of gray known to me for years, a bright and colorful flame jumped out in front of me. I watched in amazement at such intensity and heat, but failed to ignite anything with such a brilliant spark.

Instead, the match burned down to my fingers with a final, blistering scorch.

And so it goes.

Ryan

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19 Feb 2001

“The Lake District and York”

Hello once again.

Last, last weekend i went with a few people to England’s largest and most popular national park, the Lake District. It was a wonderful time–although climbing to Orset Head, [supposedly] one of England’s most spectacular summits wasn’t a high point of my life–seeing only ten feet in front of me, drenched with one of the worst downpours i’ve ever suffered. Instead of the glory of God, i felt the Dies Irae. Climbing to that point was more of a penance for the terrible sins i’ve committed than an aesthetic experience.

Alas! the sun came out the next couple of days and that, for me, was an incredible experience. Although it rains quite a bit in England (i’m understating things here), the sun does shine. And when it does, especially in a place like the Lake District on a tourist-free February Monday… with the vegetation blasting a brilliant shade of green and the enormous bright blue sky to falling down all over it… it’s like Heaven bursting open at the seams and drenching the Cumbrian landscape in some sublime glory. It’s a good reason to be alive.

Wordworth’s Dove Cottage and the tiny towns of Windermere, Keswick, and Grasmere were particularly delightful, but what really struck me was my last weekend in York.

York is a city with a 2000 year history–it was Rome’s northernmost city, an enormous Viking settlement, a place of Saxon and Norman conquest, full of religion (20 extant medieval churches) and war, architecture and commerce. …An enormously important town and certainly an experience i will never forget. York Minster is the largest Gothic cathedral in England, the largest intact medieval church in Europe. It is possible to go down in the crypt and view Norman, Saxon, and Roman buildings constructed over and over and on top of throughout the years. You can stand on the spot where Constantine was declared emperor of Rome (the man who made Christianity legal in Rome, probably most responsible for its existence to this day). You can walk in the same footsteps of French, Scottish, English, etc. leaders who shaped the current shape of the world. I know this sounds sappy; maybe it’s a personal excitement of being in such a tiny place that is responsible for so much of who I am.

This weekend was also (previously unbeknownst to me) the annual Viking festival, celebrating Britain’s Viking and Scandinavian heritage. There were battle reenactments, Viking boats on the River Ouse. The city was packed, but retained much of its charm. On Friday night, i found a locals-only-looking pub, stumbled in and met Rob and Dave, two Yorkians who took me on a tour of the finest pubs that York had to offer.

I learned that “the trick to drinking in York is–” Rob started this quotation but kept getting distracted by passing women. I prodded him three times and finally he said, “The trick to drinking in York is to drink, drink, drink, then pull, pull, pull” which apparently means to get as drunk as possible then meet as many girls as possible. It was good advice for anywhere, I guess, but didn’t take it. They also informed me that there is a pub for every day of the year and a church for every Sunday. Repentance is good.

After the final bell at the pub, the two told me how to get back to the youth hostel. Just walk about a mile or so until a fork in the road, then veer left. I walked, but didn’t see the fork in the road. My stubbornness and tragic optimism finally gave in. There was a footpath that veered left, but not really in a fork; I was too tired and frustrated to think otherwise and followed the sign pointing down the path that said “To City Centre.” If anything, I could end up back in town and try it again. So I followed the path to the river, knowing that the hostel was adjacent to the riverwalk. After probably three miles, nothing looked familiar. Worse yet, a point came where the river flooded over the path. I was at the final dry point, wedged between a fence and the river. Outside of swimming, I did what any enterprising young man would do and jumped the fence.

There’s a tendency among human beings to do incredibly stupid things and believe, at that moment at least, that it is an incredibly wise thing to do. The thought did cross my mind of being found, covered in mud, wandering through someone’s private property in the middle of the night. Fortunately, I wasn’t given the opportunity to explain myself to an angry landlord. I had yet to see a wild mammal on this island and British people can’t have guns, so I had little to worry about.

Only when there was another fence in front of me. I came to believe that the lower the fence, the less angry the proprietors would be if I were caught. And less danger from whatever was rightfully in those fields. Finally, after maybe an hour of jumping fences, stumbling blindly through fields, I came out to the road where I was lost on in the first place, basically in the same place I left it, still a mile or two away from where I needed to be. I traced my steps back into town, found the fork in the road, found the hostel, and collapsed onto my bed exhausted.

Saturday night was Ghost Walk night. Of the many choices I had for a “historic ghost walk through York,” I chose the one claiming to be the original one. So did everyone else. It was interesting and amusing, but a little too little for £3 ($4.50).

However, it was a haunting experience in a different way. After the walk, i went to a pub and had Dickens-ian encounter with three different people, each with a profound and different message about life. After i had a seat by myself, two girls recognized my American accent and asked me where i was from. I said “Iowa” and it turned out that one was from Iowa and the other from Wisconsin. They were studying in Spain and making a two week-long trip to the British Isles. I said that I made a two-week long trip to Spain last summer. It was almost like they already knew. They spoke authoritatively of El País del Sol and also of my home state, seeming to fill me in on experiences in my life that I hadn’t been too conscious of. Things I had mindlessly glossed over, like the Ghost of Christmas Past. After they left for the train station, a man immediately entered the pub and sat down next to me, striking up a conversation.

He was from England and happened to be working in the computer science field (my major field at college right now). We talked for a while about life, important things strangers don’t talk about. The final bell rang and the man said, “Well, I’m fading fast. I think I’m going to go. Good luck.” I wished him luck in his life and made my way back to the hostel (not getting lost this time).

Back at the hostel, there was a man watching TV. He started a conversation with me as well, as if the whole world knew me, and revealed that he was from Turkey. I said I was going there in May. He talked and talked and talked about life for hours until I was so confused and tired that I had to go to sleep. I had many strange dreams that night, glad to wake up the next morning as anyone other Ebineezer Scrooge.

There was one other very strange experience on this trip, but it was more comical in nature. It happened while I was trying to sleep in a four-bed room of the hostel on one of the nights. In fact, I’m inspired to write a play based on this situation:

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CAST

George, asleep in one of the four beds. He has two shirts, two books, and a bottle of shampoo and conditioner on the bunk above him.

Paul, first night in York, coming back to the hostel, getting ready for bed

John, an older man, the hostel proprietor.

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[Room is dark. The world is quiet. Paul opens door, enters room quietly and looks around in the darkness. He sees that only one of the four beds is unoccupied, but there are clothes and other small articles on it. He rushes out of the room and shuts the door.]

[Silence]

[Five minutes later, Paul re-enters and turns on light. George, immediately awoken, jumps out of his bed, as if the light going on explained the entire situation.]

George: Look, there are other beds in this hostel. I was told that only two other people were sleeping in here. In fact, I know that Room 6 has beds.

Paul: [Startled that George already understands the whole situation from just a light being turned on.] Well, I paid for a room and need a place to sleep.

George: Well, my things are on the bed and you’re going to have to find another place to sleep.

[Paul rushes out of the room, turns off the light and slams the door. Minutes later, John appears, turns on light.]

George: [Jumping out of his bed again at the light] Look, Murray said that there are only two other people sleeping in here tonight.

John: [Angrily] There are no other beds here tonight. This bloke paid for a bed and he’s going to get a bed to sleep in. Now, clean off that bed so when the bloke comes back, he’ll have a place to sleep.

George: Well, that doesn’t give me much of a %&$*ing choice does it?

John: No, it doesn’t. Now clean off all those things from the bed so the bloke can have a place to sleep.

[George reluctantly complies, and while swearing quietly to himself, spends five seconds putting in the corner the two shirts, two books, and shampoo/conditioner bottle. He turns off the light and goes back to bed.]

[Silence]

[Paul, “the bloke,” enters the room, turns on the light and looks at the bed, now cleaned off. He walks out of the room in anger, leaving the light on and the door open.]

* * * THE END * * *

(copyright Ryan Barnes, 2001)

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This really happened. To me, this is one of the funniest things ever to happen in my life. It is also both delightfully postmodern and moral.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this monster e-mail. I’ll be posting pictures on the web soon.

Ryan